Support For Same Sex Marriage Grows

[Solomwi]

Ben, just a few points on your last post:

1. You don't know what a penalty clause is. My example at the bottom involves no penalties at all. Damages and penalties are not the same thing. If, for instance, you decide to break our contract, and I find a seller of comparable widgets at a lower price, I haven't been damaged by your breach and you won't owe me anything. A penalty would not rely on my damages.

2. That explains why you would state that penalty clause are perfectly fine, when they're not. Granted, it isn't an absolute rule, but it is the general rule. Of course, you're most likely thinking of liquidated damage type clauses, which aren't the same thing as penalty clauses, and are scrutinized by a court being asked to enforce them to make sure they don't cross that line.

3. Again, the point of contract enforcement and contract law is not to punish someone who breaches a contract. It's to ensure that, when one party breaches, the other can still get the benefit of the bargain.

4. Of course people filing for divorce actually benefit from it. If they didn't expect to benefit, they wouldn't be filing for divorce. That is exactly how contracts are supposed to work. When it's beneficial to end the contract, parties are not only allowed, but encouraged, to do so. There's even an entire doctrine built around this idea: "efficient breach." If our contract requires me to spend $1,000 to confer $300 worth of benefit on you and I breach by not performing, I only owe you the $300 you would have gained by my performance.

5. If the spouse can't force you to stay in the marriage, then divorce still only requires unilateral consent. You want it to require mutual consent, so by definition, it's about specific performance, not compensation.

6. You're only arguing about the amount of alimony, not the propriety of it, when you say A should pay B half. Of course, my point wasn't that alimony is a perfect system, merely that it arises out of the duty of spousal support that one takes on when one gets married. It's part of the "benefit of the bargain" that the other spouse expected upon the marriage. Child support has nothing to do with the marriage, and is entirely based on the parent's duty to support the child. One parent takes custody of the child, and the other parent shares the burden of supporting the child by writing a check.

7. It's simply a fact of life that an ongoing contractual relationship requires constant affirmation of consent, because the moment consent is withdrawn unilaterally, the relationship ends. That doesn't mean you and your wife have to repeat your vows over breakfast every morning. That you don't file for divorce on a given day is enough affirmation, but the fact remains that consent is not just given once, and then becomes a non-issue. That's what the point of the widget example was. All it took was one party withdrawing consent and the contract was finished. Whether you discourage that withdrawal by heaping penalties on it or not, that one withdrawal is still all it takes. Why is this so difficult for you?

8. Your point didn't start out as that, and still isn't that. It started out as "divorce should require mutual consent," and has morphed into "the government should discourage divorce by placing huge costs on its intiation." What I said with that example was "a contract which requires mutual consent ends when one party no longer consents." It's the direct opposite of your initial point, and irrelevant to the point that morphed into.

I'm sure I left out a few things, but the bottom line is that you have to overcome some pretty big misconceptions before we can even begin something approaching a productive exchange.

[MrFun]

BK, I read your points again - your argument that straight people and gay people are treated the same makes no sense. Straight people are free to choose to marry a consenting person of opposite gender (of same sexual orientation) whereas gay people are denied that same freedom in seeking to marry a consenting person of same gender (of same sexual orientation).

Anyway, there is more good news on the issue of equal marriage rights.

By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer David Crary, Ap National Writer – 1 hr 44 mins ago

WHITINSVILLE, Mass., – Twenty years after he met the love of his life, nearly five years after their wedding helped make history, it took a nasty bout of pneumonia for Gary Chalmers to fully appreciate the blessings of marriage.

"I was out of work for eight weeks, spent a week in the hospital," Chalmers said. "That was the first time I really felt thankful for the sense of the security we had, with Rich there, talking with the physicians, helping make decisions. ... It really made a difference."

At stake was the most basic recognition of marital bonds — something most spouses take for granted. But until May 17, 2004, when Chalmers and Richard Linnell were among a surge of same-sex couples marrying in Massachusetts, it was legally unavailable to American gays and lesbians.

Since that day, four other states — Connecticut in 2008, and Iowa, Vermont and Maine this year — have legalized same-sex marriage, and more may follow soon. A measure just approved by New Hampshire's legislature awaits the governor's decision on whether to sign. But Massachusetts was the first, providing a five-year record with which to gauge the consequences.

