> Would there be some drawback to people contracting among themselves to
> decide these matters (except for the custody question, which is a bit
> tougher)? Or have I overlooked some reason that it's preferable for
> the state to mandate that they all be decided in one fell swoop, in
> favor of a single individual? You claim that "most people would want"
> it this way, and I'm certainly not proposing that we ban them from
> signing comprehensive master contracts if they so choose. But why
> impose them on the rest of us, while coupling them with the ludicrous
> spectacle of state-licensed religious ceremonies?
The state should mandate that a number of rights automatically rest in a specific kind of individual for administrative reasons:
You don't want to force non-specialists to have to interpret contractual language. For example, a landlord might know damn well that he can't discriminate based on marital status, but what if a prospective tenant has a "comprehensive contract" with another person?
Or, in a situation where a doctor needs to ask permission to, say, harvest organs, who does s/he need to consult in the next 20 minutes? Is every hospital going to need a lawyer in the emergency room to analyze "comprehensive contracts"? On a related note, there are innumerable statutes and regulations that refer to, or implicate, the rights of spouses. Figuring out how these intersect with different "comprehensive contracts" would be a long-lasting legal and bureaucratic nightmare.
I don't see what advantages would make these _huge_ inconveniences worthwhile: especially since nearly all comprehensive contracts would look like marriage anyway. In short, if your objection to the state being involved with marriage is that it's sticking its nose where it just doesn't belong, I don't see any convenient and/or less intrusive practical alternative. And besides, from the perspective of queers who want equality NOW, it doesn't make any strategic sense to agitate for a fundamental overhaul of how the state regards marriage: it's far easier to say "we want to get married too."
I'm all for adopting flexible marriage laws. For example, IIRC Spain has a category of marriages that automatically expire after a period of years, so if the marriage doesn't work out, you don't need to get a divorce, you just let your marriage license expire and go your separate ways. Fine. I'd probably be open to allowing more than two people to enter into a marriage. But just for the sake of efficient administration, there ought to be a single, state-recognized status: you can call it whatever you want.
> And as for custody, non-biological parents can adopt already. Doesn't
> that offer more security than a legal marriage between a biological
> parent and someone else? My impression is that step-parents, whether
> they're straight as an arrow or gay as the day is long, have pretty
> much no rights under current family law.
Adoption is no walk in the park. No matter how uncontroversial the adoption is, there are going to be courts, lawyers and government bureaucrats involved. Talk about state interference in your personal life.
Under most (maybe all) state laws, if my wife has a baby, then I immediately acquire the rights and responsibilities of fatherhood because we're married. I don't need to fill anything out or engage with any kind of bureaucracy. By contrast, if one half of a lesbian couple has a baby, her wife will have to go through the adoption process to acquire parental rights.
If you're proposing a system where everyone but the biological mother adopts a child, then no thanks. If you're proposing some system where certain people with comprehensive contracts automatically acquire parental rights upon a child's birth -- well, that sounds a lot like "marriage" to me.
-WD