UK: house of commons votes in favour of gay marriage

biochem wrote:

I also dont care whether someone is straight, gay, bi, polygamous, whatever, so long as they are all treated equally.

Polygamy is incredibly destructive to a society if practiced on a wide scale. We're starting to see the negative effects now of sex selection in India and China. Widespread polygamy produces the same sort of sex imbalance. The only reason Grayson was a stable society in Honorverse is that there was an exceptionally large number of females born for every live male birth. If they chose to fix their genes and allow more male births they will need to make polygamy a rare occurrence to maintain a stable society.

It depends whether you include polyandry and other aggregations. Group marriage without a strong gender bias doesn't produce the same imbalances.

Returning to topic, I do not believe that a government has any right or duty to regulate personal relationships between legally competent consenting adults. Such regulation, including the government's involvement in the religious rite of marriage, cones from the days when the only people who could read or write were churchmen, and churches were the de facto governments. I do not understand why we still put up with such nonsense.

dscott8 wrote:Returning to topic, I do not believe that a government has any right or duty to regulate personal relationships between legally competent consenting adults. Such regulation, including the government's involvement in the religious rite of marriage, cones from the days when the only people who could read or write were churchmen, and churches were the de facto governments. I do not understand why we still put up with such nonsense.

There are two main areas where the legal framework surrounding marriage is undoubtedly required - children and divorce.

For children, being raised by a lone parent/guardian is generally accepted to be worse than being raised by two or more parents/guardians in a stable, loving household. One of the purposes of the legal institution of marriage is to encourage and sustain that better situation for raising children.

When it comes to divorce, many divorces require the assistance of an external arbitrator to resolve the separation - breakups are messy enough when it's been just a temporary relationship, never mind when it's been something with the air of permanency associated with marriages - even just agreeing the division into "mine", "yours" and "ours" is difficult, and sharing the "ours" acceptably is another problem.

If the adults concerned can arrange things to their joint satisfaction, and there are no neglected dependents, then there's no need for the government to get involved, but that's a pretty rare occurrence.


Where things get messier is in the conflation of the civil concept of partnership and the religious concept of wedlock. Marriage in the religious sense is properly between the individuals, their church and any interested deities, and no concern of government; the legal side - civil partnership or its equivalent - is, and should be, the concern of government, but only the concern of religions to the extent any secular concern is.

Interesting point on the idea here. Recently a far right wing party tried to get support for not classing partnerships between gay people as marriage. even with their politically biased wording, to try to improve their support, their poll showed around 50% beleived that gays should be allowed to be married, but that it should be forcibly taught in schools to children that these relationships were ok, to prevent homophobia. talk about an own goal.....

The points about children and divorce are well taken, but don't really address the issue of why governments should have any say in who marries whom. These questions would still come up in same-sex marriages. IMHO, gay marriages would have a positive effect on adoptions, since some same-sex couples would choose that option to form families.

dscott8 wrote:The points about children and divorce are well taken, but don't really address the issue of why governments should have any say in who marries whom. These questions would still come up in same-sex marriages. IMHO, gay marriages would have a positive effect on adoptions, since some same-sex couples would choose that option to form families.

Should governments require marriages to be between legally competent adults who give informed consent? Should it be legal for a human being to legally marry a corporation? A dolphin? A chatbot? A pebble?

Should legal marriage be restricted to two people per marriage and one marriage per person? If not, how do you handle inheritance?

Personally, I think legal-marriage should be open to all legally responsible people, in any combination (assuming that the bugs can be worked out!), but I also believe governments should (and do!) have the right to limit legal-marriage as they see fit, advised, but not ruled, by public opinion, and with an awareness of the foreseeable consequences.

Legal-marriage is a legal construct, so, as with any other law, it is entirely appropriate for government to set what limits and scope it chooses on it.

I remember quite a few years ago a situation where two lesbians were in a stable long term relationship. The stay at home "wife" claimed unemployment benefits while the "husband" worked in a good job. That loophole has now been closed with our welfare laws now counting them as being in a relationship regardless of sexual orientation. That approach benefits the state and it's a short step from that to fully accepting same sex marriages.

rmsgrey wrote:Should governments require marriages to be between legally competent adults who give informed consent?

Definitely, yes. They have to be legally able to make that decision, for the protection of all involved.

rmsgrey wrote:Should it be legal for a human being to legally marry a corporation? A dolphin? A chatbot? A pebble?

Ah, reductio ad absurdam. Gotta love it. The answer is no to all of those. The only thing cited that can make a legal decision is a corporation, but marrying an individual is beyond the scope of a corporation's function. How would you like it if the Board of Directors of a corporation in which you hold stock informed you that you were now married to Snooki (a decision made for marketing purposes)? I suppose a person could marry every one of the shareholders, as individuals.

rmsgrey wrote:Should legal marriage be restricted to two people per marriage and one marriage per person?

Why? Those arrangements are between the parties involved. If a group marriage of five people wants to merge with another group of four, it is none of the government's business.

rmsgrey wrote:If not, how do you handle inheritance?

I would suggest that every legal union requires a contract, sort of a mandatory prenuptial agreement, that defines the rights and responsibilities of all parties. This would save a lot of squabbling farthr down the line.

Hi JimHacker

Very interesting and controversial topic !!!

From a "Mother Nature" point of view, the judgement is harsh and final - - - gay relationships produce NO progeny.

Personally, I believe love can take many forms and in any case, love is vastly preferable to most other emotions.

I do not think Governments have any business trying to regulate the details of anyone's life style.

Rather, government should concentrate on actual actions affecting all its citizens, and if ANY couple causes no harm to others - - ?? where's the problem ??

If various philosophies wish to reserve the word "Marriage" to the union of man and woman, perhaps a different word could be defined to include ALL types of unions ??

?? Comments ??

R

JimHacker wrote:This forums is understandably USA-dominated but given that there are quite a lot of us from elsewhere and 3 fellow brits I've often considered making a thread about political developments elsewhere.

It would have otherwise been about the Falklands or Britain's reltionship with the EU but the House of Commons just voted in favour (400 to 175, 75 abstentions) of gay marriage so i thought i'd throw that out and see where it goes instead. Any thoughts?

What is most interesting about gay relationships though, is that even though they may have no progeny, it is still noted that in many species, from bonobos as noted in the latest national geographic, to sheep and birds. Wikipedia notes that it has been well documented in over 500 pecies, and found in around 1500 + species, and is thought to be common to near every species in the animal kingdom. So something is keeping the genetic portion that predisposes towards homosexual, bisexual behaivour etc around.

kbus888 wrote:Hi JimHacker

Very interesting and controversial topic !!!

From a "Mother Nature" point of view, the judgement is harsh and final - - - gay relationships produce NO progeny.

Personally, I believe love can take many forms and in any case, love is vastly preferable to most other emotions.

I do not think Governments have any business trying to regulate the details of anyone's life style.

Rather, government should concentrate on actual actions affecting all its citizens, and if ANY couple causes no harm to others - - ?? where's the problem ??

If various philosophies wish to reserve the word "Marriage" to the union of man and woman, perhaps a different word could be defined to include ALL types of unions ??

?? Comments ??

R

JimHacker wrote:This forums is understandably USA-dominated but given that there are quite a lot of us from elsewhere and 3 fellow brits I've often considered making a thread about political developments elsewhere.

It would have otherwise been about the Falklands or Britain's reltionship with the EU but the House of Commons just voted in favour (400 to 175, 75 abstentions) of gay marriage so i thought i'd throw that out and see where it goes instead. Any thoughts?