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Not that long ago people tried to argue that marriage equality wasn't needed to protect basic rights of individuals involved. They just needed to use contracts

Not that long ago people tried to argue that marriage equality wasn't needed to protect basic rights of individuals involved. They just needed to use contracts/adoption/etc. This is a great article to remind us how bogus that argument was.

gwern 11y ago
> 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.
- GeorgeOrr 11y ago
  The article details the gymnastics required, required only of gay couples, to approximate those rights. 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.
  - mfoy_ 11y ago
    Not to mention it's just plain dehumanizing.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >they and only they had to endure 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.
    - LordKano 11y ago
      Three person marriage is likely next. It avoids incest taboos and the groundwork has already been done.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Three person marriage is likely next. > 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.
        LordKano 11y ago
        "Equitable division of marital assets and liabilities." This doesn't require anything special. Legalizing same-sex marriage required changes on license forms, this will too.
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        > "Equitable division of marital assets and liabilities." > 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.
  - peter303 11y ago
    I've seen it counted that marriage confers over 1000 contracts or rights. I dont know how may the other methods secure.
    - masklinn 11y ago
      > I've seen it counted that marriage confers over 1000 contracts or rights 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" http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf
  - gwern 11y ago
    > The article details the gymnastics required, required only of gay couples, to approximate those rights. 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.)
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Military members' adult children receive no benefits. Consequently, a US military member who used this method may have secured certain visitation and inheritance rights, but would not have qualified their spouse for access to the base, base hospital, insurance, and many other things. 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.
- Laaw 11y ago
  Well, not to be pedantic, but the article actually does say the adoption tactic failed, at least once: > 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.
  - 336f5 11y ago
    "adopting each other" is meaningless and the citation is vague. Some googling of The Advocate's website suggests this is probably a reference to Baker and McConnell, where the regular adoption did succeed: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/the-same-sex-couple-who-got-a-marriage-license-in-1971.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/the-same-sex-couple-who...
    - Laaw 11y ago
      So? The point remains the article specifically cites a situation where the adoption process fails, which directly contradicts the previous statement, and lends credence to the theory that the commenter hadn't actually read the majority of the article.
      - 336f5 11y ago
        > The point remains the article specifically cites a situation where the adoption process fails 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.
        Laaw 11y ago
        > No, it doesn't. Yes, it does. It literally has that, right there, in the text. As quoted, you are factually incorrect.
- nommm-nommm 11y ago
  How about joint adoption of children and spousal privilege for two really obvious flaws that come off the top of my head. 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.”
  - gwern 11y ago
    > 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. 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.
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      Oh right, feeling like you are being treated humanely and respectfully is "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.
      - 11y ago
antillean 11y ago
People still make that argument now. SCOTUS decisions don't suddenly change everyone's mind.
- erispoe 11y ago
  SCOTUS decisions don't change hearts and minds, that's true. But SCOTUS decisions tend to follow long-term changes in public opininion. Gay marriage wouldn't have passed 50 years ago. SCOTUS acts like a classic common law court: the law exists independently of the courts, in the people, and the task of the court is to discover it.
  - amyjess 11y ago
    Not necessarily. While SCOTUS legalized gay marriage after public support for it passed 50%, it wasn't until decades after SCOTUS legalized interracial marriage that public support for it passed 50%. xkcd has an interesting graph of this: https://xkcd.com/1431/ https://xkcd.com/1431/
    - erispoe 11y ago
      You are right. I don't think SCOTUS looks at gallup polls and decides to endorse anything that meets a 50% threshold. It's more about recognizing a change in opinion and a consensus in the making. Interracial marriage was not at 50% but firmly on the way up.
  - antillean 11y ago
    > SCOTUS acts like a classic common law court: the law exists independently of the courts, in the people, and the task of the court is to discover it I hope, for the sake of American democracy, that this just isn't true.
    - erispoe 11y ago
      Why? It takes more than 50% of expressed votes every two years to make a functionnal democracy.
pfortuny 11y ago
This is another issue where the definition of "right" is somewhat complicated. Does one really have the "right" to have a son? Does one really have the "right" to adopt a child? I mean, be it gay, straight, married or a widower, is there a "right" to become the parent of a child? I honestly think this deserves a greater reflection than a mere "but other people CAN, so anyone has to be able to also," which is the implicit reasoning behind gay adoption or general adoption policies in modern countries. Nothing to do, as i see it, with equality.
- erose1 11y ago
  Did you read the article? It's not about gay people adopting children.
- erispoe 11y ago
  You have a more articulate way than usual to package this classic of homophobia. But you miss the point, the article is not about that.
- ska 11y ago
  This is another issue where the definition of "right" is somewhat complicated. It's more of an issue where you didn't read the article, and are talking about something irrelevant to its points. Presumably because you thought you knew what it was about from the title or a quick skim. What purpose does that serve?

gwern 11y ago

> 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.

