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From my reading, Reciprocal Beneficiary is a statement of your intentions, but there is no legal requirement that anyone public or private recognizes it. Civil Union is a legal status that confers certain rights under the law that can not be taken away.
Example, you work for a private company, they decide to offer group family medical to any employee who is legally married. A Reciprocal Beneficiary can not force the company to provide benefits to the partner, because it has no legal rights attached. Now that employee decides to be progressive and offers medical to partners, but they don't want any one to suddenly claim their neighbor as a partner so they demand proof of the relationship. The Reciprocal Beneficiary filing will satisfy that requirement. Now the company is purchased by RWCRWM Inc and they take away that benefit. Those that are married get to keep family coverage; those under a Reciprocal Beneficiary statement will lose the coverage. However, under HB-444, an official civil union bears the same weight as a marriage as far as the status of the individuals, so all benefits attached to marriage attaches to civil union.
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And with all that... the word marriage needs to be removed from the state laws... and left for use at the church where it belongs.
But that is not what some people want, they want to change the meaning of the word marriage. And if they get to change the meaning of one legal term, they will start on another... then another... and so on...
Best to just remove it.
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I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
HBAT
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I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
The Wilder Side Of Hawaii
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"A reciprocal beneficiary relationship is a legal relationship...." quoted from hawaii.gov website.
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"......but there is no legal requirement that anyone public or private recognizes it. Civil Union is a legal status that confers certain rights under the law that can not be taken away....." quoted from bob.
agreed.
"chaos reigns within.
reflect, repent and reboot.
order shall return."
microsoft error message with haiku poetry
"a great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
w. james
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quote:
Originally posted by Jon
And with all that... the word marriage needs to be removed from the state laws... and left for use at the church where it belongs.
But that is not what some people want, they want to change the meaning of the word marriage. And if they get to change the meaning of one legal term, they will start on another... then another... and so on...
Best to just remove it.
Excellent! Mahalo!
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Actually, the U.S. has already changed the definition of marriage twice, both by federal legal decisions. First, by supporting the right of blacks to enter into a legal marriage after the Civil War. Previously they were treated as cohabitants and either of the "spouses" could be yanked by their owner and sent elsewhere. At the time this was controversial, to say the least. Then, in 1967, the rules and legal definition of marriage was altered in sixteen states (as I remember) by striking down their miscegenation statutes to support the right of separate races to marry, black and white in the particular Supreme Court case. This was also controversial and caused a lot of outrage in the affected states. Such was the state of race relations back then. So in 2009, after decades of cultural change, it doesn't seem a stretch at all to recognize that same sex couples are citizens too, and entitled to the rights and privileges already enjoyed by opposite sex couples.
However, I don't really care about the definition of marriage. There are really too many definitions in this world for a nation based on freedom of religion to write laws defining marriage as just one kind that aligns with a particular religious conservatism. For a long time I have had the same opinion as Jon (common ground for once!) that the government should be out of the business of defining marriage. Beneficial relationships, or whatever you want to call them, should be legally defined by our civil government as civil unions specifying all the civil issues pertaining thereto. Whatever the heck you want to define as marriage should be you and your partner's kuleana and carried out as you please in whatever institution you choose. Sign your papers at the Civil Union office and then go off and do whatever means most to you and not worry (or try to prevent) others from doing whatever means most to them. In my opinion, while the Hawai'i state legislature might be moving the laws progressively with the proposed civil union law, I think they are still sweeping the real problem under the rug.
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You may want to look deeper than in the the Blacks and legal marriage, the definition of marriage did not change, the definition of "man" and "woman" changed.
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I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
HBAT
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I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
The Wilder Side Of Hawaii
Posts: 859
Threads: 10
Joined: May 2008
Because when the country was young it wanted to promote population growth and stability... that Marriage provides both.
quote:
Originally posted by esnap
I have always looked at marriage as a religious thing.
I can't understand how the government has jurisdiction over a religious ceremony or union.
quote:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
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I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
HBAT
-----------------------------------------------------------
I do not believe that America is better than everybody else...
America "IS" everybody else.
The Wilder Side Of Hawaii
Posts: 1,595
Threads: 111
Joined: May 2007
Quote:
"Because when the country was young it wanted to promote population growth and stability... that Marriage provides both."
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I'm sure this is true. I do wonder though, what the statistics are on the stability of relationships between heterosexual couples and same sex couples.