At the time of those first weddings, the debate was red-hot — protests were frequent, expectations ran high that legislators would allow a referendum on whether to overturn the court ruling ordering same-sex marriage. Now, although Roman Catholic leaders and some conservative activists remain vocally opposed, there is overwhelming political support for same-sex marriage and no prospect for a referendum.

According to the latest state figures, through September 2008, there had been 12,167 same-sex marriages in Massachusetts — 64 percent of them between women — out of 170,209 marriages in all. Some consequences have been tangible — a boom for gay-friendly wedding businesses, the exit of a Roman Catholic charity from the adoption business — and some almost defy description.

"Having your committed relationships recognized — to say it's deeply meaningful is to trivialize it," said Mary Bonauto, lead lawyer in the landmark lawsuit. "I know people who'd been together 20 years who say, 'Getting married — it knocked my socks off.'"

___

Chalmers and Linnell were among seven gay and lesbian couples recruited by Bonauto's team to be the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

They had been partners since meeting in Worcester in 1988, and now live nearby in Linnell's childhood house in the rural outskirts of Whitinsville with their 16-year-old daughter, Paige, whom they adopted as an infant.

The south-central town of 6,300, with no gay community to speak of, is relatively far from cosmopolitan Boston and the gay vacation mecca of Provincetown, but the family feels thoroughly comfortable.

Paige, who brims with self-confidence, is helping form a gay-straight alliance at her high school. When her fathers got married, she said, "all my friends were saying they wanted to come to the wedding."

Chalmers, an elementary school curriculum coordinator in nearby Shrewsbury, and Linnell, nurse manager at a medical center, say they didn't need the wedding to prove their commitment to one another, but they appreciate the added legal stability and the recognition they get from others.

"Before, we had wills, we had power of attorney," Chalmers said. "But the fact of the matter was, you can't make up for the thousand or so rights that are given to married couples."

They said many of the fellow townspeople they'd spoken with were unaware that gay couples — pre-2004 — generally lacked these rights, ranging from income tax provisions to medical decision-making to property inheritance.

Another plus: Explanations about family ties are easier now that "husband" is an option.

"More than once," Chalmers recalled, "I was introducing Rich and said, 'This is my partner,' and they'd say, 'Oh, what kind of company do you own? What business are you in?'"

___

Another of the seven lawsuit couples — Gina and Heidi Nortonsmith — live in the lesbian-friendly college town of Northampton with their two sons — Quinn, 9, and Avery 12. Like their fellow plaintiffs, they married as soon as legally possible — on May 17, 2004.

Heidi, who is white, runs an emergency food pantry, while Gina, an African-American, is an elementary school classroom aide. Heidi gave birth to both sons, who are biracial, and the family name merges the moms' maiden names.

"When we were getting ready to have the kids, we wanted to cross all our T's and dot all our I's, feeling there were so many protections for heterosexual married families that just weren't available to us," Heidi said.

"When marriage finally happened, there was that emotional sigh of relief — just knowing there would be a legal framework, and a court of law would understand our family."

Heidi and Gina bridle at the contention of some gay-marriage opponents that children such as theirs will suffer from not being raised by both a mother and father.

"We have really great kids," says Gina. "It's been fun to have people see who we are."

Listening in on the conversation were Quinn — just arrived from shooting baskets outside — and Avery, both doing homework on the sofa, occasionally offering their thoughts.

Said Heidi, "Having two parents who can feel and express love for each other, and give it in abundance to their children, that's what matters. It doesn't matter what the identities of those parents are."

___

One of the striking developments, since 2004, is the fading away of opposition to gay marriage among elected officials in Massachusetts.

When the state's Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2003 that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, there seemed to be sufficient support in the Legislature for a ballot measure that would overturn the decision. But efforts to unseat pro-gay-marriage legislators floundered; a gay-marriage supporter, Deval Patrick, was elected governor; and a climactic push for a referendum was rejected by lawmakers in 2007 by a 151-45 vote.

Last year, lawmakers went further, repealing a 1913 law that blocked most out-of-state gays from marrying in Massachusetts. The vote in the House was 119-36.

