[avn2109]

I have always wondered why the government is involved with marriage at all. Seems like it would be simpler if we set it up like this:

Everyone pays the same taxes no matter what, and you better write an explicit will and testament to control who gets your stuff when you die/can pull the plug on your vegetative state. Ie. no special benefits/drawbacks for married people.

If you want to get married, great---go find a church or a mosque or a ship's captain; it's none of the state's business. The government doesn't recognize the institution of marriage as anything special. Marriage would be an entirely private association, like joining the Elks lodge or something.

[dragonwriter]

That's "simpler" in the "fewest number of base rules" sense, and more complex in the UX sense.

Given the frequency of the desire to enter into a partnership with something like the kind of mutual exchange of commitments and agency relationships packaged in civil marriage, it makes sense as a UX optimization for government in terms of providing sensible defaults for common needs (with the ability for users interested in different configurations to reconfigure the defaults to a certain degree.)

[nationcrafting]

Funnily enough, I too have often wondered about that.

I've also often wondered why your gender is the state's business at all. One way to make the whole gay marriage thing a non-issue would be to say it's nobody's business what you have between your legs, except your doctor and your partner.

There are a couple of scenarios where it would be an issue, like if you go to jail and there are no mixed gender jails, but it's likely that a little bit of imagination would fix that.