[da_big_ghey]

I'm referring to marriage as a legal contract, and legal stuff changes slowly. It was certainly founded on religious principles, which is why homosexuals couldn't marry until recently. I'm not advocating for that state of affairs, nor repeating what some partisan said. Were we to green-field re-do marriage today, divorce would be a whole lot easier and possibly more of an expectation.

[robertlagrant]

> It was certainly founded on religious principles, which is why homosexuals couldn't marry until recently

Simple counterexample: the USSR's views on gay marriage.

[valarauko]

Out of curiosity: what were the USSR's views on gay marriage?

[throwawayboise]

Or perhaps, marriage would be harder? If divorce is easy, what's the point of marriage?

[Brian_K_White]

Many administrivia reasons.

It would be useful for me that I have some way to assign certain rights relating to me, to someone else.

I am not married, but I have been living with someone for 12 years, and neither of us has plans to change.

But legally, I don't know what happens when one of us meets a misfortune and the other needs to speak for us. Luckily in our case, we both have plenty of other blood relatives all alive and reachable and all on good terms with each other.

So, if say I am incapacitated, and some functionary at a hospital won't accept my partners decision about what to do, both my partner and the functionary can reach several other generally accepted proxies in the form of my mother, my brother, and even more cousins. My partner will be able to say what to do only slightly indirectly if not directly.

And we both have our own jobs with insurance and retirement savings so neither of us really needs to be legally acknowledged to receive benefits like military death benefits or retirements etc.

So for us we can pretty much get away with having NOT addressed these issues.

But they are real issues that generally should be addressed. A legal document on the books would provide a clean path to resolve a lot of potentially messy situations. What if our families didn't all like or respect each other? What if one or both of us had no known and/or reachable bood relatives? What if one of us actually needed to be recognized as a claimant on the others insurance or retirement or property like a house?

Probably a lot of such things could just as well be handled with legal documents other than marriages. Like if I take a job that has spouse insurance benefits, that could just as well be whoever I want to write on that form, rather than having it be determined by my marriage document.

But it would still be useful to have a catch-all document that expresses my wishes in any situation not handled elsewhere.