Same-sex marriage in Iowa

[bluestarultor]

Originally Posted by Premonitions

oh well in that case, then we need to just allow gay folks to get the liscense, my bad I thought there was something special about the religious ceremony and the government validated it not the other way around, as from a governmental standpoint I did'nt understand the POINT of marriage at all "You two REALLY dig each other, he're's some special legal privileges" this actually brings to mind the question of the necessity for any sort of marriage procedure at all as far as government is concerned, anything I can do in regards to marriage from a legal standpoint I could just as easily do with a series of contracts, or just one big one, with another individual. Marriage just seems like a combo pack of financial and legal benifits..... hmmm....

There's stuff that marriage covers that civil unions and other alternatives don't, if I recall correctly. You could probably eventually get the full effect by alternative means, but those means are often ignored. Take, for example, living wills/advance health care directives and such, which often are outright lost or blatantly ignored. If you're married, your spouse is pretty much the go-to person for whether they should pull the plug on you. Unless you establish your life partner specifically as your Power of Attorney, there's jack squat they can do to influence your condition. And even then, there's a chance of legal battles if your parents want to mix it up out of spite. Or if your parents get there first and decide to pull the plug before your life partner can say otherwise, they can sue all they want, but it won't bring you back.

Hell, looking at the Terry Schaivo case, even marriage isn't enough sometimes.

In short, marriage as an institution covers a lot of financial, medical, and other legal areas in one fell swoop, where building a semblance of it from scratch is probably more difficult and expensive than is fair.