Rhode Island Devalues Marriage and Partnerships

UPDATED after the jump. - Overriding their Governor's veto, Rhode Island lawmakers have decided to devalue both marriage and domestic partnerships by voting to give unmarried "partners" the power to plan funerals for each other - no civil union, no domestic patnership. This includes partners of the opposite sex.

I'll be interested in seeing further news coverage that reveals exactly what criteria the state will require to allow someone who has no legal or kinship relationship the ability to take control over someone's remains ahead of next of kin.

Is there a mininum number of times they will have had to smooch? Or can any platonic roommate claim to be a partner when the deceased is no longer alive to comfirm?

Unless I am missing something here, this in an assault not only on marriage, but on the larger family construct and registered domestic partnerships. The state could have created domestic paternships that included funeral planning authority, but chose not to. I can't imagine a court would, say, grant the female partner of a recently deceased wife who recently moved out of her marital home authority over the remains ahead of the deceased's legal husband.

Ray Henry has the Associated Press story.

Lawmakers backed the bill after hearing from Mark Goldberg, who struggled for five weeks to recover the body of his same-sex partner. Rhode Island does not recognize gay marriage, and state officials initially refused to release the body because Goldberg was not a relative.

I can sympathize with Goldberg - I have known best friends (longtime platonic roommates) where one passed away and estranged family had authority over the body - but from what the AP has reported so far, this smells like a really bad law.

Is this a backdoor set-up to prompt the very sort of court case marriage neutering activists hope will lead to a state court ordering the neutering marriage licensing? Otherwise, I don't understand why the legislature simply didn't create domestic partnerships. Maybe things will make a little more sense when there is some more reporting.

UPDATE: The article has been updated. The new stuff is after the jump.

[Continued after the jump.]

To qualify for funeral planning rights, a couple must be at least 18, have lived together for one year and prove they were financially dependent, for example, by owning property together or sharing a bank account.

So platonic roommates can qualify, by the sounds of it. The strange thing about this is that there are married people who are not financially dependent on each other - they keep different accounts, have a pre-nup, and only one of their names appears on any property deeds.

[Governor] Carcieri argued that state law already allows residents to designate people to plan their funerals. He said the requirements in the bill meant to prove a relationship were too vague.

I agree.

"Finally, this bill represents a disturbing trend over the past few years of the incremental erosion of the principles surrounding traditional marriage, which is not the preferred way to approach this issue," Carcieri wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

If lawmakers want to grant domestic partnership rights, they should put the issue on a ballot and let the voters decide, Carcieri said.

Exactly.

A handful of lawmakers opposed the move, including Rep. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, D-Woonsocket, who supports civil unions for gay couples but opposes [neutering] marriage. She objected to allowing people as young as 18 to qualify as domestic partners for the purpose of claiming a loved one's body.

Baldelli-Hunt said she could theoretically be stopped from planning a funeral for one of her children if they died while in a relationship that qualified under the new law.

"Do I have to lose my rights as a parent because my son is in an intimate relationship with an 18-year-old girl for one year?" she said.

It's a can of worms, and it is what happens when we fail to respect the meaning of marriage and family. Things like this move towards relagating marriage to a mere wedding ceremony, which is seen as little more than an excuse to party.