Marriage as Sacrament versus State Defined

[MarcoPolo]

So you wish to impose your personal beliefs (that same sex or polygamous marriage be banned) on the rest of society, but admit that you have no “sufficiently good secular reason” to justify that belief. So why can others not force their views on you with as little justification?

I don’t know about the other poster, but there are an abundance of non-Catholic-specific reasons that it is in the state’s best interests to support and encourage stable, nuclear families. Things like easy divorce, cohabitation, and and now this are deviations that have lead to a variety of social problems absent in stable, nuclear marriages. That’s partly why there are a number of atheists who are opposed to the current “redefinition” movement. It’s not an “imposition of beliefs” any more than any law in existence. It is false to insist that pro male-female marriage is necessarily a “religious” belief.

 

[DrTaffy]

Well, then, gay people are choosing to pair up with those of the same sex. If they could just pair up with members of the opposite sex, they could reap all the societal benefits of marriage.

Ooh, massive logic failure.

Two biggest reasons that equivalence fails:

A same sex couple cannot choose not be a same sex couple.

The distinguishing characteristic of the couple who choose not to register with the Government is directly preventing the Government from giving them the tax break. In the case of the gay couple you are intervening to say that you will not give them the tax break because you don’t like gay marriage.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

This would be a lot easier to answer for a specific tax break - especially as I am not too convinced that couples should get a generic tax break (e.g. a flat lower rate of tax) just for being married.

This argument has been made, and I too find it somewhat attractive.

As for the efficiencies of a couple operating as an economic unit, that does make for an advantage. But it is mostly an economic advantage for that couple. It only benefits society at large indirectly, in that society does well when its members do well. And since the economic benefit is mostly realized by the couple involved (whether same sex or opposite sex), it should be in their own self-interest to form that economic unit. It should not need a government subsidy to encourage the arrangement. Sufficient contract laws exist that would put the force of law behind any such economic arrangement the couple should choose to make.

 

[DrTaffy]

I don’t know about the other poster, but there are an abundance of non-Catholic-specific reasons that it is in the state’s best interests to support and encourage stable, nuclear families.

Niggle’s argument explicitly posited the absence of a secular reason.

It’s not an “imposition of beliefs” any more than any law in existence. It is false to insist that pro male-female marriage is necessarily a “religious” belief.

Of course a law is an imposition of beliefs - or an imposition of the consequences of beliefs, if that (rather petty) quibble is the point you are making. A law enforcing your view that marriage is solely between one man and one woman explicitly forces that definition on others who do not share that view. Whether that view is religious or not is not the point, it is whether you have a justification for forcing it on others who do not share that view.

 

[DrTaffy]

It only benefits society at large indirectly, in that society does well when its members do well.

Are you making the argument (that I have seen elsewhere on this board) that the State should only make laws for the benefit of the State? This is a hair-raisingly extreme version of utilitarianism that would lead to all sorts of appalling conclusions.

For example: What benefit can the State get from looking after those who are so old, disabled or terminally ill that they will never again be able to benefit the State? Should we just kick them out of hospital and liberate the beds for more productive citizens? :bigyikes:

I would argue that the State exists for the benefit of its citizens, not the other way around.

Sufficient contract laws exist that would put the force of law behind any such economic arrangement the couple should choose to make.

Again, are you making the libertarian argument that a formal State institution of marriage should be replaced by private contracts?

That could be done, but why should it? What is wrong with the State providing a convenient one-stop institution for those couples wanting to commit to a lifetime together? If you don’t like the State marriage, don’t use it.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

So could you clarify what you think would be ‘reasonable accommodation’ on the issue of teachers expressing views on same sex marriage? You apparently reject both the Catholic view (or at least the CAF view) that Catholic schools should be able to fire teachers for dissenting from Catholic Doctrine even at home, and the liberal view that any school can control what teachers say or do in class, but not at home.

