When Legal Recognition MATTERS

[seagal]

source

Or how about that case in Kansas City where a man was arrested and assaulted by officers for attempting to exert his legal right to power of attorney (both had legally granted the other that right) on behalf of his incapacitated partner. The hospital treated them like legal strangers because they weren’t legally married in that state.

Things like that are one of the reasons why LGBT people want marriage, so those incidents can’t happen.

Also notice in the article cited

If the medical community isn’t recognizing legal documents, that’s a serious issue, but it has nothing to do with SSM. You can name anyone to hold your medical proxy, a relative, a close friend, or your next door neighbour. If the hospital doesn’t abide by it, they should be taken to court. In the case you cited, it certainly seems like their prejudice was showing. I wonder what would have happened if, for example, the partner was simply identified as a sister or friend of the patient.

 

[Corki]

Or how about that case in Kansas City where a man was arrested and assaulted by officers for attempting to exert his legal right to power of attorney (both had legally granted the other that right) on behalf of his incapacitated partner. The hospital treated them like legal strangers because they weren’t legally married in that state.

It helps to get your facts straight. In the Kansas City incident, it was a family member of the man in the hospital that asked the “partner” to leave. The two of them got into an altercation and the hospital staff called security after asking both of them to stop arguing or to step out. They were BOTH arrested. His treatment by the hospital had nothing to do with his being homosexual and everything to do with being disruptive in the hospital and acting out family drama in an inappropriate setting. (same thing for the family member)

Yet another case of someone misbehaving and playing the “gay” card. Being a homosexual doesn’t mean that you get to be obnoxious and no one is supposed to call you on it.

 

[jonathan_hili]

Civil marriage isn’t primarily about children and hasn’t been for some time. Polygamy would require a vast amount of legal changes whereas this would require only a dozen in many states and with incestuous marriage it is a) extremely difficult to verify true consent and b) immediate blood relatives already have a substantial amount of rights.

“Civil marriage isn’t primarily about children” - according to whom? According to a particular segment of Western society that is pushing for a change in legislation? Well, certainly! I don’t disagree with that. However, that is beside the point. If society can define and re-define social institutions, especially those which are rooted in human nature, with impunity, I don’t see why we should not accommodate such an institution to as many people as possible, and therefore allow any form of marriage which is not of itself “harmful”.

Polygamy wouldn’t require that much legal change. If it could be successfully practiced in many ancient, medieval and some modern societies, I don’t see how the contemporary West could have a problem with it. Furthermore, I can see a number of polygamous couples (and even know one) that would welcome such a change.

As for incestuous marriage, I don’t see why it would be “extremely difficult” to verify true consent.

As I said, if it is a matter of civil rights, they can be accomplished without changing marriage. Call it “civil union” or whatever, but to alter marriage for this reason is (a) a consequentialist approach to human behaviour and morality that is highly problematic, and (b) a grave insult to generations of human beings and children.

 

[jonathan_hili]

Ending civil marriage would be profoundly harmful to society.

Interesting. I really want to press this point. You said that it would profoundly harm society because of “property disputes”.

Firstly, I’m not sure how this “harms” society. Many people benefit from property disputes, both directly and indirectly. Sure, it will harm the couple involved financially and emotionally but then, what has this got to do with maintaining marriage? Divorced couples have property disputes just as much as de facto couples.

Secondly, I wouldn’t call “property disputes” a kind of harm that is “profound”. Rather, I would suggest that removing children from the institution of marriage, that is, saying both legally and culturally that marriage (the political and social, private and communal bond between a man and a woman) has not inherently or essentially to do with children is far more disastrous. What then would bind children to parents?

Hmm but that’s an idea. If we remove marriage altogether that would solve the “property dispute” of children - since children would no longer belong to a married couple.

 

[jonathan_hili]

Just a last point…

I find the whole approach wrong-headed, Joie de Vivre.

To fundamentally alter X because of a marginally related issue Y is a strange and unreasonable way of going about things. I mean, let us consider another social institution: education.

