Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective

[avatar (Alistair Young)]

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@Specialist290 <specialist290@hughes.net> on 2016-08-16 11:38:47 wrote

Hmm… So, in a general sense, if marriage is defined that broadly, what keeps “marriage” from simply being conflated with “partnership” or “cooperative association,” particularly in those cases where it’s an arrangement exclusively between or among legal persons? Is it a difference of kind, or merely of degree?

(Or, in other words, what’s the point of having a separate institution called “marriage” at all? Is there any special property a “marriage” has that separates it from any other consensual cooperative arrangement, or is it simply a matter of what label everyone wants on the paperwork?)

@Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2016-08-16 18:59:12 wrote

In law, nothing. It is simply one particular subset of the entire possible class of coadunations, that subset labeled “coadunations marital” by lawyers. The term remains useful, though, inasmuch as when you’re looking to draw one up, it gives the obligators somewhere to start in drafting the contract to ensure it comes with all the customary details. (Partnership contracts, for example, typically do not include clauses relating to default conservatorship, medical proxy, or duties to dependent offspring.)

Where the difference is most important is in culture and the Common Social Protocol, in which marriage is much like pornography - one knows it when one sees it.