Tales from Rohan

I’m finally getting around to posting photos from Thanksgiving.

This year I cooked dinner for Alex, my aunt, and my cousins (the Carpenters). Alex was enormously helpful getting ready. As you can see, we all had a good time.

I went to a three-day Acroyoga workshop this weekend with Jenny Sauer-Klein, the co-founder of AcroYoga. I have not been so sore in a long time, but I had a great time. Unfortunately I did not get a lot of photos, but after the workshop I got a few shots of me taking Frederika through a fun sequence. Thanks Serena for taking the photos and Amy for spotting.

This is “Star”. Frederika starts by doing a shoulder stand on my feet. I got to fly this as well!

This is “Free Star”. Look ma, no hands!

Vertical legs

Step down into back flying (Back Bird)

For a long time I thought the solution is not to legislate marriage but to remove marriage from the domain of the state. Likewise, household rights and things like taxes are hopelessly entwined with parentage laws. I think this is also a mistake. I would like to see no mention of marriage in any law.

Instead I want a civil union (”civil pact” sounds even better) which deals with household property rights, taxation, immigration, and who is authorized to make decisions on behalf of a sick or unconscious person. My proposed restrictions are very simple. Each person must be legally an adult by federal standards (18 years old) or an emancipated minor; and neither person can be in a civil pact with anyone else. Civil pacts or the closest legal equivalent from other countries are likewise recognized for temporary immigration and medical decision purposes. Note that this means that when married persons from other countries become become permanent residents of the US, they would need to establish a civil pact to have the rights of a civil pact. One side effect of this (good or bad) is that polygamous civil pacts would not exist and that polygamous marriages could not be considered justification for immigration the the US.

As for parentage rights, I do not want these rights in any way related to the existence or non-existence of a civil pact. Anyone who is biologically a parent or who carried a fetus to the age of viability has the right to be aware of their parentage and to participate in parenting of the resulting child(ren) unless they are unfit to do so (a danger to children or themselves) or expressly waive their rights of contact (as is often the case for sperm donors, egg donors, and surrogate mothers). Up to two legal adults can legally represent that they are the primary caretakers of a child. Neither of these adults need to have a biological connection with the child.

Veering back to reality for the moment though, the reason for all the hubbub about Proposition 8 is that the California Supreme Court ruled that a) California currently has a definition of “marriage” and bestows certain rights on individuals who are “married”, and b) the state cannot bestow that right on one individual and restrict that right from another. Since it is very difficult to take rights away (the right of marriage), the solution for equality advocates is to expressly legalize gay marriage.

While I do not think that gay marriage advocates should stop what they are doing, I think they should try to get the government out of our intimate relationships as a parallel effort.

Marriage and parentage laws have created a lot of misery for both straight and gay people. One of my cousins has lived with her boyfriend for over 20 years. They own a house together and they have raised their two teenage sons together. They have a small mountain of legal paperwork they have to deal with to get most of the rights of married couples. My friends L and K were married by a minister in Santa Cruz and have two boys with the help of a sperm donor. While they have most of the rights of a “legally” married couple in California, they don’t have all of these rights. In K’s native Kentucky they would have even fewer of those rights. Finally I got caught in a legal loophole where I was not allowed to get the address of my son because I had no established parental rights, even though I was named as his father on the birth certificate and lived continuously with him for the first 7 months.

Let’s get these laws fixed properly please.