The problem with "domestic partnership"Follow

I have no problem wrapping my brain around gay marriage. The black/white aspect comes from the insistence that we must provide all of what marriage entails is without any consideration as to whether all of those things make sense when applied to gay couples.


It would be like if we created a legal status to help struggling students get a better education. Attached to that status are things like free school lunches, tuition assistance for special-needs schools, tutoring funding, after school instructional programs, counseling, etc. Then, sometime later, we decide that we want to make free school lunches available to poor children as well. The rational thing would be to simply create a program which provides school lunches to poor kids. Maybe even tutoring funding as well, if needed. But no one in their right mind would argue that we should be able to let all poor children qualify for the "special-needs kids" program, would they? And no one would argue that we're somehow denying poor children their right to an education because the current criteria for the existing program excludes them. And if someone did, it would certainly be reasonable to counter that argument by pointing at all of the other things included in the existing program which are specific to kids with learning or physical disabilities which make it harder for them to attend school.


That's more or less exactly what we're seeing here. Yet, because we're in the midst of the issue, and many people have attached strong emotions to the issue, most people are unable to step back and assess the issue rationally.

I have no problem wrapping my brain around gay marriage. The black/white aspect comes from the insistence that we must provide all of what marriage entails is without any consideration as to whether all of those things make sense when applied to gay couples.

There is nothing that "doesn't make sense" when applied to gay couples. That's where your cognitive error is. See how easy that was?

When the family unit consists of just two people

This is unrelated to gay marriage. If you want to separate benefits for people with children and people without children, write a bill and send it to the poor ******* that reps you. Hopefully Bilbray, he's the sort of useless, powerless, empty suit you'd vote for and you deserve that level of representation.

There are lots of benefits for people who have children, married or not, that have nothing to do with sexual orientation. Tax deductions being only the most obvious example.

Any two people legally able to consent. Gotta put that in there.

So what? That has nothing to do with the fact that, in a marriage and children or not, there is an expectation that property in that marriage is jointly owned. If I'm married to someone and they have a pension, I have a joint ownership of that property barring things such a prenuptials, etc.No, but we've been through that enough times before. You feel it's not worth it. I feel that it is. Point being that saying "Hey, A is good for B so A must exist because of B" doesn't work.

Edited, May 7th 2009 5:46pm by Jophiel

Well, if we're taking away any and all legal rights and responsibilities to marriage, I guess it wouldn't matter.

No, it doesn't matter *right now*. Being married doesn't grant you the right to have sex with someone who doesn't consent. You can rape your wife. You follow? It's a separate law. If you mean in terms of contract law in the manner that a 4 year old can't buy and sell property, sure.

Assume Gbaji is right, and that marriage is all about kids, and providing optimal conditions for raising children.

Why then, is being able to physically produce a child through the act of disgusting heterosex, the determining factor on who can get married? Gay men and women can adopt children, lesbians can give birth through in vetro, why does marriage only extend to a man/woman couple when there are plenty of other ways to happen upon a darling infant? It can't possibly be just because that is the easiest method to produce a child, or the simplest path. Doesn't the fact that gay couples have to work a bit more, or take a different course prove that they want a damn child?

Why can't they get the same benefits of marriage that a hetero couple can? If the benefits are there to make it easier to have one parent say home to raise a child, why doesn't that apply to gay men and women? You are still making it easier for one of the parents to stop working and raise a child.

Edited, May 7th 2009 7:13pm by NixNot

Stop misstating my position, please. I want to separate benefits between those sets of couples who may produce children from those who wont. And I don't have to submit it. We already have this. It's called marriage.

What else do you think the set of all couples consisting of one adult male and one adult female defines Smash? Do you think it's just coincidence that this happens to encompass every single couple that can possibly produce children?

The law already does what I believe it should be. You (and many others) wish to change it, and refuse to accept why I might want to keep the existing law the way it is. See how the burden of proof is on you? I'm not the one trying to change the law. You are.




Sure. And there are lots of ways for gay couples to gain every single right and benefit they need to live their lives together. What's your point? So we look to alternative solutions only when and how it's convenient for you?


Also, the "married or not" part is kinda relevant, don't you think? Maybe you could apply your vaunted sociology degree to puzzle out what the likely effect on a society is if you provide benefits to people who have children "married or not", while eroding the benefits of marriage itself? Gee. Maybe it'll reduce the number of people who'll get married before popping out a few kids, won't it? Some of us think that's a bad thing. You don't though, since it helps your own socio-political ideology along.


And before you go off on the "But I'm not proposing we erode the benefits of marriage!" counter, the very fact that you felt the need to bring up alternative means to provide for children whether their parents are married or not, implies a belief that those structures themselves can or should be sufficient. You also know, just as I do, that the likely result of the gay marriage movement will not be gay couples gaining all the financial benefits I've been talking about, but rather the removal of those benefits from "marriage" entirely, with the benefits shifted in some way to anyone raising a child. The next step in this process will be a movement to "get the government out of marriage entirely". It may even be championed by mislead people on the Right. But that is what will happen next. You and I both know this, even if most people don't realize it just yet.



I'd suggest that this is the real reason this "cause" was created in the first place, but that would just be crazy tin-foil-hat stuff!

Stop misstating my position, please. I want to separate benefits between those sets of couples who may produce children from those who wont.

My mistake, your position is that a self made woman millionaire who has had a hysterectomy then marries a man shouldn't receive the same legal benefits as an 18 year old woman with 9 children who has no source of income other than government welfare who marries a convicted armed robber.

My mistake.

Go on.

Haha no way!! You can't impose your vision of "optimium" on the argument. I can tell ya about optimum. About the two comitted women that have (after bookoo hassles) adopted a truly fucked up 6 year old kid. He still bears the scars of some pretty nasty early abuse but is a productive high school kid that stars up his high school band with his sax and even has girlfriends. "optimum" pfft. you so full of it.

Well, taking the idea that we should only provide benefits to couples that may produce offspring within a marriage, we should institute fertility tests to married couples and withhold benefits from couples over the age of 50 getting married and people that fail the fertility test. Fertility tests are amazingly cheap and simple by the way, so just think of all the tax money we could save with this. ^^

And what about couples like Catwho who decide that they don't want children, do we give them benefits on the off chance that the condom breaks and she becomes pregnant? Or withhold them until the first positive pregnancy test from a doctor?

Edited, May 7th 2009 9:10pm by mattguard

Anecdotal exceptions exist for everything. Are you arguing that this happens more often than the other way around? Are you arguing that children born to a married couple are more likely to be abused than those born to a single mother? Cause I think you'll have a hard time finding data to support those positions.

Lol. How convenient for you! ;)




It was your suggestion Smash. Not mine. I've argued exactly this reasoning for why we currently *don't* do fertility tests. Um... But we can say with some certainty that two women aren't going to get each other pregnant, and two men definitely wont. So. If we want to get as close as possible without resorting to testing, we end up with *exactly* the requirements for marriage we have now.


Shocking, isn't it? It's almost like someone did that on purpose...



Hah! Some stuffing is falling out of that one Smash. It's not about rewarding people for having children either and you know it. It's about avoiding the negative consequences caused by people producing children outside of marriage. We don't really care how many kids are involved, just that the biological parents who produced them are married as often as possible. Because that will result in the least social and economic cost to the rest of us.