My view on this issue is mostly the liberal view as you described it. Teachers hired to teach in a Catholic school, especially those who teach a secular subject like math, should not be fired just because someone finds out they are gay. But I disagree with the liberal view to this extent: if a teacher in a Catholic school goes beyond merely being gay and makes statements away from school, but in public (like on TV or in print) that support the normalization of gay relationships and attacks the beliefs of the Church at which he or she teaches, a line could be crossed which would permit the firing of such a teacher.

So it is not the case that a Catholic would not be able to teach at all, just that a Catholic would not be able to teach that one specific subject. Indeed, Catholics would not be barred from doing so, but would be choosing not to do so as a result of their religious beliefs.

As I said before, the objections to same sex marriage come not only through religious beliefs. There would also need to be reasonable accommodations for an atheist or anyone else who is uncomfortable teaching social studies and saying that same sex parenting was normal just like mom and dad.

Consider the parallel claim of a strict Jew insisting that all butchers should be banned from selling pork, as otherwise his religious views prohibiting him from handling pork would mean that he was barred from being able to work in a butcher’s shop. Reasonable?

Perhaps. But if a ballot proposal came up deciding whether pork should be banned, I would not fault the Jew who voted in favor of the ban, even though the measure would probably lose, just like bans against same sex marriage appear to be losing.

Meaning that even Catholic schools with no state funding would be required to teach that same sex marriage was “just as normal as mom and dad”?

No, I doubt that it is going that far.

So you do not agree that voting for a law opposing gay marriage is doing more than just expressing an opinion that marriage should be solely heterosexual, but is actively trying to force that view on others?

No, I think it is no more of a forcing of a view on others than most other laws. To the extent that all laws force a view on others, this law is no different. Nor does it go beyond that point.

If I vote for a law that Catholic employer’s medical cover should pay for abortion or contraception for their employees, am I equally blameless?

I would not fault you for expressing your view. I would disagree with your view, and might try to convince you of that if we were neighbors, but in a civil society we must allow everyone to express their view to the extent that free speech will allow.

I think we have taken this meta-debate as far as it can go. That is, we have been debating about debating. If we really want to go deeper into the issue, I think we need to start talking about some specifics of marriage, such as the role of raising children. This, after all, is what distinguishes marriages from mere business partnerships or other legal entities.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

A same sex couple cannot choose not be a same sex couple.

No, but the rights do not normally go to a couple. Legal rights are ascribed to people - to individuals. Couples have rights only in so far as the individuals that make up the couple have rights. There is no reason to think that the right to marry should be any different.

 

[MarcoPolo]

others who do not share that view.

Which is why I pointed out reasons that it’s not in the state’s best interest to normalize that arrangement. The “others” you mention, in my experience, fail to engage the consequences of the same-sex “marriage” movement. Just like happened in the spread of divorce back when. Just like has happened with cohabitation. Etc… Proponents of gay “marriage” generally say it should be allowed so “2 people can love each other.” You can read such “defense” ad nauseum from bloggers or politicians. It’s nonsensical, but common. On the other hand, those who insist society’s pillar and stability is built on stable, nuclear families and kids raised by their parents, and here is data to support it, typically are shot down in the name of bigotry.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Are you making the argument (that I have seen elsewhere on this board) that the State should only make laws for the benefit of the State? This is a hair-raisingly extreme version of utilitarianism that would lead to all sorts of appalling conclusions…For example: What benefit can the State get from looking after those who are so old, disabled or terminally ill that they will never again be able to benefit the State? Should we just kick them out of hospital and liberate the beds for more productive citizens?

The benefit that society gets from looking out for those who are old, disabled, or terminally ill is similar to the benefit that people get from an insurance policy. You willingly pay the premium because you know you could become a beneficiary some day. By having programs that take care of the less fortunate, all the members of the society have peace of mind knowing that if they or their loved ones should fall into that category, they need not worry overmuch.

As for the instance where this came up, the benefit mentioned was the economic efficiency of two people joining in an economic partnership. It is not a benefit that the state grants or doesn’t grant. It is inherent in the arrangement itself. I thought you were arguing that the state should encourage such efficiencies because they are beneficial. My point was the fact that they are beneficial can be realized without state encouragement, and so such encouragement is unnecessary.

