(I admit this is a pretty tangential and minor issue, yet I feel like ranting.)
In nearly every SDMB thread about gay marriage, and there are a LOT of them, someone will propose “well, I think we should get the government out of marriage entirely. Just have the government give out civil unions, and leave all the marrying up to churches or whatnot”.
Now, I recognize that this is usually a well-intentioned proposal. In a vacuum it makes a tremendous amount of sense. However, whenever it is suggested it puts my teeth on edge for several reasons:
(1) It’s been suggested OVER AND OVER AND OVER. We’ve all heard it already. And yet people constantly pop up in threads and suggest this as if it’s an interesting new twist we should ponder
(2) It’s never ever ever going to happen, for two reasons:
(2a) There are all sorts of international laws about marriage, recognizing other country’s marriages, spouses of diplomats, etc. The US can’t, all by itself, stop recognizing marriages without chaos ensuing
(2b) More importantly, marriage means WAY too much to WAY too many people for them to support a proposal where the government no longer recognizes it. It just. Won’t. Happen.
(3) While as I mentioned this usually comes from well-intentioned people (I’m defining “well-intentioned” to mean “generally supporting gay rights”, obviously), this can also be used as a way to weasel out of being anti-gay-marriage. Ie:
Q: So, do you support gay marriage?
A: I think the government should get out of the marriage business entirely
Q: But that’s not going to happen. So, that aside, do you support gay marriage?
A: I think the government should get out of the marriage business entirely
Q: But right now there’s proposition 1234 on the ballot in state Massituckyfornia to legalize gay marriage. That specific issue is what we’re debating. Do you support it? And if not, can you give logical reasons why not?
A: I think the government should get out of the marriage business entirely
Furthermore, marriage exists. There is a reason the law deals with it. It would be not recognizing parental relationships existed. There is a fundamental difference between a married couple and roommates. It would be ridiculous for the law not to distinguish between roommates and spouses. This is why common-law marriage law exists: sometimes it is clear that two people have a marital relationship whether or not it has been formalized.
If anything, it is religion that should get out of the marriage business.
You want to have a ceremony that ratifies your religious beliefs about the marital relationship between two people, fine, knock yourself out. Feel free.
You want to be legally married, drag yourself down to the courthouse.
Getting rid of marriage entirely is actually way more radical than extending it to gay couples. Also, just like integration meant much more than mere desegregation, marriage is a key aspect of our society and the primary question is still whether gay couples should be treated differently from straight ones.
It all smacks of the similar argument, “Why are you so insistent about getting to use the word marriage? It’s just a word!” Well, if it’s just a word, why shouldn’t we have it?
Meh. I’ve put it forth before, and I’ll put it forth in the future, as my very very slight preference over allowing SSM, because I think it has a completely trivial benefit, and a fairly minor benefit.
Trivial benefit: way it’s set up now, the government is concerned over my love life in a few instances–e.g., if I married someone from another country. That skeeves me out. In a related fashion, there’s the hackneyed Britney Spears argument: to the extent that marriage marks societal approval of a relationship, there are plenty of relationships I don’t want any part in approving of. Again, though, totally trivial.
Fairly minor: the social rights that go to married couples are also useful to some other folks who are not married, e.g., an adult child caring for an infirm parent. I think that labeling these rights as something other than marriage would make providing them to such relationships more efficient.
Your counterarguments are unpersuasive to me:
Yes, you’ve heard it before. If we stop rehashing the same old debates on this board, what ever will happen to it? It’ll fall apart, that’s what. (In any case, I think the arguments I put forward for it are not the ones normally offered).
2a) We’re kind of a giant gorilla in the room, diplomatically speaking, and this problem would be really simple. “Hey, other countries? We’re rebranding our so-called marriage rights over here. If you want to continue our reciprocity agreements, you’ll need to recognize all our civil unions according to your own marriage statutes, unless you adopt statutes similar to ours; and likewise we’ll recognize all your marriages as our civil unions.”
2b) Probably it won’t happen because folks are too tied up in the idea of marriage. I also want a pony. I’m pretty comfortable in politics never getting what I want. Frankly, I’m super-thrilled to be getting something close to what I want in this case, namely, the recognition of SSM.
I am absolutely ecstatic about the idea of SSM becoming legalized, and I’ve argued forcefully for it here and elsewhere. I actually see a tie between 2b and 3, in fact: sometimes, by offering people the chance to dissolve their own marriage to achieve parity with gay couples, it makes them realize what exactly they’re asking gay couples to forgo.
So yeah, I know it’s often raised by closet homophobes, but that’s not my reason. I know I won’t ever get it, and I’m pretty cool with that; the inevitable state of actual affairs, that SSM is quickly becoming ensconced in law, is far better than I thought I’d ever see. But still, given my druthers, I’d prefer marriage be a private, not a governmental, institution.
Well, this appears to be a response to what I’ve talked about in two recent threads, but the first five posts here either misrepresent or misconstrue my position about as thoroughly as I can imagine.
If I’m not the sole proximate cause of this pit thread, I’d like to know where the other posts are so I can see if somebody understands me.
As one of the first five posters, I’ll simply mention that I have no idea what you’re talking about. I took the OP at face value and responded appropriately. (I doubt that a knowledge of whatever your posts may say would have changed my response here.)
I guess no one here has seen the umpteen times I posted of the definitive answer, which is to be found in California Supreme Court’s opnion in In RE: Marriage Cases, the case that made SSM legal in the State, and which is the law of the land pending the final injunction regarding non-Constitutionality of Prop 8.
