# Why do we have the legal concept of marriage? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 3, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223 "2009-08-03T22:19:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/41 "2009-08-05T01:02:59Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > No I have never offered an opinion on if most societies have practiced marriage. Again not my burden to disprove his statement. His burden to prove it. > > I think you have it the wrong direction, absolute statements have a large chance of being wrong. Absolute claims demand absolute proof. > [@begbert2](#): > > We recognize that _all_ absolute statements outside of, say, math and logic have a little disclaimer attached - something like “supported by everything I know based on all available information until something shows up to prove me wrong.” We all assume this disclaimer to allow reasoned conversation to continue without being constantly bombed into little peices by repeated attacks on not-completely-proven-beyond-complete-certainty statements. > > Well, we all assume that disclaimer applies except _you_, apparently. So if you must, keep bombing away. I’m sure it’ll help move the discussion forward in an insightful and productive way. Yes it has been voluminous though split between two issues. Also there can be posts that are made to a single person and posts made to the list. I do think it is important to reply to the statement, “You have to believe what I say unless you can prove me wrong”, with “the burden of proof lies with the person making the claim”. If the person keeps making the claim the reply keeps being valid. There seem to be large numbers of people making likely wrong headed decisions, some seem of serious consequence to society as a whole, because they view the reasoning process that way. I agree that most discussion can be made with the assumption that the person is making the statement that is effectively starting with “I think this to be true” and given the benefit of the doubt they mean that and they are willing to listen to what you have to say and have a discussion. In this particular case a person kept making absolute statements in such a fashion that I wasn’t willing to make that assumption. They did get around to later saying ‘it’s well founded speculation’ and ‘Yeah, I didn’t say “the vast majority of human societies practice marriage”’. Either of those would be fine in my opinion at the start. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/42 "2009-08-05T01:10:40Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > I think the OP said it was outdated as it exists with its current restrictions (in many places), I don’t think he was saying it be abolished. But either way I would also assume that he didn’t originate the thought. I like how he’s willing to read this into the OP, but he’s going to go to the mat over “all societies” versus “almost all societies.” ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/43 "2009-08-05T01:30:17Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > I think the OP said it was outdated as it exists with its current restrictions (in many places), I don’t think he was saying it be abolished. But either way I would also assume that he didn’t originate the thought. > [@Miller](#): > > I like how he’s willing to read this into the OP, but he’s going to go to the mat over “all societies” versus “almost all societies.” The words ‘all’ and ‘almost’ are both very powerful meaningful words. Their inclusion or exclusion can changes the whole meaning of a sentence. > [@TGWATY](#): > > First let me say I am not opposed to same-sex marriage per se. > > I think the whole concept is outdated. it seems that statements about it not being needed were more of a discussion method. the statement that it is outdated is ambiguous and could refer to its majority current form. there seemed to be statements that seemed to indicate that it be applied in a fairer manner which i took to be the overall message. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/44 "2009-08-05T01:49:41Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > The words ‘all’ and ‘almost’ are both very powerful meaningful words. Their inclusion or exclusion can changes the whole meaning of a sentence. Not really. Most reasonable readers, in most contexts, would parse the sentences, “All societies practice marriage,” and “Almost all societies practice marriage” as functionally identical statements. Especially as, for the purposes of the subject under discussion, the possible existence of a society that does not recognize any sort of long term pair bonding does not diminish the point being made, which is that marriage, in one form or another, cuts across racial, cultural, and temporal boundaries to an extent not often seen in other cultural traditions and institutions. The existence of a hypothetical non-matrimonial tribe in some hidden corner of the Amazon isn’t really significant. Further, if you want to suggest that such a society exists, I’d argue that the burden is on you to disprove **Lemur** ’s fairly self-evident statement about the ubiquity of marriage, as the existence of a society that entirely eschewed long-term pair bonding is, indeed, a highly extraordinary claim. All of which is beside my original point, which was amusement that you invented out of whole cloth an entire clause to the OP, while at the same time mulishly fighting it out over a point of minor rhetoric in one of the responses. It struck me funny what passes as an “obvious” intended meaning to you, and what does not. