RE: What would a new court mean?
As it stands now, government "marriage" is pretty worthless. An unenforceable contract, or more precisely, a negatively enforceable contract--the only one I am aware of where the breaching party is the one entitled to damages and the non-breaching party is the one who is liable. This makes zero sense, and causes much of the resultant damage in our society, IMHO.
It would seem to make more sense for the government to limit its interference in the institution of marriage to merely registering, and enforcing, contract agreements between two human parties. This way those who wish to be married via the requirements of a faith/religion can have their verbal vows rendered enforceable (as some faiths require only certain vows to be used, and others allow the parties to make their own up--it would protect the sanctity of respective beliefs, as well as enlighten people as to the differences in actual faithful marriages and mere marriages of appearance with pretty church pictures for show), and those who do not care about religion can get a government "marriage" which is enforceable as any other normal contract between parties who have the legal ability to give consent.
The further advantage of this for society is to allow transparency and honesty to once again be included in marriages recognized by the government, and greatly limit the damage and trillion-dollar annual costs to society by those who disingenuously enter into these unenforceable 'agreements' we currently call marriage by requiring and enforcing actual thought and consequences for what the actual terms would be that the two people are agreeing to. Currently most people who marry have no idea of the harsh reality of what the legal implications of their action are--and often assume the opposite of what the legal reality has become. This is especially harmful to children in particular, and society in general--and completely unnecessary.
Why not just allow any two people to get married by a fully enforceable written contract instead? Then each party would have to provide documentation of their intentions, basic disagreements could be worked out ahead of time, and disputes would be reduced tremendously by the same way that divorce disputes are currently handled: "You agreed." End of dispute. Money and time saved. Also, caveat emptor would again be an important (and enforceable) part of marriage, and discernment, and cleaning up each person's act before and during would again be valued by our society--which means less waste and destruction.
So, gay government "marriage" would remain, but not intrude on any religion that does not recognize it--you simply would not be able to be gay "married" in a church that does not believe in its validity, yet you could have your gay government "marriage" to brag about to your friends all you wanted, or go on hospital visits, sign papers, etc... Proper separation of church and state once again like it was meant to be.
Any religious institution requiring adherence to traditional marriage vows would then have the additional benefit they are denied (unconstitutionally it would appear via the current government interference in enforceability of their religious beliefs) of having those simple vows codified and backed by the government and courts. Therefore, people would be able to discern which religions actually understood and enforced the idea of marriage and what the respective religions actually meant by their understanding of marriage. Anyone who wished to marry in a religious setting would then clearly see which ones were shams and which ones actually stood for something.
Those who view marriage as just an extended "date" with no consequences would then be able to be free to decide if they wanted to maintain that view, and its unpleasant legal consequences and risks, or if they would prefer a "safer" marriage haven, could opt for a more solid and binding contract (whether religious or not) afforded to any two parties in most any other transaction currently enforced by the courts as a protection of both parties' rights, not merely solely protecting the breaching party's (the current situation, which again makes zero logical sense.)
Serial marriages and the damage they do would very likely be vastly reduced. Philandering would have a more transparent cost, children would be valued again, etc... After an initial adjustment period, people would largely return to being far more considered of who and why they are marrying, and a corresponding significant reduction in the number of "bad" marriages would follow. This would save trillions of dollars for the government in the reduction of unnecessary programs designed mostly to replace the enforcement of reasonable marriage contracts, which is where we are now, and it just does not work. Shame and decency would again have some value. Peer pressure would keep most people from thinking they knew better than thousands of years of human experience have shown. Poverty, fatherless children, and many other ills would be reduced to realistic and manageable levels. Trillions (perhaps quadrillions) of dollars would be saved and redirected to positive economic growth, instead of being wasted on redundant and largely ineffective "programs" that largely seek to replace simple enforcement of an agreement between two consenting parties.
Smaller government, a safer, more rational workforce and families that actually were more secure and meant something again would all come together to make the US a vastly stronger, more efficient and powerful nation that would again be the envy of the world far and away above where we are at now.
Or we could just keep doing whatever we want, whenever we want for whatever random reason we want and pretend there are no consequences to and no responsibilities for our choices like we've been doing for the past 60-odd years and keep slowly destroying our country.
(This post was last modified: 07-22-2018 11:21 PM by GoodOwl.)
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