On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 12:13 PM, keith smith <klsmith2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Government has no place in marriage, that includes regulating it and > taxing it or not taxing it. > > I completely agree. "Marriage" should be excluded as part of the separation of church and state. It's an overloaded construct anyways. We have the relationship status (often considered religious), and the sharing of rights bundled. Sharing financial obligations, medical-decision-making, benefits/insurance, things automatically granted to spouse and next-of-kin can already be conferred via power of attorney, which is really what marriage is conferring via side-effect today. The definition of marriage in regards to who or how many people want to live together and share their lives should be independent of their conferred/shared rights, which they should be able to file for as a distinct matter. There should be no filing at all for declaring the actual relationship status--that's nobody's business but the parties involved. As for sharing and division of property? Ditto. We already have pre-nups to overrule the default side-effect status conferred by the current marriage contract. Why not make that separate and explicit also rather than as a side-effect? Christians and other religions that attempt to codify their specific definition of marriage into law are at odds with separation of church and state. IMO, gays shouldn't bother trying to get "gay marriage" legalized. They can already power-of-attorney anything they want. What they should be after is simply removing any relationship definition at all in the "marriage" legal status, and get it to just cover conferred rights. The IRS will always get their money. They will find a way no matter how we label relationships and different cohabitation combinations. As programmers this problem is kind of obvious--overloading one variable where two or more are needed, and eliminating side-effects. Christians that try to claim that Christian marriage is between one man and one woman are kind of hilarious--because the history of Christianity, eg the old testament, is rife with polygamy. Mormons (also Christians) resurrected that practice, as have other Christian sects. Plenty of non-Christian faiths also practice polygamy. I don't know of any historical societies that officially declared their same-sex relationships as official marriages (doesn't mean they don't exist), but that is definitely not a new practice either. People will live with and love whom they will--that should not be an issue for any gov't to attempt to decide or codify. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