Again, are you making the libertarian argument that a formal State institution of marriage should be replaced by private contracts?

No, I am suggesting that those who want to legalize gay marriage so that gays can reap the purely economic benefits of those economic partnerships need not go so far, because those benefits are already available to gays through private contracts. It is rest of what legal marriage entails - that which cannot be provided by private contracts - that needs to be separately justified for gays before we can justify going all the way to marriage. Those aspects of marriage are not so much about the duties and rights of the couple to each other (which contract law already covers) as it is about the duties incumbent on the rest of society regarding the legal recognition of this couple as being married.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Niggle’s argument explicitly posited the absence of a secular reason [for why gay marriage is harmful].

I posited it only as a debating convenience, in that I think the point I was trying to make could be made without assuming so much.

A law enforcing your view that marriage is solely between one man and one woman explicitly forces that definition on others who do not share that view. Whether that view is religious or not is not the point, it is whether you have a justification for forcing it on others who do not share that view.

You speak of the definition of the word. Except for obscure technical legal terms, the definition of words is generally beyond the law. Definitions are more in the purview of scholars than in legislators. So if I could reword your statement:

A law enforcing your view that the rights of marriage belong solely between one man and one woman explicitly forces that view on others who do not share that view. Whether that view is religious or not is not the point, it is whether you have a justification for forcing it on others who do not share that view.

This says about the same thing, but it does not seem so outrageous now that the sacrilege of** forcing definitions** on people has been taken off the table.

 

[BOProof]

For sake of argument, I claim that 3-way marriage should not be recognized by civil law. I think you agree with me on this point, so there is no need to argue it. Can we at least agree on that?

Secondly, I claim that there is no “sufficiently good secular reason not to grant legal recognition to 3-way marriage.” Can we agree on this point too without argument?

So you admit that you think that 3-way marriage should be banned by civil law, yet you don’t think there is any good secular reason to do so!

I wonder what else you think should be imposed upon people by law without a sufficiently good secular reason.

This is not an inconsistency on my part because I do not hold your core principle that any granting of marriage should be allowed unless there is this sufficiently good secular reason not to do so.

As I have state many times, my view is that if civil marriages are widely being offered, then there should be a "sufficiently good secular reason” for the differential treatment of denying it when it is denied.

Under your approach, you would either:

1 Think there should be no civil marriage.

Or

2 Have a "sufficiently good secular reason” for granting some civil marriages but not others (differential treatment).

Or

3 Have a "sufficiently good secular reason” for granting civil marriages to all relationships.

I was operating under the assumption that you did not choose 1 because you seem to have little or no problem with taxpayers who are in same-sex relationships being forced to subsidize opposite-sex marriages. This is why I made comments in the posts you quoted such as, “If the government is going to offer benefits to most couples,” “Whether there is a sufficiently good reason to offer people civil marriage (together with all of its benefits) to a wide range of people, but to deny some people those same benefits,” “Given the fact that the government already recognizes many relationships as marriages, and grants benefits to those couples,” “justifies offering marriage (along with all of its benefits) to most couples, but to deny it to some others couples.” I think we can both agree that 3 is off the table since people shouldn’t marry children.

So it comes down to 2, which I’d argue is logically the same as my position (given that 1 and 3 are rejected), just in a different form. 2 is really just saying that there is a good reason for differential treatment. If you have a "sufficiently good secular reason” for the government to give better treatment to relationship A than relationship B, then that same reason is conversely a "sufficiently good secular reason” to treat relationship B worse than relationship A. It should be painfully obvious that being given the option of civil marriage is the government treating the relationship better than not being offered that option.

Let’s put this in a context about taxpayers that you mentioned before. You expressed the view that a taxpayer is subsidizing those people who get tax breaks. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to have no problem with taxpayers in same-sex relationship being forced to subsidize the relationships of others, yet have decried that such benefits should not be offered to them in their relationship.

Again, are you making the libertarian argument that a formal State institution of marriage should be replaced by private contracts?

That could be done, but why should it?

