Will it soon be "not unusual" for straight people to take advantage of SSM?

Great Debates
41

Don’t hold your breath. Animals aren’t even eligible to be citizens yet, or sign contracts, or numerous other things they should have the right to! We animal rights wingnuts will have to work hard to overcome that unfair and arbitrary hurdle first! :wink:

Frankly, I think the legal term for that is “fraud”.

I think it’s fine if two people want to make a lifetime commitment to live together and share their wealth, regardless of whether they have sex or not. The above case is borderline – maybe they did make that kind of commitment. To do it at the 11th hour only to keep the retirement income raises doubts. I don’t blame the family for supporting it, but I also wouldn’t blame the retirement fund from challenging it.

I think you’re focusing on financial benefits and forgetting some important legal ramifications.

I had a friend/co-worker who’d lived with her boyfriend for 20 years, when he died suddenly. At that point, she had zero legal standing. She couldn’t plan the funeral or decide what to do with his property and remains or anything, except to the extent that her boyfriend’s mother allowed. Fortunately they had a good relationship, but even then it added serious distress to a terrible situation.

Regardless, the financial aspect may explain why SSM isn’t used in the way the OP states (if indeed that’s the case … probably hard to find stats!)

I disagree. If a marriage is used solely for the purpose of evading immigration laws, it’s fraud, and IMHO it’s appropriate for the government to look at it that way. But I agree with your general sense, and that the exceptions (like immigration) should be explicit, limited exceptions.

IMHO, marriage should be for people who intend to share their lives and property for the rest of their lives, regardless of their sexes and their reasons. The cousins above might have been exactly that, but didn’t realize it due to social conventions. Immigration fraud doesn’t fit my definition at all.

42

Two criminals get married-so that they cannot be made to testify (in criminal court) against eachother?
Would that work?:wink:

43

Could give a new meaning to the Mafia term “made men.”

44

Everyone knows a husband and wife can’t be arrested for the same crime.

They can?

I have the worst fucking lawyers…

45

I don’t think so. I believe that if a marriage has not been consummated then in some states it can be annulled, but only if one (or both) of the people involved wanted it to be annulled. As best as I can tell in Google this is not the case in my state though, so I’m not sure where (if anywhere) this would be true.

46

No, it won’t. Not soon, and not ever.

47

This is an interesting thing that I’ve never really thought of before.

Life was hard in my early 20’s. Money was tight, insurance was hard to come by, good housing was always a challenge, I lived with a good friend for years.

Now say I’m able to marry my roomate. We can collaborate economically on bigger things than rent. Or, hell, with all the financial advantages, we don’t even need to cohabitate. After all, lots of married people don’t. We both want to marry someday (well, I do, but he wants to sleep with men basically forever). When we need to move on, we’ll just “divorce” and remain friends. Nothing lost, much gained.

I realize straight people can have sham marriages too, but why does the above scenario seem so much more plausible to me?

48

If you can treat it like a pure business arrangement, fine. I’ve no doubt, though, that some people who get married for short-term economic convenience will become horror-story fodder when they discover their spouse is fucking nuts, so now they’re legally and financially entangled with someone (and to a much greater degree than a simple legal partnership) who thinks a missed phone call is an incredibly offensive personal affront and worthy of a public screaming match at the workplace, and not even getting sex out of it.

Sure, get married to the person you’ve known for thirty years and whose personal quirks are known to you. A college roommate, though? How confident can you possibly be that they won’t go utterly apeshit on you? Sooner or later, the only way to sever the connection and get your life back in order in a timely manner might be to have the person killed - a crime of dispassion.

49

In favor of the “no apeshit”, this is someone I already know, and we’re not romantically entangled. Anyway, even if they do, then there’s cause for divorce. My life might get a little legally complicated for a while, but all it really means is I can’t enter into that same contract for a while. I don’t have to learn how to love again. People already take on the worst part of this risk when they take on a roommate.

50

Weird perhaps, but quite common apparently or why would “coming out” to one’s family be such a trauma?

My mother, who was widowed after five children with my father, put a fair bit of energy into finding a new husband. But, her motives were (mostly) because she thought her children would benefit from having an adult male in the household. Her closest friends were a group of women who were clearly, but not explicitly, lesbian. She eventually gave up on the remarriage plan.

To this day (fifty plus years on), my mother’s sexual orientation is not clear to me or my siblings. We’ve discussed it from time to time, but always conclude that if it isn’t something she wants us to know about it certainly isn’t something that makes any difference to us.

51

So what? Really :rolleyes:

52

Thanks for your contribution.

53

I’m not sure why straight people “taking advantage” of “gay marriage” is any bigger a deal than two straight people “taking advantage” of it.

I.E., I and a female friend get “married” for all the benefits without ever having sex with one another.

54

Only as common as getting different sex married for the same reasons. I personally consider that to be “not common.” Sure, you may run into someone who’s done it occasionally, and especially on a topic guaranteed to bring those people out, but that doesn’t make it common.

55

That’s exactly the case I wish someone would make, other than just saying it sounds like it makes sense to them. For example, is there a large number of same sex roommates living together who would love to get married?
Because I’ve almost never seen them. There’s already some benefit in living with someone you love aromantically, so why wouldn’t the same logic apply?

In other words, why aren’t you already living with this person, if you think it’s such a good idea?

56

I’m all for same-sex message if it’s sincere. My hesitation is that is vulnerable to abusing the benefit because there’s little to deter platonic same-sex roommates from exploiting it. It’s already an unconntroversial societal norm for two men or two women to live together if they don’t have sex, so why not fill out a form to get some extra benefits?

It’s true that marriage privileges could be abused by a man-woman couple who didn’t love each other, and I’m sure it happens all the time, but that situation would seem to be its own punishment. Plus, if we wonder whether it’s a sham marriage, the existence of a child can serve as partial evidence to the contrary. There’s no way to tell whether a same sex marriage was ever in earnest.

Anyway - the bottom line is equality. Everybody should have the right to get married. That being the case, we’ll simply have to tolerate the risk of sham marriages. I just expect to be hearing more numerous reports of sham marriages between non-sexual, non-caring same sex couples. Well, perhaps between all kinds of couples.

57

And it will accelerate when polygamy is legalized.

58

I have to agree with RedFury, so what? Whose business is it anyway?

59

I find the amount of speculation about possible same-sex marriage “fraud” interesting because of how it brings into visibility how much straight privilege there is in our society. Man and woman getting married for convenience? Yawn (outside of INS/green card situations, which has its own prevailing privilege to it). Man and man get married for convenience? OMG! Fraud! Stop them!

The assumption seems to be that more same-sex duos will try to get “fraudulently” married than opposite-sex duos do, which looks (to me) like an assumption that gay couples are more like buddies-who-fuck than they are actual couples in love. If you take out the “who-fuck” part, gay couples are just like me and my bro Larry down the street! We could totally get gay-married and get all those tons of special privileges!

I know you, John Mace, don’t consciously feel this way, so please don’t think I’m accusing you of homophobia or anything. But a cultural paradigm is hard to see around, and I really think the prevalence of “marriage fraud” concerns that’s been going around since the inevitability of actual marriage equality hove into view is coming from that cultural paradigm where gay relationships are never as deep as straight ones.

60

Well, the concept was sitcom fodder back in 2000 (Season 6 of The Drew Carey Show), so it’s certainly had time to sink in.

At a guess, I’d say… this issue will almost certainly cause the utter destruction of the United States as we know it, since 9/11 changed everything.