Is marriage obsolete?

Great Debates
1

Here in Maine, there is a big controversy over a ballot issue that would, if passed, allow same-sex couples to marry.

The rationale is always equal rights, which I can sort of understand. But I have a hard job equating such an arcane and restrictive institution as marriage with any concept of “rights.” It’s akin, in my book, to the “right” to sell oneself as a slave.

Anyway, I don’t care to debate the merits, or lack thereof, of same-sex marriage. Quite frankly, I grew weary of that discussion when the issue was on the ballot a few years ago (where the legislature passed a law allowing same-sex marriage, but it was overturned through a “People’s Veto,” which is allowed by Maine’s constitution).

What I’m interested in debating is the merits of the institution of marriage itself.

I figure the old “ball and chain” metaphor came about for a reason. Joking aside; does the government really need to recognize the union of any two people? We have things in place now to force men to take responsibility for the children they sire (child support laws), whether they are wed to the mother or not.

The idea of political alliances stemming from marriage is about as foreign a concept in this modern world as snowfall in Hawaii.

I think, in this modern age, that marriage is obsolete. There is little reason, beyond child rearing, for two individuals to be joined at the hip until “death do us part.” And surely, if they wish to be, they don’t need any form of licensure from a government to cohabitate for as long as both parties are willing.

Some may say it is a religious thing; and to that end, I am inclined to agree. Those who wish to practice the ritual should be not be prohibited from going to a church, synagogue, temple or mosque in order to have the blessing of the various religious authorities placed on their union. But again, I see no reason for any such things to involve the government.

So what say you all? Is marriage [becoming] obsolete? Or do you think it still has some place of value as a civil institution? I feel that as long as there are religious people, it will hold value to them, but I see no reason for the continued existence of it from the point of view of the state.

2

gay marriage will lead to gay divorce which will lead to society either accepting how men are treated unfairly in divorce, or ignoring how unfairly men are treated in divorce. But there will be an equal protection violation nonetheless.

3

It’s useful to have the government recognize the union because there is a need to recognize that two people are acting as one in certain matters. Things like property rights, child custody, medical decisions, etc. It’s true that two dating people can setup legal documents for all the same things, but getting married is like a shortcut for all that. The intention of marriage is to stay together forever, so lots of legal decisions need to be made along the way. Without marriage, your boy/girl-friend would not have any intrinsic rights with regards to your affairs other than what you have specified in legal documents.

The thing that people get wrong about marriage is that they look at it like a lifetime jail sentence with no chance of parole. People should go into marriage with a realistic approach of wanting to be with the other person forever, but if it doesn’t work out then move on amicably. If you do not feel that you want to be with the person forever, don’t get married. Don’t get married if you’re being pressured to or if it’s just the next checkbox in the steps of a relationship. You should only get married because you want to be with that person forever.

4

People like pairing up, and people want there to be some sort of legal framework for doing so. So long as voters still want this legal framework to exist, it will exist.

5

For better or worse, in our society we organize ourselves into nuclear family units. Unfortunately sometimes members of a nuclear family find themselves in a dispute with other family members, and as arbiter of last resort the courts get pulled into such disputes. This legal area is called “family law.” Nuclear families are typically made up of people related by blood, but two non-blood relationships are also nearly universally recognized - marriage and adoption. Regardless of what the law does or does not say, in our society we’re going to have people entering into such relationships, and sometimes getting into disputes where the courts will be called upon to decide matters.

We really have no option to not have legally recognized marriages so long as people are going to make pair-bonds, have kids, and then get into custody disputes. Unless you think that the existence or not of a marriage-like relationship is irrelevant in child custody disputes (say, between a widow/widower and the deceased partner’s parents), or you think that the courts should refuse to adjudicate such disputes and just leave people to resolve them with duels or something.

6

I have a feeling this thread is going to be one huge circlejerk of marriage conspiracy theories meaning no cites or anything of merit or substance.

7

Would you mind elaborating on your position here? I’m not sure what a marriage conspiracy theory is (it sounds like something from a soap opera) so I don’t know where you are going with this. It sounds like you are saying the whole discussion is stupid or pointless, and that’s discouraged here.

8

Sure.

I spent a lot of time reading men’s rights forums and a lot of them just wanted to promote a conservative agenda. It’s funny that when you go to a forum, there’s always a politics sub-forum. Many of them secretly wanted to take away women’s rights.

My position is that there’s nothing wrong with marriage. It’s not this big conspiracy that some men make it out to be (i.e. hypergamy, family courts favoring women, cops favoring women in domestic violence cases, etc.). A lot of these people think that all women are secretly out to screw men over.

If you’re in a long-term, serious relationship with a woman, she’s going to want you to marry her. And it won’t be because she wants to screw you over. It will most likely be because she wants to spend the rest of her life with you.

9

Hawaii gets snow every winter.

10

In practically all jurisdictions in the US, it’s possible for any two adults, even those who are immediate relatives, to form a type of civil union.

There would be a ton of paper work - power of attorney, amending property titles to include the other as joint owners… there would be a few things that may not be accomplished the same - employer sponsored health insurance for example. But once all that stuff is done, two people would pretty much be the same - from a contractural perspective, the same as married.