My understanding is that civil marriage grants a lot of things you can’t obtain by contracts alone. For example, the right to not be forced to testify against a spouse, immediately gaining parental rights over spouses children (otherwise you have to go through a formal adoption process), the ability to gain residency/citizenship for spouse from another country, and many other things are fittingly granted to married couples but are not granted by contract law (so far as I understand).

Even for those things that can be done by contract law, civil marriage make a lot easier. For example, when your spouse is dying in the hospital, it’s easier to say “I’m married” than it is to present a pile of legal papers. In fact, I’ve heard that many same-sex couples have found that when time is a factor, it’s better to just lie and pretend to be a sibling than present legal documents.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

So you admit that you think that 3-way marriage should be banned by civil law, yet you don’t think there is any good secular reason to do so!

I wonder what else you think should be imposed upon people by law without a sufficiently good secular reason.

The failure to enact legislation is not the same thing as imposing anything on people. Here we have the case of 3-way marriage, which is currently not recognized. Nobody accused the government of imposing a ban on 3-way marriage until now. That is because the supposed ban is merely the absence of a law that extends marriage to groups of 3 people. By your calling it an imposition, you intimate that the right to a 3-way marriage has existed, and now by positive legislation it is taken away. So when I say that 3-way marriage should not be allowed, I am not imposing anything that was not already imposed. I am merely calling for the continuation of an imposition (if imposition it was) by doing nothing on the issue.

When it comes to legislation that is only about freedom for people to as they please, I think the default position should be in favor of that freedom. The operative question is “What harm can it do?” If there is no harm, then the freedom should be granted.

But when it comes to legislation that gives some rights to some people while taking rights away from others, I think the default position should be in favor of doing nothing. The operative question in that case is “What good will the change do?” If, on balance, the decision is that there is mostly good done by that change, then the change should be granted.

The case of same sex marriage is more like the second case than the first case. It is not a case of pure freedom - allowing people to do as they please. It is a case of changing a structure that will affect many people in different ways. Many of these affects have already been mentioned in this thread, so I’m not going to repeat them.

As I have state many times, my view is that if civil marriages are widely being offered, then there should be a "sufficiently good secular reason” for the differential treatment of denying it when it is denied.

Denying gay marriage is not differential treatment. That is because gay marriage is not a kind of marriage. It is not a mere accident or a incidental property of marriage that it naturally generates children. It is inherent in the common understanding of the institution. It is mostly because of this property that diverse societies have devised various ways of codifying the institution into law.

 

[JimG]

There seems to be a lot of sophistry going around trying to defend gay marriage. Marriage was defined by the nature of man and woman long before it was defined by the state.

Next, I expect the state will want to re-define mothers to include fathers and to define fathers to include mothers. It makes as much sense.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

I was operating under the assumption that you did not choose 1 because you seem to have little or no problem with taxpayers who are in same-sex relationships being forced to subsidize opposite-sex marriages.

True. Those same-sex couples are people who, by and large, are children of opposite-sex marriages. They, like all of society, owes some degree of gratitude to those that generated and nurtured them and continue to provide new members of that society, if nothing else, to take care of us in our old age. So a small subsidy to those in that institution is perhaps warranted.

So it comes down to 2, which I’d argue is logically the same as my position (given that 1 and 3 are rejected), just in a different form. 2 is really just saying that there is a good reason for differential treatment. If you have a "sufficiently good secular reason” for the government to give better treatment to relationship A than relationship B, then that same reason is conversely a "sufficiently good secular reason” to treat relationship B worse than relationship A. It should be painfully obvious that being given the option of civil marriage is the government treating the relationship better than not being offered that option.

I gave my reason for “differential treatment” of same sex couples above.

Let’s put this in a context about taxpayers that you mentioned before. You expressed the view that a taxpayer is subsidizing those people who get tax breaks. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to have no problem with taxpayers in same-sex relationship being forced to subsidize the relationships of others, yet have decried that such benefits should not be offered to them in their relationship.