The near-consensus now among political leaders is a far cry from 2003-04, when the debate was wrenching for legislators such as Sen. Marian Walsh. Her district, including parts of Boston and some close-in suburbs, is heavily Catholic and socially conservative, so when same-sex marriage became a public issue, "there wasn't an appetite to discuss it, let alone support it," Walsh said.

Once the high court ruled, Walsh faced intense pressure from constituents wanting to know whether she would support efforts to overturn it.

"I had hundreds of requests to meet with people on both sides," Walsh said. "Everyone wanted to know how was I going to vote."

She read up on the law, engaged in countless conversations, wrestled with her conscience, and finally decided the court was right — and there should be no referendum.

"It was a lot of hard work," she said. "I came to the decision that it really is a civil right — that the constitution was there to protect rights, not to diminish rights."

She described the reaction as a "firestorm" — embittered constituents, hate mail and death threats, rebukes from Catholic clergy, but she won re-election in 2004 and again in 2006 over challengers who opposed gay marriage.

"They said marriage is always between a man and women," Walsh mused. "I used to think that was true. I had those same premises, but those premises were false."

___

For all the joy and reassurance that marriage has brought to same-sex couples, it also entails periodic reminders that neither the federal government nor the vast majority of other states recognize their unions. Partly as a backlash to Massachusetts, 26 states have passed constitutional amendments since May 2004 explicitly limiting marriage to male/female unions.

Even the 2010 census, under the prevailing federal Defense of Marriage Act, likely won't record legally wed couples in Massachusetts and elsewhere as married.

"It feels like a slap in the face," said Heidi Nortonsmith.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the Boston legal firm which won the same-sex marriage case, filed a new lawsuit in March challenging the portion of the act that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

President Barack Obama has pledged to work to repeal the act, but it hasn't been among his priorities since taking office.

"I'm so dying to meet him and have him sit down with my family," Heidi said of Obama. "He could be a leader about this."

For now, federal non-recognition can be stinging.

After Michael and Rick McManus of Charlton married in 2006, they honeymooned in Panama, and on return to the United States were told at the immigration booth that they had to go through separately because U.S. law didn't consider them married.

Michael and Rick have subsequently adopted a son, turning 2 on May 7, and a daughter, almost 1. They plan to limit international travel until the federal policy changes.

"I don't want our kids to be coming through customs and having to explain that their dads aren't married there," Michael said.

Within Massachusetts, they said, being married has been a big plus — for example in dealing with state adoption officials.

"They knew we were a family that was in it for the long haul," Michael said.

But they are frustrated at having to file two sets of tax returns, at extra cost, as a married couple in Massachusetts and as single men for the Internal Revenue Service. And they were dismayed when Arkansas voters last fall approved a ballot measure that bans gay couples from adopting.

"We're constantly reminding our friends that we still live in a world where people in another state voted that Rick and I aren't fit to parent," Michael said. "There's a sense of security for our family here — but when we leave this state, it's a very different world."

___

Joyce Kauffman, a Boston family-law attorney with many gay and lesbian clients, said particular hardships await same-sex couples who marry in Massachusetts and later seek to be divorced in a state that doesn't recognize the union.

"Sometimes people don't make it," she said. "What are they going to do?"

Massachusetts doesn't track same-sex divorces as a distinct category, so there are no statistics comparing how same-sex and opposite-sex couples who married since 2004 have fared in terms of breakups.

Overall, Kauffman thinks same-sex marriages — many between longtime partners — have been more stable. But she also has encountered same-sex couples who wed unwisely on impulse in 2004.

"A lot of people got caught up in the moment, for the wrong reason," she said. "But most are truly committed."

One of the couples that divorced, Julie and Hillary Goodridge, was among the plaintiffs in the landmark lawsuit, which became known as the Goodridge case.

Janet Halley, a professor at Harvard Law School who has studied same-sex divorce, said gays and lesbians will likely split at the same rate as heterosexuals, even though they face extra challenges.

"The stresses are going to be higher because of the very inconsistent ways in which different states and the federal government enforce the legal elements of marriage," she said.

Halley advised gay couples not to strive for some idealized goal of family perfection.

"In order to argue that they were entitled to marry, they thought they had to represent same-sex relationships as more committed, more loving, more altruistic than is realistic," she said.

