The Lost History of Gay Adult Adoption
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
For very different reasons, and theirs aren't semi-permanent.
> in plenty of places that means you're not paying property tax for the dwelling.
Then again in plenty of places (at least in western europe) you must have a permanent residence, so a mobile dwelling (whether an RV or a boat) can only be a secondary residence.
What's an interesting question is why this was so widely accepted and tolerated by judges/social workers, in an era where same-sex relationships were otherwise treated so punitively.
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/north/2015/10/09/Fox-Chape...
> when the couple petitioned Allegheny County Judge Lawrence O’Toole to dissolve the adoption this summer, he ruled the state’s adoption law didn’t allow him to do so.
That's just sad, and they only just went the adoption route 2 years before same-sex marriage was legalised.
Whenever I encounter people being dismissive of same-sex marriage because it's just symbolic/a distraction/etc., these are the kind of examples I give to show how wrong they are.
Adult adoption by gays and lesbians has only been quietly discussed, both in or outside the gay community, for fairly obvious reasons; there isn’t an easy way to tell your friends and family that the man or woman with whom you share a bed is, legally, your son or father, or your daughter or mother.
I am glad we legalized gay marriage.
And like the article, it's not an ideal solution.
True but GP is talking about "a centuries long-standing practice".
Still, yes, very interesting.
This is a great article to remind us how bogus that argument was.
I'm not sure what you mean. At no point does it indicate that the adoption tactic ever failed; in fact, the article seems to be at pains to show that adoption routinely and reliably secured most or all of the rights that marriage would have, and swapping adoption for marriage now is little more than a change of paperwork. Based on this article, you would have to say that marriage equality wasn't needed to secure the basic rights like inheritance, hospital visitation, etc.
And after all the gymnastics, they and only they had to endure, they ended up with approximation of what heterosexuals were able to accomplish with a conversation at a Justice of the Peace.
The article details the patchwork quilt of rights, the limits, the variation among States, that resulted from this sort of "solution."
It only seems successful to those who didn't need to do it.
Lets not pretend that gay marriage is the last marriage equality that will have to be fought for, even if the ones to come seem as crazy to use as gay marriage seemed to many of those who fought for interracial marriage.
It avoids incest taboos and the groundwork has already been done.
> It avoids incest taboos and the groundwork has already been done.
It actually hasn't; any two-party marriage uses the same infrastructure without problems, the differences are simply at the front door.
Multiparty marriages need ground up redesign of the rights and privileges, which are all based on exclusive dyadic relationships.
There's quite usable outlines of how the legal infrastructure might support many aspects of multiparty marriages (especially in terms of things like dissolution) in, e.g., the law of business partnerships, but the context and details of the rights and privileges tied to marriage are sufficiently different that there is a lot of work to do define even what a multiparty marriage would mean legally.
Its not a simple equality step that can be addressed largely at the front door like interracial or even same-sex marriage.
This doesn't require anything special.
Legalizing same-sex marriage required changes on license forms, this will too.
> This doesn't require anything special.
Right, and how to mechanically achieve this in multiparty relationships on dissolution is what I referred to as having a particularly good model in partnership law, because its done there a lot, and the wrinkles in how it works out have been pretty heavily hammered on over several centuries.
The non-dissolution aspects of marital rights and privileges and how they would apply to multiparty relations (and whether existing explicit rules and legal presumptions built on the premise of a dyadic relationship work, or even make any sense, in multiparty relationships needs to be considered, area by area; for some aspects of this, again, partnership law probably has good models to follow as to how things might be generalized.)
E.g., there's lots of things where spouses have either decisive rights or are necessarily included parties that must each consent, written based on the dyadic nature of existing marriage structure. Whether these generalize to every spouse having the same powers and requirements as a single spouse does now, or whether those powers require a majority of the members of the multiparty relationship, or some other rule in a multiparty case probably needs separate analysis for each of the areas.
For multi-party marriage one major issue will be based on this assumption: members can enter into and leave a marriage without dissolving the rest of the union. If 4 people are married and wish to add a fifth, and later one wants to leave, this should be feasible. How will the various assets be combined and removed from the other parties when people enter into and leave this plural marriage?
It's not as straightforward as the current two-person marriage. (Ha! It's not clean for two-party marriages either.) It'd be interesting to see, but it'll require a bit more structure to be set up, or at least more deliberation to ensure that it's not a complete clusterfuck the first time someone wants to divorce their two wives and husband (see also the issue with civil unions before same sex marriage was legalized and the issues faced when trying to dissolve those).
