Gender Rights

I’m only talking about reforming an institution to recognize this reality.

Uh, no, you’re talking about removing an insitution from people who do not fit your definition of it. For what appears to be no reason at all, or at least, you have not bothered to _give_ such a reason. As I pointed out, if you wish to give benefits to children, the correct and obvious way to is, tada, give benefits to children.

Even if it wasn’t anything to do with marriage, even if it was called ‘flooble’ or something, giving it to people that _say_ they want children makes no sense, and is subject to scammers and liars.

This is so obvious it’s hard to even _argue_ about it in any manner, especially as you’ve given no reason we might want to do this. No, we do not flooble couples, and give priviledges to people who want children. I can no more come up with an argument for that than I could for giving tax credits to people who say they _want_ to donate to charity. We give them to people who _have_ children, just like we give tax credits to people who _do_ donate to charity.

It makes even less sense when you call that ‘marriage’ and thus have to remove all other sorts of marriage. But it wouldn’t even make sense if we called it flooble and it was unrelated to marriage. The government gives people rights and priviledges _after_ people do things, or _while_ they do them, not because they say they want to.

I don’t see the point of an institution governing the relationship between two adults exclusive of children, because contract covers this relationship adequately.

Uh, no. They don’t. As gay people have repeatedly pointed out.

I want states to recognize parental rights. I want parents and only parents to have these rights.

States _do_ recognize parental rights, and only parents _do_ have those rights. Which they have by virtue of being parents. You’re the one trying to extend them to ‘people who want to be parents but aren’t’ for some crazy reason. (And have decided to do this extention via marriage, for yet some other crazy reason.)

The whole point of monogamy is ensuring that a couple procreates exclusively with one another. The idea that marriage is primarily about romance and non-procreative sex is thoroughly modern.

Uh, no. The entire history point of monogamy is ensuring that _women only procreate with known men_. You’re trying to foist a general neutral definition onto something that, historically, is entirely about ensuring that a man knows the offspring of a woman is his. 

Historically, children are not intentions. They are blessings, like the rain.

Wow, like halfway into through that you completely forgot what you were trying to say, which was that having ‘people who wish to get married declare their intention of having children’.

People who married expected to have children, rather than intending to have them, just as you say. If you asked if they “intended” to have children, they’d think you very odd.

Firstly, no, they would not think me odd. Plenty of people got married, throughout history, for the _express_ purpose of having children, so of course they intended to have them.

However, as I was pointing out, plenty of people got married with the intention of _not_ having them. (Although this was a crapshot.)

So no one would have the slightest bit of problem with understanding ‘Do you intend to have children?’, even if some of them pointed out it wasn’t exactly up to them.

However, more to the point, you’ve completely forgotten what you were arguing, which that ‘Marriages only existing with the intention of having children’ should be enacted, because that is what they were ‘historically’.

That is _not_ true in any sense whatsoever. Even _you_ appear to be arguing against this point now, or have at least completely forgotten about where you were going with that logic.

But congratulations on your incredible absurd libertarian way of dodging the gay marriage bullet, which is like the traditional ‘The government shouldn’t do marriage at all’, but with enough of a twist to sound brand new, and yet being so crazy it’s hard to argue against.

I advocate the opposite. If you want benefits of marriage (or whatever it’s called), you must bind yourself strongly to children and a coparent and make many costly sacrifices and highly uncertain investments in often challenging relationships that constrain your choices for a lifetime with little hope of escape, as well as enjoying the benefits; othewise, I don’t see the point of the benefits.
Really. Your premise is that someone who _doesn’t_ want children, and knows they don’t want to do that, shouldn’t have the right to visit their partner of 20 years in the hospital?

I have the feeling that you have the same beliefs that a lot of people have about marriage benefits. You think the benefits of marriage are mostly economic or something, and want to only give them to people with with kids.

