CA Ban on Gay Marriage overturned: Big whoop

[howeird]

The government should not be in the marriage business. Marriage is a religious institution which has no place in the law. If everyone is supposed to be treated equally under the law, there should be no special privileges or taxes for married people. I feel the same way about domestic partnerships.

Today's ruling should be a moot point. Anyone who wants to get married ought to be able to do so according to the rituals of whatever religion they belong to. Atheists can make up their own ceremony - the usually do anyway. Marriage is between two (or three or four or...) people, and the State ought to have nothing to do with who can and can't.

There are many places where marriage bleeds over into law, but it shouldn't, and there are work-arounds:
Inheritance: Write an effing will. Name your partner as beneficiary if you want. Existing laws cover this already.
Visitation rights: If there isn't a law in place which allows you do pre-designate people who are allowed to visit you when you are ill, let's get one passed.
Health care: If there isn't a law allowing you to add anyone you want to your health care package (with the appropriate fees charged for the extra body) let's get one passed.

Thanks to the high failure rate of marriages, there are already laws in place to protect the children.
There are already laws in place allowing co-ownership of property by people who are not related.
Anything else?

Comments

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

Oh heck yeah.

--SSI benefits (if you marry a woman, she receives some portion of your SSI benefits if you die before she does; if you marry a man, nada)
--health benefits (some companies allow their employees to cover their same-sex partners on their health insurance; many don't and some states actually forbid it)
--various other health- and death-related benefits, such as bereavement leave, leave to care for a critically ill partner, etc.
--all the issues that can come up around child custody when the parents aren't allowed to marry and the biological parent dies
--don't even get me started on the military's idiotic "don't ask don't tell" policy

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Modern marriage is the evolution of medieval property-management schemes, not religion.

[howeird]

Some of the inheritance things, yes, but religious marriage where the woman was chattel is well documented in the Old Testament, and pre-Biblical traditions in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

[gil-liant.livejournal.com]

"Marriage" is many different things to many different people. (I've currently counted at least four distinct and incompatible meanings for the term.) It is, regrettably, hurled about with great abandon and little precision (in my opinion) far too often. To expect any sort of rational, coherent, and sensible legislation regarding four wildly different things masquerading as one 'thing' is folly, so on that account I think today's court ruling to be in the best interest of the state and its citizens.

Different meanings for 'marriage' I have discovered so far:

1) A pledge of commitment and support between two people, made privately between the two of them, but announced publicly to the community as a whole.

2) A legal contract granting each marriage partner rights, privileges, responsibilties, and proprietary interests in the union formed thereby.

3) A religious ceremony or sacrament whereby the marrying parties can affirm and embrace a particular aspect of their beliefs with the other members of their religious community -- possibly changing the status of one or more of the marrying parties within said religious community thereby.

4) A mystic ritual which establishes a supernatural bond between the marrying parties. (If you believe in that sort of thing.)

[howeird]

I agree with all you say, and can even add a few more definitions of marriage. But my point is there is no call for marriage to be legislated at all. There is no mention of marriage in the US Constitution, and that's the way it ought to be for the states as well.

When my friends find love worthy of a commitment, I am joyful regardless of their gender, age, race, religion (or lack thereof), national origin, native language, occupation, eye color, number of thorax segmentations, length of antennae or CPU size. There should be no difference in the way the law treats them before they make the commitment vs. after.

[gil-liant.livejournal.com]

I agree with all you say, and can even add a few more definitions of marriage.

Oh? I'd like to hear what others you've encountered or come up with.

But my point is there is no call for marriage to be legislated at all.

Well, actually, you can't have marriages of type #2 without legislation --- so, if you believe that there is a benefit to having such things, there is no reason why a rational state can or should not enact such laws in the interest of its citizens. There is no call for the government to attempt to legislate the other three types of 'marriage' -- but as been earlier noted, most people fail to distinguish between the various types.

[howeird]

Others include the polyamorous version of your #1, a pledge of exclusive sexual fidelity between two people, a pledge of financial sharing between two or more people, an agreement by one person to support one or more others in return for cohabitation and/or progeny. And so on.

My gripe is with #2. I do not agree with the current practice of the government or commercial entities (such as insurance companies and health care facilities) of granting rights or privileges to married people which they do not grant to single people. We are supposed to all be equal under the law.