Last week, the cause for same sex marriage was set back when New York rejected a proposal that would extend legal marriage to homosexual monogamous couples and Georgia reinstated its ban of such marriages.
Though I believe that everyone, regardless of sexual orientation should have the same rights in regards to legal marriage, the continuing intransigent opposition to gay marriage confirms my belief that advocates are going about this in the wrong way. Indeed, at the rate we’re going, it appears it would take over a century before same sex marriage would be recognized everywhere in the USA.
Instead of advocating that marriage in its present form be extended to gays and lesbians, I firmly believe that marriage ought to be abolished altogether as a legal category for everyone. It’s none of the government’s business whom consenting adults choose to have intimate relationships with and it’s not the government’s place to sponsor or advocate any particular relationship form by extending legal benefits to only one form, excluding all others.
Some might agree with me in principle that it’s not up to the government to define what a valid relationship is through legal marriage, but point out that marriage is about more than simply legitimizing a particular form of sexual relationship. There are a large number of practical benefits our government extends to legally married couples. Every U.S. state has 170-350 rights and responsibilities connected with legal marriage. The number and exact rights vary from state to state. Federal laws relating to marriage number more than 1,138, according to Partners Task Force. Such benefits include tax breaks, health insurance benefits, next of kin rights, immigration issues, and so on.
Because of such benefits, most people are unwilling to forego the idea of legal marriage altogether, even if they agree with the fundamental idea that it is a governmental invasion of privacy into people’s intimate personal lives.
Some have advocated a middle position between legal marriage being extended to same sex couples and abolishing legal marriage altogether. They rightly point out that marriage has traditionally been understood as having two components: civil and religious. Such people have proposed that “marriage” should be understood as the religious component only, and that the civil part should be designated as “Civil Unions”, for both straights and gays. This solution was proposed as a way to mollify those who object to same sex marriage for religious reasons, but who have no objections to such couples receiving the legal benefits mentioned above.
Such relationships as they currently exist (civil union in Vermont, PACS in France, and registered partnerships in Scandinavia, (a) clearly establish that the relationship is an intimate/sexual one; (b) they, more or less, duplicate marriage by making each partner liable for the welfare of the other partner; and; (c) these systems are all basically not recognized outside of the state or country which created the statutes.
And the problem still remains that the government is still defining what a legitimate private relationship is, as well as the terms of such relationships, it would still be limited to the monogamous, and would remain subject to the government’s interference when being dissolved with the same divorce laws that govern marriage.
But there’s another way. And this would work for all types of domestic relationships, not just committed sexual relationships of various forms. This would include nonsexual family relationships, such as grandparents raising children, siblings sharing a home, parents with disabled adult children, adult children with disabled parents, and so on.
Intead of having to choose among legal marriage, marriage/civil union, or retaining privacy while forgoing legal marriage benefits, people can choose to form a relationship LLC (Limited Liability Company).
Marriage is based on family law, limited liability companies are based on partnership law and the legal arrangement its members agree to. Marriage is presently available only to one man and one woman. LLCs are available to everyone. According to Relationship LLC.com, limited liability companies created by people who generally are not married but who want a legally recognized relationship between them; a relationship which would be a legal entity that could buy property, provide health insurance to its members, obtain credit cards, serve as the couple’s consulting company, lease a car, file a tax return as a partnership and, in general, engage in any legitimate business.
The advantages of a Relationship LLC (R) over marriage and civil union are that: (a) the parties in a Relationship LLC are NOT declaring a sexual relationship; (b) the parties in a Relationship LLC can decide how much and what resources they wish to share WITHOUT making themselves totally liable for each other’s welfare; and (c) the Relationship LLC can be dissolved without a divorce-style proceeding in court.
In other words, the LLC would be addressing the legal benefits now conferred only by legal marriage, but whatever sexual relationship the members have, if any, would remain completely private and not subject to government regulation. In addition, those involved would decide individually just what benefits and responsibilities the relationship contains on a case by case basis, instead of having it decided for them in a “one size fits all” manner in the way that marriage is currently defined.
Those who still desire public recognition of their unions are still free to have marriage ceremonies, religious or not, celebrating this fact, but they’d have no legal standing, without government involvement of any kind.
To me, this would be the best of both worlds. All forms of intimate personal relationships between consenting adults would be on an equal footing and would remain private, free from government regulation. And such relationships and other forms of nonsexual domestic relationships would be able to legally gain benefits of their choosing now limited only to heterosexual, monogamous married couples. And we’d finally get the government out of all our bedrooms.
Thoughts?
____________________
To read more about the Relationship LLC idea, go to:
No comments:
Post a Comment