–already answered above–

My understanding is that civil marriage grants a lot of things you can’t obtain by contracts alone. For example, the right to not be forced to testify against a spouse, immediately gaining parental rights over spouses children (otherwise you have to go through a formal adoption process), the ability to gain residency/citizenship for spouse from another country, and many other things are fittingly granted to married couples but are not granted by contract law (so far as I understand)

These are all good points. For some of them, I’m not sure they can be justified even for opposite sex marriages, such as not having to testify against your spouse. As for the others, many of these benefits have been added on to marriage over the years, and with some of them it is not justified to restrict them to normal married couples. These benefits should be considered individually, on their own merits, and extended to other kinds of couples as warranted. But it is a sloppy shortcut to lump them all together and say any and all benefits of being married should automatically be extended to gay couples.

Even for those things that can be done by contract law, civil marriage make a lot easier. For example, when your spouse is dying in the hospital, it’s easier to say “I’m married” than it is to present a pile of legal papers. In fact, I’ve heard that many same-sex couples have found that when time is a factor, it’s better to just lie and pretend to be a sibling than present legal documents.

That is unfortunate, but granting married status to same sex couples is overkill to solve these problems that should be solved in a more appropriate way.

 

[Stephen168]

If you don’t like the State marriage, don’t use it.

Because the State took my money, and the only way to ensure the mother of my children can have access to it is by having a State approved marriage. If I didn’t have to get state married to do what I pleased with my money both during and after life, I would not do it.

 

[DrTaffy]

My view on this issue is mostly the liberal view as you described it.

Then why would you complain about secular schools being able to set a curriculum that a Catholic might disagree with?

But I disagree with the liberal view to this extent: if a teacher in a Catholic school goes beyond merely being gay and makes statements away from school, but in public (like on TV or in print) that support the normalization of gay relationships and attacks the beliefs of the Church at which he or she teaches, a line could be crossed which would permit the firing of such a teacher.

Why only Catholic schools? Would a liberal school be able to fire a Catholic teacher who spoke out in public against liberal beliefs such as same sex marriage?

As I said before, the objections to same sex marriage come not only through religious beliefs.

Irrelevant to the point I made. Teachers would not be barred from any teaching jobs, there would just be some teaching jobs that they would not choose to accept. This is, in my opinion, a perfectly reasonable accomodation between the right of the teacher to hold views - religious or otherwise - and the right of the school to set their own curriculum.

Unless you accept Catholic schools being banned from teaching any concept that a liberal, atheist or homosexual might refuse to teach, your position breaks the golden rule.

DrTaffy;11570801:

Consider the parallel claim of a strict Jew insisting that all butchers should be banned from selling pork, as otherwise his religious views prohibiting him from handling pork would mean that he was barred from being able to work in a butcher’s shop. Reasonable?

Perhaps.

Bzzt - wrong! The correct answer was ‘nuttier than squirrel poo!’

Seriously, this fails any sensible examination as ‘reasonable accomodation’ by any standards. If everyone demands equivalent measures for their beliefs, no shop would be able to sell anything.

Just as your demands for Catholic beliefs would lead to chaos if every religious viewpoint demanded equal treatment.

No, I think it is no more of a forcing of a view on others than most other laws.

Well, most other laws do force views on others.

But you have not addressed my point. If you will not consider whether you have the right to force your views on others when voting on law, why should others not vote in laws forcing their views on you?

If we really want to go deeper into the issue, I think we need to start talking about some specifics of marriage, such as the role of raising children. This, after all, is what distinguishes marriages from mere business partnerships or other legal entities.

Many marriages do not involve raising children, and many gay marriages do, so this argument fails on both sides. The only thing all marriages have in common are two (or more, if you insist) people committing to spend their lives together.

 

[DrTaffy]

No, but the rights do not normally go to a couple.

But it is the couple that you object to, and against which you wish to discriminate (and force the State to discriminate).

And the same sex couple cannot choose not to be the same sex, whereas your marriage refuseniks could just choose to marry. Further, there is a direct causal link between their choice not to marry and them not being considered married. In the case of the gay couple it is only your inistence that they not be allowed to marry that prevents them from being married.

