[ExI] Same Sex Marriage

Kevin Cadmus kcadmus at gmail.com
Wed Feb 23 23:11:52 UTC 2011


Thanks, Kelly, for bringing up a favorite topic of mine.

Perhaps the best way to get government out of the marriage business is to
foment revolution within the huge mass of single folks.  They are
discriminated against in many ways, some subtle and some not so subtle.  By
educating this group about how they are getting the shaft by government's
bestowal of privilege to married folk, maybe there will be a new faction
saying that, "We aren't going to take this anymore!"

Is it so hard to imagine a push for a new U.S. constitutional amendment
along the lines of "Congress shall pass no legislation that discriminates
according to marital status."  It has a nice parallelism with other similar
civil rights legislation.  So people will readily understand the issue.  But
how can the existing laws be retrofitted to abide by this new amendment?  It
may be easier than it appears.  A person's marital status is referenced by a
relatively small handful of existing laws.  Rescinding these few laws will
end the injustice, simplify the tax code, avoid promoting marriages for
trumped up reasons, and (maybe best of all) end the endless and irresolvable
blathering and bickering about who should or should not be allowed to be
considered by the state to be "married".  In essence, the answer becomes "no
one".  The government finally is removed from the ugly business of defining
what "being married" means.

If private parties want to discriminate for or against single persons, fine!
 But it will force them to define what they want "married" to mean.  Most
might conclude that it simply isn't worth the effort.

Would there be a down side to this that I'm just not seeing?

-Kevin

kcadmus at gmail.com
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