I am not a fan of the current immigration laws where bureaucrats are tasked with determining whether a civil union is a sham. The idea that they would be given the task of determining whether a contract is sufficiently “marriage-ish” sounds almost as bad. It would give those who want to prescribe how relationships must work the opportunity to sneak in their own rules. You speak of judges, which is one step better than bureaucrats, but much more expensive.

What makes it worse: we are now dealing with other countries and international treaties (no doubt.) Australia needs to decide which foreign country’s marriage certificates they accept, and vice versa.

Accepting other countries’ marriage certificates is simple enough in the short-term, until they start following our lead. (At that point, ummm….)

The short-term issue here is that foreign countries won’t accept the Australian definition of (free-for-all) contracts. I am no expert in this area, and I have no idea how they handle de facto relationships now.

This reminds me a little of United Nation’s solution of International Driver’s Licences. Could a minimal contract be drawn up, which only need be signed at the point someone wishes to emigrate? We only need have the minimum clauses in that contract to be accepted by the destination country as a legitimate (foreign) marriage. That may mean that same-sex couples or polyamorous groups cannot have such a contract when moving to Elbonia, but that’s an issue of Elbonian law, not Australian law.

Your grander New World Order solution is a much better approach, and it should be “easy, if we try”. But, I think it is important to maintain existing political lines, because otherwise we won’t know which sports teams to support.

I still think the immigration issues could be dealt with; though perhaps more onerously. First, each contract involving a noncitizen would have to have its own provisions for immigration status. And since immigration is a national issue, I guess there would have to be some national authority that approves each contract involving immigration clauses. Which smells like abolishing celebrants and celebrant authorization in exchange for some other, conceivably more intrusive authorization process. But insofar as all contracts need some kind of authority to declare them valid anyway, I suppose the immigration stuff could still just be folded in.

There could still be a national standard of immigration status; it just would have to be longer and more specific. It would have to spell out contractual features which partnership contracts must satisfy in order to achieve special status for a foreign partner. In some cases, a partnership contract which is mostly tantamount to a marriage or civil union could nevertheless fail to meet the immigration standard on some provision or another. The partners could then go to court to try to convince the authorities that their contract indeed meets the standard, or they can modify their contract, perhaps subject to some nationally mandated waiting period or other flaming hoops to jump through.

It might be messier than today, but I think it’s still manageable. But I suspect that what would end up happening is that some small number of common contract templates get developed, to streamline the legal process of drawing up these contracts; and most people, to save time, money, and hassle, would opt for one of these templates; with the net effect that we’ve just… wait for it… taken the word “marriage” off the books and replaced it with something that looks, smells, and tastes like legal marriage but is called something else.

First, to be clear, I believe immigration law should be kept complete separate from the religious concept of marriage.

The difference between our positions is subtle, I think.

We both propose separating the non-legal (i.e. religious, cultural and personal) aspects from the legal aspects.

You are proposing a pragmatic solution that I would vote for immediately, given the choice between it and the status quo; I hope that day isn’t too far off.

I am proposing a more extreme position which will never happen in my lifetime, under a democracy.

You are proposing that the *religious* aspects be called “marriage”, as a pragmatic compromise.

I am ignoring pragmatics, and I am proposing the religious, cultural and personal aspects be called “marriage” (and, in particular, that the word doesn’t have any protected status under the law – any couple can personally declare that they are “married”, even if no particular church approves.)

You are proposing the legal aspects be called “civil union”.

I am proposing the legal aspects (civil unions) be completely abolished and replaced by normal contract law.

Where I am getting trapped is that I want to grant special immigration rights to those with civil unions, but I want to abolish civil unions!

Your plan is clearly superior in this regard (and the fact that it might actually happen in my lifetime!)

My plan is superior in the following respects: it removes unnecessary law, it abolishes the corruption of the appointment of marriage celebrants inherent in that law, it doesn’t grant special license to the word “married” to a limited set of cultures, allowing same-sex couples to call themselves married, and it provides additional incentives to support me in the coup.

(I hope I have characterised your position accurately. If I am arguing against a strawman, please correct me.)

You do so well, with your talk of legal contracts, and keeping the legal aspects of marriage (which I thought we agreed we would stop calling “marriage” when you come into power) separate from the nonlegal aspects (which we intend to refer to exclusively when we say “marriage”, in Julian’s World). Why is it so hard to just put all the immigration stuff in the legal bucket, leave it completely out of the nonlegal bucket, and call it done?

Please bear in mind that if you have an actual reason it is difficult to separate immigration from the religious concept of marriage, I would be all too happy for you to present it. It is entirely possible I have missed something, especially as it pertains to Australian law.

My point is we already have a big and elaborate legal system for dealing with legal contracts; why can’t that be used for marriage contracts too?

Because people won’t like having their special and eternal love dealt with by a system designed for gym memberships and coal supply arrangements. It’s not a mere contract; it’s a Bond of Eternal Love. At least, that’s what a very big chunk of the population will say.

Also, the government will be getting involved when some of these marriages inevitably break down, and it will not just be enforcing contract terms etc – it will be dealing with children and many deeply personal issues that people just don’t act rationally about. So it’s appropriate that it define marriages carefully, so that everyone knows how it works. Deregulating marriage will create a legal nightmare once the deregulated divorces hit the family law courts.

And finally, it is a worthy goal to allow as many people as possible to live their lives without getting lawyers involved. There is a lot of special-case legislation written to this end which could otherwise be handled by general law. This protects the ignorant and the stupid and the love-struck and allows people to get along well without a law degree and a habit of reading long documents in legalese. The cost of having a marriage act (and consumer protection legislation, and laws about buying houses, etc, etc) is arguably (and IMHO actually) justified by the benefits to the population at large.

None of this stops gay marriage being included. Everything I’ve written above applies just fine if you refactor the legislation to remove the obsolete restriction on the gender of the people involved.