Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

I suppose the rationale is that the two of you COULD get the same benefits by being married. If same-sex marriage were legal, the statement wouldn't be required either, just a marriage license, same as straight couples.

It's all so bizarre, really.

In fact, they've NEVER asked to see our marriage license to initiate benefits except when DH was in the army. Weird.

If they said no benefits to anyone but a man and a woman who are married, it would be one thing, but then they started offering them to cohabitating couples, and then same sex couples. I'm told anything goes these days and that it's no one's business what one does in one's bedroom. Okay, fine. But if that's true, and that's the standard we seem to be going with, then what kind of relationship I have with my 'partner' is no one's business and I should have access to the same benefits. It's just one of those things that peeve me :)

What qualifies as "sex"? Can't you just tell them that you get all tingly inside when your domestic partner does the dishes of scrubs the shower?

ROTFL!! How about remebering to take out the trash without having to be asked? Or making tea on the weekend? Yeah, it makes me all a tingle!

Well, at least they aren't asking for "proof" beyond a statement....

Also, there's the option to declare that you're a couple that's "saving yourselves for marriage".

More seriously... to me, the best justification for government recognition of couples that addresses the issues the "it's for kids" argument doesn't, goes something like this:

-- Absent a family, the government has agreed to provide any number of services of last resort to individuals (welfare, medicare, student loans, whatever).
-- When you 'marry' someone in the civil sense, you take responsibility ahead of the government for any number of these last expenses.
-- Accordingly, the government gives you various potential benefits, because it is better for the government to have you looking after your partner than to have the government be responsible (likely to the point that, on the whole, the net cost of benefits is less than the net savings).

-- As a side benefit of the utilitarian argument, you remove any need for government to investigate the nature of someone's relationship in an unnecessary invasion of privacy.

-- As a further side benefit, you also provide benefits to (for example) people who take in ill parents rather than leaving them in a government "home".

And of course, anything that helps avoid the creepiness of bureaucrats deciding what's a couple that's having sex and what's not is a good thing.

As an attorney, let me say I do think there may be some real and credible legal arguments to be made about limiting the availability of such benefits only to couples who are sexually/romantically involved. I'm too tired to spell them out at the moment, but maybe tomorrow I'll have something.

Maybe I'll even do a blog post of my own on the subject. We'll see.