TracyW: If you want to abolish the state entirely, that’s one thing. But if you’re still going to have a legal system, recognising marriages strikes me as a logical thing for it to do.
This involves an elementary mistake. If Gary thought that the only form of “legal systems†available were monocentric legal systems administered by territorial states, then he would be “contemplating a role†for the state in adjudicating land disputes (say). But he doesn’t think that. So inferring that his comments about a “legal system†entail a role for a government to administer the legal system is premature. (Gary is in fact an anarchist and advocates the general and complete departure of the state from legal systems, not only in the case of marriage.)
TracyW: With over-lapping, competing, polycentric outlets, what’s the process for deciding if A made such a commitment to his girlfriend?
I don’t want to be rude, but a question like this strikes me as little more than a belligerent lack of imagination. Can you really not figure out some minimally creative way that people might try to deal with this? You might start by asking around. Or you might count on the parties to the dispute to provide evidence of a past public commitment one way or t’other by A (since, if they intend to have their claims taken seriously, they have an obvious incentive to point out the basis for those claims). In your imagined case, if we presume that we’re living in a community where the local norm is that the next-of-kin will be presumed to speak and decide for a patient who is unable to speak or decide for herself, then, given that context, either (a) A has taken it upon herself to publicize an explicit waiver of this presumption, and to vest the decision-making with someone else; or (b) A has taken it upon herself to publicize an explicit choice that someone should be considered her next of kin (for example B, which A might have done when she married B), or (c) A has not taken it upon herself to do either of these things. Ex hypothesi, we were supposed to assume that (a) was not the case, but you said nothing about whether (b) had been done or things had been left to (c). If (b) had been done, then of course there is a perfectly clear answer, and whoever did the publicizing of A’s marriage to B would presumably also have an interest in making it known should the question ever come up whether B really was A’s next of kin. (And in any case B would have every reason to point the doctor to these folks if the doctor had any questions.) It would then of course be up to the publicizing folks to produce any documentary evidence that the situation might call for. (Maybe they didn’t keep any documentary evidence of a public ceremony. If so, they’re evidently not very good at documenting marriages, and I expect anyone who seriously cared about the outcome would want to entrust the formalities with somebody else.) In case (c), then it seems like A didn’t really care too much about making sure that B would be able to make decisions for her, and the best that we can do is to rely on whatever local conventions may have developed for sorting these things out. (If A is a grown adult, and A and B have been living together for years, with or without explicit commitments about next-of-kin issues, then I suspect a local convention that strongly favors the parents in the absence of any explicit declaration is likely to lead to some pretty unjust outcomes. But then that’s a reason to develop some different social conventions.)
And if A is thinking ahead of time, and wants to sign a contract to keep his parents out of the decision, how can he do so in a way that will stick if his parents don’t agree to any such contract?
Easily. A does not need parental agreement to designate someone else as his proxy for medical decision-making (or any other kind). It’s not a “right†that they have to waive (A is their child, not their property); it’s a privilege that they have as long as A still consents to give it to them.
I agree that in an anarchist society there would be definite interest for both parties to agree on an arbitrator when signing a contract, which would get around the problem with polycentric, overlapping outlets …
Well, this seems like an odd way to put it. I deny that there is any “problem with polycentric, overlapping outlets†to be solved. Choosing one outlet among many is not the same thing as solving a “problem†with having many outlets; when I say, “Let’s go to Cottage Inn for dinner tonight, not Blue Nile,†that’s not exactly solving some “problem with polycentric, overlapping†competition in food.
So why seek the departure of the state from this particular area?
Well this seems simply like a flat denial of the central problem that Gary’s comments were introduced to discuss (the problem that gay couples, among others, have in dealing with these issues by means of a marriage through the exsting legal system). Because it is not actually something the state does reasonably well. Notably, the state currently engages in extensive discrimination against those who attempt to make use of existing legal forms for handling these situations; it fails to serve the specific real-world needs that you claim it is serving “reasonably well†for significant numbers of couples. There are three ways of trying to deal with these problems: you could deny that these forms of discrimination really are a problem (i.e., there’s some good reason for them); or you could try to deal with them by urging the state to make those legal forms of recognition more general and universally available, without changing the monopolistic control over the recognition of marriages (and family relationships more broadly); or you could try to deal with them by getting rid of the monopolistic control over the recognition of marriage (so that other kinds of social entities, non-institutionalized social processes, social conventions, etc. could emerge to handle it, for those who wish for an alternative to the current norm). But given left-wing market anarchist commitments to LGBT liberation (among other left-wing values), a left-libertarian is hardly going to deny that there is any problem here. And given left-wing market anarchist commitments to anarchism, there seem to be some strong reasons to favor the radical and anti-statist solution over the reformist and statist solution. One reason being the great likelihood that, whatever reforms you may be able to make in the short-term under the right circumstances, anarchists typically point out the likelihood that any monopolistic, politically-administered social entity is going to be captive, to a lesser or greater degree, to dominant social norms and political power structures. Thus, when you write:
It strikes me as much more convenient for there to be a central registry of marriages.
… I’m inclined to doubt that it really is as “convenient†as you think it is for everyone concerned. It might seem more convenient, if you haven’t got any worries about subjecting the definition of marriage to a uniform, centralized community monopoly in a moral and religious environment where many people have deeply conflicting ideals about marriage. But many people (LGBT people among them, not to put too fine a point on it) may have some reasons for thinking that community monopolies will tend to reflect some pretty strong bias in favor of the dominant ideals of marriage in the community, and may not allow a space for alternative ideals. Certainly this has been the outcome so far.