Conglomerate Blog: Business, Law, Economics & Society

Maggie Gallagher has finished her guest stint at VC, and I have to say that I am unpersuaded. I am probably in the demographic that her arguments would persuade, but they did not. Most of her posts seemed much like retellings of the last post, with some sections repeated (repeatedly): "Sex makes babies. Society needs babies. Babies need mothers and fathers. This is the heart of marriage as a universal human idea." (Maybe if you chant it like a football cheer, it would actually convince me that then marriage (i) can't be an institution for people who can't make babies using sex as the method but (2)can be used as an institution for people who theoretically can, but practically can't or choose not to have babies using sex as a method.)

Enough about that -- that argument is for another blog. We're all about corporate law here (and Miers and football and baseball. . . .) What really bothered me today was the complete absence all week of any talk about the historical use or consequences of marriage with respect to property. Nada. Gallagher is either ignorant of this issue or purposefully avoids it. I would say that she's too smart to be ignorant of property law and corporate law, but then she throws away this statement as a strawman in her last post:

Or take the fact that marriage is an economic partnership. Suppose we expand the definition of marriage to include two business partners? How could that possibly hurt marriage? After all we aren't running out of marriage licenses, are we?

Actually, we already have business marriage statutes -- take a look at the UPA and the RUPA. Two business people couldn't get any more protection or commitment from most state marriage statutes. In fact, it's much easier to form a partnership by default than a common law marriage. Do we do this because we want to throw the state interest around the intimacy of business relations? No. We do this to decide who has duties to whom and who owes what property. Hmmm. Just like marriage. If Gallagher is against civil unions as well as SSM, then maybe she's against partnership statutes as well?

Family | Bookmark

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8345157d569e200d8349258fd69e2

Links to weblogs that reference More Thoughts on Partnerships and Marriage:

Maggie Gallagher has finished her guest stint at VC, and I have to say that I am unpersuaded. I am probably in the demographic that her arguments would persuade, but they did not. Most of her posts seemed much like retellings of the last post, with some sections repeated (repeatedly): "Sex makes babies. Society needs babies. Babies need mothers and fathers. This is the heart of marriage as a universal human idea." (Maybe if you chant it like a football cheer, it would actually convince me that then marriage (i) can't be an institution for people who can't make babies using sex as the method but (2)can be used as an institution for people who theoretically can, but practically can't or choose not to have babies using sex as a method.)

Enough about that -- that argument is for another blog. We're all about corporate law here (and Miers and football and baseball. . . .) What really bothered me today was the complete absence all week of any talk about the historical use or consequences of marriage with respect to property. Nada. Gallagher is either ignorant of this issue or purposefully avoids it. I would say that she's too smart to be ignorant of property law and corporate law, but then she throws away this statement as a strawman in her last post:

Or take the fact that marriage is an economic partnership. Suppose we expand the definition of marriage to include two business partners? How could that possibly hurt marriage? After all we aren't running out of marriage licenses, are we?

Actually, we already have business marriage statutes -- take a look at the UPA and the RUPA. Two business people couldn't get any more protection or commitment from most state marriage statutes. In fact, it's much easier to form a partnership by default than a common law marriage. Do we do this because we want to throw the state interest around the intimacy of business relations? No. We do this to decide who has duties to whom and who owes what property. Hmmm. Just like marriage. If Gallagher is against civil unions as well as SSM, then maybe she's against partnership statutes as well?

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
		1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31