Posted on 05/13/2008 10:35:21 AM PDT by bs9021
How to Commit Marriage
by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 13, 2008
A couple of professors from the University of Chicago think they have found a way out of what they see as a national impasse over state marriage laws. “To respect the liberty of religious groups while protecting individual freedom in general, we propose that marriage, as such, should be completely privatized,” Richard A. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein write in Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness.
“Under our proposal, the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government.”
Thaler is a professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at UChi, Sunstein is a visiting professor in the law school there.
“Under our approach, the only legal status states would confer on couples would be a civil union, which would be a domestic partnership agreement between any two people,” the authors of Nudge promise. In an asterisk attached to that sentence just quoted the authors set off more alarm bells.
“We duck the question of whether civil unions can involve more than two people,” they admit. Judges with lifetime appointments have not been known to duck such questions.
In tackling them, moreover, many magistrates show a bias towards the novel at the expense of the traditional. Thaler and Sunstein’s text is one that such jurists are likely to find inspirational.
“Within broad limits, marriage-granting organizations would be free to choose whatever rules they like for a marriage conducted under their auspices,” Thaler and Sunstein avow. “So, for example, a church could decide that it would marry only members of that church, and a scuba-diving club could decide that it would restrict its ceremonies to certified divers.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at campusreportonline.net ...
Other people put another adult on. Make the regulation that they must be in contract somehow. Why punish my mom who has been with me longer than any husband could be
That's between you and your employer (or insurer). You and your mom could not produce children together. Therefore you are not a marriage and the state has no interest in subsidizing whatever contractual arrangemnets you made.
At the same time, my hubby and I had a commuter marriage. He was in Detroit and I was in Cleveland and I carried him on my health insurance.
That was fair?
Yes it was. Even in a commuter marriage you and your husband could produce children. The state has an interest in the care of the next generation of citizens. It is worth it to them to subsidize the marriage contract. Marriage is all about children.
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