Sanctioned domestic partnership contracts are a legitimate government interest.

This resolution, in my mind, comes down to two fundamental questions that need to be answered: what fundamental role in the game of survival and adaptation in the universe does the construct known as "government" exist to approximate and serve, and does the encouragement of domestic partnership through the validation of domestic partnership contracts serve that role? The role of government I would name the purpose of government to be to fight that which does insult to the freedom of its citizens to be, as well as to codify for future reference what is not within our freedoms, and to allow people as a group to determine what constitutes explicitly acceptable behavior, both for the government itself and for the people who are members of it. These purposes are actually ethical imperatives, derived precisely from shared first principles set forth at the beginning of this debate. Such an investigation is laid out in the book The Rebel, by Camus. To make it succinct and perhaps overly brief, the individual exists, and the universe exists, therefore the other may exist. The other is equal to self by virtue of equal existence, therefore other must be treated as self, principally because equals ought be treated equally. Because of non-contradiction, that which the other may not do the self may not do, and that which the self may do, the other may do. Further, that which the other may not do is that which the self may prevent from being done, and that which the self would prevent from being done to self is also that which the self ought prevent from being done to others, as equals must be treated equally. This is further corroborated by many different sources of philosophy, not the least of which being our own constitution which has approximated it with the provision that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are inalienable rights, things which to which all people ought be entitled... it is an explicit declaration that all people ought be afforded the freedom to be. It is also supported by numerous religions, which have independently come to a vague and emergent understanding that we ought do unto others as we would have done to ourselves, that we ought not do to others that which we do not wish done to ourselves, that we are to be good to one another, etc (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11). With this in mind, there are certain problems of natural evil: people die, people have emotions which wrest control of their own bodies from their rational minds, people have needs and drives which they CANNOT ignore which otherwise limit their freedoms either in the requirement for action (where someone would, if free to choose, simply not do those things). It is the responsibility of all of us to reduce incidents where people or nature as it is are acting against the freedom of individuals to that same extent as we value our own freedoms. And because it takes time to reason out what particular classes of action may or may not be within our freedoms, and this problem of time itself impedes our ability to act freely (to act rather than to sit and process the appropriateness of our actions), we have a responsibility to codify and create tables of those classes of actions which are and are not within our freedoms, and thusly to codify such as law, as well as pool the resources of people for the purposes of reducing the influences of what may be referred to as "natural evil" as coordinated effort is more effective than uncoordinated effort, and by enforcing those laws through a division of labor. So from the intersection of natural ethical rights and responsibilities, and natural evil, there is a purpose and place and ethical authorization for government that can be clearly defined. It is not just the government's responsibility to provide for the public welfare because it is in some assertion of government's power but also because it is demonstrably the case from first principles and the state of reality. The necessity of domestic partnership in an imperfect world Given that it is thusly demonstrable that any government which might claim ethical authority must be in the business of providing for the public welfare, it is then necessary to ask whether or not the encouragement of domestic partnership is looking after the public welfare, and if the costs of such a pursuit might be better spent in some other way. First, individuals who live together rather than alone require less infrastructure than those who do not live alone. By not needing separate buildings or spaces, those living together in a space have reduced their demands upon the system which provides the resources for their activities. This reduction of costs itself is a boon in that the time people don't spend providing extra for these separate people, the more they can be spending doing more useful or interesting stuff or in acting freely, spending fewer raw materials or expending less available energy for their combined survival and freedom. In fact, sharable expenditures account for 60+% of low and middle income expenditures, when transportation costs are counted (13). That reduction, that "penny (of freedom) saved" is a "penny (of freedom) earned" across a wide sector of society, as societal effort is no longer responsible for those additional costs in the defense of the freedom of those people to be. For that reason if for no other, the government has a responsibility to encourage such situations of cohabitation through the offering of contracts which formalize the responsibilities between cohabitants and to provide incentives for engaging in such effort-reducing activities. Second, humans have a biological drive to find mates and keep them close. It is what happened to work well in the game of Darwinian evolution. Simply, the majority of humans have a driving need for companionship (14), and by arranging our living spaces in such a way that companionship is available, it reduces the effort to satisfy those drives for companionship (15). Again, this yields less opportunity costs towards the actual implementation of freedom because while people CAN choose to spend their time doing those things, they shouldn't HAVE TO. Thus encouraging and publicizing and taking measures to increase the longevity of such partnerships and cohabitation is within the general public welfare: it reduces the activities (and thus the opportunity cost) necessary to satisfy biological drives. Thus the argument is not that domestic partnership directly increases the public good, but rather its existence reduces the overall impact of other problems upon society as a whole, and in an effort to reduce these to their greatest extent, we should as a matter of course encourage domestic partnership to its greatest possible extent. In this way, it seems apparently that the provision of state sanctioned domestic partnership contracts constitute a legitimate government interest. Bibliography 1 Pim van Lommel. Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience 2 Morse, l., D. Venecia, and J. Milstein. 1989. Near-death experiences: A neurophysiological explanatory model. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 8 45-53. 3 Matthew 7:12 RSV 4 Analects 12:2 5 Udana-Varga 5,1 6 Mahabharata 5,1517 7 Sunnah (No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.) 9 Talmud, Shabbat 3id 10 Tai Shang Kan Yin P"ien (Regard your neighbor"s gain as your gain, and your neighbor"s loss as your own loss.) 11 Dadisten-I-dinik, 94,5 13 http://www.bls.gov... 14 Baumeister, Roy F., and Leary, Mark R. 1995. The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, Vol 117(3), May 1995, 497-529. 15 Cutrona, Carolyn E. 2004. A psychological perspective: Marriage and the social provisions of relationships. Journal of Marriage and Family Volume 66, Issue 4, pages 992"999, November 2004