asterroc | Civil Rights

I personally think that all of this ban gay marriage stuff is a step in the right direction but doesn't go far enough. I think marriage should be made illegal in all forms.
Marriage should be left up to religious groups if people want to have a big party declaring their undying love for each other fine, but it should not be a binding legal contract giving half of you to someone else. But I am a very very bitter man.

On How I Met Your Mother, Neil Patrick Harris's Barney is opposed to gay marriage for the same reason he's opposed to marriage: As an inveterate womanizer, he is philosophically opposed to monogamy. Gay marriage is awful to him because it strengthens the institution of marriage.

Barney:OK, here's my thing - if gay guys start getting married, then suddenly the whole world's gonna be doing it. That's how it works: they start something, then six months later, everyone follows.

Barney: Gay marriage is going to cause single life as we know it to die out. [beat] Think of how the American family will be strengthened!

The last quote made me laugh.
I just think that the legal ramifications of marriage are excessive. When you get divorced (the result of the majority of marriages these days) it is a horribly nasty affair. It makes ordinary contract law look downright friendly. Unmarried couples manage to break up without needing to go to court and fight over every little thing. If it is really nasty hire a damned mediator. Fortunately NJ has decided to use mediation as the primary means for doing property settlement as well as child custody. It has been amazingly successful for child custody. Who would have thought that ordering parents to sit down and talk to each other could be good for the kids? Shocking.

the result of the majority of marriages these days

As I understand it, that oft-quoted statistic doesn't do the real situation justice. Specifically, it's skewed by serial divorcers, and it might be more appropriate to instead look at the percent of *people* who marry who subsequently get at least one divorce.

Mediation: Heh, whoda thunk. Too bad it doesn't work so well for unions.

I actually talked with Jeff about divorce statistics waiting for court the last time. Apparently the statistic for first marriages failing is pretty close to the overall divorce rate. The impact of so called serial divorce is washed out by the extremely high success rate of second marriages (more than 80% go the distance). I will ask him if anyone tracks the number of people who have at least one divorce. We need something to pass the time waiting for judges, and I pay him quite well to make small talk. I'll be someone's friend for his hourly rate. Even with the professional courtesy rate I get for having a federal judge as my maternal uncle (not the asshole).

In response to your other comment: What's your opinion about marriage as a legal institution now? I wanted to reply ten minutes after you posted it but I had company come over.
As far as not having a legal contract marriage I think that there is no reason why a religious marriage would not be recognized internationally. The issue I worry about would be benefits, but I think they should be opened up to domestic partners or whatever you want to call them anyway. It's bias against people who choose not to marry. I also think that people who don't marry their partner to keep some kind of benefit (like alimony from a previous marriage contingent on not remarrying). You shouldn't get the best of both worlds in my book.

I've changed back and forth a few times since then. Without any form of marriage/union, spouses would not have legal rights as a next of kin, such as making healthcare decisions when the individual is incapable of making them him/herself. (And healthcare directives are not good enough, as gay couples have been shown repeatedly in the past.) The word "marriage" has religious context, so we should rename it at the federal level to "civil union." But singles get a tax disadvantage.... So yeah, I do not have a well-formed opinion, I just keep waffling around.

When you get divorced, it -can- be a horribly nasty affair, but not always. Fortunately, my ex and I parted on friendly terms, and did not have children (which would have made things more complicated, though hopefully still not vicious).

Oh I know just how nasty divorce and subsequent child custody stuff can be. Child custody issues are like having a nasty divorce that doesn't end until the kids are out of school (which often keeps things like child support payments in the picture even after the child is 18).
I am absurdly jealous of you having a smooth divorce. So very very very jealous.

Civil marriage is an international institution. I don't want US citizens at a disadvantage abroad.

However, I keep changing my mind about this, so ask me again in ten minutes and I'll say something different.

Wow, I feel dumb. I know, of course, how lack of federally-recognized same-sex marriage affects same-sex couples when one member is not a US citizen, but it never occurred to me to look at it from the perspective of married US citizens traveling/living abroad. That's kind of a shame, because I otherwise find the notion of abolishing federal recognition of marriage appealing (can't they just replace it with "civil unions" for everyone?").

Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on with citizens of foreign countries whose countries recognize same-sex marriage when they come to the US. But as long as same-sex marriages are not federally recognized, even other countries that allow them are not obligated to recognize a gay marriage that took place in one of our states that allows it. The other coutries may *choose* to do so of course, but they're not required to.

FWIW I'm not sure what sort of international law actually obligates countries to recognize each others' marriages, so I could be misstating the situation. Also, it's possible that if the US abolished the federal institution of marriage and replaced it with civil unions at the federal level (rather than state level), that it would be legally viewed as the same thing internationally - I mean we don't fail to recognize French marriages just b/c they use the French word for marriage instead of our word "marriage." If civil unions were made identical(accepted federally), then they would BE identical in all legal senses.

This is a total bullshit answer. Do you imagine that if marriage were not a federal institution, countries around the world would just decide to screw all American citizens? It's unlikely. An accommodation would be worked out. Anyway, if gay marriage were legal, would the Saudis suddenly recognize American gay marriages? Even more unlikely.

Well, what actual international law requires other countries to recognize our marriages? For example, I believe that Canada recognizes gay marriages that take place in MA, but is Canada *required* to do so? And how does Canada even know that the couple is really married, do they ask for a marriage license? Would they recognize the same-sex marriage of a gay couple from Texas? The whole issue is just too fuzzy to me b/c I don't know enough about the law involved.

This is a total bullshit answer.

I know you like arguing, so I would like to set a ground rule here. I do not appreciate responses that seem to come more from anger than from a reasoned argument, or that are designed to provoke the other individual. Because of the cursing and the brevity of the sentence, this part of your comment appears to be more of a provocation. (The rest of your comment does appear well-reasoned and I felt deserved a response, so I did my best to ignore that first sentence while responding above.) I would appreciate it if you would try to avoid comments that could be triggering to me in this way.

You're right. I'm sorry for my first sentence. I regretted it as soon as it came out.

Your point about Canada not being obligated to recognize American marriages by international law is exactly it. Many US states have laws requiring they recognize marriages from other states, and others that don't have legal traditions stemming from English common law that recognize other states' marriages . Other states have laws on the books forbidden them to recognize gay marriages. The situation with foreign countries is similarly murky. Marriage isn't an international institution, it's a patchwork of hyper-regionalized laws.

I mean, think about it... The captain of a ship is allowed to perform weddings that are legally binding by English common law. Have you ever paused to reflect on the absurdity of that tradition?

The video sounds awesome but the lj embeded version is not working for me, can you put up a link right to the you tube page?

Found it :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H3kxDFgmu8

Pretty freaking scary. I can't believe these people can even appear in this video, I would be totally ashamed.

OMG you mean if we allows gays to marry a photograph might have to photograph a gay marriage!? THE HORROR.

If the Boy Scouts - who are publically funded - are allowed to kick out gays, I'm pretty sure an entirely private for-profit phtographer can do what they want.

You like the part about "Massachusetts Catholic churches were forced to stop their adoption agencies"? Um, no, they DECIDED to stop them b/c they were bigots and weren't willing to give children to all loving families.

Nope. The Boy Scouts are a private organization. They can allow in whoever they want (A lot of time the strings you imagine to be attached to receiving federal grants aren't there). The photographer runs a business. She's forced by anti-discrimination laws to photograph gay weddings. I believe the analogy is to a restaurant not serving blacks.

What's troubling to me was the CHURCH that was required to allow civil union ceremonies on land it owned and used for religious weddings. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91486340 That story really bothers me.

Civil Rights

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