On the sickness of our community

Posted Oct 31, 2014 0:27 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: On the sickness of our community by njs
Parent article: On the sickness of our community

> This is a simplified fantasy you made up to make a convenient argument; reality is more complicated. If this were really the sole and only purpose of legal marriage, then why is it that marriage e.g. gives spouses special rights to decide on medical care for each other?

Purely pragmatic reasons, it's much easier to incorporate this into an existing structure than to require that all couples take additional legal actions. Remember that the law (at least in many places) recognizes Common Law Marriages, which basically boil down to "if you act like you are married, you will get treated as if you are married"

And this sort of visitation/medical care access has never been something that opponents of Gay Marriage have been opposed to.

> Marriage has a lot of complicated cultural, social, and legal aspects; child-care is just one piece of it.

I will agree with this statement. However I think that the child-care and child-creation aspects are what drive the rest of it.