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Should we do away with marriage as a legal status?

Should we do away with marriage as a legal status?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 20 45.5%
  • No.

    Votes: 23 52.3%
  • Knibb High football rules!

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Total voters
    44
Come on, we know he doesn't have one, he hasn't got a rational argument in favor of anything he believes.

I don't regularly take advice from eight year olds nor do I consider what they have to say about me.
 
The problem with your argument is that when you got married you agreed to give her ownership of your property. If you don't like shared property and its pit falls of mindless disputes over property you shouldn't have agreed to it. Yup, she didn't put anything towards buying anything in the entire house and yet she gets everything. Go figure.

No, she has bought most of the junk in the house out of her money. We didn't have nearly the cool stuff then like we do now, like flat panel TV's, that I my want to keep as learning to work a new remote is such a bitch. Regardless, I was sort of joking sort of not. She is a keeper; I may not be but she is. I really do not feel that marriage is some great thing because there is a piece of paper at the Courthouse. I cannot imagine that our lives would be any different if the paper didn't exist other than we might have more money since she blew a fortune on the I do's. I just wanted to elope to somewhere cool like Antarctica.
 
No, she has bought most of the junk in the house out of her money. We didn't have nearly the cool stuff then like we do now, like flat panel TV's, that I my want to keep as learning to work a new remote is such a bitch. Regardless, I was sort of joking sort of not. She is a keeper; I may not be but she is. I really do not feel that marriage is some great thing because there is a piece of paper at the Courthouse. I cannot imagine that our lives would be any different if the paper didn't exist other than we might have more money since she blew a fortune on the I do's. I just wanted to elope to somewhere cool like Antarctica.

Well then. One of the reasons I will never marry someone is that I hate the prospect of losing my stuff. I have no problem sharing it, but to assume that sharing it for X amount of years equals ownership is the worst kind of nonsense. Just because I allow someone to share with me things bought with my money does not mean they can claim ownership later. The fact that the contract basically makes everything in the marriage the property of both parties is a huge reason I find the contract not agreeable. I don't really care all that much if other people want to agree with it, but its not a wise decision in my opinion.

I wish you luck in your marriage and if it ever goes under I hope you get your wish and keep the tv. :D
 
Well then. One of the reasons I will never marry someone is that I hate the prospect of losing my stuff. I have no problem sharing it, but to assume that sharing it for X amount of years equals ownership is the worst kind of nonsense. Just because I allow someone to share with me things bought with my money does not mean they can claim ownership later. The idea that contract basically makes everything in the marriage the property of both parties is a huge reason I find the contract not agreeable. I don't really care all that much if other people want to agree with it, but its not a wise decision in my opinion.

I wish you luck in your marriage and if it ever goes under I hope you get your wish and keep the tv. :D

LOL. Thanks. My state is not a community property state so anything you bring into the marriage is off limits in the divorce unless you have mixed marital assets into it (like using money you make from work while married to build a room onto the house you owned prior to the marriage). I really don't care but for about things like family heirlooms from my family. She could take the rest for all I really care anyway. The kids wouldn't need to see their lives turned upside down and as long as I had liberal visitation, that would be acceptable. She also is very close with some of my family members as are the kids so a divorce would not need to be a drama filled thing. Our lives are pretty low maintenance.
 
Um...no. Every religion has some arbitrary belief system, and I doubt you'd have to look very hard to find one that believes any of a number of things that disqualify me from common privileges I take for granted. So with all due respect religious people, at least in this context, can bite me.
You're entitled to your opinion. Trust me, making religious people feel good about their prejudice is not worth my time to even think about. If it ever comes down to an actual vote then I'd vote to let anyone marry - but I don't think it'll ever get that far.
 
Discrimination against singles.

Your turn.

That's not an argument against marriage, but against discrimination between married and unmarried people. It makes no more sense to abolish marriage on the point of discrimination against single people as it did to abolish marriage on the basis that people of mixed races couldn't marry: changing the rules of marriage was sufficient to correct that particular problem.

EVEN SO...

Your argument doesn't work on the second reason that the government has a state interest in encouraging stable relationships, such as marriage does, the obvious example being tax breaks for married people.
 
