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Mina is about to get schooled.

6 Comments

The piece of paper is not so much related to love as to certain legal rights and privileges associated with a “family”. Many countries give tax benefits to married couples that neither could attain singly. In Florida, it’s a crime (which is still enforced in a highly biased manner) for two person of opposite gender who are not blood relatives to live together if they aren’t married. Some adoption agencies or Child Protective Services agencies will not allow a single would-be parent or unmarried couple to adopt, regardless of financial status or available time. Some branches of the U.S. military will not allow a parent who is not married (even if living with the child’s other parent) to voluntarily enlist. And then there’s the ever-popular rule in U.S. courts that someone cannot be compelled to testify in court against their spouse (or may be explicitly blocked from doing so even if they want to), regardless of what knowledge they might have of their spouse’s (alleged) involvement in the matter under prosecution; “pillow talk” is as privileged as legal consultation… but only within a marriage.

And I completely forgot to include the right to include a spouse when enrolling in medical coverage through an employer at a lower total price (including employer contribution as well as employee portion) than obtaining the same coverage independently (or by the spouse being another employee of the same company). And the list goes on, but these are the highlights.

All of these “highlights” are stupid, in my opinion. Bias towards marriage is wrong. What if you truly love someone, but don’t want to bother with marriage or can’t afford it? What if you just want to stay “lovers” for the rest of your lives, huh? Some of the laws out there, regardless of country, are just plain stupid. It just pisses me off knowing that these laws are real.

If?

How fitting that the little comic add to the right I just got on this page is a certain scene from Sandra and Woo including Zoe, Larisa and a certain relevation. 😉

But yeah. There’s more to the whole “marriage” thing than just a declaration of love. There’s a whole bandwagon of different things attached to it, as DanialArin quite eloquently put. And while countries differ on the details, it’s something most of them share.

Hence why I strongly feel that any country that has a separation of church and state, of religion and state should also make a difference between a church wedding and marriage by state law. The former may well be exclusive to some forms of couples in any way the religion says. That is something that’s up to the respective clergy and community to decide on. The latter should include any kind of partnership of two politically mature persons bound by love, regardless of their gender. Else the country does not conform to its own set rule of separating church law and state law.

But that’s just my two Rappen on the matter.

That is a very intense ice cream cone. There’s at least five scoops in there.

Alien Hand Syndrome

This comic may not contain any actual aliens.

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