The problem is that this idea is almost completely wrong. Besides various ‘defaults’, which can often be mimicked with power of attorney and whatnot, almost all the economic benefits of marriage actually are for children, and only show up when children do. (The one exception being inheritance tax.)

The actual reason and purpose for marriage, the parts of it that gay people cannot mimic with contract law, is that it extends, legally, someone’s _family_. It makes someone a family member. In fact, legally, it makes them the closest family member. (As it puts them in a position of ‘spouse’, which beats ‘parent’ and ‘child’.)

The closest thing to marriage is not a business partnership. The closest thing to  marriage is _adult adoption_.

If you want a right to visit a partner in a hospital, obtain the partner’s durable power of attorney. If that doesn’t suffice, I want the law changed so that it does suffice. 

That does _not_ suffice. Often only family members have visitation rights, such as in ICU. Likewise, if the person is unconscious, the _family_ controls who is in the room, not power of attorney.

Most of these benefits, like dependent exemptions, don’t require marriage.

And if you want to change them to require marriage, I have no problem with that.

You seem to have a ‘solution’ that has nothing to do with the ‘problem’, nor do you appear to have a problem with marriage at all. Your problem appears to be with taxes and children, neither of which actually has anything do with ‘marriage’ at all, and if you want to alter tax rules about marriage, feel free.

If you want to think of someone as a member of your family, you don’t need the state’s permission.
Except that absolutely no one, from random people to the government, will _recognize_ them as family. They can’t, for a completely random example, testify during the sentencing phrase for someone who killed their lover. (Like some states allow for family members.)

The idea of ‘family members’ legally exists. It’s a real thing, it allows a whole host of assumptions about all sorts of things, which a very large section of society uses. It’s actually _codified in law_ in all sorts of places, and that’s just the law…it’s all over the place in private institutions also. 

 Yes, _some_ of those assumptions can be done contractually…but some can’t. (And why anyone would think it would be useful to _remove_ the ability to do those assumptions and make everyone use contracts is beyond me.)

That’s _why there is a formal process to turn lovers into family members_, called ‘marriage’.

You propose removing that process because a) you don’t like the tax benefits (Which are a completely independent issue and can be removed separately.), and b) I have no idea.

@DavidCheatham:disqus 

Uh, no, you’re talking about removing an insitution from people who do not fit your definition of it.

You’re right. I am.

For what appears to be no reason at all, or at least, you have not bothered to _give_ such a reason.

I have given the reason. I don’t see the point of tax breaks and other benefits for childless couples, and I don’t see the point of a legislature writing the terms of a relationship between two people, terms involving only the two people that are no one else’s business, regardless of sexual orientation. In my way of thinking, advocates of this statutory institution and its benefits bear the burden of proving its utility.

As I pointed out, if you wish to give benefits to children, the correct and obvious way to is, tada, give benefits to children.

Of course. A childless married couple receiving benefits designed for a family with a non-wage earning mother makes no sense to me. This benefit is an accident of history. These days, when most couples have two earners, if a childless couple wants one earner not to work, I see no reason to subsidize this choice.

But I don’t want to “give benefits to children”. Parents are obliged to support their children, rightly so. I want children to owe their supportive parents reciprocal support in old age. Labor is the most valuable means of production, empirically. Raising children is a real investment in a real means of production, and a recipricoal obligation to support aging parents is a real return on investment. The rationale for this benefit is its economic rationality, the real proportionality between current expendture and future production.

Even if it wasn’t anything to do with marriage, even if it was called ‘flooble’ or something, giving it to people that _say_ they want children makes no sense, and is subject to scammers and liars.

I added “declared intention to have children”, because marriage historically involves the expectation that you describe, but defining marriage strictly in terms of the children makes more sense.

No, we do not flooble couples, and give priviledges to people who want children.

If that’s your point, I withdraw “declared intention to have children”. I would define marriage strictly as the relationship between parents of the same children, already conceived. The legal relationship begins with a pregnancy that the mother intends to continue. A father’s obligation should begin at this point.

