9. November, 2003 - same-sex marriages

• You might have noticed that I now have a link on every day’s picks that links to the weather history from the Weather Underground for that day, as well as the This Day in History page from the History Channel. It was a small bit of code, but I think they’re both kinda cool features. If nothing else, I’m often curious what the weather was like when I wrote something, and this will let me go back and check things. That’s one of the nice things about rolling your own blogging software — it’s pretty easy to add something like that.
• Cosh takes a look at The Volokh Conspiracy’s Jakob Levy’s look at the Political Compass and explains why the test probably isn’t all that good in much more detail than I did. Go read his thoughts. [colby cosh]
• John Ross has some dating Advice for men titled Understanding Women & “The Rules” For Men, or Think of it Like Driving in England which I found interesting, but also a bit discouraging. [endwar]
• Layne’s moving forward with her wedding plans, and the whole thing got me thinking about the problem many people have with same-sex marriages. I see it as a confusion between the two functions of marriage. One function is the religious, church-sanctioned, husband-and-wife function. Maybe that should have prohibitions on same-sex marriages. I’d say it’s up to the religion. But then there’s the parallel civil union function of marriage, which says that these two people have a special legal status.
  I think the two functions need to be divorced.
  In this USA Today article it says that in 14 of the 18 states that have tracked data for any significant period of time since 1980, more than 40% of the marriages performed were civil marriages (up from 30% in 1980). That’s a pretty good sign that people are already starting to think that marriage doesn’t necessarily mean a church ceremony.
  Activists often spend a lot of energy citing arguments about why same-sex marriages ought to be allowed, but to me, the most compelling argument is that if two people want to gain the legal benefits and responsibilities of marriage, essentially tying themselves together in the eyes of the law, they should be allowed to do so. They’re entering into a contract, and there shouldn’t be restrictions on who can sign contracts (at least as long as both folks are competent). There aren’t for most kinds of contracts.
  The problem is that the special legal status conferred by the state on married people has been used in the tax-code for social engineering. The meaning of marriage in the eyes of the church (or of god) has been tangled with the meaning of two people joining their fortunes together. Maybe it’s time to clear up that confusion.

Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek. Last updated on Sun, 09 Nov 2003 08:54:32.