Why is government involved in marriage at all?

[Lilairen]

@levdrakon

What people look down on are same sex unions and they’re going to do that whether it’s called marriage or not. In fact, Americans have shown they’re unwilling to let SS couples call it marriage. We’re not winning that battle.

I live in Massachusetts. Pretty sure I still count as an American here, and I’m pretty sure that same-sex couples are married here. Pretty sure I went to the hearing to argue about it a couple years before Goodridge, too. We’re still bickering with the Feds about recognising all of them, but we have 'em. And here in MA, acceptance for the rights of same-sex couples to marry has only increased since Goodridge.

But increasingly SS couples can get civil unions and I think this shows a civil union is the extent to which the government needs be involved in it. Once everyone has a civil union everyone will realize that’s pretty much all they ever had as far as the government is concerned and those screaming “but I’m special, I’m married!” will just look silly.

Increasingly, bigots hope that throwing same-sex couples the sop of legal rights without the term that associates with social acceptance will get them to shut up.

[Keeve]

@Lilairen

Marriage is the social ritual for presenting a partnership to the community. There are expectations for how one is obligated to treat a married couple in the society in which I live, standards of politeness and respect for the existence of that relationship. Those expectations do not hold for roommates, dating couples, long-term cohabiting couples, and so on, though some people may choose to extend them anyway. Your example of the party invitation was of this type, though what I am speaking of is not limited to that.

Okay, thank you very much. Really and sincerely.

Now, suppose the goverment would remove itself from certifying who is married or not for the above purposes. Instead, a couple would marry with a ritual (either designed by themselves or of a pre-existing type) which had no goverment involvment (i.e., no Marriage License from the local Board of Health or whatever). Then, they present their partnership to the community as a marriage, and they can have full expectations for others to accept them as such.

What objections do you have for such a procedure? I think you might have misunderstood my suggestion.

@Lilairen

The major problem with your suggestion is that it does not recognise that the concept of marriage – the word itself – is important. If the word were not important, than nobody would be making the argument “It’s okay if they have legal protections, so long as they don’t use the word”, and nobody would be waving the idea of ‘civil unions’ around in the first place, some way of indicating a marriage without giving it the respect of actually calling it a marriage.

I do agree that the concept of marriage, and the word itself, are important. In fact, they are so important that I want the government to refrain from telling us who is married and who isn’t. Only the people themselves can make that call.

[Polycarp]

@Keeve

Okay, thank you very much. Really and sincerely.

Now, suppose the goverment would remove itself from certifying who is married or not for the above purposes. Instead, a couple would marry with a ritual (either designed by themselves or of a pre-existing type) which had no goverment involvment (i.e., no Marriage License from the local Board of Health or whatever). Then, they present their partnership to the community as a marriage, and they can have full expectations for others to accept them as such.

What objections do you have for such a procedure? I think you might have misunderstood my suggestion.

I do agree that the concept of marriage, and the word itself, are important. In fact, they are so important that I want the government to refrain from telling us who is married and who isn’t. Only the people themselves can make that call.

Here, though, is the problem. There are cases in which you want the government to have some recognition of marriage. Here are a few:

1. Sam and Harvey are on vacation in Key West. Harvey falls on the coquina and is knocked unconscious, inhales a lungful of seawater, and suffers various complications. A risky medical procedure is indicated, and Harvey is comatose. Does Sam, holding himself out to be Harvey’s legal life partner, have the right to consent as next of kin, or do we telephone Harvey’s mother in St. Paul, whom Sam says has disowned him, for her consent?

2. Bernard invented the Mark VII widget, and made several millions off it. He was in his 50s when he was struck with a massive heart attack and died, without making a will. Three heirs present themselves: Sam, his son, 27; Wanda, his daughter, 23; and Heather, a bubbly, vivacious and voluptuous young blonde of 26. Heather states that Bernard married her after divorcing Sam and Wanda’s mother, and should inherit half the estate. Sam and Wanda contest this, saying the estate should be divided between them.

3. Marie put Dr. Rufus through medical school and internship by working as an unskilled laborer. Marie then had three children, all still under the age of 18, while living with Rufus, and claims he is their father. Rufus is now living with Evette, a younger woman. What is Marie entitled to in support from Rufus?

4. Don’t forget young Missy, the precocious ten-year-old from an earlier post of mine who is convinced that Chester the 40-year-old pedophile is deeply in love with her and wants to marry her. (If the law does not define who may marry and who may not, Missy is quite capable of contracting that marriage. Because the law is what gives her parents the right to keep her from marrying.)

5. The Mystic Crystal Commune consists of 20 people, ranging in age from a 14-year-old runaway boy to the 43-year-old guru who leads them. They claim to all be married to each other. Are they? Oh, and Martha and her son Quaoar have just left the commune, and is suing for support.

6. Billy and Betty are brother and sister, and also claim to be husband and wife. Sometimes their brother Barney lives with them, and Betty claims he’s also her husband. Child Protective Services are intervening on the oldest child, Brenda, whom Billy and Barney want to take as a second wife.

In insisting that the law should not limit who may marry (except Missy and perhaps that 14-year-old in the commune), you are ignoring the legal implications of what marriage means in our society. You’re the judge on these cases. How do you rule, and why?

[Keeve]

@Polycarp

Here, though, is the problem. There are cases in which you want the government to have some recognition of marriage. Here are a few: … You’re the judge on these cases. How do you rule, and why?

Thank you.

(I’ll begin with a real simple one: Case #3 is probably already covered by palimony rules. I don’t know what they’re based on, so I have no idea whether that would change in my scenario. It could well be that my lack of knowledge of why palimony is an accepted concept, is the basis for my uncertainty in other parts of this thread.)

I’ll add another case: 7. Lee and Chris had 500 people attending their religious wedding ceremony, but they never bothered to file the civil union paperwork. One got sick and needs someone to make medcial decisions. Who will it be?

In my proposal, Lee and Chris are stuck. They have no standing for each other, and their legal next of kin will be someone from their family-of-origin.

Okay, now to Polycarp’s other cases:

In the cases other than #4, if there is no civil union, then none of those people have any rights to inheritance, or support, or have standing for medical decisions. If there is a civil union, then the details of the contract (and/or of the civil union laws) will determine who is entitled to what.

Case #4, of 10-year-old Missy, is a bit different. I presume that your unstated question is “How does their relationship relate to concepts of statutory rape?” I honestly don’t know the answer to that. I know that there are some states which currently allow minor children to marry, and I suppose that similar clauses might be part of the civil union laws. But eventually, we’ll be confronted with the uncomfortable idea that the civil union laws will have expanded beyond areas like financial partnerships and responsibilities, and beyond medical power-of-attorney areas, into the area of who can have sex with whom.

(I wonder if this might be what some posters were alluding to, and I just didn’t get it until now…)

Okay, fine. So let the civil union laws explicitly say that the partners are exempt from any sort of statutory rape violations – The current laws which allow underage marriage must address the issue, right? So just copy the wording from there.