With 3 party marriage, the vast majority of laws related to financial transactions would fundamentally have to change. Some simple examples 1. Survivor benefits: If someone is in a >2 person marriage, does that mean all of their spouses can continue to collect survivor benefits until the last person dies? 2. Tax-free inheritance: Similar to the above, but does a >2 person marriage mean everyone gets tax free inheritance? 3. Healthcare benefits: Could you put 5 spouses on one employee-sponsored health plan? 4. Tax laws: Tax laws would need a total rewrite because all brackets/amounts just support a single person or a 2-person marriage.
>2 person marriage has huge legal and financial implications that gay marriage did not.
I'm sure a think tank can form a much better option than the one I crafted in under 5 minutes.
Survivor benefits continue as long as there is a surviving spouse. It doesn't matter if there are 1 or 3.
2. Tax-free inheritance: Similar to the above, but does a >2 person marriage mean everyone gets tax free inheritance?
Every surviving participant in the marriage inherits tax free. Just like now.
3. Healthcare benefits: Could you put 5 spouses on one employee-sponsored health plan?
Yes.
4. Tax laws: Tax laws would need a total rewrite because all brackets/amounts just support a single person or a 2-person marriage.
Married or Single are the current choices. That wouldn't be any different. It would actually incentivize multiple person marriage.
>2 person marriage is fundamentally different from existing marriage laws in a way gay marriage is not.
If the relationship type (interracial, same-sex, poly) is considered in some manner deviant or otherwise unacceptable, the number of people openly engaging in it will be small. As race relations in the US improved, as attitudes on same-sex relationships improved, the number of people openly engaged in these relationship types increased.
As poly relationships become more acceptable, more people will admit to being in them. Then we can examine what percentage is impacted by not being able to marry.
Way over 1000 in fact, back in 2004, at the federal level alone, the GAO identified "1049 federal statutory provisions […] contingent on marital status or in which marital status is a factor"
Now you are moving goalposts. First you were all 'look at how total a failure this is and how this is proof marriage is the only possible option'; when I point out that it worked out just fine for all the people who did it, now you're backpedaling to complaining about 'gymnastics'.
And as gymnastics go, having a parent fill out a form, enduring a rubberstamp social worker visit, and filling out some more paperwork is hardly an Olympic-level feat; especially when one consider what this gets you (a clever legal hack to secure a very large set of legal rights that would be unobtainable otherwise for 40 years or more, going by the mentioned years). The surprising thing is that it wasn't more common.
> The article details the patchwork quilt of rights, the limits, the variation among States, that resulted from this sort of "solution."
The article details how this worked out quite well for them. I don't see much of a 'patchwork' or discussion of the limits, or how the variation was a serious problem. (If you read OP, the biggest problem described seemed to be a hypothetical legal conundrum about some incest laws that the lawyers were still arguing between themselves about.)
Hell, no one using this method would be able to cover their adult partner (over age 26, now, variously 18 or 21 in the past) under company health insurance.
They wouldn't have qualified for any tax benefits of marriage (or penalties, for that matter).
Combining property in joint accounts or joint ownership was slightly easier, but still not as straightforward as it is for married couples.
> At no point does it indicate that the adoption tactic ever failed
The adoption technique did not fail in that it achieved what it intended to achieve (primarily the basic legal rights and access of family members). But it did not achieve a marriage substitute, as it did not give them access to everything that marriage entailed.
> ; in fact, the article seems to be at pains to show that adoption routinely and reliably secured most or all of the rights that marriage would have, and swapping adoption for marriage now is little more than a change of paperwork.
It secured some of the rights, it did not secure all or anywhere near most of them.
> There had been an article in The Advocate about a couple in the Midwest who unsuccessfully tried to adopt each other in order to forge a legal bond.
No, it doesn't. The article vaguely alludes to a third-hand description of the failure of a legal tactic which taken literally is nonsensical; and as far as I can tell, when those two people tried in the sensible standard manner used by everyone else (the manner in which the article is about), did succeed.
Yes, it does. It literally has that, right there, in the text. As quoted, you are factually incorrect.
The other thing is it requires someone's actual parents to sever family ties. Removing someone's parents entirely from the next-of-kin hierarchy.
