Posted by
PDX Dave on Saturday, March 15, 2008 4:29:17 PM
Whether it's two spinster sisters who have shared their home and incomes for decades, or two cigar smoking poker partners who - in 1986 - threw in together after nasty divorces and settled into a comfortable domestic arrangement, there is clearly a need for our civil laws and government to allow an adult to designate any other adult they choose as a domestic partner with full legal rights equivalent to the fiduciary rights of married couples.
Those rights should include, but be not limited to, hospital visitation and a place in the decision making process, tax advantages of filing jointly if they so desire, co-mingling of assets incomes and liabilities, power of attorney, and protection from government discrimination based on their domestic partner status.
Some would want to force a sexual definition into domestic partnership, but I feel doing so is base and reveals an ugly agenda. Who really cares about the sexual orientation of regular folks today? I don't. I don't personally know anyone who does. If domestic partnership laws are used by gays and lesbians, so what? What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom is their business, and should not be part of any public debate on this or any other issue. The trend toward wearing sexuality on one's sleeve in public is base and degrading to society. Anyone who parades sexuality of any flavor before society - which means before the eyes of children - needs to be slapped. Hard.
As a society, we need to respect the rights of two adults to form a legal and social contract which gives each rock solid fiduciary rights in a domestic partnership. We do not need to change the millennium-old traditions of marriage which society, religion, and law has always viewed as a unique union of one man and one woman.
PDX Dave
Behind Enemy Lines in Portland, Oregon