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/45 "2009-08-05T02:35:36Z")
> [@johnpost](#): > > The words ‘all’ and ‘almost’ are both very powerful meaningful words. Their inclusion or exclusion can changes the whole meaning of a sentence. > [@Miller](#): > > Not really. Most reasonable readers, in most contexts, would parse the sentences, “All societies practice marriage,” and “Almost all societies practice marriage” as functionally identical statements. I don’t view them as functionally identical especially in the fashion the statement originally was stated and restated, not how it was later modified. Maybe I’m not ‘most readers’, maybe I’m not ‘reasonable’, maybe your statement is false. > [@Miller](#): > > Especially as, for the purposes of the subject under discussion, the possible existence of a society that does not recognize any sort of long term pair bonding does not diminish the point being made, which is that marriage, in one form or another, cuts across racial, cultural, and temporal boundaries to an extent not often seen in other cultural traditions and institutions. The existence of a hypothetical non-matrimonial tribe in some hidden corner of the Amazon isn’t really significant. I agree that it may not be significant to the overall discussion to most of the people. It would have been significant to Lemur’s statement that all societies practiced it without exception. > [@Miller](#): > > Further, if you want to suggest that such a society exists, I’d argue that the burden is on you to disprove **Lemur** ’s fairly self-evident statement about the ubiquity of marriage, as the existence of a society that entirely eschewed long-term pair bonding is, indeed, a highly extraordinary claim. I don’t believe I ever made the suggestion that such a society exists, at least I never intended too, so I have no burden. I did state that the person making the factual claim had the burden of proof. I also said absolute statements demand absolute proof. I certainly got the feeling that the statement was made in a very absolute sense. > [@Miller](#): > > All of which is beside my original point, which was amusement that you invented out of whole cloth an entire clause to the OP, while at the same time mulishly fighting it out over a point of minor rhetoric in one of the responses. It struck me funny what passes as an “obvious” intended meaning to you, and what does not. The OP made statements of not opposing marriage. Made statements which seem to show its current unfairness. Said it was outdated. Overall it was ambiguous but I read it to wanting fairness not abolishment or that at least fairness would be acceptable. Go ahead and claim it couldn’t be taken by a person to mean that. Objecting to an absolute statement is not a point of minor rhetoric, especially when it’s made repeatedly before being modified. Making a statement that applies to ‘all’ and ‘almost all’ can change the whole conclusion of a statement. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/46 "2009-08-05T02:48:02Z")
How the fuck am I supposed to prove that no known society without marriage exists? Except by pointing you to the anthropological literature and inviting you to find a society that didn’t practice marriage. It’s like, suppose I said that no society has ever allowed brother-sister marriage. And I start listing the chinese, the japanese, the ainu, the cherokee, etc. In none of those societies is brother-sister marriage allowed. But all it takes is for you to point out that the Egyptian pharoahs frequently practiced brother-sister marriage to disprove my contention. See, it doesn’t matter how many societies I list that didn’t allow it, you just have to find one case where it was allowed. I specifically didn’t say “almost all”, because that would imply that I know of a few such societies. But that’s not true. I don’t know of any such societies. I INTENDED to make a categorical statement that no such societies exist, because–get this–that’s what I believe. Now, my belief may be incorrect. I admit that because I’m a fallible mortal human being, I might be mistaken. However, I have no reason to believe I’m mistaken, and unless someone gives me some reason to believe I’m mistaken–perhaps by point to some citation that proves me wrong–I’m going to continue to believe that I’m not mistaken. Jesus, do we really need to get into a pissing match over epistemology? All I said was that there are no known human societies that don’t practice marriage. If you think I’m mistaken, then show me one. But you whine that the burden of proof is on me. Except you can’t seem to think of any such societies yourself, and neither can anyone else. Which means I’m right and you’re wrong. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/47 "2009-08-05T03:05:57Z")
Relax, **Lemur** , I think most people are with you on this. **Johnpost** is correct to say that your statement has not been incontrovertibly affirmatively proven. However that does not mean that it is false, or that we are obliged to treat it as false, or that we behave unreasonably in taking it as true. I think most people will be quite happy to proceed on the basis that it is sufficiently likely to be true that it can reasonably inform our thinking on the legal recognition of marriage. As you point out, if your statement were false, it would be a trivial matter for **Johnpost** to show this by producing a single counter-example. **Johnpost** protests that there is no obligation on him to disprove your statement, and he is correct, but so what? I am sure he does a great many things not because he is obliged to, but because he wants to. If he has any interest in weakening or discounting your claim he is free to disprove it. The fact that he can’t be arsed to suggests to me either that he doesn’t greatly care whether it is true or false (which is hardly consistent with the effort he has put into this thread) or that he doubts that he could find a counter-example to disprove it – i.e. he also thinks your claim is likely to be true. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/48 "2009-08-05T03:55:42Z")
Fine with me if they do away with marriage! I see the writing on the wall. Young Miss Salinqmind will be free to shack up with one or more random dudes or women, crank out a series of kids, and generally behave like a chimpanzee, gibbon, or gorilla if she so desires. At least her father and I won’t be expected to fork over our rapidly diminishing money towards a wedding. I won’t have to go shopping for a mother-of-the-woman-in-a-committed-relationship dress and I won’t have to wave bye-bye as they go off on a honeymoon. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/49 "2009-08-05T15:07:12Z")