___

"Holy cow, the sky hasn't fallen."

That assessment of five years of same-sex marriage came from Jennifer Chrisler, who advocates for gay and lesbian parents as head of the Boston-based Family Equality Council. It's a common refrain from many like-minded activists, and the message can be grating for those who still speak out with opposing views.

"We absolutely believe the sky is falling," said Kris Mineau, a former Air Force pilot and pastor who is president of the Massachusetts Family Institute. "But we believe it would be a generational downfall, not an overnight downfall."

Mineau and his allies say their primary concern is the welfare of children raised by same-sex couples — even though establishment groups such as the American Academy of Pediatrics say such children fare just as well as children with heterosexual parents.

"No matter how loving and how caring two women are, there's no way they can replace the role of the father," Mineau said. "It will take a generation to prove that, but we have no reason to think otherwise."

Mineau also said religious liberty is at risk in Massachusetts, and cited the example of Catholic Charities of Boston, which stopped providing adoption services in 2006 because state law required it to consider same-sex parents when looking for adoptive homes.

At Boston College, one of the nation's leading Catholic universities, law professor Scott FitzGibbon said legalization of same-sex marriage also has created friction in the public school system and exposed students to "indoctrination".

Statewide, there is no mandate that schools teach about same-sex marriage, but FitzGibbon said he was troubled by some local districts' policies. Citing a 2004 anti-bias directive in Boston, he said a teacher there could risk his or her career "by encouraging an examination of the cons as well as the pros of same-sex marriage."

FitzGibbon also said many parents had been troubled by the Goodridge case.

"Same-sex programs lead on almost inevitably to a situation of discord and tension between teachers and school officials, on the one hand, and those numerous parents who adhere to ethical beliefs and belong to religious communities which disfavor those practices."

One such couple, David and Tonia Parker of Lexington, have withdrawn their two sons from public school and are now homeschooling them after a lengthy confrontation with school officials.

Parker objected in 2005 when his youngest son brought home a book from kindergarten that depicted a gay family. He was later arrested for refusing to leave the school after officials wouldn't agree to notify him when homosexuality was discussed in his son's class.

The Parkers filed an unsuccessful lawsuit contending that school administrators violated a state law requiring that parents get a chance to exempt their children from sex-education curriculum. School officials said the books didn't focus on sex education, and merely depicted various families.

"Parental rights lost out in a big way — the right of parents to oversee the moral upbringing of their own children," said Parker. "The judges are trying to force the government to affirm, embrace and celebrate gay marriage."

Opposition to same-sex marriage remains strong in the Roman Catholic hierarchy, though church leaders are less vocal on the issue than a few years ago when they campaigned hard for a referendum. Disappointment in the legislature for blocking a public vote is still deep.

"Why was it squelched?" asked Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester. "It seems to me, in terms of the politicians, that they have listened more intently to a well-heeled, organized political action group than they have to the will of the people."

McManus, who was installed as bishop just three days before the first same-sex weddings, says traditional husband/wife marriage already was under stress, as evidenced by the high divorce rate, and could be undermined further by the spread of same-sex marriage.

"The mantra that the sky hasn't fallen takes a short-term view," he said. "We don't know what the implications will be."

The Catholic church, he said, would welcome a civil debate, but he questioned whether this was feasible.

"The proponents of same-sex marriage argue that if you're opposed, you are exercising bigotry," the bishop said. "No one who's proud of being an American wants to be accused of being a bigot, so some people retreat into a live-and-let-live situation."

McManus insists the church won't compromise on marriage and says its views, over time, can still prevail.

Bonauto, the lead lawyer in the lawsuit, sees a different outcome as more states consider same-sex marriage or extend other recognition to gay couples.

"Goodridge set a new standard, and the standard was equality," she said. "It was a game changer. Even our opponents know it's only matter of time before there's marriage equality nationwide."

Advancement toward equal rights protection.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Proponents of gay marriage that are opposed to legalizing polygamy are massive hypocrites.

Aside from political concerns (ie, separating yourself now may be help gay marriage to be passed), I agree

[Ben Kenobi]

1. You don't know what a penalty clause is. My example at the bottom involves no penalties at all. Damages and penalties are not the same thing. If, for instance, you decide to break our contract, and I find a seller of comparable widgets at a lower price, I haven't been damaged by your breach and you won't owe me anything. A penalty would not rely on my damages.

