Texas House Bill 623 (radical, Obama, how much, school)

[jjrose]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

If the government is out of it, which I agree they should be, it means people can call it whatever they want. It can be a religious thing or a cultural thing depending upon the people joining.

I've been a big proponent of the government getting out of the marriage business, because it has NEVER had the right to diddle with it in the first place.

Without government, anyone can marry whomever they choose.

With the government out of the marriage business, do we kick spouses out of military housing?
Refuse immigration to foreign born spouses?
Make people pay taxes on their estates when their spouse dies?
Do hospitals just guess who should make medical decisions for people who are incapacitated?

There are many things tied to marital status. If anyone can just say they are married to anyone else there is no way to keep it all straight. Unless you are talking about a legal contract, which is exactly what a legal civil marriage already is.

[PedroMartinez]

Originally Posted by jjrose

With the government out of the marriage business, do we kick spouses out of military housing?
Refuse immigration to foreign born spouses?
Make people pay taxes on their estates when their spouse dies?
Do hospitals just guess who should make medical decisions for people who are incapacitated?

There are many things tied to marital status. If anyone can just say they are married to anyone else there is no way to keep it all straight. Unless you are talking about a legal contract, which is exactly what a legal civil marriage already is.

Military - Members of the military have housing allotted to them for themselves, any children they have and an additional adult if they choose.

Immigration - Any citizen can choose to sponsor one foreign national to live with them. If their cohabitation reaches X years, they get their green card or whatever.

Eliminate the death tax and people should make a will and file it.

People should appoint someone for medical decisions, have it notarized and filed.

Pretty easy in my eyes.

[doctorjef]

Can anyone here get the idea that the state, i.e. the United States of America and all foreign sovereign states, will NOT be getting out of the marriage business. Ain't gonna happen, folks. The law, both in the USA and every other country, is structured around the concept of marriage. While civil unions and other alternative arrangements have been enacted in various domestic and foreign jurisdictions, these do not have the portability of recognition that marriage has in law. Our own federal government doesn't legally recognize civil unions. Such alternative arrangements only have recognition within those specific jurisdictions that enact them. This is analogous to the notion of common-law or informal marriage. These are very liberally recognized in Texas under its Family Code, and can even be registered (though if you're going to go to that trouble, you might as well just contract a civil marriage down at the courthouse). By contrast, my present state of residence, Delaware, provides no recognition whatsoever of common-law relationships. Further, common-law marriages are not recognized federally for purposes such as social security survivor benefits.

The primacy of state-regulated marriage is too legally well-established in the United States to be changed, even more so given the complexity of the federal system, with its shared and dispersed jurisdiction between fifty different states and the national government.

So PLEASE quit tilting at windmills.

As to the matter of constitutional rights to legally marry and to have a marriage contracted in one jurisdiction recognized in all other jurisdictions within the United States, please see the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the original Constitution.

[jjrose]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

Military - Members of the military have housing allotted to them for themselves, any children they have and an additional adult if they choose.

Immigration - Any citizen can choose to sponsor one foreign national to live with them. If their cohabitation reaches X years, they get their green card or whatever.

Eliminate the death tax and people should make a will and file it.

People should appoint someone for medical decisions, have it notarized and filed.

Pretty easy in my eyes.

Military - your option would end up costing the military a lot of money. People could and would be renting out their "free" housing. Plus to get on the base you have to be sponsored so if the adult living with the service member changes weekly or monthly, or whatever that is a lot of additional background checks and military ID cards to make.

Immigration- not a bad idea, could work.

Will- yes people SHOULD make a will, but most do not. And a will can be challenged by legal family members and overturned, it happens all the time. Marriage makes your spouse your legal next of kin, a family member.

Medical POA- Yep, a good idea, but most do not do it. They are also not always accepted. I was refused entry to my fiancees hospital room when we had an accident in another state. Even with a POA in my possession they still had to call her mother to get further instructions.

[PedroMartinez]

Originally Posted by jjrose

Military - your option would end up costing the military a lot of money. People could and would be renting out their "free" housing. Plus to get on the base you have to be sponsored so if the adult living with the service member changes weekly or monthly, or whatever that is a lot of additional background checks and military ID cards to make.

You just add stipulations. You have to have a six month period between swapping out anyone living with you. If your partner moves out, nobody else can move in with you for a period of six months. Only one "bedroom" is allotted for the adults. Things like that would keep abuse to a very minimum.

