[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?

[foldr]

>If the law says that married and unmarried couples are to be treated equally...then immigration officials will treat married and unmarried couples equally.

In your pie in the sky world, I'm sure they will. In reality, not so much.

I deleted my point about your support being "quiet and ineffective", as I didn't have a justification for that - sorry. But I do think you are very naive in thinking that undermining the importance of marriage as a legal institution is a good way to advance rights for gay couples.

[dragonwriter]

>>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.

Right. Because government agents and agencies never systematically violate equal treatment mandates.

[skissane]

In the long-run, they never do when (1) those equal treatment mandates are firmly enshrined in law, and (2) there is an effective judicial remedy for violations of that law. Cases where they do it in an ongoing manner are cases where either (1) or (2) are missing.

In the case of immigration/visas, a big problem is that (in many legal systems) most immigration/visa decisions are not judicially reviewable. (There are often exceptions for certain areas of immigration law, such as refugee status determinations and deportation proceedings, but if you are refused a visa from outside the country you usually have no legal recourse.) This means that, even if you believe you have been discriminated against on a legally prohibited ground, no court will even hear your claim.

I think that's wrong, and that should be changed. And it impacts all kinds of people; I'm sure some people get discriminated against on the basis of their sexuality when seeking visas and have no legal recourse, but plenty of people get discriminated against on other grounds – or even just get visas denied for completely inscrutable reasons (e.g. Daniel Stenberg's continual denial of a US visa) – and have no recourse either. But this is a problem which could be fixed with sufficient political will; the law could be amended to grant rights of judicial review in all visa/immigration matters.

Another point: you can say "even if the law says that married and unmarried couples should be treated equally, immigration officials will ignore/violate that law", but you can equally say "even if the law says that same-sex and opposite-sex married couples should be treated equally, immigration officials will ignore/violate that law". I don't understand how, the risk that some immigration official might discriminate against a same-sex couple is a good argument for retaining the legal recognition of marriage, since immigration officials can discriminate against same-sex couples whether marriage is a legally recognised institution or not.