How Would Gay Marriage Weaken The Institution Of Marriage?
The problem with gay marriage is that it makes it hard to justify getting the federal government involved in marriage at all. There is good reason to have a legal institution which recognizes that people often form pairs who depend on each other. It is, for example, useful to recognize for tax purposes that a stay-at-home parent is an economic benefit to be encouraged. A stay-at-home parent should get Social Security survivor benefits, for example, even though the actual direct contributions are zero. It’s extremely useful to have a legal structure that makes it easy to designate a medical guardian and decision maker. And since children are usually best off in two-parent households, it’s very useful to have a structure unifying their finances so that the children will be financially cared for in the event of a separation of the parents. These are all good cases for some sort of civil union, but they are not good cases for “marriage”. The notion of civil union and marriage have been con
