[wander_homer]

There's a thing called ethical beliefs and people tend to feel quite strongly about them, even though they're not consistent or reasonable in many cases. Like most of the people in my country are pro gay marriage, however most of them are also against marriages of more than two partners or between close relatives. None of those type of marriages harms anyone else, and yet people don't support it, just because it feels wrong to them or because they want to draw the line at one point to not make marriage arbitrary.

I'm also pretty sure that you draw the line somewhere and I'd be surprised if you were fine with siblings being allowed to marry each other, even when they're deeply in love, they take care of each other like other couples and them being together doesn't harm you or anyone else the slightest.

Edit: My take on this is: Even though I'm married myself, I don't think marriage should be part of the legal system or the concern of the state. If the state wants to support people who take care of each other, it should state specific requirements and everyone who fulfils them gets the benefits, no matter who they are. And if people want to get married they can do that as part of a private ceremony, provided by the church or whatever, and if they can't live without the consequences of being married today, they can sign a private contract to their liking. No reason to involve the state in this private matter.

[acdha]

> Even though I'm married myself, I don't think marriage should be part of the legal system or the concern of the state.

This is a valid position but the Prop 8 people showed no sign of believing it. They were, reserving marriage for themselves, not working to change the laws first, and this was very directly stated both in the language of the proposition and their advocacy for it.

Remember, gay marriage was legal at the time. They could have de-privileged marriage as a legal construct with no unfair impact but put no effort whatsoever into that. It was entirely focused on removing access to those benefits from gay people.

I lived in a relatively conservative part of California at the time, was canvassed a bit, a fair chunk of my family are Orange County Republicans, etc. The language was uniformly an argument on religious principles, and if you suggested reforming the laws which privilege marriage they were profoundly uninterested in those options.

[foldr]

>No reason to involve the state in this private matter.

You won't be singing the same tune when they take away the tax breaks, your right to visit your partner in hospital, your right to live in the same country as your partner should you be of different nationalities, etc. etc.

I'm so sick of straight people who essentially say "well if gay people can get married then I guess marriage shouldn't be a real thing any more". In 100% of cases these people turn out not to have even minimally thought through the implications of this. But maybe suddenly stripping straight people of their right to get married would be the only effective way to stop the endless stream of heartless and hurtful comments on threads like this.

[wander_homer]

> You won't be singing the same tune when they take away the tax breaks, your right to visit your partner in hospital, your right to live in the same country as your partner should you be of different nationalities, etc. etc.

I don't see how any of that should depend on people being married? All but one of those things are already possible where I come from without being married, and the last example could be easily fixed.

> I'm so sick of straight people who essentially say "well if gay people can get married then I guess marriage shouldn't be a real thing any more". In 100% of cases these people turn out not to have even minimally thought through the implications of this.

If have thought this through pretty thoroughly. So before we continue, answer the one simple question: where do you draw the lines, that exclude certain types of partnerships from getting married? If you draw it then you're doing the same thing opponents of gay-marriage do, and if you don't draw it marriage becomes a stupid concept within the legal system.

> But maybe suddenly stripping straight people of their right to get married would be the only effective way to stop the endless stream of heartless and hurtful comments on threads like this.

That is exactly what I was saying: Get rid of marriage as a concept within the legal system of a state.

[foldr]

The funny thing is that people who want to get rid of marriage as a legal concept seem to pipe up almost exclusively in discussions about gay marriage.

Why do you think this idea is relevant here? It's only relevant if you want to argue that gay marriages shouldn't be legally recognized because no marriages should be legally recognized.

You mention that you're married yourself. If you really wanted the state not to be involved, you could just have conducted a non-legally-recognized marriage ceremony. So why didn't you? My guess is that you (a) didn't actually feel strongly about this issue at all and (b) wanted the many benefits conferred by a legally-recognized marriage. As to (b), gay people want these benefits too.

[wander_homer]

> The funny thing is that people who want to get rid of marriage as a legal concept seem to pipe up almost exclusively in discussions about gay marriage.

If Eich had donated money towards an organization that opposes marriages of more than two people, so this discussion had been about those types of relationships instead, I would have brought forward the same arguments. But I have the feeling that Eich wouldn't had lost its job in that case in the first place.

> Why do you think this idea is relevant here? It's only relevant if you want to argue that gay marriages shouldn't be legally recognized because no marriages should be legally recognized

No my take is: Either make all relationships legal (of course as long as none of the participants are exploited), if you insist on keeping marriages as a legal concept. Or, preferably, get rid of marriages altogether from the states point of view, since this is much more efficient and practical.

[foldr]

It seems to me you are just introducing lots of distractions and hypotheticals to avoid saying anything specific about gay marriage. I'm married to another man. Do you think my marriage should be legally recognized or not?

[wander_homer]

Like I said, I'm fine with any partnership being able to enter a legally recognized marriage, if its 7 men, two siblings, man and woman, three man and three women, ... if the state provides marriage within its legal system. So yes, if a man and woman can get a legally recognized marriage in your country then your marriage should be legalized as well. But I'd much rather prefer it for the state not to have such a stupid system in the first place, so marriage becomes a purely private matter.

