[Lauxa]

Originally Posted by Still Growing

If you take the benefits of being married one by one there is a way to enact them without the gov't institution of marriage.

1. Taxes: You could file jointly if you claimed to be married may be a solution.
2. Inheritance: We all know that wills are required even if you are married. So wills or children or marriage certificates issued privately would still be valid
3. Name Change: You could still choose to change your name if you wished.

There are others you haven't addressed, openeyes pointed out a few earlier in the thread:

Originally Posted by openeyes

For now, for one to be able to share insurance benefits, go together on a peace corps mission, or possibly many other things such as immigrating to other countries, adopting children and such, a marriage contract does what no other contract can do.

Originally Posted by Still Growing

Many gay couples want to be married for two reasons. One reason is for symbolism and the second is for the tax benefits and some other benefits.

From my perspective I think that the gov't should recognize marriage certificates issued even for same sex couples. However by taking out some of the tax benefits and moving inheritance to wills and so forth it does take out some of the financial benefits of being married.

Does the federal gov't not recognize marriage for same sex couples? I thought they recognized any marriage sanctioned by any state but I could be wrong.

Originally Posted by Still Growing

In my view if the gov't was not involved in marriage we may see improvements to the institution that we never expected. By people looking to their church or company that they chose to get married by would be looked at more critically. I can imagine that some companies may even offer for a fee a service of instruction before marriage and then advertise their lower divorce rates. Others may advertise that their divorces were resolved more amicably and they boasted the lowest amount litigous divorces. By having marriages being universally managed by the gov't the actual ceremony at the church looses its importance or focus. If the gov't no longer managed marriage then people's focus would turn to custom marriages. I can even envision someone asking "So where did you get married" and by answering the question you would tell so much about what your view of marriage was. "Wow you got married by the Catholic church" I hear you guys have to go to 100 hours of couselling before marrying. "So where did you get married?" Well we got married by E Marry. "Wow I heard their contracts really keep things simple if you should ever get divorced".

Perhaps, but one thing people LIKE about marriage is that it glosses over the contractual details. Perhaps some people will appreciate getting to research dozens of different marriage contracts and marriage companies before taking the plunge, but we're already overloaded with information and I'm guessing most will see it as a hassle.

Originally Posted by Still Growing

In summation, I hope that as you read this that you don't pick at the details. Certainly such a system would need more people giving it thought and there would be some trial and error.

The devil is in the details.

Originally Posted by Still Growing

The big idea, however, is that the gov't really isn't capable of instituting marriage and the cost of divorces to the system are too high. The sterility that the gov't brings to marriage currently is part of the down fall of marriage quite possibly.

You still haven't addressed the possibility that court costs could be HIGHER without a standard marriage contract...

Anyways, I don't disagree with you, per se. I just don't think you're making a very strong argument yet.