Your argument doesn't work on the second reason that the government has a state interest in encouraging stable relationships, such as marriage does, the obvious example being tax breaks for married people.

There goes the SSM argument then.
 
As long as there is legal recognition for family at all, we need marriage, at least recognized.

And marriage does help to protect people. Think about this. What if someone has two wives, and neither knows about the other? It happens now with marriage being tracked. It would be even more easy for someone to do this if marriage was simply whenever someone said they were "married"/wanted to be recognized as a legal spouses. Who gets what? Who gets to make the decisions when it comes to the death of the person living the two lives, the first spouse, the second, the last, the oldest, the youngest? What if a spouse claimed they weren't a "spouse" at all to avoid having to pay debts of the other because they had access to the accounts and wiped the other out, leaving any debts and even the burial/funeral to blood relatives?

Now, if there is no legal recognition of spouses at all, then you come upon may other problems. Do we make writing up wills and living wills compulsory? Do we force adults to have this paperwork made up for themselves, vice the much simpler "marriage contract"?

I honestly don't see us doing away with legal recognition of marriage anytime in the near future because it really doesn't cost anything to society and in fact, provides plenty of benefits to society, beyond even that small incoming tax bonus to our public coffers due to marriage. Many people want marriage. It is much more efficient and less paperwork (by a lot) for a contract that covers a lot of things that people want that "special person" in their life to have legal say/privilege to.
 
If you can make an argument about unmarried couples being unstable, I'll gladly make the argument about gays.

Are you saying that married couples do not have statistically higher rates of stability than unmarried couples?
 
If you can make an argument about unmarried couples being unstable, I'll gladly make the argument about gays.

You're argument wouldn't work because married couples are going to be more stable than single couples no matter their relative genders. But not only that, marriages don't really cost taxpayers money at all, but do benefit society greatly, even when it is same sex couples. So that means a cost/benefit analysis would show that married couples are worth the cost (which isn't really significant if it costs anything at all) because of the benefits to society in providing another adult who is volunteering to take legal responsibility for another adult and vice versa.

The single person and the married couple are not similarly situated.
 
Are you saying that married couples do not have statistically higher rates of stability than unmarried couples?

I'm not sure how you can rate stability of unmarried couples, but I'd be willing to take that bet.

I'd also be willing to invoke some statistics about kids being raised in a homosexual household as opposed to a household with a mother and father - especially with regard to abuse.
 
I'm not sure how you can rate stability of unmarried couples, but I'd be willing to take that bet.

I'd also be willing to invoke some statistics about kids being raised in a homosexual household as opposed to a household with a mother and father - especially with regard to abuse.

Captain has crawled up people's butts with a mining hat and a pick axe when they tried arguing that homosexual couples were less able parents or less stable family units. While I don't have the information on hand like he does, when I do I can guarantee you that's a debate you'll lose. The facts don't support you on this one. Not that the facts supported you anywhere else, either, but still.
 
Captain has crawled up people's butts with a mining hat and a pick axe when they tried arguing that homosexual couples were less able parents or less stable family units. While I don't have the information on hand like he does, when I do I can guarantee you that's a debate you'll lose. The facts don't support you on this one. Not that the facts supported you anywhere else, either, but still.

I think that if you did research on biological parents who raise children without marriage, you wouldn't find the disparity in stability that you're looking for in regard to this thread.
 
I can't help but notice that the "lets get government out of marriage" sing-a-long here didn't really exist a year ago.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/sex-a...ts-help-pro-gay-marriage-group-w-56-61-a.html
http://www.debatepolitics.com/sex-and-sexuality/127976-its-time.html
http://www.debatepolitics.com/sex-a...ame-sex-couples-recieve-federal-benefits.html
http://www.debatepolitics.com/sex-a...ponents-submit-signatures-referendum-w47.html
http://www.debatepolitics.com/sex-a...ried-stop-5th-grader-giving-speech-ssm-2.html
http://www.debatepolitics.com/sex-and-sexuality/129472-legalize-gay-marriage-now.html

Quite a posters back here weren't singing that tune last year.

I wonder what could have happened within a year?

