Different realms of responsibility?

Are we still talking about marriage or have we moved on?

that is a horrible metric for it working.

people have kids regardless of marriage, and people get married regardless of kids

meanwhile now need divorce laws, because we made it a legal status.

we need welfare, for people who have kids without marriage

then it covers things like joint filing, which has weird rules that could either save you on taxes or cost you on taxes

the parts where its related to taxes are handled by the IRS

is the IRS not the government?

i was not aware

Yea it is the government, i never said it wasnt

The section for welfare is handled by the HHS which is the portion of the government that distributes welfare. Single parents do get additional money as far as im aware.

Seems like a backwards incentive to me

It looks like fiddling with it makes it worse.

what is a backwards incentive?

Divorce laws werent instiuted for a long time because marriage was supposed to be until death. It wasnt until the 1920-40s when people started giving women the ability to divorce

@Blackhawk342 the fact they are laws is because marriage is a legal status

And as such

if it wasn't a legal status, there would be no need for a law removing that legal status

It's been something increasingly taken more and more lightly.

Did I say that it wasnt a legal status?

just give marriage back to the churches and rename all the current legal benefits to "codependent" instead of "married"
That way roommates can get it temporarily too

that would mean changing it to a temporary status, not something permanent.

You mean the same churches which seem to be the last bastions against same sex marriage?

Im not really in favor of that

not all churches were against it

and it would also not stop you from calling yourself married

You realize sometimes its men who divorce women right ?

the government, nor the church, nor anyone outside you and your partner, should get to make the call if you are married

Id rather not hand over any more power to religious organizations than absolutely necessary

Marriage was primarily a religious ceremony until like 1515 or so

what power would they have? @Blackhawk342

The government stole the idea

As youve been going on at length grenade, the power to marry people

last i checked, the church could not tell i couldn't call my gf my wife and say we are married.

only the government can

more than one religion has their own versions of marraige

But the option you put forward was that you can declare yourself married or not from year to year.

So now grenade, if you go back up through the chat and read you will find that aidanwr has proposed giving that power back to the church

Simply put, that's not something I can get behind.

Yeah Aidan is with me in that