And sometimes they should have them and sometimes they shouldn't. Families should be together, our immigration policy supports this. Now with out some way to categorize family vs not family how do you make this differentiation?
So no one can be just roommates anymore? How do you suggest differentiating people who are living together from a family? Not all couples or multiple sexual unions who are cohabitating want to be considered a family legaly.
Sure people should be able to determine who they want to decide for them. The thing is that you can not do this with out legal action, be it marriage or having various papers drawn up.
And marriages that have practical reasons that they can't live in the same place? And how do you differentiate again between family and not family? IT seems that you would give equal status to someone who has a roommate in this country as someone who has spouse.
The problem here is that even if they are important to someone, you are now forcing them to spend a lot of money in legal fees. What is the advantage here over the power of attorney and proxies? If you need to have legal documents drawn up anyway, I don't see why this changes things.
Family is a discriminatory concept, why should you and your siblings choose for your mother instead of someone else? Unless you were living with her by your definitions here, you were not actually in her family, except by a discriminatory means.
Again single people are not penalized because of this, as long as they have the option to marry. The bundling of recognition with various rights and responsibilities makes a lot of sense.
How are they? You seem to be against things like spousal visa's and the like, so be clear, those people are cheating the system right?
Finally someone who will support my right to make deductions for charitable donations I don't make.
Yep it is and always will be about the transfer of ownership of a woman from her father to her husband.
I don't mean to be argumentative, but I don't see where you get the notion that marriage is about the transfer of ownership of a woman from her father to her husband. I didn't have a father around, so how in the world did I get married?
Oh, I know! I decided to, and filled out the papers, which required my signature, paid the fee, and showed up at the ceremony. No father involved. And oddly enough, no one demanded to speak to him before the deed was done, either.
I got divorced, too. We handled it like adults, which granted, may have been easier since we had no children, but as a woman, I can tell you that the law was as fair to me as it was to him. In fact, it required my signature, too...so he couldn't just abandon me. I wasn't a victim in marriage, nor in divorce. No one forced me to sign anything, and no one "transfered" ownership of me. I'm really confused as to how this is being made out to be that somehow women...grown women with minds of their own...are victimized in marriage, and would be by default in situations where they chose to sign agreements involving multiple partners. Are we going on the assumption that women aren't as smart as men? If so, I take issue with that.
Donations you don't make. That's based on fraud. However, why would it be comparable to someone using as deductions people they support financially? If that would be fraud, then surely claiming children would be as well. Or a non-working spouse. I'm uncertain as to what you're implying there.
And obviously, no, those people aren't "cheating the system". The system is what recognizes spouses in those ways to begin with. It gives preferred status to a marriage partner. Which is exactly why homosexuals have fought for those same rights. I'm simply saying that, if marriage is based on anything other than preferred status, level the playing field for everyone else and eliminate the preferred status. For example, I don't work. Were I not a deduction, this household would pay more in income tax. Why shouldn't it? Because we decided to get married? You don't consider that unfair to single earners? Or two income households? The income tax is supposed to be based on earnings, not personal choices. Make it so. Why all of the exceptions?
And of course people can be room mates. If they don't want to be anything more, then so what? But if they do? What? They should be required to get married?
Do you not think that the legal status of marriage is as abused as other social institutions? I know people who got married simply for the tax benefits. I know people who got married simply for insurance. I know people who DON'T get married because it would reduce benefits they receive...though they live together as if they were married. Sadly, I've known people who got married, ran up incredible amounts of debt, then abandoned the spouse to deal with it. And yeah, in my opinion, some of those are cheating the system, and I'd be hard pressed to understand how anyone could disagree.
If we're going to argue that marriage is somehow special and that everyone in it is happy and in love and working only to build a family, then we've got a tough hill to climb, because that simply isn't so.
Of course there are practical reasons spouses cannot always live together. Jobs, military, one spouse taking care of elderly relatives, one living away to complete school, any number of reasons. But there are no laws against that, so I don't see why that is an issue. What I thought we were talking about was unrelated people who want to be considered "married" or "in a marriage" or at the very least, get that same preferred status as the word "spouse" implies.
And so yeah, if we can choose our spouse (which we can, even if we don't have a father to transfer our ownership, as if women were puppies), that means we can indeed choose our family. Right? We can choose a spouse, therefore we do get to decide who is family, regardless of blood relation. Although for most of the country, choosing a spouse requires choosing someone of the opposite gender, even though we don't strip away marriage from men and women who choose to not have children.
As I said, I don't think polygamy should become a marital status. But I do think that, if adults wish to be entitled to property and medical rights, as spouses, they should be allowed to do so without that being threatened by other relatives.
In the case of my mother, the LAW said that it had to be us, her children, first. My mother was, to my way of thinking, young. She had no reason to believe that she would die so young...so she never made her own designations. Had she done so, she would have chosen her own mother to make her decisions. But...at the hospital, my grandmother was refused that responsibility, because there were children. The only way to circumvent that? Fight one of my sisters, so that I could be designated, and carry out my grandmother's, and my mother's, wishes.
At the time, I didn't realize it could be so difficult to have your wishes carried out, without the proper paperwork. I was not married then, to the person I lived with, but I knew that he is who I would want to make those decisons for me. I have no children, so that would have meant, apparently, my sisters would have been making those choices were it to be me. We talked about different ways to handle that, and decided it was just easier to go ahead and get married. And what is the cost of that? Well, it's much cheaper for us both to be insured. The tax burden on this household is lightened. But who took the risk, in getting married?
Not me. My property is secure, as I had it before getting married. But my husband is still building a retirement and, were the marriage to not work out, would stand to lose much more than I would, materially. The laws would favor me. Fortunately, I'm more fair than the laws, and so, like with my prior marriage, he would not lose what he has worked for. The stupid part of it is, the only difference now in our relationship is that he'll automatically get my property if I die, and me his, only because none of our relative can challenge it. We have the security that we shouldn't have had to pay a county clerk a few bucks to get.
Oh, and we pay less in taxes. So yeah, either marriage is rewarded, or being single is penalized, because for the life of me, I don't understand why a change in status should mean our contribution should be less. It's a personal choice. It has nothing to do with the income earned.
