Dodging the social issue media stick
Social issues are another area where he thinks Republicans can make a better argument to independents and centrists without departing from their principles. Gay marriage, for instance, is one issue on which Paul would like to shake up the Republican position. “I’m an old-fashioned traditionalist. I believe in the historic and religious definition of marriage,” he says. “That being said, I’m not for eliminating contracts between adults. I think there are ways to make the tax code more neutral, so it doesn’t mention marriage. Then we don’t have to redefine what marriage is; we just don’t have marriage in the tax code.”
This! I think I like Rand’s chances unless he slips up on one of the social issue freak outs the media is prone to.
March 14th, 2013 at 7:59 pm
Although a definate improvment over the typical GOP position, this doesn’t really address the myriad other problems facing “quasi-married” GLBT couples. Taxes are a definate headache, but not nearly as devastating as things like adoption, parental rights, hospital care, etc.
If your spouse is dying in a hospital and the state is preparing to send your children to the biological parent they’ve never know… do you really care about the $300 you saved on your last 1040?
March 15th, 2013 at 12:15 pm
It would be helpful to have a statute which acknowledges the existence a civil union between (at least for now) 2 persons (of the same or opposite sex) and provides a framework for unwinding that relationship and distributing the property and allocating the debts between them (a la divorce) if they call it quits.
Under Tn law, the best that a court can do to address how to parcel out the assets and debts of 2 people, who live together as a couple and ultimately part ways, is to infer that they have created a partnership (which necessarily involves a profit-making, and not just a living, arrangement and to dissolve the parties as if they were a legal partnership.
In other words, the court pretends that the 2 people were a business partership and follows the dissolution procedures under Tn partnership law.
March 15th, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Agree with the above. Marriage as a creation of the government is a relatively recent invention. For most of history, people got married without any government involvement.
Chris’s idea is a good one. We just create a legal framework for a “civil union” which anyone can enter into voluntarily. The framework provides for a standard way to create the union, provide for children who may come of it, dissolve the union and split the assets of the union upon dissolution. The union also delegates partners the right of visitation, medical care decision making, etc.
Couples can modify the specific terms of the framework explicitly by creating and signing an addendum when they enter into the union. The tax code should become neutral about the whole business.
March 15th, 2013 at 2:42 pm
> For most of history, people got married without any government involvement.
Church of England, part of the official state since King Henry VIII couldn’t get a divorce.
Of course we threw off that oppressive government years ago.
Took us until the War Between the States to saddle ourselves again. Why? My research indicates 1)false claims for entitlements from marriage to dead war veterans, and 2) keeping the “wrong” type from marrying teh white wimmin.
It’s also curious to note the gradual outlawing of “common law” marriage. Almost can’t possibly get married nowadays without first securing a permission chit from the state.
March 16th, 2013 at 9:55 am
Once again, Rand is right. God forbid, I’m actually starting to like a politician. Sign of the coming apocalypse.
March 16th, 2013 at 12:12 pm
Ish,
What the hell does the Fed gov got to do with hospital regulation? I know they stick their noses in there, but like Rand’s tax comment, the solution is to get the .gov out of it. Same thing with adoptions, 80% of adoptions are done by private institutions. Parental rights can/should be decided by expression of the parent’s desire via the proper legal documents.
Homosexual marriage is not an issue of civil rights, instead it is an attempt to force one set of morality over another via the courts. Yes, current marriage is also an instance of using the gov to push one set of morality, but at least it has the legimitacy of being a democratically arrived at position.
The only “Civil Rights” position is to remove the areas of government that require the gov to make moral decisions about the legitimacy of private action. Simply replacing one set of morality with another is not advancing a Right.
March 18th, 2013 at 2:12 pm
You mean like this one?
March 19th, 2013 at 8:04 am
IANAL, but unless I’m missing something (entirely possible since IANAL) it would appear that some sort of standardized contract would resolve the issue. Just as corporations enter into contractual agreements in which the contract specifies responsibilities, obligations and benefits accruing to the parties from the action(s) regulated by the contract, it would seem that the same could apply to any real person legally able to enter into a contract.
Should that be the case, then the .gov involvement would be limited to Article 1, Section 10.
In theory, unlike what is now termed “marriage (with its attendant – and to a certain degree unspecific – legal obligations, responsibilities and benefits),” such a contractual arrangement would not preclude >2 parties to a contract, but it would eliminate the dog, sheep and duck issues since they could not obligate themselves to a contract. Nor, on its face, would it preclude any future amendments to such a contract agreed upon by all signatories to the original contract.
I suspect this might actually work, but I don’t know if such contractual specificity would be better or worse than the ambiguity of “marriage” which we’ve had for millenia.
March 20th, 2013 at 10:35 am
@ Anon: In theory, it would work (and it’s the way it should be), but in the current reality you would have to get past things like Virginia’s “marriage” amendment, which – in addition to specifically limiting marriage in VA to monogamous heterosexual couples – also bans the creation or recognition of any other kind of “union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage.”
Since the kind of contract you’re talking about would specifically do that, it would not be valid in Virginia without repeal of the amendment or massive legal (and probably Constitutional) changes at the Federal level.