What are the shareholder votes?

Isn't that the Republican motto? The official party of the self-loathing closeted gay.

Based on Slashdot comments, the Texas mother that targeted a minor with a known mental issue, committed fraud to gain her confidence, then pushed her to suicide, anyone who would commit suicide is unfit to live, and the murdering mother did the world a service.

Another consequence is that because it digs deeper in the pile, it tends to put a lot of affirmatively-actioned applicants in over their heads, who otherwise wouldn't have qualified academically. So it actually increases the failure rates among those minorities. And this is somehow seen as evidence that we need more affirmative action...

I bought the Hacking Exposed books.... they were enlightening: Linux isn't really 'safer' than Windows; it just has a different set of vulnerable points (fewer of 'em, but penetrating deeper into the system and more likely to persist across versions). If you want true security, run Netware.

The patching system may be the real culprit, tho: It's been pointed out that when a Windows version becomes "unsupported" there's an abrupt cessation of newly-found vulnerabilities. Why? Because the bad guys discover the holes mostly (perhaps entirely) by reverse-engineering the official patches ... which with Windows, tend to be monofocused on a single bug, making the hole fairly easy to ID, and thereby paint a handy target on unpatched machines. Conversely linux updates are, to my grok, more likely to address a bunch of stuff at once, making any single hole harder to identify. Likewise, Windows service packs (which address a bunch of stuff at once) have not typically been followed by a rash of newly-found vulnerabilities.

There are no negative consequences to breaking a contract, outside the contract. If I call up and cancel my mortgage contract, there are set penalties, written into the contract, same with phone service, for those under contract. But the State doesn't punish you for entering into a contract lightly. For your scenario to work, the State would have to be involved in every contract, and punishing people that enter/break lightly.

That would result in the system we have now, with state sanctioned marriages, and controls on them.

Do you not know the definition of privileged communications? Or the few areas where it's applied?

A step-parent relationship is legally the same as an adoption here. The only reason to perform a step-parent adoption is to block birth-parent visitation. So step parent adoptions are rare. But, marriage to the parent of a child is the equivalent. One is the legal guardian of the children in the relationship, regardless of blood. So, if the birth parent in the married couple dies, the child's care is uninterrupted. The surviving parent is sole guardian, and legally the parent, unless the other birth parent had some formal custody, or wishes to pursue it.

But living together without marriage? The child of a sole-custody arangement is an orphan the same as if both parents died, and the non-married non-birth parent is treated as if a neighbor walked up after a car crash that killed both parents, and offers to look after the new orphans.

You should not rush to judgement.

So if a town dumps their toilet water into the stream, and downstream someone drinks it from the tap, that's not toilet to tap. Got it. Toilet to Tap has nothing to do with toilets or taps.

Do you want a list of the thousands of rights that come with marriage? The rights of survivorship are ignored by almost all, at least until their spouse dies suddenly, and they have to take over the life. When my dad died, I could have sued his partner for her house. They weren't "married", but had lived together for 10+ years, and lived as man and wife. As he made tangible improvements to the property, and as I'm his son, I have a right to whatever holding he had in that property. Since he wasn't married, I could claim against that as his heir. If they had been married, then I'd have had no claim. It would have passed to his wife without claim or ability for incident.

That's one of the thousands of rights that married people take for granted. In most cases, even a written living will is trumped by the "marriage" card. Though, that's changing. But a non-married partner will be ignored by all. And that's not changing.

Since someone doesn't agree with your fascist declaration of when life begins, you assert that their value of life is different. Nah, you are just a fascist aggressor who hates people.

I'm old enough to remember 20 years ago when the defenses of marriage were being erected, the arguments then were that marriage was an idea whose time has ended. The people came together to support marriage. More than one movement has talked about ending marriage, and all that did that failed. Quickly and miserably. So they moved on to working within the system.

There is no parsing of the OP that indicates he's talking about suicide.

I'm not keeping anything, or doing anything, or complicating anything. I'm stating that the rules are hard-coded into laws. Laws on property, inheritance, privacy, and everything else.

With your "marry anyone and divorce them anytime you want" rule, just marry everyone you do an illegal deal with. You can't be compelled to testify against your spouse. Divorce them after the deal, and the illegal acts are still under priveledged communication rules.

Abandon all that, and telling your wife that you hate the boss at work, can be used against you when they find that the boss was run over at work. So you either have to change millions of laws, or break the idea of "marriage" completely.

Which do you find preferable? Why?

Most people find it easy that they can have a single contract with no modifications or negotiations allowed (though separate property contacts, commonly called pre-nups, are allowed, though in practice, rare). The millions of laws written around marriage work together to define it in a contractual, legal, financial, and societal context. It may not be perfect, but it's better than abolishing a legal recognition of any relationships.

Yeah, and so the one law passed to do that is in what jurisdiction? Federal? They don't define "marriage" now, but put rules on it based on what the 50 states decide. So at a minimum, you'd have to have 51 states (DC is a "state" for most purposes), plus the feds, and get that 52 law bundle passed at the exact same instant for that to work. Plus, the "laws" in many places aren't laws, but regulations and administrative rules. Your "simple" law would have to change the IRS code, and hundreds or thousands of other federal regulations with weight of law. And the countless local rules on marriage. State law in Texas allows a minor to drink, under the supervision of an adult. So a 21 year old married to a 19 year old, can buy drinks for, and hand drinks to the "under-age" drinker. But that's not the same everywhere. Thousands of little things like that would make a massive change to the legal burden of formerly married people, once you abolish marriage, in the way you state.

You obviously don't even understand that, let alone have an opinion how it would work after. How does your one simple law fix under-age drinking law in Texas (a state matter) and the IRS code (not coded into law), at the same time?

"One simple law" change for multiple independent jurisdictions. With no understanding of law, or reality.

Why? That's the logical conclusion of rule elimination. Just because you live in a fantasy land doesn't mean the practical people are all wrong.

That's not what they said at the last independence vote, less than a year ago.