And as far as the gov’t/law is concerned, that’s what a marriage is. It’s a civil contract between two people. One main difference is that in most instances, a marriage is a verbal contract entered into in front of witnesses and documented by a member of the clergy or other approved legal officiant. This varies by state. Then end result is pretty much the same, but it was accomplished without so much as a single document signed by both parties (again, varies by state, and even by counties within the same state.)

The only real (perceived) difference is the social construct. And some people would like the same social construct available to same sex couples.

The real question is, I think, does a change in the law equal a change in the social construct of a given institution. Legally/contracturally, yes. But socially?

11

There’s your first problem. :wink:

::Feigns astonishment.::

Yeah, that’s a small minority position. It’s possible stevenova subscribed to it, but most people don’t.

12

Somehow, I knew that would be a response… just when I thought I had a good simile, you had to go and ruin it for me. Thanks. :stuck_out_tongue:

Suffice to say, politically arranged marriages aren’t that common anymore. At least not in the western world.

13

That can’t be the reason. She can spend the rest of her life with you without marriage.

14

That is a good question. Yes would be my first thought, but not immediately. It’s something that would happen gradually over time. It wouldn’t be for 100% of the society. The civil rights movement of the 1960’s eventually led to a general societal condemnation of racism, but it did not eliminate it altogether, unfortunately.

If the LGBT community gets its way, there will be a broader acceptance of them over time. Still, there will be pockets here and there that will not accept it for a variety of reasons. I suspect those pockets will diminish as time goes on, just as the number of (vocal) racists has diminished from what it was in the era of the KKK.

15

First - where I’m coming from. My SO and I have been living together for almost 20 years now, no marriage.

Originally, it’s wasn’t a big deal. We have no kids, and we had no wealth. A couple of used cars and college loans were about it. We were young, not prone to health problems, and invicible, as the young often are.

20 years later, we occasionally talk about getting married, not for the social reasons, but for the legal reasons.

There are many marriage benefits that can be replicated with a visit to a lawyer - A will, medical and legal power of attorney, designated beneficiaries on insurance. There are also a few that can’t be - He can’t inherite my pension plan. I can’t be on his health insurance. Social Security doesn’t get paid out to non-married SOs.

Marriage, as overseen by the government, is a short form version of all of that, and as that, I don’t see it going away.

16

I don’t think it’s obsolete. It’s simply another relationship configuration people are free to enter into. But it’s a convenient one if you are planning on sharing assets or raising children together. I mean one certain doesn’t NEED to get married to have sex or even raise children.

Fact is, I think most people eventually want someone to settle down with.

It’s more complicated than that. Once you get married, you now have to make decisions that affect two (or more) people. Your career, where you live, what you drive, who you hang out with, what you do in your spare time.

Then hardly anyone would get married. There’s a reason most people get married around the same age (26 for women…28 and 37, 42 and 55 for men. It’s because they say “I’m at that age when it’s time to get married…my girlfriend of three years is pressuring me to get married…all my friends are getting married…I guess I’ll get married.”

I mean if you really think about it, the idea of getting married to a person to be with them forever is stupid. The person you are marrying at 26 is not going to be the same person in 30 years.

17

There may be particular issues within marriage and family law that need changing, and that possibly will change in the coming years. But as for marriage itself, it is here to stay. For the entire history of humanity, people have wanted to pair-bond. In general, people don’t like to live alone, they want to partner up, to form a household together. As others have said on numerous occasions, the government doesn’t create marriage, it simply recognizes what already exists.

18

Yes, but by that same logic, I won’t be the same person either. But that’s irrelevant. The point is that we get to have that one difficult part of our life, the search for companionship and love, already handled by default. Sure, both people may change and become incompatible, but we as a society have determined the risk of that is worth it.

Plus, each person is not developing independently anymore, so there is a higher likelihood that they will evolve to still be compatible with one another. This isn’t absolute, and that’s why divorce exists, but it is part of the reason we choose pair bonding in the first place. Heck, people often just grow to like each other because they spend time with one another–that’s how arranged marriages don’t inevitably turn into mutual hatefests.

And there’s also this idea in our society that a marriage must be about love and how you feel about one another, when that’s just one possible reason for a marriage. As pointed out, it’s also useful for raising children. People overestimate how hard it is to grow to like one another.

19

Good lord, I hope not. I just printed out a hundred and seventy goddamned place cards.

20

Right. There are conflicting ideas that someone must find ‘the one’ or some such nonsense on one hand and the simple fact that most people decide they want to get married first and then just find the best available person available when it fits their life schedule on the other. If people really just waited for their best match, it could happen at any time in life and it would be smooth distribution across the ages. Like you say, instead we see people just magically finding that special love of their life in a remarkably narrow slice of time. Most people are actually signing up for marriage at a certain time in life rather marrying because they happened to meet a specific person.

I am strongly opposed to marriage in general especially for myself but also for most other people as well. I think it is the greatest scam across the ages. The simple fact is that only a small percentage of married couples have long-term happiness with their spouses or their marriage. About half of them get divorced and a significant percentage of the ones left standing put on a smiley face to the public while secretly or openly despising the hell on earth they have created for themselves but don’t have the courage or the means to get out of it. Marriage is a losing and destructive institution the majority of those who sign up for it. Married people are often like horror movie characters however. They lie to recruit people into their ranks with all kinds of false expectations so the cycle continues onto a new naive generation.