> [@TGWATY](#): > > I think the whole concept is outdated. I don’t know how you can make this claim. Are you saying that men and women no longer get together, pledging their lives to each other, and wish to join together as a family and to have children (at their choice)? If so, then it isn’t an outdated idea. And since so many people want to do it, it just makes sense for the state to set up a legal vehicle into which people can channel these relationships. For what purpose should the state try to ignore it? ---
**Author:** ![TGWATY](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b5e925/32.png) [@TGWATY](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TGWATY)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/50 "2009-08-05T15:55:26Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I don’t know how you can make this claim. Are you saying that men and women no longer get together, pledging their lives to each other, and wish to join together as a family and to have children (at their choice)? Sorry I have not posted until now. To clarify: my statements are not about marriage but about the legal classification “married”. The state did not create marriage through legislation. The state did not even exist when marriage evolved. And the social institution of marriage today is still prior to an and in no way dependent on its recognition by the state. People will still get married if the state ignores that they get married. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/51 "2009-08-05T16:08:13Z")
There has been a lot of back and forth between multiple people and it gets hard to tease out. As often in discussions replies overlap, points get overlooked and people do recompose their thoughts better over time and all the other frailties that happens with written communication between strangers. I will try to tease things without using the QUOTE function (which would be real work at this point). I will reply to both Lemur886 and UDS (my comment on post #20). Lemur in #8. “Marriage predates all human law, and likely predates Homo sapiens sapiens.”,“likely that our mating system arose before we became fully human.”, “So the legal concept of marriage, along with the religious concept of marriage, exists to recognize instinctual human behavior.” He gave examples of primate systems. That is a lot of claims. I replied in #12 that the bonobo was another primate system and that it’s hard to know what is instinctual behavior. (I seem to recall that human and primate behavior would change based on stressors). Lemur in #13. “Except there is not and never has been a human society that did not have marriage.” I replied in #17. “If you are making a factual claim then you should be able to provide proof for it.” (i used ‘proof’ in the common non-rigorous sense, ‘support’ would be a much better term that i should have used throughout).( in my experience in debate and discussion you need to support your position). Lemur in #18 through analogy said his claim was hard to prove but I should prove the exception. It seems that Lemur assumed my statement saying that he should support his claim was disagreement about marriage and not a statement about the discussion and debate process. This assumption persisted and others took that assumption to be true. In #20 I replied, “You are making the claim so you need to provide the proof. My two choices are not to accept your claim as true or to disprove it to your satisfaction… I have at least a third choice to think your claim is wild speculation and not bother with it.” (the third choice is my position, that it doesn’t matter to me if the claim of marriage was true or not. ‘wild’ is an extreme adjective the point could have been made with a milder or no adjective but the earliest statements of Lemur seemed very absolute which could be claimed to be extreme in regard to humans and primates). Lemur did restate his claim to be relative to his experience. I have no trouble with accepting such a statement as truthful. it was stated a number of times that i had to prove the exception. i replied each time that i didn’t have to (both because i never made a claim that there was an exception and no one has to believe someone’s statement to be true until they can disprove it to the claimant’s satisfaction). i did state a number of times that the burden of support is on the person making the claim. Lemur did supply support for his claim. He said if i wanted to find out his claim was true that i could look it up. with other people had discussions about if “all” was the same as “almost all” and similar. with other people there was discussion that people’s statements should be assumed to be prefixed with ‘i think this to be true’ or ‘to the best of my knowledge’. due to the tenor of Lemur’s earliest statements i didn’t think that was a assumption i would make. assumptions aren’t always automatic, sometimes they are conditional . Certainly my replies were too concise in spots, if i had been more verbose my points would maybe have been clearer and assumptions about what I was saying wouldn’t have persisted. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 5, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223/52 "2009-08-05T18:33:42Z")
I still think that horse is dead. > [@TGWATY](#): > > Sorry I have not posted until now. > > To clarify: my statements are not about marriage but about the legal classification “married”. > > The state did not create marriage through legislation. The state did not even exist when marriage evolved. And the social institution of marriage today is still prior to an and in no way dependent on its recognition by the state. People will still get married if the state ignores that they get married. How does this make legal marriage “outdated”? It provides the framework for services that all those socially-married couples _use_. And that other couples _want_. Clearly, legal marriage is still functioning fine. In my opinion, theway to become outdated is to be replaced by something better, that attracts people to it. When it’s clear that the new thing is the good thing and the old thing is the bad thing, then it’s outdated. Note that it’s not good enough for there to _be_ a new idea, or even for a few people to be using it; the new thing also has to have clearly supplanted and replaced the old thing in the eyes of most people. So, if marriage is outdated, what is everyone switching to instead? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-we-have-the-legal-concept-of-marriage/505223.md?page=2)