With the presidential campaigns in full swing, everyone has their own particular deciding issues that help them to narrow down which potential candidates to vote for. (For me personally, a big one is the STEM CELL debate.) For many, it’s whether or not a candidate is for or against legalizing gay marriage.
Here is a link to how each candidate stands on the issue of gay marriage.
I am a huge advocate for personal freedom. I feel that a person should be able to do whatever they choose as long as it isn’t directly affecting the liberties of another. I believe that it should be the government’s primary objective to protect and expand it‘s citizens’ freedoms. I also believe, however, that the government should stay out of it’s citizens’ personal lives as much as possible.
The main reason why the government is involved in marriage at all has to do with taxes. Often times, in our society, a husband will bring home a pay check, while a wife will stay at home in order to take care of the kids. In this arrangement, both the husband and wife are working to support a family with a single income. It makes sense that if two people have a shared income, then they should be taxed as a unit, and that their assets should be shared equally.
Now, let’s say a couple of buddies are living together. They share their household costs. Both have jobs that are seasonal, so sometimes one friend takes care of most of the bills, while at other times, the other friend carries the bulk of the load. These friends are not sleeping together romantically, but they are just as much in bed financially as the married couple. Yet, the government doesn’t recognize it that way.
Marriage is a cultural and religious institution. A good government should and must have a strong separation between church and state. It should make no difference to the government who is sleeping with or married to whom. If a man marries a man or has ten wives, what difference should it make to any outside parties? The government should be involved only in finding appropriate ways to tax people who are in bed financially with one another, and mediating disputes between those who have abandoned their financial arrangements.
If I where the Emperor of the United States I would eliminate the government’s legal acknowledgement of the institution of marriage. I would replace marriages with “domestic partnerships.” Domestic partnerships would be available for any people (whether romantically involved or not) that live together and share expenses. In order to be recognized as having a domestic partnership, the applicants would have only to show that they live together, and provide itemized lists of their current assets that they would like to maintain if or when they end their domestic partnerships.
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