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But this isn’t really “equality” at all. This is a clumsy attempt at it.

Gasp, someone who questions the validity of a gay marriage law? Surely I must be some kind of hateful bigot. Well, judge for yourself.

For a while I worked with teens and met their families sometimes, and I learned there's just all sorts of things people do domestically I wouldn't even conceive of.

I encountered an arrangement between two men and three women, where two of the women were gay and one of the men was bi, and they had four kids between the five of them, and this was a 25+ year thing. I did not ask further details, this was quite enough for me. One of my most memorable meetings was with two sixty year old gay Mormon missionaries who wound up moving to a commune with other gay Mormons for the purpose of raising a half dozen adopted children as a big group. And it's surprisingly common to have three people in any gender configuration you can think of set up in some permanent arrangement. Also there's some people who might appear to be traditional heterosexual couples, but are very libertarian people and they don’t get married because they don’t want to be legally combined to such a degree.

This gets to a very basic question to me, why do we want to legally sanction some of those people, but not all of them? Why is it two heterosexual people is okay, and two homosexual people is okay, but none of these things above are okay? Even the last couple had problems, common law marriage forced them into a situation they hated. I mean it’s really silly, people who want marriage can’t have it and people who don’t want it are forced into it. A law like the one in the article helps none of these people, not even the gay Mormons because they wanted every adult to have all parental rights for every child.

Some could argue a gay marriage law is at least it's better than the present system in countries that don’t have it, or we could expand on such a law like the one NZ just passed to accommodate these people, but I have to ask why does everyone think government recognition is a good idea here in the first place? I mean do people just not see the basic problem that government marriage regulation in and of itself IS the problem? No nation should be expanding its marriage laws, they should be shrinking them.

Granted I'm specifically against this in America, and the history of New Zealand is most assuredly different, but I think everyone can appreciate the example of why government regulating marriage is a terrible idea. In the US government regulation and licensing of marriage in the United States has its roots in horrible old ideas best left forgotten. Namely, the purpose of marriage licenses originally was so officials could prevent interracial marriages. Over time, to give this thing some teeth, they kept adding laws and laws and legal framework to this structure, to the point it's stuck around far long after its original purpose was forgotten. But really government regulation of marriage is a throwback an old racist way of thinking that we shouldn't be expanding on and subjecting more people to. It's an idea we need to just toss out like segregation or Jim Crow laws. You don’t take old racist laws and modify them so everyone is treated like the favored group, you throw them out on their ass. I can't speak for NZ but government sanctioned marriages are something Americans need to kill with fire.

More basic and global than that however is it's really no one's business who you are boning or how you set up your family. It just isn't. The less people involved in that decision making process, the better. For something as personal as marriage it mystifies me why people want these huge governments to get involved in it. That idea isn’t one I thought of either, I was enlightened to this thinking by a gay coworker at my old job who constantly raged at the words gay advocacy groups kept putting in his mouth. Credit where it is due.

Although I must disagree with their opinion, I can still understand where other gay people are coming from; we've attached so much legal bull shit to marriage, major life stuff like medical decision making and inheritance, etc. I understand why they want it. It’s not good for these people to suffer, and I can at least admire they’re trying to solve their own problems. I just think their solution is the wrong one and that I have a better approach that helps everyone.

My proposal is get rid of marriage licenses and common law marriages, then create a common legal form that lets you sign over certain legal privileges to another person or a trust with that's very simple and easy to file. Make it easy and accessible for the masses. Just have one universal document, sign over medical power of attorney, pension or retirement account sharing, etc. and then let people who want to do these things a la carte can use the basic approach to make their own arrangements. Get all the states to adopt it in the same way they all recognize each other’s drivers licenses. This concept basically already exists, we have a thing in the States called Power of Attorney and I imagine most western nations have an analog of it. Just expand it a little bit and make it more accessible where you just go fill out a form somewhere instead of having to hire a lawyer to draft one.

From that perspective, NZ just took a big step nowhere. Granted their original purpose for regulating marriages may not have been sinister in that country, but I see no advantage to this when a superior alternative exists.

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Alexdaemon wrote:

And this is why i hate humans and would feel no regret if we all died. Because people who do things like this exist and because we dont do anything about it. Kira was right IMHO.

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Vakirauta wrote:

I'm very sorry to hear this, but there's hundreds of people being murdered everyday and nobody gives a fuck about them. I do not like it when people change only when something happens to their close-ones. Don't misunderstand me, but I've witnessed lots of events like this where people completely forget about in a week or two.

I feel very sorry for you both. It is juvenile naivete to believe either of these sentiments. I used to hate people too at one point, but I got past it. Cynicism and hatred of humanity are immature, and at best they are coping mechanisms.

John Donne said it better than I ever could:

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No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.

This was a terrible act and my thoughts and prayers are with the victims.