Let me see if I can simplify things.
What I am suggesting does not change, in any way, the responsibilities of parent to child. It does not do away with marriage or divorce.
In a nutshell, either
a) all legal and financial benefits granted by law upon marriage are discriminatory by nature and should be stopped entirely, or
b) all legal and financial benefits granted by law upon marriage should, instead, be granted by registry.
REGISTRY allows any adult to assign to any other adult, those legal and financial rights and responsibilities which, in the current system, are assigned to a married couple simply by virtue of marriage.
(I won't even begin to list those rights/benefits; someone did a partial list once but I can't find it now.)
Marriage does not need to change, but the government should no longer reward it. The reward, incentive, whatever, should be assigned to the registry, to the legal relationship - which may be marital, kinship, or something else. (In my case, I have two lifelong friends who would be better choices, perhaps, than family members.)
A procedure similar to disinheritance or divorce would be available to end the registration.
As I understand it, rights and responsibilities to children are not assigned by marriage, but by birth and/or adoption. I can't see why that would be affected.
It distances the church from the state, and it makes the benefits currently and unfairly restricted to marriage, available to all.
I thought of this in terms of solidarity, really. The way marriage is handle is, indeed, discriminatory - but it is discriminatory to more people than I thought. In fact, as a single woman nearing 50, I need to designate someone to act, shall we say, in lieu of spouse in the event of my death, disability, or other emergency. I shouldn't have to do that right-by-right, item-by-item, any more than gay people should.
This is, as someone pointed out, very similar to the civil unions we've talked about before. But I think we've narrowed the definition of the problem recently. The problem isn't civil unions versus marriage. The problem is that the government rewards marriage - and that is discriminatory.
(Just a note - employment benefits and insurance are moving forward much faster than the whole marriage issue. Registry wouldn't affect them directly, but I think it would be a pretty big prod.)
Phil, as a lawyer you will see all kinds of items that would never occur to me, but I think you understand the point I'm trying to make.
Last edited by Mellowicious; 01/23/09 06:49 AM.
