Is marriage an antiquated institution that should be eliminated?

Great Debates
1

Note: For the purposes of this thread, I’m talking about marriage in the legal sense, not whatever Religion X chooses to do with its adherents.

I’d like to hear some views from both sides (if there even is an anti- side here). I’m not sure where mine lie, so I’m open to convincing…

Some background: This question recently came up during a classroom discussion on gay marriage, and it really got me wondering. Here is this fascinating socio-legal construct that grants certain privileges to people in a very specific type of arrangement, namely (theoretically) committed long-term heterosexual two-member relationships. This leaves out all the LGBTi folks, polyamorous people, multi-wife/multi-husband arrangements, sugardaddies, single parents, long-term unmarried partners, closer-than-your-spouse best friends, people who love animals more than any other human, etc. – all of which are very real situations in today’s society. Do the historical reasons for emphasizing the “traditional” model still apply today? Is it socially desirable to continue to grant married couples special benefits while denying them to people in other types of relationships?

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve seen so many failed marriages (my dad has two, my mom one, my uncles one each, my mom’s best friend one, etc.) and keep hearing about ever-increasing divorce statistics that I’ve long since lost faith in the concept, so granted I’m biased to begin with. The latest gay marriage situation in California further left a bitter taste in my mouth, and I swore I’d boycott marriage in favor of civil unions until marriage is available to everyone. But then I wondered… why do it even then? Aside from enriching DeBeers, what are the pros of the whole idea?

I’m cautiously open-minded and I’m definitely listening, so please share your thoughts.

2

There’s a similar thread in GD, but that one is more about letting everyone get married whereas this one is about letting no one be married. Instead of expanding the rights to some arbitrary type of human-human/human-anything relationship, can the same rights (financial benefits, medical decision-making, citizenship, etc.) be need- or merit-based, not relationship-based (and if a recipient must be specified, allow it regardless of relationship)?

3

Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.

4

I think it makes sense that marriage, as most people think of it, be a religious /spiritual ceremony with absolutely no legal implications.

Then allow people to enter into civil unions that may be defined however they like; most can be covered with a standard contract, others may set up custom contracts as fit their situation. Then these relationships will be covered by contract law instead of current law. This allows heterosexual, homosexual and various polyamorous situations to be covered, or not, as people see fit.

It also would require a contract up front and (more) clearly understanding what legal situations they are getting into.

“I, Shibb, being of sound mind, do enter into this contractual relationship with (name), hereafter referred to as Mrs. Shibb, foresaking all others (see subsection C, clause I on Infidelity)…”

5

No. Maybe it should be expanded (e.g. to include gay marriages), but it should not be eliminated.

Ed

6

Um… care to expand on that, suranyi?

Personally, I think that the legal aspects of marriage should be completely replaced by civil union contracts. If a couple wants to get married, they just file a copy of their contract. If a couple wants to get married in a church, they just file a copy of their contract and then have their ceremony performed by the appropriate religious leader.

Sadly, I think this is an uphill battle- because this will just give the other side an emotional banner: “They want to destroy marriage!”

Sigh.

7

People may want to be married by the state, not by any church or other organization. For example, by a judge. That’s extremely common nowadays. Your proposal would make the ceremony with a judge into something qualitatively different from that performed at a church, say. I don’t think people would want that.

Beyond that, I want the state to recognize that I am married.

I think I’m far from alone in this feeling.

P.S. I’m not on the other side: I’m in favor of gay marriage. I’n in favor of ALL marriages.

Ed

8

Isn’t that what they’re doing with a marriage license? I don’t really see the point of requiring a contract up front. I can tell you that having been married for almost eleven years, I would not have anticipated how we would have grown together and some of the things that were important to us when we married are all but forgotten. Some of the things that are important to us were born out of the marriage and would not have been considered at the time we were married.

Finally, I don’t think our marriage requires any written guidelines or rules. We seem to be operating just fine without a written contract. So have my parents who are in their 39th year of their first and only marriage.

The fact that it doesn’t work out this way for everyone is not an indication that there’s something wrong with legal marriage itself. I would say that the secret to a long-lived marriage is marrying the right person for you, understanding that your mate is as human as you are, and nurturing the relationship so when you grow into different people as you age, you grow together.

But hey, I also don’t think marriage necessarily has to be forever if the parties don’t want it to be. What’s wrong with enjoying what works for as long as it works and moving on when it stops working? It’s part of emotional growth, isn’t it?

9

Actually, I didn’t say anything about a judge. Why would a judge even be involved? All you’re doing is filing a contract. If you want a ceremony, you can have one- but it wouldn’t be necessary.

Maybe I wasn’t clear enough. I think that all civil unions should simply be contracts between two people (or more, if the details can be sufficiently hammered out). File the paperwork, and poof- you’re “married” just as much as anyone traditionally married is now.

If you WANT a religious aspect to it, file the paperwork and then have a ceremony in your church. Heck, just sign the papers at your church and have them send it in after they perform the ceremony. Poof- you’re married.

There’s no difference between the two. All it does is remove the religious aspects from the secular. The two do not contradict each other. This way, an atheist couple is just as married as a theist couple. A gay couple is just as married as a straight couple. The only difference is that the theist couple had a ceremony in a church.

10

There’s nothing wrong with marriage, except that at its roots it’s a religious institution, which means that homosexuals can’t get married because it somehow damages existing marriages. Replacing all (future) marriages with civil unions changes nothing- except that now the various churches have no say in who can or can’t get married.

