06-21-2003, 11:00 PM
It is the legal aspect of marriage that needs to be changed or dropped entirely.
I think your logic throughout this thread makes a strong case for dropping it entirely. Or rather, it makes the case that the most equitable thing would be to not have any legal benefits from marriage. From a practical standpoint, this seems too radical as it would throw a monkey wrench into all sorts of social structures. But to me it would be more preferable to scrap legal marriage than to alter into something that deviates from the religious and social concepts on which it is based.
It may just be the way I was raised and the company I keep, but from what I've seen marriage is still mostly true to its customary roots. I'm trying to think of anyone I know who is legally married and did not have children with their spouse, and with the exception of a couple people with fertility problems who had to adopt, I'm coming up blank. I have almost no family or friends who have ever gotten divorced (coworkers are a different story entirely... guess it is just the company I keep). To me, marriage remains very much an institution about starting a family and spending life together.
Marriage is a very powerful thing and the legal aspects still seem minor in comparison. Perhaps I'm naive, but I think most people still feel this way. I suspect this is very much true for those who would push for this law the most. Are they fighting for legal benefits, or are they looking for a powerful foothold on the path to social acceptance? I suspect it is the latter... that this is really about being accepted as couples and not about financial equity. And that is exactly the reason many would also strongly oppose this; they don't want the social-religious institution of marriage to be weakened under the guise of legal equity. The legal concept and the social concept have never been identical , but they are joined at the hip and will drag each other in one direction or the other.
I think your logic throughout this thread makes a strong case for dropping it entirely. Or rather, it makes the case that the most equitable thing would be to not have any legal benefits from marriage. From a practical standpoint, this seems too radical as it would throw a monkey wrench into all sorts of social structures. But to me it would be more preferable to scrap legal marriage than to alter into something that deviates from the religious and social concepts on which it is based.
It may just be the way I was raised and the company I keep, but from what I've seen marriage is still mostly true to its customary roots. I'm trying to think of anyone I know who is legally married and did not have children with their spouse, and with the exception of a couple people with fertility problems who had to adopt, I'm coming up blank. I have almost no family or friends who have ever gotten divorced (coworkers are a different story entirely... guess it is just the company I keep). To me, marriage remains very much an institution about starting a family and spending life together.
Marriage is a very powerful thing and the legal aspects still seem minor in comparison. Perhaps I'm naive, but I think most people still feel this way. I suspect this is very much true for those who would push for this law the most. Are they fighting for legal benefits, or are they looking for a powerful foothold on the path to social acceptance? I suspect it is the latter... that this is really about being accepted as couples and not about financial equity. And that is exactly the reason many would also strongly oppose this; they don't want the social-religious institution of marriage to be weakened under the guise of legal equity. The legal concept and the social concept have never been identical , but they are joined at the hip and will drag each other in one direction or the other.