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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cogito who wrote (112006)	5/27/2009 10:38:01 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541582

Allen - <<equal treatment>> IMO the Straw Man is the term "marriage". I don't believe there is any constitutional basis for the federal government interfering with or for that matter sanctioning marriage. It is clearly not an enumerated power. Marriage is a social contract originally sponsored by churches (to prevent "living in sin") and secondarily recognized by the law for disposition of property and control of children (and the women). People got hitched and that was the end of it. At this point I don't think States (and certainly not Federal government) have any constitutional basis to sanction it anymore as a religious institution. As soon as religion ideas of "sin" are introduced in the context of the union, the marriage process must become extra-legal to a neutral civil-union partnering process which allows couples to rear children together and retain custody and distribute personal property. There would still be a tax benefit because the government benefits by having people in unions. There could be Interstate Commerce angle too similar to those used to create civil rights for blacks. If your union is good in Massachusetts it should be good in California. As a society, though, we will burn far less resources if we pair up and this increases the individual security of each partner. Polygamy in my mind increases the complexity of the partnership process and polygamists should probably incorporate rather than partner, with only one civil union per person at a time. Or, conversely the polygamists may choose to live out their personal choices in the privacy of their homes as cohabitant friends without partnerships. This complicates the commingled assets issue if there are no articles of incorporation. Let the churches have their marriages. I for one want to end the debate and go to a registered civil union model. -cf