http://slate.msn.com/id/2085127/
Michael Kinsley says: privatise marriage. (I really like this idea—as he explains, it solves a whole lot of problems all at once. True, the institution of marriage is embedded into various laws and regulations, but as Kinsley says, “in all these areas, marriage is used as a substitute for other factors that are harder to measure, such as financial dependence or devotion to offspring.” And since we’re having to figure out how to measure these factors in order to recognise de facto relationships, why not go the whole way and abolish government-sanctioned marriage altogether?)