[skissane]

> You won't be singing the same tune when they take away the tax breaks, your right to visit your partner in hospital, your right to live in the same country as your partner should you be of different nationalities, etc. etc.

Here in Australia, the government has decided that unmarried couples in long-term marriage-like relationships (with characteristics like intentions of permanence, sharing of finances and mutual financial support, living together, raising children together, etc) should be treated equivalently to married couples, and receive the same rights and entitlements as married couples do – those long-term marriage-like unmarried relationships are called de facto relationships. This has been enshrined in law, and is now mostly true (modulo some obscure legal technicalities, and the fact that some government agencies at times fail to adhere to the spirit or even letter of the law – although to my knowledge immigration is the main and maybe even only offender). So, in Australia, there are no special tax breaks for being married – unmarried people in de facto relationships can claim the same tax breaks. Family law courts, etc, treat long-term de facto couples as if they were married for issues like property settlements and child custody. This gave a somewhat different character to the same-sex marriage debate in Australia – unmarried couples, both opposite-sex and same-sex, already had pretty much the same rights as opposite-sex married couples, and extending the right of marriage was primarily a symbolic statement of equality rather than a change in people's real world rights and entitlements.

I think other countries, including the US, should do the same thing as Australia has – extend long-term/serious unmarried couples the same legal rights and entitlements as married couples.

And once you've done that, there really is no obstacle to abolishing marriage as a secular legal institution. People who want to participate in it, either as a cultural institution or as a religious institution (or both) are free to do so, but there really is no compelling reason for the government to get involved.

[foldr]

Yeah, if you actually do your research, you will find that not everything works this way. So e.g. it is almost always much easier to get visas for married partners than for unmarried partners. And in general, marriage is strong objective evidence of a real relationship. Without the certificate, you're at the mercy of a homophobic government official's judgment call about whether your relationship counts.

This impractical pie in the sky stuff about abolishing marriage as a legal institution is almost always just a lame excuse for opposing same sex marriage. I'm not sure why you're bringing it up or why you think it's relevant to Brendan Eich.

[skissane]

> Yeah, if you actually do your research, you will find that not everything works this way. So e.g. it is almost always much easier to get visas for married partners than for unmarried partners.

I already said that, for the case of immigration/visas, it wasn't working that way in Australia; but, that is the only case in Australia in which I know about. But, that's a problem with the Australian immigration system that could be fixed with sufficient political will; it isn't a problem with the principle that serious/long-term unmarried couples should have the exact same rights as married couples, it is just a correctable failure to fully and correctly implement that principle in practice.

For many years I was in an opposite-sex living-together relationship, including having a child together, without being married. (We did eventually get married.) I know people in my extended family who have lived together (in opposite-sex relationships) for 30 years, had kids, never got married, never experienced themselves as being disadvantaged in any way compared to legally married couples. So my lived experience in Australia tells me that unmarried couples rarely or never experience any discrimination on the basis of their marital status, outside of the immigration system. (And maybe some religious institutions, but that has nothing to do with the government or legal system.)

> People usually used this impractical pie in the sky stuff about abolishing marriage as a legal institution as a lame excuse for opposing same sex marriage

When did I say I oppose same-sex marriage? I support same-sex marriage, but I also support abolishing marriage. The two positions are not mutually exclusive – so long as the state is in the business of recognising marriage, it should treat same-sex and opposite-sex couples equally – but, it should get out of that business altogether.

> I'm not sure why you're bringing it up

I didn't bring it up; someone else did. But since it has become part of the conversation, why shouldn't I share my view on it?

[foldr]

Marriage also isn't technically required to get a visa for your partner in the UK, but it makes it vastly easier in practice, and is a barrier to capricious discrimination against gay couples by immigration officials.

The idea of removing marriage as a legal institution and "fixing" 101 other rules that used to depend on marriage is, as I said, pie in the sky stuff. This silly idea is great cover for homophobes. It's harmless to discuss it in the abstract, but not so much in the context of the question of whether gay people should have fundamental rights.

[skissane]

If the law says that married and unmarried couples are to be treated equally (including in immigration/visa matters), and if that law is enforced, then immigration officials will treat married and unmarried couples equally.

If immigration officials are not treating married and unmarried couples equally, that's a problem with either the law or its enforcement in practice – both of which are fixable with sufficient political will – not a problem with the principle that married and unmarried couples ought to receive identical treatment.

If the principle of equal treatment were legislated, and if that legislation were consistently enforced, what then would be the problem with abolishing state recognition of marriage (for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples equally)? I can't see how there could be any.

> You "support" gay marriage in rather a quiet and ineffective way, I'd say.

In 2017, Australia had a national postal plebiscite on the question "Should the law be changed to allow same-sex couples to marry?". (Technically called the "Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey", since by calling it a "survey" the government was able to carry it out without the permission of Parliament.) I voted "Yes". I told my friends and family I was voting "Yes". I even posted a photo of my "Yes" ballot paper on Facebook (I covered up the barcode so that I didn't spoil my vote by doing so). Over 60% of my fellow Australians voted the same way. Within a month of the result being announced, Australia's Marriage Act was changed to reflect the result of that vote. So how exactly was my support ineffective?