OK, that was a mouthful.
I promise you, all the legal and religious and emotional arguments are addressed there, and the legal reasoning against them is listed. It is not really what everyone thinks though, so go read it for yourself here (pdf)
Hi, Frank. Fair enough, and I apologize for assuming too much. I thought you thought you were disagreeing with me.
Without the context of my last couple posts on the subject, those that I was responding to and those that responded to me–I would have said I exactly agreed with you (with a qualification to the first sentence). But with that context, you sounded like another of the voices making me feel I’d slipped into an insane alternate universe where language couldn’t be made to work right no matter how hard I tried.
I’ve read big old chunks of that decision before, and I’ve quoted them at opponents of SSM–but I don’t recall the sections that address the specific idea of replacing all government-marriage documents with government-civil-union documents for everyone. Can you be more specific?
You’re also going to give major ammo to homophobes who claim that allowing gays to marry is going to destroy traditional marriage. They’d have a field day.
But, at the same time, you’re scaring them, and then offering them a solution that doesn’t do what we are proposing. I like it as an attempt to move the overton window.
I also agree that it makes the most sense of the proposals offered, even if it is the least likely to happen. It solves the problems that both sides articulate, and the fact that neither side wants it is a good reason to realize that something else is involved.
The most pertinent argument against “get government out of the marriage business” is how many laws depend on the legal recognition of the relationship. Quck quiz:
You’re a young person who has been postponing making out your will until after you get a bit ahead financially. You have a fatal accident. Who should get your estate?
…a. The person you love, who has entered into a mutual lifelong ommitment with you.
…b. The sister whom you cannot stand.
…c. The state receiver of unclaimed property.
The accident wasn’t quite that bad, but did leave you unconscious. Who makes medical decisions for you?
…a. The person you have taken as spouse.
…b. Your six year old son.
…c. Your only living blood relative, your 84-year-old senile aunt.
…d. A judge you’ve never met.
As a woman, you put your career on hold to give your kids a good home. Now your soon-to-be-ex-husband has found someone younger and more attractive. Would you prefer that:
…a. You and the kids be left destitute, with only what little is in your name legally for resources.
…b. You need to sue your husband for support for the kids, and prove they’re his responsibility to the satisfaction of a court.
…c. You’re entitled to a divorce settlement that takes your contribution to the marriage and your custody of the children into account.
Oddly, it’s costing more to maintain a home and family than it did to live single. But you’re assessed the same taxes, with the same deduction, as your single co-worker earning the same salary. Do you believe your greater responsibilities should entitle you to a larger deduction?
Your father was quite well-to-do, and while you’re disappointed that he left you, his only child, nothing in his will, you’re philosophically accepting of his right to leave his entire estate to the Home for Derelict Yaks. However, what rankles you is that you now have to house and suport your mother for the rest of her life. on a salary that you were just eking by on. Do you think maybe she should have had a claim on his estate?
You are supposed to pick up your child and take her to the dentist today. But unfortunately, it was your spouse who enrolled the kid, and the school won’t release her to you. Are they being reasonable?
You’re single, so none of the above bother you. What does piss you off is having to cover the work your co-worker left behind when he/she took time off to deal with the assorted problems above.
It’s too much bother to stand for what is right against some knuckledraggers. So instead, let’s inconvenience everybody, permanently.
I don’t think this is what the OP is refuting. I think he’s refuting the idea that the government should get rid of marriage documents and not replace them with anything. What you propose is a perfectly reasonable stance, and one I’d be happy with–either all can get married or all have civil unions. It’s the idea that the law can somehow just ignore the reality of human relationships at all that is just asinine.
Weird. I can’t say I’ve ever heard of the former argument. I’ve only heard of - and occasionally proposed out of annoyance - the idea that a civil union is the government registration portion of your union.
We already need “marriage licenses” whether you get married by a religious officiant or a judge or by your best friend who applied on the Internet to be ordained by the Universal Life Church. So for all those who go on about the “sanctity” of marriage and how “marriage is between a man and a woman” or even “OMG, same-sex marriage will force churches to marry gays!!!1,” make “marriage” only the religious ceremony portion. The license is the civil union portion. Laws and regulations that mention marriage should be considered to only apply to the licensing portion, and should cover both same-sex and opposite-sex. Anti-discrimination laws should apply where applicable, so religious institutions that were allowed to discriminate based on gender or sexuality before get to continue to do so.
I have to say, coming from a country that has had civil unions for donkey years, seeing how people on the US get twisted in knots over the semantics of marriage is highly amusing.
Seems so simple and obvious to me, a civil union is the legal framework seen by the state, the religious marriage is up to the beliefs of each couple. Whatever happened with “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” anyway?
In effect, this is saying “Not only can gays not get married, but atheists can’t, either.”
When you reach adulthood in the Catholic Church, you can get confirmed. They don’t have to confirm you, and you don’t have to get confirmed if you don’t want. When you reach adulthood in the US you are an adult. Adult-in-the-church and adult-in-the-law share some things, but they aren’t exactly the same thing.
I don’t see why the same can’t be (and it obviously is) said about married-in-the-church and married-in-the-law. The former should be for people who want that sort of thing, and the church can choose who to marry. The latter should be the default that happens when you get married, and the state shouldn’t have any ability to judge those doing it or to withhold permission–just as they don’t have the ability to withhold permission for adulthood while the RCC does.