If it were discovered that a certain minority of the educated population does not like studying History and in fact gain no socially pragmatic benefit from studying History, does that mean we should abolish History in schools? Obviously not because (a) we can see that there are equally important - and perhaps more important - reasons for studying History than just those which confer a practical social benefit, (b) it only affects a minority of the population, and (c) to remove History from a school curriculum will detrimentally affect other aspects of the curriculum and, more broadly, society in general.

I suspect your approach to re-defining marriage is like this because (a) it is based on a socially pragmatic reason (legal rights or access), (b) it affects only a minority of the population (not all people with same sex attraction want to get married), and (c) it will doubtlessly affect what marriage is, children, and the rest of society.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

“Civil marriage isn’t primarily about children” - according to whom? According to a particular segment of Western society that is pushing for a change in legislation? Well, certainly! I don’t disagree with that. However, that is beside the point. If society can define and re-define social institutions, especially those which are rooted in human nature, with impunity, I don’t see why we should not accommodate such an institution to as many people as possible, and therefore allow any form of marriage which is not of itself “harmful”.

Polygamy wouldn’t require that much legal change. If it could be successfully practiced in many ancient, medieval and some modern societies, I don’t see how the contemporary West could have a problem with it. Furthermore, I can see a number of polygamous couples (and even know one) that would welcome such a change.

As for incestuous marriage, I don’t see why it would be “extremely difficult” to verify true consent.

As I said, if it is a matter of civil rights, they can be accomplished without changing marriage. Call it “civil union” or whatever, but to alter marriage for this reason is (a) a consequentialist approach to human behaviour and morality that is highly problematic, and (b) a grave insult to generations of human beings and children.

According to rampant contraception abortion and the “child-free” movement.

Spousal benefits would become a mess as would parental rights, property rights in case of divorce, etc.

The difficult with proving consent is related to influence parents exert over children and siblings can exert over another; because child grooming.

I don’t particularly care about the name other than it not being called marriage if possible.

Interesting. I really want to press this point. You said that it would profoundly harm society because of “property disputes”.

Firstly, I’m not sure how this “harms” society. Many people benefit from property disputes, both directly and indirectly. Sure, it will harm the couple involved financially and emotionally but then, what has this got to do with maintaining marriage? Divorced couples have property disputes just as much as de facto couples.

Secondly, I wouldn’t call “property disputes” a kind of harm that is “profound”. Rather, I would suggest that removing children from the institution of marriage, that is, saying both legally and culturally that marriage (the political and social, private and communal bond between a man and a woman) has not inherently or essentially to do with children is far more disastrous. What then would bind children to parents?

Hmm but that’s an idea. If we remove marriage altogether that would solve the “property dispute” of children - since children would no longer belong to a married couple.

Lawyers profit from protracted property disputes lasting years and getting every penny as a result, but the government doesn’t benefit from courts being tied up even longer and the common man profits not from financial ruin. Divorcing couples have legal mechanisms to benefit from in division of assets.

I was asked “In what way? (Aside from the harm to children.)” and so I answered property disputes.

Then who would children belong to?

Just a last point…

I find the whole approach wrong-headed, Joie de Vivre.

To fundamentally alter X because of a marginally related issue Y is a strange and unreasonable way of going about things. I mean, let us consider another social institution: education.

If it were discovered that a certain minority of the educated population does not like studying History and in fact gain no socially pragmatic benefit from studying History, does that mean we should abolish History in schools? Obviously not because (a) we can see that there are equally important - and perhaps more important - reasons for studying History than just those which confer a practical social benefit, (b) it only affects a minority of the population, and (c) to remove History from a school curriculum will detrimentally affect other aspects of the curriculum and, more broadly, society in general.

I suspect your approach to re-defining marriage is like this because (a) it is based on a socially pragmatic reason (legal rights or access), (b) it affects only a minority of the population (not all people with same sex attraction want to get married), and (c) it will doubtlessly affect what marriage is, children, and the rest of society.

It’d be a strange and terrible thing for the legal view of something to become closer to the cultural view of something.

