How about rights of care when your partner of 20 years can’t make medical decisions because your relationship is not recognised?
Or i inheritance rights when you pass away and you lifelong partner gets little or nothing because your relationship doesn’t mean anything to the state?
What about parenting rights?
And what about simply people who decide to commit to a relationship enjoy the same rights, privileges and duties as anyone else instead of making them second rate citizens unworthy of the protection and recognition of the state?
^ Yep, it's not a coincidence that the push for same-sex marriage in the US came right after the height of the AIDS crisis.
People were routinely denied the right to stay with (or even visit) their partners in the hospital, couldn't extend health insurance coverage to those partners to pay for rising treatment costs, and had little control over those partners' estates after they died.
Can't you sign power of attorney papers, explicitly list people in a will, and name guardians for children? It sounds like it's just not implicit or automatic (which is obviously desirable). Is that correct or am I off base?
> Can't you sign power of attorney papers, explicitly list people in a will, and name guardians for children? It sounds like it's just not implicit or automatic. Is that correct or am I off base?
There are some things that aren't replicable easily, some things that are more difficult to deal with because institutions are more used to dealing with marriage, there are recognition issues and anticipation issues because both the things covered and the legal forms necessary to acheive them differ by jurisdiction, and may not have the degree of mutual recognition marriage does, and there are innmost jurisdictions a very large number of things that this applies to so it complex, potentially costly, and leave lots of room for error to get everything yoj can do by contract.
And there are things you still can't duplicate at all because they are, e.g., benefits conditioned directly on marriage by the state or a third party, so contract between the parties outside of marriage has no effect on them.
Or i inheritance rights when you pass away and you lifelong partner gets little or nothing because your relationship doesn’t mean anything to the state?
What about parenting rights?
And what about simply people who decide to commit to a relationship enjoy the same rights, privileges and duties as anyone else instead of making them second rate citizens unworthy of the protection and recognition of the state?