Yes, a marriage may include children, many do, but not all marriages include children, and not all people marry intending on having children.
I’m still wondering about the incapacity issues. Any lawyers care to check in on that one ? At the moment (AFAIK) a spouse can make medical decisions on your behalf if you are unable to. Can a contract be drawn up by an adult, granting another person the right to make medical decisions on their behalf ?
Polycarp, at the moment, I assume that American law restricts marriage to couple of opposite sexes, that aren’t too closely related. Are you proposing a law where anyone can join in a legal contract that resembles marriage? As far as the government is concerned, it is just a contract drawn up and notarised by a government official, the terms of which are completely at the discretion of the couple/group of people agreeing to the terms of the contract. Or are you proposing a marriage law which the government still defines, but one that is much more liberal/open/inclusive of different lifestyles ?
Actually, Polycarp brings up a pretty good point, which I meant to address (really!) in my original post, but didn’t: children. Although a private marriage between consenting adults does not in fact affect any other adults, any children of any partner in the marriage will obviously be affected greatly by it. As it happens, however, I think that for the most part current law with regard to child support, custody, and parental responsibility already has this covered; furthermore, with restrictive or permissive marriage laws, most marriages will be of the traditional sort envisioned by those laws, or close enough to it that the same standards should apply seamlessly. It only needs to be pointed out that no contract can alter the rights and responsibilities of any person who is not a party to it; thus, for example, Alice’s marriage to Bob should not (in and of itself) terminate biological father Carl’s visitation rights with his children, though of course if Carl and Alice are divorced, any agreement made then should be strictly applied.
I wasn’t formally proposing any particular thing in this thread, although I do have some definite views. It was merely my observation that (a) there seems to be a general consensus (with a vocal minority) that there ought to be a fair marriage law, and (b) a large proportion of Great Debaters do not feel that present laws are fair. (I agree.)
In token of this, I asked what a properly structured law on marriage ought to constitute, trying to spell out the question as thoroughly as possible, and sought for the logic behind the opinions expressed.
read a book about rape and the book claimed that our idea of marriage began when tribal women attempted to obtain some sort of protection from being constantly raped.
they would promise their favors to one man, who would protect them from the others.
i am not so sure we have evolved all that far when it comes to marriage today. but what the hell do i know, i am worse than married, worse than divorced, i live with my ex-wife.
Ooh. Starting a thread like this is tantamount to handing me a soapbox. Heh, heh, heh.
First of all, marriage as it stands is a complicated tangle of concepts and ideas. The first step is to untangle these. The religious component should be dropped by the goverment entierly, while the social/legal component should be clarified and made equitable to all.
Now, the second issue is the purpose of the whole thing. I don’t think anyone likes laws with unclear purposes. I propose two possible objective benefits to society from the idea we associate with marriage:
Assistance to those who are engaged in raising the next generation of citizens. Under this purpose, only parents would be eligible for benefits; couples without children, biological or adopted, would be no different from two single people living together. (This is not my preference, but I think it’s more rational than the current aimless system.) This, however, excludes a large number of people covered under the current definition of marriage.
Encouraging otherwise unrelated individuals to form stable societal units. This has been touched on already, and is my preference as well. Under this system there would be some requirements to demonstrate stability before recieving benefits. In order to be fair, this could also be expanded to cover any sort of societal unit, not just romantic partners–roommates, friends, etc. This is rather more expansive than the current concept of “marriage”, of course.
Given that the current definition of marriage is rather divorced from either of these two justifications, I think it would be best to abandon the term “marriage” entirely; leave that for the symbolic or religious value. The social/legal aspects would then be encoded in a more rational form as a technically seperate concept, though in practice there would likely be a great deal of overlap.
I’d like to think that my system would be superior to the current one and beneficial to all, but then, I may be biased…