You're also missing something very very important from the article:
>They married 10 days later. After 52 years, marriage is “anti-climactic,” Novak said. But, he added, “psychologically, it makes you feel better. Like you’re a part of the human race.”
No, you don't. That's just more paperwork. You don't need to sever relationships any more than the adoptee needs to look up to the adopter as a father rather than lover.
> You're also missing something very very important from the article:
That's pretty weaksauce.
>No, you don't. That's just more paperwork. You don't need to sever relationships any more than the adoptee needs to look up to the adopter as a father rather than lover.
Legal family relationship.
From TFA:
> First, his biological mother had to legally disown him.
Meaning the mother isn't a legal next-of-kin anymore and also the reverse. So then you'd apparently have to have more legal paperwork to "fix" that I guess.... Mother would have to make sure her will/paperwork was perfect to not leave out child and child would make sure their will/paperwork was perfect so as to not leave out mother.
One example
If my mom died tomorrow my siblings and I would inherit her estate. If my mom had to disown me so I could be adopted by my spouse then the estate would go to my siblings only and not me. So my mom would have to first create a will and "add" me back in. Then I'd hope the siblings wouldn't try to challenge that in court or anything. After all that I still can't add my spouse (who is now legally my parent) to my health insurance! Sounds like a bum deal.
Yes, it is. When the best one can say for the culmination of a multi-generational civil rights struggle is that it makes you feel a little better, then that's not much of a improvement.
> Mother would have to make sure her will/paperwork was perfect to not leave out child and child would make sure their will/paperwork was perfect so as to not leave out mother.
Your parents should already be drawing up a will because the problems with dying intestate go well beyond accidentally leaving out a child. (You're worried about siblings challenging a will? Enjoy what will happen without a will!) Your hypothetical is only relevant in a situation in which people have already screwed up big time. As downsides go, this is very small compared to what one gained.
> After all that I still can't add my spouse (who is now legally my parent) to my health insurance
Children usually go on the health insurance, so you could have done it the other way around. I would also point out that in the relevant time period, employer health insurance was not as critical as it is now. (I don't know how Obamacare would enter in here.)
> Sounds like a bum deal.
The question is not whether it was worse than regular marriage, since it is. The question is whether adoption is so futile and useless a strategy that it was not worth doing at all. And that's not supported by OP at all.
xkcd has an interesting graph of this: https://xkcd.com/1431/
I hope, for the sake of American democracy, that this just isn't true.
And I mean that literally. I started typing about five different responses, each beginning differently. None of them seemed to work, and besides I would've probably ended up typing too much anyway.
Instead I refer you to:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legitimacy_(political) and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legitimacy/
That's true in many important Constitutional areas, in many cases because parts of the Constitution are generally read in a way which incorporates that view (its particularly true, e.g., of things like 8th amendment "cruel and unusual" standards, 4th amendment reasonableness, 9th amendment nonenumerated rights, and 5th and 14th amendment due process.)
That is, the ways in which the Supreme Court "acts like a classic common law court" are because certain written sources of law like the Constitution or particular statutes are understood to require the court to do that to apply the law as intended, because the text itself invokes considerations that require consideration of the social context to apply.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
There are gay people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and there are gay people in these forums. I would guess that there might be a higher percentage of gay people on HN than in the general U.S. population. Issues like this one are deeply important to them, and people who know them (which is a growing demographic).
In any case, HN is filled with submissions and comments on languages, platforms, and businesses that I really don't care much about, but their presence does not bother me.
Wasn't hostile, but my inquiry has produced some downvotes. Go figure.
I would just point out however that questioning a topic's presence on a forum could easily be perceived to be hostility toward that topic. You might or might not know that on HN gay-related and other not-strictly-tech topics have come up on occasion that inevitably trigger queries like yours (some overtly hostile), and most likely the opposition you are experiencing comes from readers who have become tired of the routine.
I wish we had a canonical discussion thread that's led with an instance of "Why is this on HN", followed by someone's post of the guidelines link, followed by an "evergreen" discussion forum where folks can debate why non-tech related things are featured on HN - anytime someone posts that "why" comment, someone can link to that.
Let alone the fact that the basic mechanism of the site is not a mystery. Someone posts a link, and folks looking at the "new" tab upvote it, hence - it makes it to the front page. It's on the front page because people found it interesting! Who the fuck cares if it's not a technical article.
Furthermore, this article in particular is an example of a successful, noble "hack" of the legal system and as such deserves a mention on hacker news.