Today, we simply give benefits to straight couples that get a license from the state, for no apparent reason, and gay couples and others rightly feel short-changed, but healing this inequity by extending the same benefits to gay couples makes no sense to me.

Historically, these benefits are related to a presumption that married couples found families with children. This presumption becomes archaic in the 20th century with the emergence of more reliable birth control and changing cultural norms.

Uh, no. They don’t. As gay people have repeatedly pointed out.

Which terms of the relationship are not addressed by contract, power of attorney, wills and joint ownership of property?

I’m not discussing statutory benefits that gay people associated with childless straight marriage. The existence of these benefits for childless straight couples does not justify extending them to gay couples. If the benefits are not defensible for childless straight couples, withdrawing them for childless straight couples is the solution.

Uh, no. The entire history point of monogamy is ensuring that _women only procreate with known men_.

Well, that’s equivalent to the partners procreating only with one another, which is what I said. The issue is paternal certainty. I make this point repeatedlyTraditional marriage protects interests of fathers. It is part of a system of governance properly called “paternalism”.

I don’t defend paternalism, because I support gender equality, but I want to replace many statist institutions with a customs that might be called “parentalism”, a more gender neutral form of the traditional standards.

You’re trying to foist a general neutral definition onto something that, historically, is entirely about ensuring that a man knows the offspring of a woman is his.

I’m not trying to neutralize anything. A man reasonably wants to know that his wife’s children are his progeny; otherwise, he has no control over his own reproduction. I’m not hiding this motivation. I have no reason to hide.

Wow, like halfway into through that you completely forgot what you were trying to say, which was that having ‘people who wish to get married declare their intention of having children’.

I didn’t forget anything. I describe a possible reform of current law in one context, and I describe the past in another. Again, if your objection is all about “declared intention”, I withdraw it.

Firstly, no, they would not think me odd.

Everyone who married expected children unless they knew they were infertile, which was very hard to know unless you were a post-menopausal woman, or they intended to be chaste, which is hard to imagine. Shakers were celebate, but they didn’t marry.

People understood marriage with a strong desire to have children, but fertile people didn’t understand marriage with no intention of having children. If you ask a marrying couple if they intend to have children, even if they don’t seem interested in children, you’re basically asking them if they intend to have vaginal intercourse. They might look at you and say, “Uh. Night follows day …” Or they might think you rude and say nothing.

However, as I was pointing out, plenty of people got married with the intention of _not_ having them. (Although this was a crapshoot.)

People with an intention of not having children became nuns or Shakers or something. Plenty of people marry with an intention of not having children today, but this plenty is thoroughly modern.

However, more to the point, you’ve completely forgotten what you were arguing, which that ‘Marriages only existing with the intention of having children’ should be enacted, because that is what they were ‘historically’.

I say that marrying with a declared intention to have children is “much closer to” traditional marriage, when marriage generally involved an expectation of children, but this intention is not my point. Most children are not carefully planned. Intention is highly overrated. It’s a comforting illusion of control.

But congratulations on your incredible absurd libertarian way of dodging the gay marriage bullet, which is like the traditional ‘The government shouldn’t do marriage at all’, but with enough of a twist to sound brand new, and yet being so crazy it’s hard to argue against.

I concede your point, but review the post you’re disputing. “Declared intention” did not rule out gays marrying. I say, “a declared intention to procreate or to adopt jointly“, precisely anticipating your objection.

You argue against a single phrase that I introduced recently and is not particularly relevant, so I’ll just withdraw that phrase. Calling me crazy doesn’t bother me. I can get that just for having sex with men.

Well, if gay marriage doesn’t exist legally, then a gay relationship is not a marriage, so having a gay relationship while being married is not two marriages.

That’s just because I didn’t mention the last step, ‘They then leave North Carolina.’ Let’s use names:

Adam marries James in Massachusetts or somewhere.

