Domestic partnership law may expand

The Sacramento Bee has an interesting story today on a proposal to expand the state's domestic partnership law. It would allow any heterosexual couple to register a domestic partnership. They would then get all the legal rights of married couples.

The current domestic partnership law gives the legal rights of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.

There's the standard the-sky-is-falling reaction:

Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, which lobbies for conservatives causes, warned that if SB 11 becomes law, "marriage will be functionally abolished" in California.

...aaand the standard this-is-about-equality response:

Jessica Heskin and Bob Stephens, who live in an unincorporated area of Sacramento, are typical of the couples [Sen. Carole] Migden has in mind. Heskin and Stephens, both 41, have lived together for two years and are raising Heskin's 11-year-old daughter, Alyssa, by a previous marriage. Heskin, who testified earlier before a Senate committee in support of SB 11, said "it's not only taxes, it's basic rights" equity the legislation would ensure.

As someone who tends to be poth pro-marriage and pro-domestic-partnership, this proposal feels weird to me. I like the idea of expanding the law to include hetero couples, but... practical reasons for getting married do seem to be getting gradually more sparse. I don't know. Your thoughts?

Paying couples to get married?

In an effort to motivate poorer couples to get and stay married, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback has helped institute a pilot program in the District of Columbia that actually pays couples up to $9,000 for getting married. Brownback has said he hopes the program will eventually be implemented nationwide. The money isn't simply a handout--couples in the program are required to take additional steps like buying a home or expanding a business to qualify for federal matching funds. Nonetheless, it's designed with the goal of supporting marriage. "The welfare system penalizes marriage," Brownback tells USA Today, and that's hard to argue with. But is this the right solution? In context with Brownback's other efforts to reduce or eliminate social service programs, it looks like part of a broader plan to go back in time--to an era when money was much more of a motivator for marriage, an era when women got married less because they wanted to and more because, financially, they had to in order to survive.

Look, I agree that some of the financial disincentives to marriage should be removed. And that poverty adds strain to marriages. But tackling this without tackling the more systemic causes of poverty seems shortsighted. You really want to support marriages for poor families, senator? Show your support for federally-funded day care.

Is this what the future holds for marriage?

The San Francisco Chronicle tossed out an interesting idea Sunday: privatize marriage. I think it's ludicrous, but maybe not for the reasons you'd expect.

Marriage is a lot of things: A social contract, a religious bonding (for some), a legal contract, and so on. While its meaning and significance are frequently debated, the vast majority of adults in the US and around the world will marry at some point in their lives, and marriage is--more or less--a common experience we share as people, a bonding of two people as romantic partners for life. That serves a valuable purpose for communities and cultures, linking their members together in a way that few other rituals or contexts of life do.

The Chronicle's proposal would fracture marriage into, essentially, different kinds of commodities. ("What's that? You got the Lexus Wedding presented by TD Waterhouse? Wow, that's great! My wife and I went for the McMarriage instead. Yeah, it was all we could afford. What your life must be like!") Privatization as proposed in the article would surely create rich and poor classes of marriage, which would only increase the kind of polarization we're experiencing too much of already. And if you're expecting an anti-gay, "protect marriage for the children!" rant here, hardly; I wholly support efforts toward marriage for all. No one should be shut out of that valuable cultural and human experience because of their sexuality.

All that said, I will give credit to the Chronicle for attempting to inject some creativity into the discussion of the future of marriage. That absolutely is welcome, and it enlivens a discussion that more of us should be having.