Ok, that's a good point. The problem is how would this work when looking at marriage? In every situation the one who didn't initiate the divorce is going to be worse off after the split.

2. That explains why you would state that penalty clause are perfectly fine, when they're not. Granted, it isn't an absolute rule, but it is the general rule. Of course, you're most likely thinking of liquidated damage type clauses, which aren't the same thing as penalty clauses, and are scrutinized by a court being asked to enforce them to make sure they don't cross that line.

We aren't talking the same language. I'm not up on my legalese, but surely you understood my point of suggesting that some form of compensation is owed to the party who does not initiate the divorce. Whether the form is in 'penalties' or 'damages' doesn't matter much to me.

3. Again, the point of contract enforcement and contract law is not to punish someone who breaches a contract. It's to ensure that, when one party breaches, the other can still get the benefit of the bargain.

Exactly.

4. Of course people filing for divorce actually benefit from it. If they didn't expect to benefit, they wouldn't be filing for divorce. That is exactly how contracts are supposed to work. When it's beneficial to end the contract, parties are not only allowed, but encouraged, to do so. There's even an entire doctrine built around this idea: "efficient breach." If our contract requires me to spend $1,000 to confer $300 worth of benefit on you and I breach by not performing, I only owe you the $300 you would have gained by my performance.

Right, but the party who does not consent to the divorce is owed damages for the breach of contract, if they can't reach a mutual agreement prior. You can't just skip out on marriage.

5. If the spouse can't force you to stay in the marriage, then divorce still only requires unilateral consent. You want it to require mutual consent, so by definition, it's about specific performance, not compensation.

I thought I made it clear that I have no issue with someone filing for divorce. All I am suggesting is that the party who did not file is entitled to damages resulting from the breach of contract.

6. You're only arguing about the amount of alimony, not the propriety of it, when you say A should pay B half. Of course, my point wasn't that alimony is a perfect system, merely that it arises out of the duty of spousal support that one takes on when one gets married. It's part of the "benefit of the bargain" that the other spouse expected upon the marriage.

One should not be able to file for alimony for a breach that they have initiated. It's just wrong to me. It would be like me breaching a widget contract, and you having to pay out twice what the original bargain decided. You'd rightly be upset at the injustice at rewarding me for my faithlessness.

Child support has nothing to do with the marriage, and is entirely based on the parent's duty to support the child. One parent takes custody of the child, and the other parent shares the burden of supporting the child by writing a check.

If the other parent wanted the support for their own child, they ought to have remained married to the other parent. I don't have much sympathy for someone who divorces and takes their children away. I do have sympathy for the parent who has been divorced, and I believe they should be entitled to alimony and child support.

I agree with you that parents have a duty and an obligation to care for their children, but the court should not enforce support, in the case where the other parent has already decided that they do not want to remain married.

7. It's simply a fact of life that an ongoing contractual relationship requires constant affirmation of consent, because the moment consent is withdrawn unilaterally, the relationship ends. That doesn't mean you and your wife have to repeat your vows over breakfast every morning. That you don't file for divorce on a given day is enough affirmation, but the fact remains that consent is not just given once, and then becomes a non-issue. That's what the point of the widget example was. All it took was one party withdrawing consent and the contract was finished. Whether you discourage that withdrawal by heaping penalties on it or not, that one withdrawal is still all it takes. Why is this so difficult for you?

It's not difficult. You are using terms that you haven't taken the time to clarify.

8. Your point didn't start out as that, and still isn't that. It started out as "divorce should require mutual consent," and has morphed into "the government should discourage divorce by placing huge costs on its intiation." What I said with that example was "a contract which requires mutual consent ends when one party no longer consents." It's the direct opposite of your initial point, and irrelevant to the point that morphed into.

Divorce should require mutual consent. I stand by that statement. That it is permissible in other cases doesn't detract from the ideal that divorce should only be conducted through mutual consent.

[MrFun]

Let's play with BK's retarded rationalization using interracial marriage and past laws that prohibited them.

