92
opinion
12 votes
Apr 27, 2015

This is infinitely simple : What is the government trying to do by having any kind of marriage status ? All the government needs to know, on any level be it federal, state or local, is if in terms of finical activity, you are acting as a single person or not.

The government should remove itself from the discussion of sexuality in terms of marriage because it is irrelevant to the government. Instead the only thing that needs to be known is if you are acting as a single person or jointly with another person. Marriage would qualify for joint legal status, as would civil unions, and civil unions should be accessible to everyone who wants to file for them. Through the legal status of civil union the government can get out of the way of the religious bigots who want to complain about the sanctity of marriage and the government can get on with handling the legal issues of people who are acting in their lives in a joint financial status for whatever damned reason they want to.

Gay or not, it doesn't matter. Right or wrong, it doesn't matter. The point is how to legally handle a couple of people who want to act jointly in a financial capacity.

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-3
main reply
3 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

I think heterosexual Marriage should be strictly regulated because of public health concerns

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0
linked reply
0 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

All sex carries health concerns regardless of sexual preference. But, to regulate sexuality is too intrusive. Individuals should be able to determine who they have sex with and how they intend to approach health issues as a result without the intrusion of regulation by the state.

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0 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

Mind explaining what health concerns your talking about?

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67
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3 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

The big problem is that the government grants many privileges to married people, for various reasons. There's significant tax benefits to being married, just for starters. This is likely done because the government sees marriage as something it needs to encourage for reasons of social stability, and also because it's not uncommon (even these days) for one partner to stay home and raise kids full-time while the other works. So if you're going to make a privilege available to people, it's not fair to restrict it based on a factor (sexual orientation) that people have no control over.

However, it's also not fair to restrict these benefits to only 2-person groupings, rather than larger groups. What if 3 or 4 adults want to be married and have a family together? Of course, 2-person marriage has been done a long time and the legal technicalities are fairly well worked-out by now. Adding more people into the mix would greatly complicate things, esp. with regard to taxation. This doesn't mean it shouldn't be done however.

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100
1 vote,
Apr 27, 2015

Catering to Polygamy seems unnecessary on a Federal level considering how far out of the norm it is, states can handle what works best for their state.

Polygamy as a legal issue really shouldn't be lumped in with sexual orientation based discrimination, they are separate issues on a Federal level.

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0 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

Not really. Remember, the whole reason gay marriage had to become a Federal issue is because of the requirement that State must recognize marriages performed in other States (reciprocity). So what happens when 3 people get married in Oregon, then move to New York where they don't have such marriage? Or what if those 3 people travel to New York and one has an emergency and is hospitalized, and the others want to visit him or her?

As far as being "out of the norm", what difference does that make? Gay marriage isn't all that normal, even now, but people are recognizing it's an issue of fairness and equal rights. Plus, there's estimates that at least a half-million people are involved in polyamorous relationships nationwide, and the number is rising quickly with the Millenials.

Finally, I never mentioned polygamy, I'm talking about polyamory. "Polygamy" is a loaded term that implies Mormon-style patriarchal and religious relationships.

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0 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

Polygamy and or polyamory is a tremendous shift away from the norm of 2 person relationships, if culture is heading that direction it will take 7-10 years to show up in significant amounts (half a million people in a country with 350 million or so people is less than 1%).

Consider that the LGBT community has grown since the 60s-70s from a hush hush mentality to an almost socially acceptable mentality and you'll see how long it will take any shift in acceptance for polyamory to become common place, let alone legislated on favorably.

"Traditional" values are still entrenched in the country's living spirit via the legions of 40-60 year olds that make up the old guard that are still mostly in charge of the country's policies. Growing away from that will require a few more decades, and by then the lifestyle choice of polyamory might be common place enough to warrant specific legislation. Until then the best you could hope for is vague enough language changes to existing marriage laws to allow the potential for polyamory to creep into the debate.

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-2
2 votes,
Apr 27, 2015

The population of the US is only a little more than 310 million, as of the 2010 census. Did we suddenly gain 40 million people?

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0
0 votes,
Sep 15, 2016

Arizhel, it is still 0.16% of the population. The UCLA estimates 9 million gay people are in the US, 18x as many as those in polygamous relationships. While their rights are important too, we have to take one thing at a time.

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User voted Yes.
0 votes,
May 21, 2016

But that all could be taken care of with a simple form and a few minor changes to existing laws. For example, SSI, you would designate a person for your death benefits. Same with medical, etc. The benefit and privileges are easily taken care of, and then the government would be out of the marriage business, then marriage would be a religious ceremony. So it's not as hard as some people make it out to be, the government gets out and doesn't care who you're sleeping or sharing your life with and everyone is on the same footing.

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0 votes,
May 21, 2016

That doesn't fix the tax laws, which heavily favor marriage. Besides, I've seen zero action by the anti-gay-marriage crowd to actually doing any of the things you propose. In theory, your proposal makes sense: get the government out of the marriage business. But there is absolutely zero action by the anti-gay-marriage people in that direction; they just scream about gay marriage and offer no solutions. They simply don't want it done at all; they want to oppress gays. So you'll occasionally hear some libertarian-ish person say something like that, but since they're such a tiny minority there's no actual legislation proposed.

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User voted Yes.
main reply
0 votes,
Oct 16, 2015

Being gay should be ok. If you make it not legal then that will be stupid. The government should not tell you who to marry if you're a boy marry a boy or girl it doesn't matter. Same with girls marry a boy or a girl it wouldn't matter

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