Re: >^..^< "The answer is blowing in the wind"

David Friedman wrote:
In article <gfqr1s$rce$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Nobody's forcing you to have a same-sex marriage. How does it harm
you, or anyone else, if those who want to have one are allowed to do
so?

I don't know the legal details, but one possibility is that it revises
employment contracts without the consent of one of the parties. If, for
instance, the employer provides health insurance to employee and spouse,
then altering the definition of spouse effectively alters the contract.

I concluded some time back after conversations with two people, one on
each side of the general issue, that it was mainly an argument about
symbolism. Each side wants to require the other to accept its view about
what "marriage" means. I think the best solution is for the government
to offer standard contracts that can be used by same-sex or opposite-sex
couples (perhaps a broader range of contracts as well) and leave the
definition of whether those contracts count as marriages to social
convention.

Back when, what was it, Conneticut, allowed gay marriage, one of the
*Republican* state legislators, seeing that it would happen, came out with
an intelligent commentary: that what was being discussed was *civil*
marriage. Further, he noted that the whole reason for the conflation of
civil and religious marriage was that in the early 1800's, there weren't
enough Justices of the Peace to perform civil marriages, and so the states
and commonwealths allowed religious leaders to perform them. It's this
confusion that makes the whole issue a mess.

Renaming "marriage" to "civil union", given the modern US penchant for
slanting words to one's own favor (mostly right-wing, let me assert), this
would make sense, and break the connection.

mark

--
"GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY!" - Megaphone Mark Slackmeyer, Doonesbury
.

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