also
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One of the arguments in Obergefell was that the ability to procreate has no bearing on the legality of marriage. What would you say to a same-sex incestual relationship, where they can’t have biological children together? Or what about a couple that’s not related, where both carry a gene for a rare disease? (For example, Tay-Sachs is a lot more common in Ashkenazi Jews than in most other groups, and Jewish people routinely screen for it while dating. Should it be illegal for 2 carriers of Tay-Sachs to get married, knowing that they’re likely have children with health issues?)
It won’t be too long until we will be able to eliminate genetic diseases with gene editing. Ngl I felt weird typing that but what I’m saying is society changes and with society, the laws that govern it to get with the times.
What do the different shades represent? Need a legend for the map.
As far as poly marriages having “practical” issues, so what? If it’s protected under the Constitution, then the government needs to figure out how to make it work. That’s not SCOTUS’s problem.
As far as poly marriages having “practical” issues, so what? If it’s protected under the Constitution, then the government needs to figure out how to make it work. That’s not SCOTUS’s problem.
Except it’s not protected in the same sense. And the SCOTUS has to be a little pragmatic, because practical issues end up disrupting peoples rights.
OK, so WTF DOES BLUE MEAN???
That reminds me, I never finished The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
I don’t think it’s inconceivable for poly marriagies to be a thing, should humanity’s environment change to set the conditions to where they are optimal. I do believe the laws can work things out concerning custody and inheritance should the time arrive.
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Dark Blue = states where it’s legal for first-cousins to get married.
Light Blue = first-cousin marriage allowed with conditions (NC=no double-first-cousin marriages; ME=subject to genetic testing)
Pink = banned with exceptions (usually age or infertility)
Red = banned
Dark red = first-cousin marriage is a crime
Pink/dark red striped = first-cousin marriage is a crime, except for cases (age/infertility) where it is allowed
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I’m saying that, assuming capacity for and granting of consent, it’s none of the government’s damned business who chooses to live together, etc.
The sole reason I remarked about incest is that I can see a logical argument being made that the government stepping in to protect the public interest in the reduction of risk of inbreeding. In theory, that would suggest a law against incestuous procreative sex would be appropriate.
There are, of course, many practical issues when it comes to such a law…which is how you get back to general prohibitions on marriage between too-closely related individuals, as that’s a more practical constraint than attempting to enforce rules on boinking.
I’d agree that poly relationships is where my principle of the subject not being any of the government’s damned business does run into practicality.
Matters of community property, inheritance, mutual support, etc. could be addressed via contract law…and really trying to have a pre-codified set of defaults in the law would be a challenge because I assume there’s a broader range of “what’s appropriate” in poly relationships than in conventional non-poly marriages.
Then you have the added problem of there being a history of polygamy being associated with abusive relationships, and how (the number of people who can be successful in a long-term poly relationship) is considerably smaller than (the number of people who think they can be successful in a long-term poly relationship), etc.
Thanks.
I think that “marriage” for the sake of easing property issues and hospital visitation rights and such is lazy. While I do not agree to giving more money to lawyers to hammer each one of these out and for people to have on their person all of their signed documents, something just as easy should be made available by the government.
I think that the use of “marriage” for taxation differentiation needs to be abolished. Again, more contracts to sign if “dependents” need to be clearly defined, but really, the tax code should not be used to moderate society (in this case, tax breaks for following norms).
It looks like we mostly agree. 
Many of those issues can be addressed by having directives and power of attorney documents prepared, updated, and generally ready to go. However, humans are humans, and all too often such preparations have not been made, or are out-of-date, which is why having default policies in place are a good thing…at least until those default policies conflict with nontraditional / “nontraditional” situations.
IIRC, lucy pointed out that there’s a special simplicity to saying “she’s my wife!!” that you can’t get from waving around a bundle of legal documents at the hospital / school / jail / emt / police / customs / ice / etc.
So even if you can theoretically accomplish the same things with contract law, it might not work for the authority in question.
Back in the days when much of the public debate was on “gay marriage vs civil unions vs neither”, my stance was that the official recognition should be “civil union” for everybody, and no longer using the label “marriage” in an official sense.
I hypothesized that terms “marriage”, “husband”, “wife”, and “spouse” would continue on conversationally / socially / religiously, but without the stress of fussing because of disagreeing about whether certain people could or couldn’t be “married” to one another.
And, in a hospital visitation context… yes, that does potentially add a little ambiguity if a couple decide (for example) that they are “partners” rather than “spouses”, but hopefully something could be in place where a simple question like “formally or informally?” could provide the necessary clarity without the need to read and assess the validity of a stack of papers that may or may not exist, and may or may not be current.
I think if we completely nuked the term marriage, and replaced it with an identical legal concept, then yes, it would work at least in the US.
But if we broke the concept apart into parts like Dr T suggests-- property rights, visitation rights, child guardian, etc. then I think some parts might get ignored by authorities.
Also no idea how reliable it would be outside the US. I suspect some authorities might acknowledge that you are gay-married, but not gay-civil-unioned.
With the “single thing with a different label” approach: How does it work today when one country’s marriages (official or recognized as de facto) aren’t recognized by another country?
(Keep in mind that I think it’s the norm in many countries for “civil marriage” and “church marriage” to be separate things. And then you have the complication of situations where common law marriage is in play…)
For the “multiple parts” approach: I assume that it’d be the same question, but admittedly more complex.
EDIT: Consider the situation that could exist today:
- Coming from a country where polygamy is officially recognized/sanctioned
- Man and his second wife travel someplace where polygamous marriage is not recognized
- Something happens to one or the other of them
- How do officials / hospital administrators / etc. react?
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Not a surprise, but a reminder that the SCOTUS’ new term is starting soon:
At some point since this thread was last active, details of ACB’s book came out in which she apparently says a) the court should not be swayed by public opinion and b) the arguments in Dobbs don’t apply to gay marriage or interracial marriage because those are popular. While I don’t understand how she reconciles that, it does make me less pessimistic.