Originally Posted by jjrose

Immigration- not a bad idea, could work.

OK.

Originally Posted by jjrose

Will- yes people SHOULD make a will, but most do not. And a will can be challenged by legal family members and overturned, it happens all the time. Marriage makes your spouse your legal next of kin, a family member.

If you are married and don't have a will, other family member can very easily challenge what happens to the estate and it happens regularly. Marriage is by no means a way to ensure your estate goes to the person you think it will go. Way too many people don't realize this, and this might actually be a good way to encourage people to have their affairs in order.

Originally Posted by jjrose

Medical POA- Yep, a good idea, but most do not do it. They are also not always accepted. I was refused entry to my fiancees hospital room when we had an accident in another state. Even with a POA in my possession they still had to call her mother to get further instructions.

And if you were married and separated from your wife, and you were in a serious accident, would you want your estranged wife making your medical decisions or your parents. It's happened a number of times in the past where a spouse who would still receive the life insurance claim wanted the plug pulled while the parents who agree to take care of all medical needs don't.

Additionally, if you have a proper POA and the hospital refuses to acknowledge it, you can sue the pants off of them. Right now hospitals are used to going by marriage, but if that norm were changed, they would go off of things like POA's with less hassle. Also, always just say your are immediate family.

[jjrose]

Originally Posted by PedroMartinez

You just add stipulations. You have to have a six month period between swapping out anyone living with you. If your partner moves out, nobody else can move in with you for a period of six months. Only one "bedroom" is allotted for the adults. Things like that would keep abuse to a very minimum.



OK.



If you are married and don't have a will, other family member can very easily challenge what happens to the estate and it happens regularly. Marriage is by no means a way to ensure your estate goes to the person you think it will go. Way too many people don't realize this, and this might actually be a good way to encourage people to have their affairs in order.



And if you were married and separated from your wife, and you were in a serious accident, would you want your estranged wife making your medical decisions or your parents. It's happened a number of times in the past where a spouse who would still receive the life insurance claim wanted the plug pulled while the parents who agree to take care of all medical needs don't.

Additionally, if you have a proper POA and the hospital refuses to acknowledge it, you can sue the pants off of them. Right now hospitals are used to going by marriage, but if that norm were changed, they would go off of things like POA's with less hassle. Also, always just say your are immediate family.

If you are estranged from your spouse, you get a divorce. That ends their ability to make any decisions on your behalf.

As for suing the hospital, that does not help when you are sitting there for hours with no word of how your loved one is doing.

[TexasReb]

=LeagleEagleDFW;38219442]You apparently need to broaden your horizons in more ways than one.

Amendment XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

A state can't make a law that grants rights to one group of people but arbitrarily and without reason deny the same rights to another group. It's petty much been a fundamental tenet of all struggles for equal rights - women's suffrage, the Civil Rights Act, and now gay rights.

LOL Yeah, I know I need to "broaden" my horizens. Actually, it is you who needs to step back and consider it all, in terms of intent. And yeah, I know all about the (Reconstruction) amendment and why it was written. You are the one fooling yourself if you think it applies even remotely to "gay marriage." What it really does is just give activist judges a license to steal, as per their own ideology.

There is no strawman here, and yet you keep saying that. It's about denying citizens equal rights under the law. You're saying that you disagree with one group's lifestyle and because of that, they shouldn't receive the same rights and privileges you do under the law.

See above. Ok, perhaps it was more of a "Red Herring" Although the two can often blend. The 14th is always the appeal to support a "redefinition" of marriage as has always been understood. And I say again, if it is "redefines" , then there are no logical limitations why it will stop with "same-sex".

[Ih2puo]

I'm just a bill.....

[arjay57]

The Taliban comes to Texas.

The government has no business kowtowing to religious zealots or sticking its big snout into when consenting adults can get married.

[TexasReb]

=arjay57;38231197]The Taliban comes to Texas.

The government has no business kowtowing to religious zealots or sticking its big snout into when consenting adults can get married.

Yes, it does. It -- the sovereign state -- per the 10th amendment -- define what a marriage is, and what parties can legally marry. "Religious zealots" have nothing to do with it. There are some -- religious zealots -- to be sure and are irritating in their own right. But there are many more "gay rights" activists who are using this issue to advance an agenda that has no logical limitations in terms of definition, regardless of what their press-releases say...