[anigbrowl]

It sounds like you've never been married. It's not a matter of getting the government to approve, it's a matter of getting other people to recognize it. If you have a common-law marriage but it's not documented then if your spouse falls ill and taken to hospital you might be denied visitation rights, for example.

I suggest you read some court filings/legal articles on the gay marriage cases from a few years ago to get an understanding of why people sued to have the right to get legally married, over and above just having an emotional commitment.

[wutbrodo]

It sounds like you haven't read the thread you're commenting on. Those issues (visitation rights etc) are explicitly stated in the GP comment, and the comment was speculating that it may be worth the trade-off. The comment _I_ was responding to was talking entirely about legal marriage _meaning_ more to its participants.

I suggest you read the threads you're participating in before smugly assuming that someone else is the one who doesn't know what they're talking about.

[anigbrowl]

I'd read it, and I stand by my original comment. Your understanding of this seems to be abstract rather than concrete and I'm suggesting reading material you could examine to concretize your understanding. I don't know why you're being so rude about it.

[nylonstrung]

There are obviously real benefits to being legally married.

That said the #1 reason that marriages fail is finances and I can imagine divorce would be massively net positive it if alleviated the financial desperation this family feels, allows them to spend time together vs working overtime and gives them healthcare they wouldn't have access to otherwise.

The downsides of not being legally married honestly seem trivial in comparison to the realities of poverty.

[anigbrowl]

I concur about the corrosive effects of poverty, but it seems to me that you're ranking different circumstances in a one-dimensional utility calculus, and I'm arguing that many aspects of a long-term relationship are orthogonal to each other.

Marriage and family are contexts within which people are willing and/or liable to make life and death decisions which transcend fiscal considerations. The combination of a tax code and economic circumstances that (perhaps unintentionally) incentivize the breakup of families and the loss of rights for short-term economic reasons is not politically sustainable.

[nradov]

While I support marriage equality I think that was a suboptimal solution. A better, although more complex, option would have been to eliminate civil marriage from the legal code altogether. Currently a civil marriage is a fixed bundle of legal rights, penalties, and responsibilities. But it doesn't have to be that way. Issues like hospital visitation rights could be easily handled through standardized written agreements instead.

Marriage should be strictly a religious or social status with no official government recognition.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

> hospital you might be denied visitation rights

I don't understand this. If I turn up at the hospital you're in and claim you are my (opposite sex) spouse (with the same surname), do the hospital staff demand to see a certificate of marriage registration and then perform a search to ensure there is no state issued marriage annulment?

[anigbrowl]

No, but consider the situation where A elopes with B (but doesn't get legally married) against the wishes of A's parents, and they have a child C. A tragic car accident puts A and C in the hospital but A is in a coma, and by the time B gets to the hospital A's parents are there and disputing B's eligibility to attend at the bedside of family members.

[talmand]

B should just respond with "those aren't my wife's parents, don't know who they are".

[vkou]

Their ID shows them to have the same last name, and they can probably dig up other documentation to prove their case. B has no such documentation, his last name doesn't match, etc.

No, you don't need to have the same last name to visit your sick partner, but when people start accusing eachother of lying, it will sure help.

[anigbrowl]

Asserting counterfactuals is the short track to a loss. I encourage you to think through the ramifications of a situation or consult some case histories rather than just documenting your reflexive response.

[talmand]

joke [johk] : noun : something said or done to provoke laughter or cause amusement, as a witticism, a short and amusing anecdote, or a prankish act

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Ah yep, that's a very good point and quite obvious now you point it out.

[canadian_voter]

Bingo.

Marriage is a responsibility, but it also provides rights. A system that financially punishes marriage is cruel.