Why privatizing marriage would be a disaster

The Week ^ | 07/18/2015 | Shikha Dalmia

[SeekAndFind]

If Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul is (politically) from Mars, then the leftist feminist writer Naomi Wolf is from Venus. But there's at least one thing this odd couple agrees on here on Earth: The government should get out of the marriage business.

Following the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling, Sen. Paul argued that Southern states that want to stop issuing marriage licenses were right. The government shouldn't "confer a special imprimatur upon a new definition of marriage," he said. It should leave marriage to churches and temples, regardless of how these institutions define marriage, and let consenting adults of all sexual proclivities write their own civil union contracts.

Likewise, along with fellow liberals such as Michael Kinsley and Alan Dershowitz, Wolf opined some years ago that "dress and flowers" blind women to the reality that, at root, marriage is a "business contract" that the government should stay out of.

Today, the idea of privatizing marriage is gaining popularity. But it is an incoherent concept that, if anything, will actually increase — not decrease — government interference in marriage.

At the most basic level, even if we can get government out of the business of issuing marriage licenses, it still has to register these partnerships (and/or authorize the entities that perform them) before these unions can have any legal validity, just as it registers property and issues titles and deeds. Therefore, government would need to set rules and regulations as to what counts as a legitimate marriage "deed." It won't — and can't — simply accept any marriage performed in any church — or any domestic partnership written by anyone.

[txrefugee]

Millions of couples are living together without any legal “marriage,” so apparently, it’s not that necessary for them in present day society.

[Vaquero]

Partnerships for legal purposes are the affairs of state. Marriage is the affairs of God and man. How to connect the two is the issue.

[silverleaf]

On the contrary government needs to go all in on owning “marriage” as a social construct to convey legal status in the eyes of government

Like a dog license or a business license

Churches should stop signing govt licenses and go back to offering the sacrament of holy matrimony to those in good standing with church doctrine to receive it

[silverleaf]

It is disconnecting the 2 that is the solution

Europe has done this for many years

Wed in the church but register at city hall to get govt bennies

[outofsalt]

Good first step toward the bigger goal of getting government out of things it doesn’t have the power, granted to it, to force upon people. Education, healthcare, retirement planning and many other things found nowhere in our constitution.

[Sooth2222]

...then there is the marriage tax penalty that applies to high income couples. Groups that would benefit from marriage are the groups that aren't getting married.

(gMarriages aren't ever going to amount to much more than a rounding error.)

[silverleaf]

Think of the liberation

Widowed senior citizens can wed in the church without having to get a govt license that costs one of them their social security check

Divorce is of govt as is “ marriage” - sorry to lose yet another traditional term to the left but it is worth it if it frees the church from state interference in the practice of faith

[alloysteel]

Every marriage license is a contract. A legal, binding contract, with sometimes very severe penalties for non-compliance, but one that has been largely unwritten for centuries. If the state simply confines itself to authorizing and administering compliance with the writing of personal “dependency” contracts (fulfilling the need for interpersonal bonds that can then be recognized in law). These contracts need not be concerned with love, or sex, or even marriage in the traditional sense. The purpose would be for the holding of title to various property rights (”joint tenacy” rather than “tenacy in common”), or for purposes of acting as administrator when one member of the contract is incapacitated, or for rights of inheritance, or for filing for certain government benefits. The terms for non-compliance, and penalties imposed, would be spelled out BEFORE the contract is signed, and the parties agree as part of signing the contract.

Weddings are entirely separate and apart from this series of contractual agreements. One would not be dependent upon the other.

[TalBlack]

Consenting adults could have done what ever the hell they wanted before the SCOTUS wiped their collective ass with the constitution. What was done was an attack on tradition and Religion.

[Alberta's Child]

At the most basic level, even if we can get government out of the business of issuing marriage licenses, it still has to register these partnerships (and/or authorize the entities that perform them) before these unions can have any legal validity, just as it registers property and issues titles and deeds.

I don't know anyone who is suggesting that a "civil partnership" arrangement should be instituted by the government in lieu of a formal marriage license.

I've suggested for years that the government should have nothing whatsoever to do with marriage, civil partnerships, licenses, or anything of that sort. Any statute or regulation that gives some kind of benefit to two "partners" that would not be conferred upon two unrelated individuals should simply be eliminated. It's no coincidence that from a purely material standpoint, the only tangible benefit a married couple gets is through tax advantages and taxpayer-funded benefits.

[Captain Compassion]

>On the contrary government needs to go all in on owning “marriage” as a social construct to convey legal status in the eyes of government

The recent SC decision has Federalized Marriage. No longer can states define the union. The feds must define the contract and issue the licenses. Further sanctioning is between the individuals. Divorce courts should be federal courts.

[WildHighlander57]

And that’s why some people got married in church per church standards and didn’t file with the county. Didn’t want taxes to go out the roof...

[Alberta's Child]

At the rate things are going in the U.S. over the last few days, marriage "contracts" have been violated so frequently that I would deem them worthless. In fact, a marriage contract is the only contract that a person can sign today, even while knowing full well that 50% of such contracts end up getting broken with the full approval of the governing authority that issues the license in the first place. If any other aspect of human interaction worked this way, then nobody in their right minds would even bother with it. Can you imagine if real estate deals were subject to this type of success rate?

The pathetic truth here is that most people consider a car loan more sacred than a marriage contract.

[The_Reader_David]

The disaster already happened: the Supreme Court abolished marriage -- the biologically based institution universal throughout human societies for the purpose of creating a life-long bond between biological parents for the benefit of children and grandchildren -- in the view of the government and replaced it with a government-sanctioned benefits package for arbitrary pairs of adults (typically pairs sharing mutual erotic attraction, and nothing else, at least until they get the benefit of community property from the state).

If marriage properly so called is to continue in these United States, then it must do so without state sanction, not strictly privately, perhaps, but as a part of the non-state civil society.

[molson209]

Marriage , the 2(what ever) make a contract and take it a Lawyer ,sign ,pay Lawyer ,done, Married

[dila813]

Make it a corporation, just eliminate the concept of marriage from government.

The main push back I always get is tax reductions, dependency, and marriage law

I some people push for freedom from religion (crazy) but I want freedom from government.

[aquila48]

While leaving it in the hands of the state is what??

[Alberta's Child]

The U.S. Supreme Court cannot "abolish marriage." What they've done, as you said, is simply establish a bizarre legal definition for arbitrary pairs of adults who want to call themselves "married."

The basic premise of this article is flawed. There is no threat to marriage if it is "privatized." Marriage by definition is a private matter, and it's only in modern times that societies have (for some strange reason) insisted on government involvement for the purpose of providing legal and financial advantages to "married couples" that aren't provided to individuals.

I don't know why so many people are upset over the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. I see it as something that simply confirms what conservatives have been saying for as long as I can remember: If you want to completely f%#& something up, just get the government involved in it.

[riverdawg]

For most two-earner couples, there is a marriage penalty, not a marriage subsidy, in the federal tax code.