 

[jonathan_hili]

According to rampant contraception abortion and the “child-free” movement.

Ummm so you’re suggesting that we, as Catholics, or any people of good will should be looking to those who approve of abortion and marriages without children as the moral guides of our society?

Spousal benefits would become a mess as would parental rights, property rights in case of divorce, etc.

Nonsense. These things could be worked out reasonably easily based on DNA testing or some kind of legal framework, such as adoption of children within a polygamous marriage, which was very common in the past.

The difficult with proving consent is related to influence parents exert over children and siblings can exert over another; because child grooming.

Sure, influence can be a factor, but the same can be the case in marriages dealing with people of different ages, different social classes or ethnic backgrounds. I don’t think that should be an obstruction to people’s “rights” or keeping them apart because they “love one another”.

I don’t particularly care about the name other than it not being called marriage if possible.

I’m confused! I thought you were arguing for the redefinition of marriage?

Then who would children belong to?

As in some past societies, any children could be adopted and made legal heirs to the male and primary wife, or some other division could be organised.

It’d be a strange and terrible thing for the legal view of something to become closer to the cultural view of something.

I’m not sure whether you’re being sarcastic or not, but what you’ve said is very true. The “cultural view” is based on descriptive behaviour - what people do - whereas the “legal view” should ideally be based on normative behaviour - what people ought to do. If we allow the legal to submit to the cultural, there are no end of laws that we should allow and that would ultimately harm the individual and society.

 

[Cojuanco]

Civil marriage isn’t primarily about children and hasn’t been for some time. Polygamy would require a vast amount of legal changes whereas this would require only a dozen in many states and with incestuous marriage it is a) extremely difficult to verify true consent and b) immediate blood relatives already have a substantial amount of rights.

That is, of course, rather Amerocentric, or at most Anglocentric. The Continental legal tradition, for example, does not have this development to the same extent, as we saw in the debate over this issue in France, which took for that reason a different tenor than it would in the Anglosphere. Not to mention that this concept that marriage in law is not about children is no older than, say, the presidency of Ronald Reagan.

And if the so-called gay marriage movement were truly about these practical considerations, the laws, of, say, California circa 2007, or of France, or of Argentina, would have been left untouched. Here, the pragmatic policy goals of providing adequately for the LGBT population of a place would have been achieved while hewing to the definition of marriage as being between persons of the opposite sex.

 

[markomalley]

Christians do not have an obligation to protect the rights of those individuals who determine for themselves to violate Divine Law or natural law to any degree above the specific rights that apply to any human individual. Most civil societies acknowledge the rights of a spouse to certain special privileges; that is an acknowledgement of the spiritual effect of the “two becoming one flesh” – a situation that exists with a married couple in a valid marriage. That does not carry to so-called homosexual “spouses” (and, in my opinion, should not carry to heterosexual couples who are in invalid “marriages” either, but that’s another discussion).

Having said that, any of the issues that you bring up could be dealt with through contracts and do not inherently demand societal, statutory sanction of a perverted relationship (again, I speak not only about the primary situation of so-called “homosexual marriage”, but also for invalid heterosexual relationships identified as second, third, fourth, or eighth “marriages” as well).

By the way, I tend to agree with Leo XIII in what he asserted through his encyclical Arcanum, where he rejected the right of the State to license marriage. I support measures like that proposed by Oklahoma where they attempt to get the State out of the marriage business altogether.

 

[_Abyssinia]

There may be people in polyandrous or polygamous relationships that want to marry multiple people, who cam’t access the benefits that you can get in marriage because polygamous and polyandrous marriage is not legal. Should I put more examples of people in relationships who want to get married but marriage for them is prohibited? Homosexuals who can not get married are not alone in not being able to get certain rights that come from marriage.

