Kansans for Fair­ness is a group fight­ing against the anti-gay amend­ment on the bal­lot April 5. Not only would this amend­ment ban gay mar­riage (which is already against state law), it has this stu­pid language:

(b) No rela­tion­ship, oth­er than a mar­riage, shall be rec­og­nized by the state as enti­tling the par­ties to the rights or inci­dents of marriage.

That bans domes­tic part­ner­ships, civ­il unions, or any con­trac­tu­al rela­tion­ship between two peo­ple which grants the ben­e­fits of mar­riage. Is that any or all of the ben­e­fits? Pre­sum­ably this does­n’t inter­fere with inher­it­ing prop­er­ty, though it prob­a­bly changes how the estate fares in probate.

Atrios has dis­cussed what some of the banned ben­e­fits are (orig­i­nal­ly from here). I’ve high­light­ed the ones which would, if rec­og­nized by the state out­side of mar­riage, result in chaos:

Tax Ben­e­fits

Fil­ing joint income tax returns with the IRS and state tax­ing author­i­ties.
Cre­at­ing a “fam­i­ly part­ner­ship” under fed­er­al tax laws, which allows you to divide busi­ness income among fam­i­ly members.

Estate Plan­ning Benefits

Inher­it­ing a share of your spouse’s estate.
Receiv­ing an exemp­tion from both estate tax­es and gift tax­es for all prop­er­ty you give or leave to your spouse.
Cre­at­ing life estate trusts that are restrict­ed to mar­ried cou­ples, includ­ing QTIP trusts, QDOT trusts, and mar­i­tal deduc­tion trusts.
Obtain­ing pri­or­i­ty if a con­ser­va­tor needs to be appoint­ed for your spouse — that is, some­one to make finan­cial and/or med­ical deci­sions on your spouse’s behalf.

Gov­ern­ment Benefits

Receiv­ing Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and dis­abil­i­ty ben­e­fits for spous­es.
Receiv­ing vet­er­ans’ and mil­i­tary ben­e­fits for spous­es, such as those for edu­ca­tion, med­ical care, or spe­cial loans.
Receiv­ing pub­lic assis­tance benefits.

Employ­ment Ben­e­fits
Obtain­ing insur­ance ben­e­fits through a spouse’s employ­er.
Tak­ing fam­i­ly leave to care for your spouse dur­ing an ill­ness.
Receiv­ing wages, work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion, and retire­ment plan ben­e­fits for a deceased spouse.
Tak­ing bereave­ment leave if your spouse or one of your spouse’s close rel­a­tives dies.

Med­ical Ben­e­fits
Vis­it­ing your spouse in a hos­pi­tal inten­sive care unit or dur­ing restrict­ed vis­it­ing hours in oth­er parts of a med­ical facil­i­ty.
Mak­ing med­ical deci­sions for your spouse if he or she becomes inca­pac­i­tat­ed and unable to express wish­es for treatment.

Death Ben­e­fits
Con­sent­ing to after-death exam­i­na­tions and pro­ce­dures.
Mak­ing bur­ial or oth­er final arrangements.

Fam­i­ly Ben­e­fits
Fil­ing for step­par­ent or joint adop­tion.
Apply­ing for joint fos­ter care rights.
Receiv­ing equi­table divi­sion of prop­er­ty if you divorce.
Receiv­ing spousal or child sup­port, child cus­tody, and vis­i­ta­tion if you divorce.

Hous­ing Ben­e­fits
Liv­ing in neigh­bor­hoods zoned for “fam­i­lies only.“
Auto­mat­i­cal­ly renew­ing leas­es signed by your spouse.

Con­sumer Ben­e­fits
Receiv­ing fam­i­ly rates for health, home­own­ers’, auto, and oth­er types of insur­ance.
Receiv­ing tuition dis­counts and per­mis­sion to use school facil­i­ties.
Oth­er con­sumer dis­counts and incen­tives offered only to mar­ried cou­ples or families.

Oth­er Legal Ben­e­fits and Pro­tec­tions
Suing a third per­son for wrong­ful death of your spouse and loss of con­sor­tium (loss of inti­ma­cy).
Suing a third per­son for offens­es that inter­fere with the suc­cess of your mar­riage, such as alien­ation of affec­tion and crim­i­nal con­ver­sa­tion (these laws are avail­able in only a few states).
Claim­ing the mar­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tions priv­i­lege, which means a court can’t force you to dis­close the con­tents of con­fi­den­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tions between you and your spouse dur­ing your mar­riage.
Receiv­ing crime vic­tims’ recov­ery ben­e­fits if your spouse is the vic­tim of a crime.
Obtain­ing domes­tic vio­lence pro­tec­tion orders.
Obtain­ing immi­gra­tion and res­i­den­cy ben­e­fits for nonci­t­i­zen spouse.
Vis­it­ing rights in jails and oth­er places where vis­i­tors are restrict­ed to imme­di­ate family.

I high­light­ed the mar­i­tal priv­i­lege because I can see how it could be abused. But hon­est­ly, should­n’t every­one get to pick one close friend, a per­son who they want to be able to vis­it in the hos­pi­tal or prison, to live with, to make funer­al arrange­ments for, to trust with med­ical deci­sions, and declare that that per­son can­not be com­pelled to tes­ti­fy against you? What crim­i­nal would that keep out of jail? Not even mob boss­es would con­sent to let­ting a lieu­tenant make med­ical deci­sions in order to evade pros­e­cu­tion. The trade-off would­n’t be worth it.

If they just want­ed to say that mar­riage was “one man, one woman” that would be bad, but in a way that would be so gra­tu­itous I would­n’t care. It would just re-assert exist­ing law. But this stinks.

A sim­i­lar amend­ment in Ohio has made it hard­er to pros­e­cute domes­tic vio­lence between an unmar­ried, het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ple. After all, domes­tic vio­lence pro­tec­tion is an inci­dent of mar­riage, and they weren’t married.

This is bad pol­i­cy and a bad amend­ment. It also hap­pens to be bad pol­i­tics. If they left it to the guber­na­to­r­i­al pri­maries or the gen­er­al elec­tion, they could have used it as a cud­gel against all sorts of mod­er­ates. But they rushed it through. Only you, gen­tle read­er, can hold it back. See how you can help Kansans for Fair­ness and be sure to vote.