Bloggingheads: Ban Marriage?
The two law professors in this video are not suggesting to end the legal status of marriage, just to call it by a new name and make it available to both same-sex and different-sex couples. Granted, this would achieve one important step forward by recognizing more couples’ relationships. But nothing the professors said suggests that they have any problem with privileging some licensed couples over all other relationships. So they really are not suggesting to get government out of the marriage business, merely to rebrand the business with a new, modern name. An interesting moment that shows real bias: they talk unselfconsciously about “downgrading” existing marriages to civil unions or domestic partnerships. If they are proposing to give CU/DP the exact same legal status as marriage with a different name, why would they call it a downgrade?
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get gov't out of marriage
Comments 3
December 16th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
I find it interesting that this whole debate seems to be somewhat unique to the US (or maybe completely unique). In other countries, marriage is just one option to get legal protection, not THE option (and often civil unions are indeed equal to marriages, no downgrading required). What is it about the US that makes matrimania so prevalent here?
December 17th, 2008 at 11:45 am
And what is it about the US that makes babymania so prevalent here? I didn’t have to be a child-free advocate to see the column that gave teenage birthrates in developed countries, and the US was squeezing them out by a factor of over three times as many as European countries.
December 24th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I think that what Ann said about hostility in this matter is correct. Issuing basic human rights to all people seems to be a HUGE problem, not just for the US, but for a mass of people all together. Government(s), however, are kind of shaped by the will of the majority (democracy, that is) and so many in the US are not as advanced and open-minded as in other countries, not to mention the monetary pull that any government relies on in order to restrict or define correct moral standings and regulatory matters such as marriage and that of civil unions which determine property rights, medical insurance benefits and the like. What boggles my mind, is why people would want to get married at all in the first place. Straight or gay, I’m not willing to trust any civil union or marriage to protect me, make me happy or provide me with any rights that I can either have or have not on my own.
It seems to me that this whole marriage thing is about money, insurance and legalities which turns me off immediately. When you talk about love and human rights, religion and government are both corporations on their own and they are so poor at dealing with these things, why they are even mentioned in the same conversation is beyond me?