Gore sexual assualt Follow

They serve multiple purposes depending on what you're talking about. I remember us discussing some of them in past threads, going over the evolution and how women's rights, and unions influenced one or two. I would imagine it would be fairly complex really.

You yourself laid out the example where the one person is supporting the other some of the benefits are in place to ensure that if that support wears out the supported person won't be left hanging. The idea is that they are treated essentially as one unit, rather then two distinct people.

Edited, Jun 29th 2010 4:26pm by Xsarus

No, they are not part of the legal concept of marriage. We had legally recognized marriage long before we created special tax tables and special SS and pension benefits. Those things evolved over time as a means of convincing couples to enter into a legally recognized marriage (ie: one with an actual contract). During the same time period many states passed common law marriage laws as well. Same reasoning. Lots of couples would get "married" with no legal documentation of the fact, causing all sorts of problems with inheritance and guardianship. All of the common law marriage and marriage benefits exist specifically to address that issue.

No one intended for them to be applied to non-heterosexual couples.



No it hasn't. You've just assumed that since the courts ruled that marriage *was* a fundamental right, that this right includes receiving state benefits. It doesn't. The issue of unfair discrimination with regard to granting those benefits is related issue, but is not exactly the same.

Yup. And in all cases, the reason why those groups wanted those benefits for married couples was because of their relevance with regard to child raising and sacrifices made by women when going through pregnancy and whatnot. You can't separate the issue from that of child production. It's that nagging fact you all can't get away from, but try desperately to insist doesn't really matter.

Sure, ok. Let's concede it. It has to do with raising children.

Same-sex couples are completely able to raise children, so that doesn't really matter in this context.

Well, that was easy enough.

So are single mothers. What's your point?



Well, not really.

exactly. Treated as a unit the people in a married couple play different roles. The women argued that their role, which at the time included staying at home and supporting their partner was an important contribution and so the rules were changed to ensure that they would reap the rewards of their work, ie: pension and stuff. The people who made the rules realized that it wasn't about gender, and so it works both ways. Again you yourself showed that if one person doesn't stay at home, these benefits are minimized and made irrelevant. The person staying at home is contributing to the unit regardless of why they're staying at home, and so the laws don't care why they're staying at home.

If it was about kids they would have been tied in. There are tons of laws that deal with children specifically.

It's not hard to understand, it's just not true. That's not why the benefits are there. /shrug

maybe it's why you support the benefits rather then calling for them to be repealed, but that doesn't mean that's why the benefits are in place.

Edited, Jun 29th 2010 4:52pm by Xsarus

If you accept his premise that it's to encourage people to get married before they inevitably start popping out kids it sort of works, as gays aren't likely to accidentally pop out a kid.

Edited, Jun 29th 2010 4:54pm by Xsarus

You write this and still insist children had nothing to do with it? I'll notice you conspicuously left out "taking care of the kids" which would normally follow the phrase "staying at home". Are you trying to lie to me about this, or to yourself?



Yes. But that there was still a need for the couple collectively to have some kind of benefits to offset the difficulties encountered trying to raise children in the modern workplace. I'm unsure why you go out of you way to ignore the clear reason *why* this whole thing matters. If men and women didn't produce children when they had sexual relationships, there would be no need for special benefits for married couples, no need or value for pension benefits for spouses, no need or value for medial coverage for them, etc. All the stuff that married couples fought for over time wouldn't matter to them.

But you can't or wont see it. You're so caught up in the "what" that you refuse to even look at the "why".



The laws don't care, but the laws would not exist if it wasn't something which was unavoidable for some couples (specifically heterosexual couples as a group). Why would we provide some offset for one person not working otherwise? What possible reason could we have to do that? We don't do this for any two random people, do we? Why just married couples? And why married couples consisting of one man and one woman?

C'mon. You're not dumb. Stop pretending to be. All that sex education presumably taught you where babies come from, right?



Because it's not just "about kids". It's about a recognition that heterosexual couples, all by themselves and with no interference from the government, and often with no specific choice made themselves, will tend to produce children. It's a recognition that when this happens and the couple is not married, the outcomes for the children are much worse than when the couple is married. We want heterosexual couples to enter into a legally recognized marriage contract. That's what this whole thing is about. Why else would we create those benefits? You all jump on me for having no other "proof" other than the obviousness of the reasoning, but can anyone give a better explanation? We just did it randomly? No reason at all? Hold your own position to the same standard for once!


The answer is that it *is* obvious. It's so obvious that up until the last couple decades when it became politically convenient to argue otherwise, no one even questioned it. It's sad that some people put their political agenda ahead of common sense, and sadder that they'll insist that the truth isn't true anymore simply because it happens to disagree with what they want to do.

None of which can happen "accidentally".

Xsarus has it exactly right. We're not looking at one individual. We can always find exceptions when we do that. We look at the complete set of "all heterosexual couples", and can say that some percentage of them will end out getting pregnant. Accidentally or not, from the state's perspective it makes no difference. They will. And the outcomes for the children are so vastly different if the couple is married versus if they are not, that it is worth it for the state to do everything it can to get as many of those heterosexual couples to enter into a marriage contract as possible.

If gay couples want to enter into marriage contracts as well, that's their choice and doesn't hurt anyone. But the same need to do so from the state's perspective simply doesn't apply. We don't need to create incentives for them to do so, and we've certainly never applied common law marriage to same sex couples, have we? Same reasoning applies. We don't care if gay couples marry or not.

Individually and by benefit there are different reasons they came about. I would argue that most of them revolve around the idea of shared property and mutual dependence. and I have in the past.

Ok. So if no one ever needed to stay home to take care of the kids, would we have created benefits in order to offset the career harm imposed by staying home?

No. We wouldn't. So while people might choose to stay home for other reasons, the benefits exist because some people have to in order to take care of their kids. Kinda "obvious", isn't it?



Except that they wouldn't exist if people didn't have children. If new people appeared fully grown out of some magical doorway, fully educated and able to become productive members of society, and no pregnancy or children existed, would any of those benefits exist? Think. Then form an opinion.

Of course they were enacted to help people raise their children. And they were tied into marriage instead of just the act of having children because we'd rather people get married first and then have a bunch of children than have a child with one guy, get some benefits, have a child with another guy, get some more benefits, etc...



Why treat them different? Heck. Why would they do that in the first place? Consider my "no children" scenario above. Would marriage exist? Would we have such complete contracts? Would we even contemplate creating benefits for people who got married? I don't think so. And I don't think you do either, if you stop and think first.



No, I mean why did no one even consider that same sex couples should be considered "married" in terms of the government (or society to some degree) until recently. It wasn't like anyone sat around and said that Gays were icky so we'd exclude them. The laws didn't even specifically exclude them. No one bothered to apply them to gays because it was so "obvious" that marriage didn't apply to them in this context.

Ever heard of a shotgun wedding between two people of the same sex? Why not? Are common law marriages imposed on same sex couples? Why not? Answer that, and you'll be on your way to understanding the thinking behind most of our marriage laws. It's quite clear that their limited the entire scope to heterosexual couples, not out of some bizarre desire to exclude gay people, but because they simply never connected gay people with the act of procreation and thus to marriage itself.