IS MARRIAGE A RIGHT? Mark Barton replies to Sarah Bates

I think it's great that Sarah is caring for her sister and I want to see her have whatever rights and legal conveniences that would make it easier for her. But does she seriously want the package called "marriage"? I'm sure bits of it would be helpful, but other bits seem quite
inappropriate for her circumstances. While she's taking care of her sister, for example, she can't take a husband. If her sister recovers her faculties and they "divorce", then all sorts of provisions about community property and custody of children could be triggered to unhelpful effect.

Now I agree with Eve that there should be a variety of special-purpose legal partnerships for different circumstances, including Sarah's. I
disagree that we should create a new type of legal partnership for committed gay relationships, because it's a wilful waste of effort to avoid acknowledging that it's an already solved problem: with vanishingly
rare exceptions, existing marriage law is perfectly appropriate. Moreover, quite apart from the symbolic value, I don't want a new,
cobbled-together arrangement because marriage law has been thoroughly debugged. I don't want to find, for example, that my domestic partnership dissolves if I have to work in another city for a period because it depends on having the same residence. I don't want to find in an emergency that, oops, they forgot to include a provision for quick domestic violence restraining orders.
posted by Eve at 3:31 PM VOTE

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