[GeorgeOrr]

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]

> 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.

[Jtsummers]

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.

[GeorgeOrr]

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.

[Lawtonfogle]

>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]

Three person marriage is likely next.

It avoids incest taboos and the groundwork has already been done.

[adevine]

I think this is wrong. As Dan Savage pointed out, heterosexuals had ALREADY changed marriage long before the gays came along. Forgive the bluntness, but marriage used to basically be a property transaction where a woman was transferred from her family to her husband. Long ago, though, marriage in the US has legally been viewed as a merge of equals. In fact, ALL states AFAIK had already gotten rid of parts of their laws where husbands had different rights/responsibilities from wives. Allowing gay marriage was just replacing husband or wife with "spouse" in any legal document.

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.

[Lawtonfogle]

Perhaps simpler would be allowing one person to be in multiple 2 person marriages at once. Even if one of these must be set as the primary, for which all tax benefits, etc. apply to. So while a 3 person marriage would leave one person with no primary, a 4 person marriage would really be 6 marriages, only 2 of which are primary and which function mostly the same. Any special cases like power of attorney could work through the primary marriage unless a legal document was drafted that changed the functionality.

I'm sure a think tank can form a much better option than the one I crafted in under 5 minutes.

[LordKano]

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?

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.

[dragonwriter]

> 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]

"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.

[knodi123]

something like 4% of americans are gay. what percent of americans are clamoring for legalization of poly marriage?

[Jtsummers]

Something similar could've been said about both interracial and same-sex marriage.

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.

[Lawtonfogle]

The funny thing about human rights is that one can never justifying denying them because the minority who wants them is too small to count as important.

[gwern]

> 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.)

[peter303]

I've seen it counted that marriage confers over 1000 contracts or rights. I dont know how may the other methods secure.

[masklinn]

> 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

[mfoy_]

Not to mention it's just plain dehumanizing.

[nommm-nommm]

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]

> 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]

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.

[gwern]

> Oh right, feeling like you are being treated humanely and respectfully is "weaksauce."

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.

[nommm-nommm]

Adult children do not go on health insurance. Adult children do not usually get any work provided benefits at all.

[Laaw]

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]

"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...

[Laaw]

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]

> 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]

> No, it doesn't.

Yes, it does. It literally has that, right there, in the text. As quoted, you are factually incorrect.

[antillean]

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

[erispoe]

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.

[dragonwriter]

> 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.

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.

[amyjess]

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/

[erispoe]

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]

> 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]

Why? It takes more than 50% of expressed votes every two years to make a functionnal democracy.

[antillean]

I don't even know where to begin.

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/