Prohibitions against interracial marriage was not discrimination because white people and black were both prohibited from marrying someone of the other race. They were treated the same way under those laws.

[notyoueither]

Proponents of gay marriage that are opposed to legalizing polygamy are massive hypocrites.

How do you figure?

[MrFun]

Drake is being a jackass by using the idea of legal polygamous marriage as a boogey-man red herring when in actuality, he does not give a **** about extending legal recognition to polygamous marriage.

[Drake Tungsten]

How do you figure?

If you argue that consenting adults have a basic right to marry someone of their own gender, what logical reason is there to say that consenting adults don't also have a basic right to marry more than one partner? Traditional marriage is limited to two persons, but you can't use deference to the traditional definition of marriage as a reason for denying marriage rights to polygamous relationships if you've already tossed traditional marriage aside to allow gay marriage.

[Kuciwalker]

Proponents of gay marriage that are opposed to legalizing polygamy are massive hypocrites.

God doesn't hate gay people, but he does hate polygamists

[Kuciwalker]

So you believe in a God that had nothing to do with reality?

This is different from any other Christian how?

[Ben Kenobi]

Let's play with BK's retarded rationalization using interracial marriage and past laws that prohibited them.

I already dealt with this.

I'll just repost what I wrote before, and perhaps you'll read it again.

Interracial marriage bans do not return the same result all the time.

Example A:

White husband, white wife, marriage ok

Black husband black wife, marriage ok.

White husband black wife, marriage not ok.

Black husband white wife, marriage not ok.

In this case you can have the same person apply as a white husband but depending on who his wife was, it will return different results. Therefore, it violates the equal protection clause.

The same is not true of gay marriage bans. In this, a gay man and a straight man will be treated exactly the same way.

[Solomwi]

All right, let's take this back to the very basics from which it started.

You think divorce should require mutual consent because marriage requires mutual consent. This is a logical impossibility, since unilateral removal of consent means there is no longer mutual consent. Therefore the marriage, which requires mutual consent, can necessarily be destroyed by unilateral withdrawal. To allow the marriage to continue when one party no longer consented to it would be to allow one spouse to force another spouse to stay in the marriage without consenting to be married. They can't possibly both require mutual consent. Every time you say you don't have a problem with one party filing for divorce, but think the other party should get paid, you disaffirm your original assertion.

Now, it does not matter to the question of consent what you think should happen pursuant to a divorce. You could say anyone filing for divorce must undergo the amputation of two limbs and turn over all earthly property to the other spouse. Divorce would still require only unilateral action. This is where the original question ends. The rest is me correcting largely unrelated misconceptions you've brought into the conversation.

It's not a matter of legalese, either. Damages are emphatically not just penalties by another name. There are substantive differences between the two, as I've tried to point out. Damages are based on the duties the breaching party has undertaken with respect to the non-breaching party, and either the actual damages suffered or the parties' best estimate of those damages beforehand, in the case of contracts with liquidated damage clauses. Penalties would be simply based on the fact of the breach, with no necessary connection to damages suffered.

On the child support issue, again, it has nothing to do with the relationship between the parents, and who you have sympathy for doesn't matter one bit. By bringing a child into the world, you assume certain duties that you owe to the child. When you're married to the other parent, you can fulfill those duties without writing a check to the other parent, by doing things like buying clothes, paying rent, paying the light bill, etc. Child support simply ensures that you keep fulfilling your duty to the child when you're no longer part of the same household. Why do you want the courts to punish the children for something that was out of their hands?

Unilateral divorce, even under a no-fault regime, does not allow you to just "skip out." Whether you can file divorce to begin with and what the fallout is after you do are two independent questions. A mutual consent requirement goes to the former. No-fault goes to the former. Everything you've been trying to argue goes to the latter.

I've been pretty clear about the meanings of the terms I've been using. If you thought I meant that a couple had to periodically relive their ceremony to affirm consent, that's on you, as it's a ludicrous interpretation.

If you still want to defend the idea that divorce should require mutual consent, you need to do so in terms of consent, not in terms of the burden on one party or the other. Aside from being irrelevant to your consent point, those burdens will be different in each case. Sometimes the non-breaching party will wind up far better off as a result of the divorce. Sometimes the breaching party will wind up far worse off. You're using a cardboard stereotype of divorce that isn't a solid foundation for universal rules, which is why so many details of a divorce are handled on a case-by-case basis.

