Separation of Romance and State

You know how we like to say that separation of church and state is as much for the benefit of church as for the benefit of state? Well, the following quote from someone at a Brown Democrats meeting, discussing the state of marriage equality politics in Rhode Island, reminded me of that idea:

There's nothing romantic about the term 'civil union.'

Yep. Nothing romantic about the term civil union. But, if I may, romance is not a legitimate state interest. I don't say that because I dislike government (if you're reading this blog, you probably know that), but because I'm a huge fan of individual private lives. Romance, it strikes me, is one of the most fundamentally private personal interests I can conceive. The reason I don't want the state trying to foster romance per se is that romance will best be fostered by letting people just commingle amongst themselves and have romantic interactions. There are other things that a government might want to foster, social stability and what-have-you, that are often given as benefits of marriage, all of which could in theory be promoted just as well by a system of civil partnerships conferring certain legal rights, privileges, and obligations, but with no supposed connection to "romance." Then you could let people who had strong romantic feelings about one another go have a big flowery ceremony and start calling themselves married, and maybe lots of those couples would want to get a civil partnership as well.

I don't have an enormous problem with having government do the marriage thing directly, so long as it obeys the good ol' Equal Protection Clause while doing so, but it's just a thought: getting the government out of the romance business would probably be a good thing for romance itself.