GeorgeOrr 11y ago
The article details the gymnastics required, required only of gay couples, to approximate those rights. 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.
- mfoy_ 11y ago
  Not to mention it's just plain dehumanizing.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >they and only they had to endure 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.
  - LordKano 11y ago
    Three person marriage is likely next. It avoids incest taboos and the groundwork has already been done.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Three person marriage is likely next. > 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.
      - LordKano 11y ago
        "Equitable division of marital assets and liabilities." This doesn't require anything special. Legalizing same-sex marriage required changes on license forms, this will too.
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        > "Equitable division of marital assets and liabilities." > 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.
- peter303 11y ago
  I've seen it counted that marriage confers over 1000 contracts or rights. I dont know how may the other methods secure.
  - masklinn 11y ago
    > I've seen it counted that marriage confers over 1000 contracts or rights 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" http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04353r.pdf
- gwern 11y ago
  > The article details the gymnastics required, required only of gay couples, to approximate those rights. 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.)
Jtsummers 11y ago
Military members' adult children receive no benefits. Consequently, a US military member who used this method may have secured certain visitation and inheritance rights, but would not have qualified their spouse for access to the base, base hospital, insurance, and many other things. 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.
Laaw 11y ago
Well, not to be pedantic, but the article actually does say the adoption tactic failed, at least once: > 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.
- 336f5 11y ago
  "adopting each other" is meaningless and the citation is vague. Some googling of The Advocate's website suggests this is probably a reference to Baker and McConnell, where the regular adoption did succeed: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/the-same-sex-couple-who-got-a-marriage-license-in-1971.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/us/the-same-sex-couple-who...
  - Laaw 11y ago
    So? The point remains the article specifically cites a situation where the adoption process fails, which directly contradicts the previous statement, and lends credence to the theory that the commenter hadn't actually read the majority of the article.
    - 336f5 11y ago
      > The point remains the article specifically cites a situation where the adoption process fails 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.
      - Laaw 11y ago
        > No, it doesn't. Yes, it does. It literally has that, right there, in the text. As quoted, you are factually incorrect.
nommm-nommm 11y ago
How about joint adoption of children and spousal privilege for two really obvious flaws that come off the top of my head. 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.”
- gwern 11y ago
  > 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. 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.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    Oh right, feeling like you are being treated humanely and respectfully is "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.
    - 11y ago

antillean 11y ago

People still make that argument now. SCOTUS decisions don't suddenly change everyone's mind.

erispoe 11y ago
SCOTUS decisions don't change hearts and minds, that's true. But SCOTUS decisions tend to follow long-term changes in public opininion. Gay marriage wouldn't have passed 50 years ago. SCOTUS acts like a classic common law court: the law exists independently of the courts, in the people, and the task of the court is to discover it.
- amyjess 11y ago
  Not necessarily. While SCOTUS legalized gay marriage after public support for it passed 50%, it wasn't until decades after SCOTUS legalized interracial marriage that public support for it passed 50%. xkcd has an interesting graph of this: https://xkcd.com/1431/ https://xkcd.com/1431/
  - erispoe 11y ago
    You are right. I don't think SCOTUS looks at gallup polls and decides to endorse anything that meets a 50% threshold. It's more about recognizing a change in opinion and a consensus in the making. Interracial marriage was not at 50% but firmly on the way up.
- antillean 11y ago
  > SCOTUS acts like a classic common law court: the law exists independently of the courts, in the people, and the task of the court is to discover it I hope, for the sake of American democracy, that this just isn't true.
  - erispoe 11y ago
    Why? It takes more than 50% of expressed votes every two years to make a functionnal democracy.

pfortuny 11y ago

This is another issue where the definition of "right" is somewhat complicated. Does one really have the "right" to have a son? Does one really have the "right" to adopt a child? I mean, be it gay, straight, married or a widower, is there a "right" to become the parent of a child? I honestly think this deserves a greater reflection than a mere "but other people CAN, so anyone has to be able to also," which is the implicit reasoning behind gay adoption or general adoption policies in modern countries. Nothing to do, as i see it, with equality.

erose1 11y ago
Did you read the article? It's not about gay people adopting children.
erispoe 11y ago
You have a more articulate way than usual to package this classic of homophobia. But you miss the point, the article is not about that.
ska 11y ago
This is another issue where the definition of "right" is somewhat complicated. It's more of an issue where you didn't read the article, and are talking about something irrelevant to its points. Presumably because you thought you knew what it was about from the title or a quick skim. What purpose does that serve?