It’s true that homosexual couples do not have the same legal benefits as married heterosexuals regarding taxation, family leave, health care, hospital visitation, inheritance, etc. However, no other non-marital relationships between ndividuals–non-gay brothers, a pair of spinsters, college roommates, fraternity brothers–share those benefits, either. Why should they? If homosexual couples face “unequal protection” in this area, so does every other pair of unmarried citizens who have deep, loving commitments to each other. Why should gays get preferential treatment just because they are sexually involved? The government gives special benefits to marriages and not to others for good reason. It’s not because they involve long-term, loving, committed relationships. Many others qualify there. It’s because they involve children. Inheritance rights flow naturally to progeny. Tax relief for familie seases the financial burden children make on paychecks. Insurance policies reflect the unique relationship between a wage earner and his or her dependents (if Mom stays home to care for kids, she–and they–are still covered).These circumstances, inherent to families, simply are not intrinsic to other relationships, as arule, including homosexual ones. There is no obligation for government to give every human coupling the same entitlements simply to “stabilize” the relationship. The unique benefits ofmarriage fit its unique purpose. Marriage is not meant to be a shortcut to group insurance rates or tax relief. It’s meant to build families.

str.org/Media/Default/Publications/June%202004-2.pdf

If you then question, what about homosexuals who raise children, frankly, that is not something we should be encouraging and incentivising in society. This is not to say homosexuals raising children don’t love them, but children do not deserve to be denied father and mother. Through marriage, couples can access the child tax credit. I have discovered tragic stories from people who are now adults, who were raised in homes with homosexual parents, and they have spoken of the lack of a father and mother.

 

[St_Francis]

Marriage is *for *procreating. The benefits given are *because *of the procreative aspect of marriage. Why would we give a “marriage” which is intrinsically non-pro-creative the same benefits as a potentially pro-creative one?

Now, that being said, I think that people who, for whatever reason, choose to have people who are unrelated to them be a medical proxy or similar, should be allowed that, and the arrangement, if properly documented, should be honored. This should be the case regardless of any romantic aspect of the relationship. There are certainly enough people alone in the world who have friends that this could be done. A man without other family, or whose family is very distant ought to be able to choose one or more friends to be there for him in the hospital without there being any speculation as to the nature of their relationship.

OTOH, I can also see that hospitals probably don’t appreciate being dragged into family controversies and having to deal with different “sides” of that. A person could easily designate one person to be his or her medical proxy and the hospital would deal with that person. The proxy woud be the one to deal with other friends, family members, or anyone else (churches, jobs, etc).

No marriage required.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

There may be people in polyandrous or polygamous relationships that want to marry multiple people, who cam’t access the benefits that you can get in marriage because polygamous and polyandrous marriage is not legal. Should I put more examples of people in relationships who want to get married but marriage for them is prohibited? Homosexuals who can not get married are not alone in not being able to get certain rights that come from marriage.

It’s true that homosexual couples do not have the same legal benefits as married heterosexuals regarding taxation, family leave, health care, hospital visitation, inheritance, etc. However, no other non-marital relationships between ndividuals–non-gay brothers, a pair of spinsters, college roommates, fraternity brothers–share those benefits, either. Why should they? If homosexual couples face “unequal protection” in this area, so does every other pair of unmarried citizens who have deep, loving commitments to each other. Why should gays get preferential treatment just because they are sexually involved? The government gives special benefits to marriages and not to others for good reason. It’s not because they involve long-term, loving, committed relationships. Many others qualify there. It’s because they involve children. Inheritance rights flow naturally to progeny. Tax relief for familie seases the financial burden children make on paychecks. Insurance policies reflect the unique relationship between a wage earner and his or her dependents (if Mom stays home to care for kids, she–and they–are still covered).These circumstances, inherent to families, simply are not intrinsic to other relationships, as arule, including homosexual ones. There is no obligation for government to give every human coupling the same entitlements simply to “stabilize” the relationship. The unique benefits ofmarriage fit its unique purpose. Marriage is not meant to be a shortcut to group insurance rates or tax relief. It’s meant to build families.

