Quote:
Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
Where civil unions are legal, can men and women enter into civil unions? Suppose me and the Mrs don't feel like getting hitched, but we want to enter into a civil union. I assume we could do that, because to restrict it to gay people would discriminate against hetero people. That being the case, we could have all sorts of "marriage lite" type unions. I guess you could upgrade or downgrade from one to another. So if I wanted to sleep with other women, I could renegotiate, something like "On thursdays every other week, we get to sleep with other people" and then let the lawyers negotiate.
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I would imagine so. In many other countries, there are common-law marriages that are governed by a different regime than marriages. I was common-law married to two boyfriends in Canada because I lived with each of them for at least a year. Under the law, we had certain property and support rights under the relationship. We also had rights to certain employer-provided benefits (because a lot of ins. companies extended benefits to common-law spouses).
Before gay marriage was permitted in Canada, gay unions were considered common-law marriages if the parties lived together for at least a year (whether the parties liked it or not). That is how they got certain employer-provided benefits and some other rights.
So yes, there's no logical reason why hetero people can't enter into an arrangement that falls a little short of marriage.
