Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Legalized Polygamy?

An interesting article of view from Meghan Basham on the issue of gay marriage and polygamous marriage.
In an earlier thread, I was asked if gay people shouldn't have something.
My tentative response is that we need to make it so that contracts can address a lot of the issues that gay marriage is intended to solve. In other words, people should have more freedom in choosing who they want to be able to visit them in the hospital, who gets notified if they die, etc. A lot of the problem currently come from the fact that contracts other than marriage are often not enforced. As for tax issues, I think that we need to devise a tax systme that doesn't discriminate on the basis of marriage myself. A spouse can be a dependent, and perhaps dependent #1 gets a bigger deduction than dependents #2 onwards, regardless of relationship. In any case, a lot of the problems meant to be solved by expanding marriage could be solved by altering current aspects of contract law, etc., and eliminating one-size-fits-all rules (only family allowed to see someone in certain situations, etc.). As for benefits from the company you work for, that can be solved by letting employers decide what benefits they want to give, and letting the market decide which choices are good ones.

That is all.

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