Marriage

[howeird]

Couch surfing this afternoon brought me to the "We" channel, and an episode of Bridezilla which made me wonder why the homicide rate isn't sky high among fiancés. And it made me wonder about marriage, which led me to ponder the gay marriage thing.

What I believe:

1. Marriage is personal, a matter of the heart
1a. Legal marriage is mostly an artifact of religion.
2. Anyone should be able to marry anyone. Singular or plural.
3. The government should make no laws respecting marriage or the freedom to marry.
4. The government should get out of the marriage business entirely.

There is nothing which marriage laws cover which are not covered somewhere else in the law, except  tax tables, which shouldn't discriminate against people on the basis of marital status anyway. I'm surprised the "married filing jointly" loophole has lasted this long. Where's the ACLU when you really need them?

Comments

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

There is nothing which marriage laws cover which are not covered somewhere else in the law, except tax tables...

Marital Confidences Privilege and Spousal Immunity Privilege are not granted in any manner other than marriage.

[howeird]

And they should not be, IMHO. But thanks for the correction.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Legal marriage is mostly an artifact of religion.

Not really. Marriage was, until modern marriage (which is pretty much only 150 years old in its current form) business, not religion. It's a tool for building wealth and passing it on.

I'm surprised the "married filing jointly" loophole has lasted this long.

It's a legal union. Much like a corporation is a legal construct defining an organization as equivalent to a person, marriage is a legal construct defining two people as a unit. It's practical from a reporting standpoint, more practical than attempting to separate finances and properties that are thoroughly mingled. That's kind of like trying to un-scramble an egg (and why even amicable divorces are messy).

[howeird]

I don't know where you get the 150 years figure, religious marriage is all through the Book of Genesis, the Koran, Buddha's writings and Jewish marriage contracts and divorce writs date back before the Romans. It's all through Greek and Roman mythology as well.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Religious marriage has existed for a long time, no debate. The marriage customs it was a part of were very different, though. It's not a universal human constant except that in it existed.

You bring up ancient Greek marriage traditions; "economics" comes from the Greek for "house rules;" an ancient Greek marriage and family was a unit of production. Marriage was a tool for building and passing on wealth; religious trappings were merely added incentives to avoid breaking the contract.

Modern religious marriage built on love matches is a 19th century thing. Romantic literature and European empire-building ensured that the popularity of the new idea spread.

[howeird]

You're ignoring 5,000 years of marriage history to shoehorn your argument into a much narrower space than it belongs. All through the Old Testament there are examples of any kind of marriage you want - religious, economic, romantic, status, convenience... you name it. And while I'm not as familiar with them, I'll bet almost every other culture can say the same thing dating back almost as far as their recorded histories.

I brought up Greek mythology, which is a whole different thing from Greek marriage. There was no aspect of economics in Zeus' six marriages.

However, the concept that both partners in a 2-person marriage are equal is not even as old as we are. It is still not accepted in much of the country, much less the rest of the world. I bring this up because it changes many of the way the law treats spouses, or should.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

There's mythology and there's practice. Mythology is just a bunch of stories, and deities in them usually didn't play by the same rules that the humans who worshiped them were expected to.

You make my point. Historically, almost all marriage practices involved a spouse (or spouses) and children being chattel, usually property of the husband. It's business, a wealth-building tool. It's a tool for building alliances. Look at the cultural prevalence of arranged marriages even now.

The sacraments are just mumbo-jumbo laid over the basic contract, the threat of divine punishment for breaking the contract.