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Originally posted by Not Me
That isn't a rational basis argument that would work. If that argument would work, then the argument that you should be able to ban severely disabled people from marrying because they tend not to work and instead collect unemployment benefits would work. But it doesn't.
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You may disagree with it, but it's the sort of crap that courts accept under the rubric of rational-basis review. And it's unclear to me that severely-disabled people are less likely to work when they're married. But whatever.
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I wasn't ducking it. I can only type so fast and answer so many questions at a time. Others were higher priority than yours.
What is it you want to know? Should we allow those? No. I don't think we should have gay civil unions, either.
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I take it that you think that states that permit gay civil unions must also permit polygamous civil unions. Odd that the polygamists are not pressing their advantage in those states.
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Why do gay people need the state to authorize civil unions? They can do by contract anything that they get from a civil union. Medical power of attorney, wills, property rights, etc. What is the purpose of having the state sanction it? What do they get from a civil union that they cannot get by private contract with each other. Answer me that.
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There are a whole bunch of societally-conferred benefits that have nothing to do with the couple's rights inter se. If your partner is in the hospital, unconscious, and you want to see her, they will let you in if you are a spouse, but not otherwise.
So that's concrete. But then the bigger idea here is that the only reason to prevent gays from marrying is to keep them in a second-class status. It's not like the marriage hurts anyone else. Not permitting marriage carries a stigma, like what blacks experienced after Plessy.
