02-29-2004, 03:35 PM
That's interesting. Perhaps the two should be separated. Allowing gays to be "legally married" but not "religiously and legally married" might be a decent compromise.
Obviously, the legal distinction between the two would need to be defined. That would require someone smarter than me to work out.
It would have to be done state by state as well as at the federal level, and it would be necessary not to call it marriage, and it would be necessary to give serious thought as to what restrictions, if any, could then be placed on people seeking those legal implications.
To really get government out of the marriage business, I think you would need to do it legal issue by legal issue. For example, if you think that it is important for gay couples to get the same health benefits and married couples, you could create a law setting up the ability for any 2 unmarried adults to form a healthcare cooperative, and require any company that gives benefits to married couples to provide the same benefits to such a cooperative. If children get benefits, those could be given to anyone who has primary or joint custody. Income tax would be tricky to reform... the idea would be to eliminate joint filing but I don't know how that would work.
If you took these issues and reformed them all, then legal marriage would be exactly equal to a sequence of legal contracts that anyone could get, and at that point you could simply eliminate legal marriage and allow people to choose which contracts applied to their situation. But to take legal marriage as it currently exists and make no changes other than to allow same-sex marriages would be a strong social statement (I would say a moral statement) by the government. Basically by performing legal marriages, the state governments act almost like churches endorsing the concept of family, and this is why they have such restrictions (can't marry a minor, can't marry your sister, ect.), because the legal marriage has a strong social connotation to it. The legal contracts have to be forcefully separated from that social connotation before they can be opened up to all people without other ramifications.
What I have described above will not happen. It's too intricate. The government will stay in the marriage business, either by reinforcing the idea that marriage requires a husband and wife or by effectively abolishing the idea.
Obviously, the legal distinction between the two would need to be defined. That would require someone smarter than me to work out.
It would have to be done state by state as well as at the federal level, and it would be necessary not to call it marriage, and it would be necessary to give serious thought as to what restrictions, if any, could then be placed on people seeking those legal implications.
To really get government out of the marriage business, I think you would need to do it legal issue by legal issue. For example, if you think that it is important for gay couples to get the same health benefits and married couples, you could create a law setting up the ability for any 2 unmarried adults to form a healthcare cooperative, and require any company that gives benefits to married couples to provide the same benefits to such a cooperative. If children get benefits, those could be given to anyone who has primary or joint custody. Income tax would be tricky to reform... the idea would be to eliminate joint filing but I don't know how that would work.
If you took these issues and reformed them all, then legal marriage would be exactly equal to a sequence of legal contracts that anyone could get, and at that point you could simply eliminate legal marriage and allow people to choose which contracts applied to their situation. But to take legal marriage as it currently exists and make no changes other than to allow same-sex marriages would be a strong social statement (I would say a moral statement) by the government. Basically by performing legal marriages, the state governments act almost like churches endorsing the concept of family, and this is why they have such restrictions (can't marry a minor, can't marry your sister, ect.), because the legal marriage has a strong social connotation to it. The legal contracts have to be forcefully separated from that social connotation before they can be opened up to all people without other ramifications.
What I have described above will not happen. It's too intricate. The government will stay in the marriage business, either by reinforcing the idea that marriage requires a husband and wife or by effectively abolishing the idea.