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Comment by seldo | Hacker News Reader

This was Mitt Romney's suggestion for gay marriage, but the truth is that there are all sorts of rights that can only be conferred by marriage. For example: you can't write a contract that says your business partner should pay less taxes, but marriage can. You can't write a contract that gives your business partner the right to a green card, but marriage can. There's literally hundreds more.

We are a species that likes to pair-bond; we consider it a greater hardship to separate members of a pair than members of a looser association like friendship. The legislation reflects that. Social engineering via tax breaks are a dumb idea, but deleting the concept of marriage from law entirely is impractical and probably undesirable.

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I think you could change the law to allow the currently-conferred-by-marriage rights to be otherwise assignable.

I basically am in favor of religions being able to define "marriage" however they want (and am confident there would be a variant, if not primary variant, of every major religion which supported and another which denounced gay marriage).

The state should do something else, for everyone, with all rights handled through the state's thing.

The quick hack is to just require all new marriages also be civil unions, and not recognize future marriage otherwise. Civil union should get every current private and government benefit of marriage. Strictly religious benefits from private entities could potentially be withdrawn from civil unions (I honestly have no idea what those would be).

This has been repeatedly suggested, but given all the fuss from the religious right over giving others equal rights, the uproar that would be caused by attempting to take rights away from them would be enormous, and political suicide.

In most of the country this is political suicide anyway (there is probably 50% of the country where stripping non-heterosexuals of citizenship would be a winning political strategy).

I have a lot more faith in a judicial solution than a legislative one. March should be interesting.

I am torn, because I want to upvote your first para which accurately addresses the points raised by the parent; yet your second para is all fluff, empty rhetoric, assertions totally without justification.

If you are a new kind of troll, I salute you.

Hmm good point, I'm taking notes from this one.

It is never my intention to troll, as I hope my commenting record attests. Which of my statements do you consider unjustified?

I was thinking specifically of the statement "[D]eleting the concept of marriage from law entirely is [...] probably undesirable."

Social engineering via tax breaks are a dumb idea, but deleting the concept of marriage from law entirely is impractical and probably undesirable.

The only rights of marriage that cannot be conferred by contract are the parts that fall into the "social engineering via tax breaks" (or redistribution) category.

Immigration rights are not tax breaks, and they are a hugely valuable benefit of marriage. Marriage gets you a green card within two years; attempting to do the same as, say, a 25 year old with a bachelor's degree could take upwards of 7 years. (Marriage is also much cheaper)

There's other rights, like hospital visitation, legal indemnification, etc. that also don't fall into that category.

You get hospital visitation with a medical proxy contract.

You are correct about immigration and legal indemnification, though I question the social utility of both those benefits.

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