Alternately, allow anyone to get married to anyone. However, as Prop 8 showed us, this isn’t acceptable to some people.

Requiring two separate but equal institutions (traditional marriage and civil unions) is making things overly complicated- and “separate but equal” never seems to stay “equal”.

11

Is marriage as a legally-recognized institution with certain rights not provided to the non-married socially desireable? In my opinion, it is.

The reason is quite simple: it is socially desireable to foster existing long-term sexual, romantic familial relationships between two adult people, for a whole host of reasons:

  • for those with children, such long-term relationships have on average a positive effect on childhood development, care and nurture;

  • for those with or without children, such long-term relationships have on average a positive effect on care and nurture of each other (a married partner is more likely to care for a sick, injured, depressed, or otherwise in difficulties person than an friend or collegue);

  • It acts as a pooling of risk, to an extent. My wife lost her job in the recession but it wasn’t a disaster for her because I didn’t.

The other forms of relationship are all very well, but they do not perform these functions, or not to the same extent. I have a very good friend and if she was out of work I’d help out, but I would not share my last dollar with her as I would my wife; she doesn’t help raise my kid; and if I get sick I can expect her to visit every day or so - not stay by my bedside feeding me soup.

The exceptions are long-term committed relationships, and they already have some recognized aspects of “marriage” (i.e. “common law”) - and of course committed gay partners, which CAN be married in my jurisdiction and SHOULD have the right to marry everywhere (in my opinion), precisely because they, too, fill these functions.

12

Well, it should come as no surprise that I disagree with this. It doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) matter a bit whether marriage is rooted in religious tradition or if there was some non-religious marital equivalent prior to written history. The fact is that due to the tendency for humans to treat one another unfairly, marriage was co-opted as a legal contract wholly separate from any spiritual overtones. The government doesn’t see religious unions any differently than non-religious unions so long as they file their marriage license and follow all the rules to legalize the union.

The only people that think that same-sex marriage is damaging to opposite-sex marriage are the people who are eager to inject religious-based morality into civil life. Stop associating the legal contractual marriage with the religious spiritual marriage. They aren’t the same and the church has no business interfering with the state’s rule of law. The church can’t say who can and can’t get legally married, and they should mind their own damn business.

13

This, of course, I completely agree with. However, if they do decide to try this crappy alternative, I’d be fully inclined to have my own marriage redefined as a civil union (if my husband was so equally inclined), just to muddle things up further. There’s no way in hell I’m going to align myself with hateful people.

14

Now I really don’t understand you. Do you think atheists can’t get married now? There are lots of atheist married couples around right at this moment, and they are just as married as any couple that got married in a Catholic church. There already is no necessary connection between marriage and religion. What there is, is a connection between marriage and the state. And I think that should be kept.

Ed

15

Okay, so we’ve gone over the replace-marriabe-with-civil-unions before, but what about just flat out no marriage? To be more precise, any marriage you want, but the government doesn’t give a damn. Not that I think this is either a) practical or b) necessarily good, but what would be the consequences? Now, I’m not married, I’m not a lawyer, so I’m surely missing certain things, but here’s what I see for the current effects of marriage:

Custody of children - AIUI, biology counts, but marriage counts too. Also for child support, occasionally from what I’ve heard.

1) Tax effects - don’t know what they are, but I know there are changes in how you file.

2) Visitation rights in hospitals and such - I don’t know if this is a legal issue or hospital policy.
**
3) Health insurance/other benefits** - adding spouses to policies and the like.

4) Wills/living wills - who gets what, who gets to decide what after you’re (brain)dead.

I guess my real question is, why is the government involved in most of this stuff? Taxes are the only really necessarily-governmental issue, and I wonder if we really need to change tax laws based on marriage. What are the pros and cons?

For the rest, I see them as primarily legal issues - a will or living will could clarify who gets what rights, and I don’t see a pressing reason why the government needs to be involved in the rest. Leave insurance and hospital issues up to the individual institutions, or if necessary, let anyone specify a designated visitor/emergency contact/insurance recipient.

Of course, the change would be a huge bureaucratic mess, and the benefits probably don’t outweigh the drawbacks, but are there any inherent reasons that the government ought to recognize only one kind of relationship? To me, it’s about on par with the government issuing ‘friendship licenses’ that change your tax status.

16

Why are the ones arguing for the elimination of marriage precisely the ones that aren’t married?

Ed

17

Because we don’t have a stake in the continuance of the institution?

18

I’m married and I think it’s a bit ridiculous. We mainly got married for the tax benefit and so my company would shell out benefits for her during a relocation.

19

I think aside from taxes and entitlement to gov’t programs and the like, most of that stuff can in fact be done through living wills etc.

The “rights” of marriage legally speaking seem to me mostly like a lot of what you might call “safety net” rights: stuff that can kick in if you lack the means or incentive to plan out in detail this sort of thing with your lawyer (and how many people have a lawyer on call? Many do and many more don’t).

20

Sure, atheists can get married. However, if there’s anything that Prop 8 taught us, it’s that theists believe marriage belongs to them. Separating the religious aspects of marriage from the secular aspects will remove their ability to bitch when marriage gets “redefined”. Allowing civil unions (through the state) with non-binding marriages (through their choice of church) resolves the situation nicely, without the church complaining when the state changes the rules and allows non-traditional marriages. The church would be free to say, “Homosexuals can’t marry”, but would be prevented from telling homosexuals that they don’t get the rights that civil unions would allow.

I don’t understand why this is such a difficult concept.

And, for the record, I’ve been married for eleven years now.