By wrong, I mean unethical, immoral, or unacceptable in the poster’s judgment.
I specified contemporary society for obvious reasons, and American because I am a narrow-minded jingoistic chauvinist with no respect or interest in other cultures. Well, not really. In fact, I really should change American to industrialized Western, but if I did I would have to get rid of this paragraph and it’s too late now. Sadly my keyboard has no backspace or delete button.
Anyway – would you judge a person to be acting immorally, unethically, or otherwise unacceptably to you if you knew she or he was marrying for financial security or other such motive rather than genuine affection for the prospective spouse? Would you think a person foolish or pathetic if he or she agreed to wed a person known not to feel romantic love for him or her?
If you feel such a union is wrong, please explain why. Likewise the other way around.
Only if that person lied to his/her potential mate about his/her reasons. Otherwise, there is no requirement that people only marry for love. There might well be some legal or financial reason to wed, and as long as the two people are honest with each other, go for it.
I think that as long as people are willing to say that under all circumstances that they are marrying for love that it is sufficient “American”. So if they are really marrying for money, or because they are sexually turned on by women with moustaches, etc. as long as they are willing to say it is for love, then go for it. For love of money, for love of sex, for love of her sister, etc.
I think that, as with any social contract, there’s nothing inherently wrong with getting married for any reason that two people agree with, provided there’s no coercion involved. I could easily see two people deciding it would make sense to be married for legal or financial reasons. Similarly, I know people who are legally married, but because they’re unwilling to go through the hassle of divorce, they just ignore it.
Of course, I personally make a distinction between the legal and social/ritual aspects of marriage because I view the former as really nothing more than a very common sort of contract, but the latter involves a lot of other complicated issues. As such, until we can actually sort these out (fyi, I tend to support a “civil union” for everyone approach), it means that honesty about ones motives that cannot be covered by the legal aspects is also important.
Exactly this. In almost all walks of life, I believe that consenting adults should be able to do as they wish (absent harm to others). Why should this be any different?
That being said, if a friend were contemplating such a marriage, I’d probably urge him to consider alternatives - there are other ways to get financial security, for example. But I wouldn’t consider what my friend was doing to be “wrong” or “unacceptable” - at worst, I might think it isn’t that great an idea.
My girlfriend and I love each other dearly, and have no problem with just living together. However, we also understand that as we get older, it will become neccesary for one of the other of us to have power of attorney should one of us get sick or die. We don’t want the state to make personal decisions for us.
So, as soon as her son turns 18 we are getting married.
Are you talking about a union where the couple is explicitly not in love? Not like “We’re living together because we love each other, and getting married because of the tax benefits”, but instead that they’re actually not fond of each other at all? Because in that case, yeah, I would disapprove of it. Not to say that it was immoral or unethical or unacceptable, but seriously, it’s a bad idea and seems rather unlikely to result in an increase in happiness all around.
Of course, it might be the case where external factors make an unloving marriage desireable or necessary, like in that recentish comedy where the woman has to get married to she won’t get a promotion. But in cases like that I can frown on both the marriage and the situation that forced it. I have frowns enough to go around.
I suppose it would be unethical to get married for the sole purpose of getting the spouse a green card. As long as we agree that it is unethical to disobey laws that are not deemed to be unjust. Although some people might view immigration laws as unjust.
I dunno. What about two people who liked each other well enough and who wanted to make a family together, but didn’t feel a deep and abiding passion? I can see someone wanting stability and companionship and a co-parent more than wanting to take the risk of a big emotional entanglement. I don’t see anything wrong with that, though I think both people need to be the sort of person who thinks in those terms. If it’s unbalanced it would never work.
I would say that those two folks do love each other, and it’s just an unrealistic notion of what “love” is that makes them think otherwise.
On the OP, I don’t know if such folks would be “married in the eyes of God”, or whatever, but that’s not my business, me not being God and all. If they want to enter into the same sort of social, cultural, and legal construct that people in love do, for whatever reasons, I see no reason to say they shouldn’t.
Dang, it. I heard about a study comparing arranged marriages to love marriages in India, just yesterday. Now I can’t remember if it was on NPR or on an old 60 Minute Science podcast. I went through a couple dozen of those.
They compared how much the two people loved each other, rather than any other criteria. Arranged marriages started out with the spouces being distant to each other, as expected, but their love tended to slowly grow. Love marriages, on the other hand, started out joyfully, but started to peter out between year five and seven. By year ten and later, folks with the arranged marriages loved each other more.
Only one study, and I can’t cite it properly. But it seems to support the idea that you can get married for other reasons and end up with love.
There’s nothing innately bad about arranged marriages. The custom gets a worse reputation than it deserves due to being associated with forced marriages.
I see no problem between any marriage/civil contract between consenting adults of any race, creed or sexual persuasion.
I know a pair that are both homosexual and they married to present the appearance of a normal married couple - they are both closeted from family and the military. They do their own thing sexually on the side with great discretion. They both decided they wanted a military career, and will be divorcing when they retire. I should ask them what would happen if the military legalized gay open relationships …
