(no subject)

[naath]

Yay Obama is still president!

Also yay! 4 states voted for (or against being against) same-sex marriage to be allowed!

Legal notions of family.

I am strongly in favour of allowing same sex couples to get married (also couples where one or both parties are neither male nor female). In the UK we have the campaign for equal marriage who would like to introduce this right here too. I support them (but think they have a kinda nasty website). I don't like calling it "gay marriage" because it's not really - not all same sex couples are gay (some are bisexual) for one thing.

Also I'm in favour of bringing in civil partnerships (or similarly named non-marriage marriage-like things) for all couples; because I have strong personal reasons to not want to get married myself. I'm not in favour of claiming that CPs are "just like marriage" and should be "good enough" for same-sex couples. They really aren't; it's a principle-of-the-thing even if the rights are very-nearly-identical.

I'm also also in favour of extending legal recognition of marriage (and/or CP) to groups of more than 2 people; although I understand that this is rather harder, because (for instance) if you have 3 wives who are all exactly as closely related to you in law then how does the law decide which of them gets to turn off the life support machine? Also if my wife's wife husband divorces her then does he get a share in my worldly wealth (because I agreed, by marrying her, to own all things in common with her)? It's not as simple as writing three names on the marriage cert. (Although note that it's clearly not IMPOSSIBLE; and Islamic jurisprudence presumably has a full set of rules for how one-man-many-wives works).

I'd also like the law to recognise intentional family bonds other than "spouse" (through marriage) and "parent-child" (through adoption); and also the dissolution of blood family bonds in a similar way to divorce. For instance the law recognises my brother's relationship to me if I die intestate or if I'm on life support, especially if our parents are dead; it would be nice if I could "divorce" my brother and/or "adopt" friends as my siblings-in-law (er, except that term already means something). This seems like it might be a legal minefield.

Comments

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

I'd be strongly opposed to any system that goes beyond two people if it was going to give them equality of rights over children. Given the spectacular degree of selfish fuckage TWO parents can inflict on a child, I don't think adding and extra party would help.

Sharia is not a useful model, really, given that it does not recognise marital rape and still has tenets to address witchcraft etc etc.

I've always thought that getting married should be as protracted and expensive (in terms of the legal license, not the faff, fun and frolics) as getting divorced. Say, a 5K tax on the marriage, and a 10K penalty if you divorce within the first decade.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I quite disagree about parents. Yes, there are awful parents, and yes we need rules for removing these people's right over their children (in part, or in full). But if three people are raising a child together then it makes sense for all three of them to be regarded as the child's parents by the law. It is a matter of the law recognising the truth of a situation which *already exists*.

And it doesn't have to involve poly families either - families where parents have separated and now have new partners are also strong affected by this.

I think both marriage (and/or civil partnership) and divorce should be as legally and financially easy as possible. I certainly don't think we should be trying to use the law to bribe people into remaining in relationships which suck.

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

I think the law should make it much harder to get together in the first place, rather than keeping people together - more 'don't breed until you know this relationship doesn't suck, and if it does, don't expect the state to pay for the fallout'.

My attitude is definitely shaped by my work though, and I think I feel the same way about elderly people as I do about children. I don't think people should expect the state to rear their children or look after their doddering parents. Extending the range of potential family ties while letting so many in existing 'traditional' roles abnegate their repsonsibilities seems crazy to me. If people want the rights/status/kudos/label etc they should accept that the responsibilities that go with them.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, clearly people don't feel any need to marry in order to sprog... so, um, don't think that would work.

I think I have a much broader notion of the role of the state than you do - it certainly includes welfare benefits and health and social care provision for elderly people and being a back-stop on ensuring that children receive adequate care, education, and so on.

I don't think the state currently does very well at handling children who are being failed by their parents - I don't think I'm at all in a position to propose useful guidelines on what should be done there. But I don't think the answer is "the state should do nothing".

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

Married or not, there are presently financial incentives to sprogging - I'd like to see disincentives.

Necessary welfare and health care is fine for those in desperate need and without families. As the law stands, you are obliged to pay for your children up to the age of 18 (and your income is taken into account for their uni fees etc after that), but only the individual's income is taken into account when they are elderly, so many fairly affluent to actively wealthy people continue to be so, while the state picks up the bill for their parents.

I can't think of a single incidence of the state getting bigger in education in the last thirty years that has has a genuinely beneficial outcome, unless creating taxpayer-funded jobs for white middle class people is classed as such.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I don't like my parents; I have little intention of doing anything to support them in their old age, I'm certainly not letting them move in with me. I think I basically think the whole notion of "biological family" is irrelevant to the way I view the world and the way I live. I don't like it when the state tells me I should care about (and for) people I would rather have nothing to do with just because of some accident of birth.

No, the state isn't very good at being a substitute parent; although of course sometimes "not very good" is better than the alternatives available. If parents are shit, and the state is shit... what other options remain? private companies taking on the parenting of all children? I don't see this as working very well.

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

So by the same token, if you accept no responsibility for your parents, you are happy for parents of children they neither like nor want to dump them on the state?

You don't have to like them, and they don't have to like you but I think it would be MUCH fairer to get people to support their parents because we each have two (and I thoroughly detested mine) than for the state to expect me to subsidise other people's choice to have children they can't raise properly.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, I have the choice to not have children I don't want... I don't really have the choice to not have parents I don't want do I? (parenticide probably not a reasonable way out).

I'm in favour of parents being able to give their children up for adoption, if that is their preferred choice. I do think the state should step in where adoptive parents can't be found.