The Supreme Court’s Lonely Hearts Club

[Nylese]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/opinion/the-supreme-courts-lonely-hearts-club.html

 

2015 piece on how marriage and long term romantic relationships are put on the ultimate pedestal for no good reason. There's acknowledgement of asexual and aromantic people in this piece if you squint but I think it's still a great read. Too many points to preview so I just went with the first paragraph. 

 

Quote

Now all of us single people are pathetic, not just the straight ones. “Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there,” writes Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges. As I read that bit alone in my apartment, I choked on my coffee.

 

[RedNeko]

That was an interesting read. I like the idea of the U.S. having a rotating first lady (why is the role of first lady so important anyway?).

[PerformativeSurprise]

12 hours ago, RedNeko said:

 (why is the role of first lady so important anyway?).

 

It's a way to demonstrate that he's a decent "family man" with good old-fashioned values  .  

[Louis On Air]

We're not magnets! This bias is just so dumb because even romantics suffer when the rush finding a lifelong partner and then it isn't lifelong! And don't get me started on what it would do to me. I don't know how different it is in the UK but I hope it is very different!

[Philbo Wiseroot]

On 7/3/2016 at 10:36 PM, PerformativeSurprise said:

 

It's a way to demonstrate that he's a decent "family man" with good old-fashioned values  .  

 

And can you not be a "family man" without a partner. Senator Graham's idea is a good one: if there must be a first lady, have it be a sister or something. Is a sister not still family?

[Blue Phoenix Ace]

That was a pretty good article. Married couples do enjoy a lot of benefits not granted to unmarried people in the US. For example, when you die, your social security benefits continue to your surviving spouse as long as they live. If you're single, those benefits evaporate. Why can't I designate those benefits to a sibling, a close friend, or even a child?

[Isaac]

This thread has moved me to read the Spanish law of same-sex marriage, and I'm glad in Spain these laws are passed by the parliament and not by the judges. Our law 13/2005 consists of two introductory sections before the legislative dispositions, as it's usual in Spanish law for expressing the motivation of the law. The first paragraph of the first introductory section praises couplehood as "a genuine expression of human nature" and marriage as "a juridic institution of social relevance that allows to fulfill the shared life of the couple." Then it reads the constitutional mentions to marriage as an obligation to regulate it in the law. Then the discourse moves to justify that the parliament has the power and the duty to adapt the institution of marriage to current societal values, and so removing the man-and-woman restriction. What worries me is praise of couplehood and marriage in the law, but it worries me less than if it had been ruled by the Constitutional Court. Although marriage can't be abolished in Spain without modifying the Constitution, there's no constitutional impediment to disprivilege marriage. But, as I said in another thread, the LGBT activists, formerly advocates of civil unions, moved to the advocacy for same-sex marriage, so it is now very difficult to get a nationwide law of civil unions, contrary to France, where civil unions were passed before same-sex marriage, so now French couples are not forced to choose marriage if they prefer a civil union.

[fairytalefanfor1]

I see no reason why civil unions half to be marriage only, hetero or homo. I want a queerplatonic relationship with another woman and do not want to get married. I also want to become a mother and do not want to get pregnant. So yeah, it would be great if I could have the same rights any married heteroromantic heterosexual.