James leaves Adam, but does not get divorced. 

He moves to Georgia, and meets Sandy.

James and Sandy _cannot get married_ in Georgia. While Georgia law does not recognize what James and Adam have as a ‘marriage’, it does recognize it as actually existing, and until it is dissolved, James cannot marry.

But let’s say that James does not want to get divorced. (Perhaps James ran off with some joint property like a car, and does not want to lose it in divorce proceedings.)

Luckily, there’s a way around this. Sandy and James drive to North Carolina, where James’ marriage does not exist in _any_ manner, and get married there. (Incidentally, some states have laws against such drive-by marriage, but I don’t know North Carolina is one.)

A month later, Adam shows up, pissed, and…what? What is Georgia supposed to do with James, who is married to two people? How do the joint property laws work? How do the divorce laws work?

When gay people started getting married in some states, the courts of other states had to figure out how to deal with them, but it  was pretty easily…sure, they couldn’t get married here, and don’t have marriage rights here, but they can get divorced and all sorts of things, and this worked because marriages just had two people so the law worked anyway.

But North Carolina just made all other states deal with polygamy. Um, yay?

Oh, and let’s not forget the fact North Carolina isn’t free of problems, either.  If instead James and Sandy lived in North Carolina…what happens when Adam shows up and wants his half of his car back? Lawsuit? The state refuses to recognize the marriage exists, so how can it talk about joint property that exists due to that marriage? But..if the couple doesn’t jointly own it…who does?

What happened is that idiots have, for years, been yammering about how their state doesn’t ‘recognize’ gay marriage, and maybe there’s even ‘laws’ saying that. But there are other laws also, and court decisions on those other laws, which mean that, strictly speaking, _all_ states recognize all(1) marriages, just not as those having the rights and privildges of marriage in that state. Except now North Carolina _literally_ cannot see those other marriages, because they put such a stupid thing in their constitution, overriding court decisions and bigamy and divorce laws.

1) In fact, they recognize foreign marriages also, which means, yes, occassionally polygamy does show up. But it’s incredibly rare, and not much precendent exists.

A divorced couple may continue to own a property jointly after a divorce in principle, so North Carolina can still recognize James’ claim on the car.

I do not know the joint property laws in Massachusetts, but I’m pretty certain you have oversimplified them, as they all vary by state. Some places do not have joint property besides real estate outside of marriage. Some places have all property gained during marriage automatically be joint property. Some places let anyone do anything in joint property. Almost all of them have special inheritence rights for spouses. Etc, etc.

If North Carolina literally cannot see the marriage, all those rights are going to be weird if any gay married couple brings in property from outside the state. (And ‘property’ includes ‘bank balance’.)

Here’s the base text of the amendment: ‘marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.’

The problem isn’t ‘valid’, that’s fine. To rephrase the problem part, ‘No domestic legal unions except marriage between one man and one woman shall be recognized’. 

The problem is ‘recognize’ isn’t actually a synonym for ‘valid’, as the drafters appeared to assume. If courts and laws don’t ‘recognize’ something, they behave as if they do not see it at all. That’s what ‘recognize’ means in a technical and legal sense. (For example, speakers are recognized at a meeting.)

Granted, ‘not recognize gay marriages’ has shown up in the law before, but that was _the law_. If one part of the law says they don’t recognize something, and another part talks about it existing, clearly the first law is crazy. Likewise, if the law says it doesn’t recognize something, but this produces absurd outcomes in the courts, the courts will quietly continue to recognize that thing.

But now it’s in the constitution, which means even courts in North Carolina are supposed to behave as if something that is true is not known. The fact that ‘James and Adam are married under the laws of Massachusetts.’ is not allowed. (It seems like it would be  akin to the ‘fruit of the poisioned tree’ concept.) Instead of them just saying ‘He married there, and stuff happened there that we have to sort out now, even though we don’t treat that as a valid marriage here’, which is how all the other states handle it.