Sounds suspiciously like a "scorch earth" policy of "if we anti-SSM can't control marriage,then no one should benefit from it".
Or to be blunt,a dogs attitude of "if you can't screw it or eat it,or piss on it".
 
It is perfectly self evident that your position is based on principle over practicality.

Do you have any citations that show that gigantic government resources are allocated to managing marriages? I've never heard of this and though I suspect you've made it up for the convenience of this debate.

I'm not aware that it's ever been studied. Still, it's fairly self-evident that the more work you assign the government to do, the more resources it will require in order to perform the tasks allocated to it.

I'm not sure why you would question this.
 
As long as there is legal recognition for family at all, we need marriage, at least recognized.

And marriage does help to protect people. Think about this. What if someone has two wives, and neither knows about the other? It happens now with marriage being tracked. It would be even more easy for someone to do this if marriage was simply whenever someone said they were "married"/wanted to be recognized as a legal spouses. Who gets what? Who gets to make the decisions when it comes to the death of the person living the two lives, the first spouse, the second, the last, the oldest, the youngest? What if a spouse claimed they weren't a "spouse" at all to avoid having to pay debts of the other because they had access to the accounts and wiped the other out, leaving any debts and even the burial/funeral to blood relatives?

Now, if there is no legal recognition of spouses at all, then you come upon may other problems. Do we make writing up wills and living wills compulsory? Do we force adults to have this paperwork made up for themselves, vice the much simpler "marriage contract"?

I honestly don't see us doing away with legal recognition of marriage anytime in the near future because it really doesn't cost anything to society and in fact, provides plenty of benefits to society, beyond even that small incoming tax bonus to our public coffers due to marriage. Many people want marriage. It is much more efficient and less paperwork (by a lot) for a contract that covers a lot of things that people want that "special person" in their life to have legal say/privilege to.

Why does the government have to play the role of Judge Judy or Jerry Springer and sort out people's messy personal issues?

No thanks.
 
Marriage should be treated the same as any other contract. No need to license it. No need to pass laws over it. The extent of government involvement should be only in the divorce courts.

That makes way too much sense. We need more bureaucracy and backward-thinking in this country, dammit.
 
There's a difference between Swedish society and ours. Unless you're also willing to adopt other Swedish ways it's a false analogy.


But I'm certainly all in for deleting "marriage" from the law books and changing it to civil union, civil partnership, or whatever. That would also resolve the issue of "We own that word and you can't use it!" :lol:

A fish by any other name would be just as rank.

Just do away with the concept altogether, at least legally. There is no need for the government to track who is coupled with whom.
 
All of which requires laws that determine how a family unit legally operates. The only difference is that they're forgoing a formal marriage ceremony and calling it something different. Which is just the tired old "seperate but equal" argument.

No, there are quite a few differences between cohabitation (sambo) and marriage.
 
I think government should be out of the marriage business.

While everyone wants to frame this in terms of gays, who it also REALLY hits is seniors and families. The marriage penalty can be HUGE and prohibitive against marriage because if married the government combines their income in calculations and not if they aren't. For this reason, it can be so costly for couples to marry due to benefits issues they literally dare not do so.

A young couple we know have three YOUNG children, not much income and dare not remarry. They divorced in part due to huge financial pressures, but are back together - though not married and technically must pay for two different housing situations - because they would lost more than they could withstand in government assistance. One has 1 child, the other has 2. By NOT being married, the government assists both with food stamps, housing and utilities assistance, daycare assistance etc etc. BUT if they marry then the income becomes joint and they lose most benefits.

In that and in many other ways, the government pays people to divorce and have broken families. It is NOT just about gay rights.

Couldn't agree more. What a messed up system that is. Government assistance should be doled out per mouth-to-feed. In that case, there are five people, so there needs to be enough given out to provide for five people. It doesn't matter if they're "married" or not.
 
A fish by any other name would be just as rank.

Just do away with the concept altogether, at least legally. There is no need for the government to track who is coupled with whom.
The government doesn't have to track anything. I just want the paper on file so if there's any question about who can make decisions for me and all the other "perks" of a domestic contract then my spouse doesn't have to go looking for a piece of 25 year old paper.
 
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