[Solomwi]

All right, let's take this back to the very basics from which it started.

You think divorce should require mutual consent because marriage requires mutual consent. This is a logical impossibility, since unilateral removal of consent means there is no longer mutual consent. Therefore the marriage, which requires mutual consent, can necessarily be destroyed by unilateral withdrawal. To allow the marriage to continue when one party no longer consented to it would be to allow one spouse to force another spouse to stay in the marriage without consenting to be married. They can't possibly both require mutual consent. Every time you say you don't have a problem with one party filing for divorce, but think the other party should get paid, you disaffirm your original assertion.

Now, it does not matter to the question of consent what you think should happen pursuant to a divorce. You could say anyone filing for divorce must undergo the amputation of two limbs and turn over all earthly property to the other spouse. Divorce would still require only unilateral action. This is where the original question ends. The rest is me correcting largely unrelated misconceptions you've brought into the conversation.

It's not a matter of legalese, either. Damages are emphatically not just penalties by another name. There are substantive differences between the two, as I've tried to point out. Damages are based on the duties the breaching party has undertaken with respect to the non-breaching party, and either the actual damages suffered or the parties' best estimate of those damages beforehand, in the case of contracts with liquidated damage clauses. Penalties would be simply based on the fact of the breach, with no necessary connection to damages suffered.

On the child support issue, again, it has nothing to do with the relationship between the parents, and who you have sympathy for doesn't matter one bit. By bringing a child into the world, you assume certain duties that you owe to the child. When you're married to the other parent, you can fulfill those duties without writing a check to the other parent, by doing things like buying clothes, paying rent, paying the light bill, etc. Child support simply ensures that you keep fulfilling your duty to the child when you're no longer part of the same household. Why do you want the courts to punish the children for something that was out of their hands?

Unilateral divorce, even under a no-fault regime, does not allow you to just "skip out." Whether you can file divorce to begin with and what the fallout is after you do are two independent questions. A mutual consent requirement goes to the former. No-fault goes to the former. Everything you've been trying to argue goes to the latter.

I've been pretty clear about the meanings of the terms I've been using. If you thought I meant that a couple had to periodically relive their ceremony to affirm consent, that's on you, as it's a ludicrous interpretation.

If you still want to defend the idea that divorce should require mutual consent, you need to do so in terms of consent, not in terms of the burden on one party or the other. Aside from being irrelevant to your consent point, those burdens will be different in each case. Sometimes the non-breaching party will wind up far better off as a result of the divorce. Sometimes the breaching party will wind up far worse off. You're using a cardboard stereotype of divorce that isn't a solid foundation for universal rules, which is why so many details of a divorce are handled on a case-by-case basis.

[chequita guevara]

How do you figure?

If you argue that consenting adults have a basic right to marry someone of their own gender, what logical reason is there to say that consenting adults don't also have a basic right to marry more than one partner? Traditional marriage is limited to two persons, but you can't use deference to the traditional definition of marriage as a reason for denying marriage rights to polygamous relationships if you've already tossed traditional marriage aside to allow gay marriage.

I think people should be allowed to have polygamous marriages. I wouldn't want one. One woman is plenty more than I need and I certainly don't want another man.

[MrFun]

White husband, white wife, marriage ok
Black husband black wife, marriage ok.

White husband black wife, marriage not ok.
Black husband white wife, marriage not ok.

In this case you can have the same person apply as a white husband but depending on who his wife was, it will return different results. Therefore, it violates the equal protection clause.

The same is not true of gay marriage bans. In this, a gay man and a straight man will be treated exactly the same way.

Straight men do not want to marry other straight men just as gay men (who accept that they are gay) do not want to marry women. This argument of yours relies on this ridiculous example:

Straight man marrying straight woman - okay.
Gay man marrying straight woman - okay.

Straight man marrying a straight man - not okay.
Gay man marrying a gay man - not okay.

The reason that this example of yours does not make any sense, is because straight men are not attracted to other men, and gay men are not attracted to women.

Straight men have the freedom to legally marry a consenting person THEY ARE ATTRACTED TO while gay men are denied this same freedom.