For those who haven't heard yet...

[marcmagus]

In this post, penknife informed the LJ community of Virginia's Marriage Affirmation Act.

The bill, whose full text can be read here, prohibits any same sex civil union or contract which "[purports] to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage".

Further commentary by Equality Virginia suggests that this could invalidate Powers of Attorney, custody arrangement, health insurance benefits, and wills involving same sex partnerships.

Comments

[marcmagus]

I'm sort of interested in what constitutes a "civil union, partership contract [etc.] purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage".

Does this only refer to such contracts which explicitly purport to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage? If so, any such contract which bestowed all the identical privileges and obligations, but never referred to marriage, would still be enforceable under this legislation, and it's easily circumvented.

If it refers to any contract which bestows any of the privileges or obligations which are a part of those accompanying marriage, they're in for a big mess, because marriage bestows a lot of privileges and obligations which are routinely bestowed by other contracts, many of which are a part of same sex partnerships. This would just be a total mess, and per force lead to selective enforcement until the whole thing has to get thrown out.

If it refers to any contract which bestows any of the privileges or obligations which are exclusive to marriage, it's unenforceable. As soon as a contract is entered into which bestows any of these privileges or obligations, said privilege or obligation is no longer exclusive to marriage. The only way I see to avoid this paradox is to retreat to the position of my previous paragraph.