California Ghey Marriage

[Tommy]

My thinking about the whole definition of marriage thing has led me to a conclusion different from anything I've seen here. My opinion is that government should get out of the marriage business entirely. Here's my thinking.

First, there is no legal barrier that stops any couple from living together, sharing assets, having sex and raising children without being married. If they conceive children, they are both ethically and financially responsible for raising them whether or not they are married. Courts will back that up. .... If they split up and fight over the children and shared assets, courts can resolve those disputes whether or not they were married. Marriage is simply not necessary for the most part.

What marriage does provide is a legal partnership between spouses that is defined by and can be changed by the government whenever it chooses. I believe the vast majority of first married people have no idea of the legal entanglement they are entering. I think those who want to have a legal partnership with their housemate would be much better off negotiating a prenuptial type agreement where both partners know exactly what to expect. That way the partners define the partnership rather than the government. (For example, I had no idea when I married that the federal government would later decide that half of my retirement pay would go to my former spouse and that matter would not even be subject to negotiation during the divorce.)

Marriage also gives spouses the right to speak for their partners should they become incapacitated or die. That same privilege could be easily provided by legal papers signed by the partners.

Lastly, as currently structured, marriage provides spouses with certain benefits such as Social Security retirement payments. I'll illustrate my problem with that with a hypothetical example. ... Suppose a man had a younger sister with Down’s syndrome. Both parents are dead and the man has been providing for his sister for his entire adult life. The man has never married nor had children with anyone. He’s concerned that there won’t be enough money to care for his sister during retirement of if he should he die before her. As he has no wife to benefit from the years of social security payments he’s made, he’d like to designate his sister as his beneficiary for social security and retirement benefits. Is it fair for the government to say he can only claim those benefits if he marries someone? I think not. I think a better system would be to allow each person who has earned spousal benefits to designate one person to receive those benefits. The choice of who that person is should be entirely up to the individual. The beneficiary could be a spouse, child, mother, friend or anyone they choose.

Marriage does provide the couple with an opportunity to stand before their community and announce their intention to live together in accordance with their cultural and religious beliefs. That's fine with me. But that doesn't require government involvement. We should turn the concept of marriage back over to religious and cultural groups and allow each to define it as they set fit. But government should get out of the business of defining what a marriage is, how it should operate and how it should end.