There have actually been people pushing so that two otherwise unattached people such as two best friends, a mother and daughter, etc. that designates the other for purposes of spousal benefits, etc.
Back when Cardinal Levada was Archbishop of San Francisco the city decided to force everyone to give civil union partners spousal benefits, Levada’s solution was to have it so one person could designate another person, no need to have a piece of paper documenting the relationship which totally sidestepped the recognizing gay marriages while being even more progressive.

 

[JimG]

There have actually been people pushing so that two otherwise unattached people such as two best friends, a mother and daughter, etc. that designates the other for purposes of spousal benefits, etc.
Back when Cardinal Levada was Archbishop of San Francisco the city decided to force everyone to give civil union partners spousal benefits, Levada’s solution was to have it so one person could designate another person, no need to have a piece of paper documenting the relationship which totally sidestepped the recognizing gay marriages while being even more progressive.

This might be a useful solution provided that no one is forced to recognize same sex marriage against their conscience. Photographers would be free to decline to photograph any wedding for reasons of their own choosing.

The disadvantage of applying such a solution nationally, of course, is that it effectively eliminates marriage as an institution. It becomes just any two individuals who wish to designate each other for benefits. Presumably a NAMBLA member could also designate an underage boy to receive benefits, since no acknowledgement of sexual activity is involved or required in such a registration. And it still leaves those who wish to designate more than one person out in the cold.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

How could they not take a legally executed document seriously? What leg do they have to stand on?

We always take them seriously. And on the rare occurrence where we don’t it is because someone made a mistake and it is quickly fixed.

It is a straw-man argument.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

This might be a useful solution provided that no one is forced to recognize same sex marriage against their conscience. Photographers would be free to decline to photograph any wedding for reasons of their own choosing.

The disadvantage of applying such a solution nationally, of course, is that it effectively eliminates marriage as an institution. It becomes just any two individuals who wish to designate each other for benefits. Presumably a NAMBLA member could also designate an underage boy to receive benefits, since no acknowledgement of sexual activity is involved or required in such a registration. And it still leaves those who wish to designate more than one person out in the cold.

Marriage has never been understood as a sacrament in the United States due to it’s Protestant roots.

Unless of course it was necessary to sign a legally binding contract to gain said rights/privileges in which case NAMBLA gets nothing.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Marriage has never been understood as a sacrament in the United States due to it’s Protestant roots.

Unless of course it was necessary to sign a legally binding contract to gain said rights/privileges in which case NAMBLA gets nothing.

I don’t understand this. Are you saying that marriage has never been understood as a sacrament unless it was necessary to sign a contract? That sounds like if you do sign a contract then it is recognized as a sacrament, which makes no sense at all. What does your “unless” clause refer to?

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

I don’t understand this. Are you saying that marriage has never been understood as a sacrament unless it was necessary to sign a contract? That sounds like if you do sign a contract then it is recognized as a sacrament, which makes no sense at all. What does your “unless” clause refer to?

No, the US’s Protestant roots don’t recognize it as a sacrament, see common law marriages.

Notice that line break, it refers Jim’s second paragraph

 

[JimG]

Marriage has never been understood as a sacrament in the United States due to it’s Protestant roots.

Unless of course it was necessary to sign a legally binding contract to gain said rights/privileges in which case NAMBLA gets nothing.

No, sacramentality has nothing to do with it. But it has up till now been recognized as a covenant between man and woman. It has been recognized for the great expanse of western civilization as a union involving sexually complementary couples–i.e. man and woman.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

No, sacramentality has nothing to do with it. But it has up till now been recognized as a covenant between man and woman. It has been recognized for the great expanse of western civilization as a union involving sexually complementary couples–i.e. man and woman.

However the function of marriage in society has fundamentally shifted, instead of being the glue that binds society together it is now more atomistic than something that keep society together.

 

[JimG]

However the function of marriage in society has fundamentally shifted, instead of being the glue that binds society together it is now more atomistic than something that keep society together.

Exactly so. I agree with you entirely. We have not quite reached total atomism yet but that is where we are headed. And that is why society will not hold together.

You have pretty much summed up the thesis of Carle Zimmerman’s lengthy book “Family and Civilization.”