A note on marriage and government

[danaeris]

In response to some rather excited reactions to my post...

Right now we have this thing called marriage. It affords people certain kinds of financial and tax-related advantages. People can choose to not get married and be together, but they don't get those advantages.

Those advantages are basically endorsing the institution of marriage, which is a religious endorsement and inappropriate for the government to make.

What I was suggesting was simply this: That in the event that an OBJECTIVE assessment of the stability of a set of parents could be made, and in the event that the child was either ADOPTED, or screened to be a good genetic match if the couple are breeding, that the couple receive tax breaks etc. similar to those married couples receive today.

Remove marriage from the legal arena. Civil unions would still exist, but they would be contracts between partners (of any gender, for any reason, and in any numbers) and afford no governmentally granted tax breaks, but rather rights such as hospital visits and unassailable wills. A registry, perhaps, of the people who are permanent partners in your life, who should always be allowed to see you in the hospital, etc.

Meanwhile couples in or out of civil unions could STILL have children if they wanted. The only difference is that without applying for thingum, they would not get the tax breaks. Given that unmarried couples have children all the time nowadays, all this does is shift the tax breaks to being based on ability to raise a healthy child in a stable environment, rather than a religious institution.

So chill out. :)

Comments

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

The only problem with that, and I happen to agree with most of what you're saying, is that the tendrils of the institution of marriage extend far beyond local, state, or federal laws. Banks, insurance companies, hospitals, etc. all factor marriage in to what they will and will not allow.

Legal agreements can be made between parties that will offset some of this... most of it even.

I guess all I'm trying to say is that it's non-trivial.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I think the issue is that you were advocating genetic and psychological profiling. and while you said "objective psychological profiling" we can never truly have it objective - there will be people who think gays are unfit to raise children, who think non-college-gratuates are unfit to raise children, who think people with a criminal record are unfit to raise children (even if it was long ago in the past and they've been clean since), who think lawyers are unfit to raise children, who think people who work in the sex industry are unfit to raise children, who think pagans are unfit to raise children, who think people taking SSRIs are unfit to raise children, who think people who would spank their children are unfit to raise children... the list goes on and on. Who gets to choose which of these things are part of the psychological profiling?

And we already HAVE tax breaks for people who have children or other dependants and they're not based on marriage or even partnership.

[ebenezer.livejournal.com]

In general, I agree with you. I have one major worry though, which is custody. Relationships come and go, and part of the purpose of marriage / civil unions is to raise the bar for breaking up. (Note: I learned this from you.) It seems that encouraging a society in which couples have children and then capriciously break up without a well-defined, reasonable path to legal custody is kind of dangerous. How can we resolve this?

(Yes, I'm with you about referring to the legal aspect of marriage as "civil union" in all cases, and having government get out of the religion business.)

[wurmfood.livejournal.com]

My response to all this is based on some of the time I spent down at city hall yesterday.

I spoke to a couple in their 50's, easily, who had been together over 20 years. They had all the legal stuff they could have up to that point including contracts and such that essentially made them married (minus the monetary bits) from a legal point of view. However, marriage was different for them.

Marriage is very different from simply a legal contract. The problem with making things a strictly legal union is that legal contracts alone are usually much easier to get annuled.

Marriage is an emotional contract, or, rather, a formalization of an emotional contract between two people. There is a strong difference between "this is my legal partner" and "this is my spouse". Marriage is a commitment that is looked at very differently. The concept of what marriage is is very ingrained into our culture. Providing 'civil unions' of whatever type just isn't the same thing.

Re:

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

I agree. So what right does the government have to grant or not grant marriage to a couple? Even if the government would grant marriage to any couple or group of people, what does the government have to do with it? The government should only be involved with the legalities. The emotional aspects -- for instance, who you are or are not married to -- should not be a legal thing at all, and is none of the government's damned business.

I think that if the government stopped performing marriages of any kind -- for hets, gays, whatever -- people would stop CARING about it. Right now, because the government DOES ratify marriages for het couples, it is viewed as something that is denied queer couples. For that reason, it makes me just as teary eyed as anyone else to see all these queer couples being married legally. It's beautiful. It has become something with great emotional attachment, to be legally married as a queer couple. But remove it from the government's realm entirely, and that changes, in my opinion.

And regardless of the emotional attachment we have to legal MARRIAGE, as long as the government has that emotional power over us, they can still remove it. Even if federal queer marriage and group marriages become legal today, a hundred years from now things could change and it could be taken away. It is much more likely to stay equal if the concept of an emotional bond is removed from the realm of government.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

in the event that the child was either ADOPTED, or screened to be a good genetic match if the couple are breeding

This is what has the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. If your child does not meet government approval for *any* reason, you have to give them up for adoption or else be rich enough to forgo the tax benefits. So the rich and the governmentally approved get to have kids. I have a big problem with that.

Living as a human being has taught me that much-touted objectivity does not exist when it comes to people's lives. I find that preferable, to be honest; objectivity (in the form of sceince) has taught us much, but treating it like a Commandment From On High is a fool's errand.

[auros]

I'd note that there are good reasons (taxes, inheritance, medical power of attorney) to have a simple government form available so that people who never intend to have children can get hitched. The existence of stable family units has benefits beyond the raising of children -- people take care of each other when they're sick, enhance each other's sense of a stake in the community, etc.

Currently most benefits of marriage are mostly accessible, but a) some are not (e.g. employer health insurance) and the state could compel all such benefits to be extended on a gender-neutral basis; and b) getting those benefits currently requires employing a lawyer, and considerable expense, to draw up the contract, and the contract is (as observed) relatively easy to annul. This sort of thing ought to be managed by simply filling out a form and registering the union with the gov't.

[urbanbard.livejournal.com]

This goes back to a long-standing debate you and I have had. I just don't believe such an 'objective' judgement can ever be made.