Why should they have to go find a lawyer to help them navigate that crap when nobody else has to do that?
Flip the argument to the divorce side of the relationship and ask the same question? If its just between two people and Jesus, why are all these lawyers making tens of thousands of dollars off the end of a marriage?
If the averaged legal cost of a marriage from start to finish (finish as in post-divorce) is $5K, or the average total cost of a marriage ceremony/party is $20K before the divorce starts, the real discrimination question is why a gay couple is only charged $100 to fill in the blanks and notarize a DPOA form. The government seems to be unfairly favoring them.
With a side dish of if you want all sorts of government cooperation and benefits from having an official love of your life, fine whatever, its not asking too much agency to invest $100 at a lawyer to make it all go away or far less if you do some google work and expend some effort. From memory I think we "donated" more than the cost of a DPOA to the priest back when I got married as his fee, although I'm sure if we were poor he wouldn't have hit us up for as much of a "voluntary donation". Just saying its kinda a cheap date argument, like "yeah thats my spouse but I won't buy him anything more expensive than a value meal at McDonalds when out on a date" isn't a good propaganda argument.
Also you're still not flipping the argument correctly in that why should a marriage ceremony have Big Brother as a secondary involuntarily required best man, when seemingly more important religious events such as baptisms or Bar Mitzvah are not intruded upon?
You might still have a good argument in there, just don't think you expressed it yet.
Either the government is explicitly Christian and as such should have its nose stuck in the church and government should have policies opposed to non-Christians, or the government should butt out entirely. In my opinion the religious rites I may or may not participate in at church should be none of the business of the .gov or IRS or whatever unless its a tacit admission that all this "separation of church and state" is untrue propaganda. Which, obviously, it is.
Also you're still not flipping the argument correctly in that why should a marriage ceremony have Big Brother as a secondary involuntarily required best man, when seemingly more important religious events such as baptisms or Bar Mitzvah are not intruded upon?
...I'll just quote my previous post here:
IMO, we ought to leave marriage to the church where it belongs.
Although it's true that the post you last replied to wasn't quite making that argument, because that post was only arguing against the idea that the discrimination isn't *really* a problem as long as there's a separate system available with similar benefits. Separate but equal is not equal; we've already gone through that debate in this country...pick one system and stick to it, and the easiest system to stick to is probably to just drop the whole damn idea.
So I think I pretty much agree with you here. Although I will contradict myself slightly to say that there probably is some benefit to getting "government" involved, simply because it simplifies a lot of potential questions later. Same reason that power of attorney does have a reason to exist as a concept, and both are granting a lot of the same rights AIUI. "Divorce" -- or whatever equivalent process -- is probably always going to be messy and complicated if only because "marriage" tends to imply a lot of shared property that you'll have to deal with. There's other contracts to simplify that, but it's nice to have a simple, least common denominator that most people can use without too much extra effort. If you end up arguing this stuff in court later, it's a lot easier for the judge if you've got a signed document rather than having to drag in character witnesses just to prove you were "married". So stop calling it "marriage", but come up with something kinda similar that's available to everyone because it's just a contract without the thousands of years of emotional/cultural ties.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 25 2018, @03:29PM (2 children)
Flip the argument to the divorce side of the relationship and ask the same question? If its just between two people and Jesus, why are all these lawyers making tens of thousands of dollars off the end of a marriage?
If the averaged legal cost of a marriage from start to finish (finish as in post-divorce) is $5K, or the average total cost of a marriage ceremony/party is $20K before the divorce starts, the real discrimination question is why a gay couple is only charged $100 to fill in the blanks and notarize a DPOA form. The government seems to be unfairly favoring them.
With a side dish of if you want all sorts of government cooperation and benefits from having an official love of your life, fine whatever, its not asking too much agency to invest $100 at a lawyer to make it all go away or far less if you do some google work and expend some effort. From memory I think we "donated" more than the cost of a DPOA to the priest back when I got married as his fee, although I'm sure if we were poor he wouldn't have hit us up for as much of a "voluntary donation". Just saying its kinda a cheap date argument, like "yeah thats my spouse but I won't buy him anything more expensive than a value meal at McDonalds when out on a date" isn't a good propaganda argument.
Also you're still not flipping the argument correctly in that why should a marriage ceremony have Big Brother as a secondary involuntarily required best man, when seemingly more important religious events such as baptisms or Bar Mitzvah are not intruded upon?
You might still have a good argument in there, just don't think you expressed it yet.
Either the government is explicitly Christian and as such should have its nose stuck in the church and government should have policies opposed to non-Christians, or the government should butt out entirely. In my opinion the religious rites I may or may not participate in at church should be none of the business of the .gov or IRS or whatever unless its a tacit admission that all this "separation of church and state" is untrue propaganda. Which, obviously, it is.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday July 25 2018, @05:48PM
...I'll just quote my previous post here:
Although it's true that the post you last replied to wasn't quite making that argument, because that post was only arguing against the idea that the discrimination isn't *really* a problem as long as there's a separate system available with similar benefits. Separate but equal is not equal; we've already gone through that debate in this country...pick one system and stick to it, and the easiest system to stick to is probably to just drop the whole damn idea.
So I think I pretty much agree with you here. Although I will contradict myself slightly to say that there probably is some benefit to getting "government" involved, simply because it simplifies a lot of potential questions later. Same reason that power of attorney does have a reason to exist as a concept, and both are granting a lot of the same rights AIUI. "Divorce" -- or whatever equivalent process -- is probably always going to be messy and complicated if only because "marriage" tends to imply a lot of shared property that you'll have to deal with. There's other contracts to simplify that, but it's nice to have a simple, least common denominator that most people can use without too much extra effort. If you end up arguing this stuff in court later, it's a lot easier for the judge if you've got a signed document rather than having to drag in character witnesses just to prove you were "married". So stop calling it "marriage", but come up with something kinda similar that's available to everyone because it's just a contract without the thousands of years of emotional/cultural ties.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 23 2018, @04:50AM
Regardless of whether one of the individuals is an undocumented immigrant, the most obvious legal issue is that polygamy is not legal in the US.