I do support marriage equality, but my position on marriage in general is the same as it’s always been. Even as a kid, I never understood marriage, even though my parents had what I thought at the time was a happy marriage. The kind of thinking it takes to think you can and should try to dedicate your whole life to just one person… that takes a lot of delusional thinking. I mean, back in the day when nobody lived past 30, and breeding young and often was a necessary part of life, sure, that’s the thing to do. But we live now in a society where people regularly live past 80, so marriages that actually last a lifetime without losing happiness and without becoming abusive are fucking rare.
In other words, the whole institution of marriage is outdated. I think the laws ought to be changed so that marriage is strictly a personal thing and the state doesn’t get involved at all. There really isn’t anything that marriage as a legal institution does for anyone that can’t be done with other legal documents. Inheritance can be done via wills, and I’m sure there’s some kind of legal document that can assure that your partner - whether or not you’re married - gets to be with you in the hospital. If not, there should be.
Of course, I’m an anarchist, so I really don’t think there’s ANYTHING that the state needs to be involved with, because the state shouldn’t even exist. The government that governs least, governs best; and nothing governs less than something that doesn’t exist at all.
You might think that contradicts my “legal document” argument, but it doesn’t. Having a document that says something like “Let my partner, X, in to see me if I’m in the hospital, unless I say otherwise,” which has been notorized by professionals and thus can be used as proof of the person’s wishes when they’re unable to express their wishes, does not require the existence of a government.
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