 

[DrTaffy]

Which is why I pointed out reasons that it’s not in the state’s best interest to normalize that arrangement.

There is a well established link between religiosity and poor societal health. Should the State therefore ban religions?

On the other hand, there is (as far as I know) no such peer-reviewed studies of societies showing that same sex marriage leads to problems. The closest we have is the Roman Empire, which collapsed shortly after Christians took over and banned gay marriage.

Proponents of gay “marriage” generally say it should be allowed so “2 people can love each other.”
…]
On the other hand, those who insist society’s pillar and stability is built on stable, nuclear families and kids raised by their parents, and here is data to support it, typically are shot down in the name of bigotry.

Did you think that you had a monopoly on misrepresenting the position of your opposition?

Note also that ‘bigotry’, while undeniably unhelpful, does accurately describe your position, taking the literal meaning. It may also be hurtful, but Catholics are very quick to describe homosexuals as “intrinsically disordered” or “sodomites” or as being more likely to abuse children or be serial killers. I think Matthew 7:5 applies. If you want thegay marriage lobby to stop calling you bigot, I sympathise, but I would suggest that you start by persuading your colleagues to stop slandering gays.

 

[DrTaffy]

As for the instance where this came up, the benefit mentioned was the economic efficiency of two people joining in an economic partnership. It is not a benefit that the state grants or doesn’t grant.

I think that you are confusing two ‘benefits’. The ‘benefits’ that the State grants are the legal status of marriage and the advantages that go with it. The ‘benefit’ to the State of encouraging marriage is seperate.

So if the State abolished the legal institution of marriage, that would not mean that two people living together long term no longer benefitted the State, just that there would presumably be fewer such long term realtionships.

In other words there is a purely utilitarian justification for the State to encourage same sex couples to establish long term stable relationships.

No, I am suggesting that those who want to legalize gay marriage so that gays can reap the purely economic benefits of those economic partnerships need not go so far, because those benefits are already available to gays through private contracts.

They are equally available to heterosexual couples through private contracts. You still need to justify why you are demanding special privileges for yourself that you would deny to homosexuals.

This says about the same thing, but it does not seem so outrageous now that the sacrilege of** forcing definitions** on people has been taken off the table.

I don’t mind whether you call it forcing of views or definitions - after all it was the anti-SSM lobby who started talking about ‘definitions’ and ‘redefinitions’ as a way to portray this issue as about something being forced on them.

Equally, I hope we can agree that it is actually about forcing the consequences of your views on others, but that we use ‘forcing views on others’ as shorthand.

The point is that you are forcing your views on marriage on others, have been doing since the Christian Roman Emperors brought in theTheodosian code, yet seem to think that it is outrageous that the liberals might force you to stop forcing your views on marriage on others.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Then why would you complain about secular schools being able to set a curriculum that a Catholic might disagree with?

The fact that a Catholic might disagree with the curriculum is incidental to the argument. I was referring to the teachers themselves, or to the local school boards, who might be forced to include this curriculum against the wishes of the teachers and the local community.

Why only Catholic schools? Would a liberal school be able to fire a Catholic teacher who spoke out in public against liberal beliefs such as same sex marriage?

The Golden Rule applies here. If a Catholic were teaching at such a school and then spoke out publicly against the school’s core philosophy, I would expect that teacher to be fired as well.

Unless you accept Catholic schools being banned from teaching any concept that a liberal, atheist or homosexual might refuse to teach, your position breaks the golden rule.

I was not objecting to a school teaching what it wants to teach. I was objecting to the school being forced by law to teach what it does not want to teach.

Bzzt - wrong! The correct answer was ‘nuttier than squirrel poo!’

Whoops! I misunderstood your question. I thought you were asking if the analogy of the Jewish butcher was a reasonably apt one. I was agreeing that it was apt, and possibly nuttier than squirrel poo as well.

But you have not addressed my point. If you will not consider whether you have the right to force your views on others when voting on law, why should others not vote in laws forcing their views on you?

They can force those view on me (and I am not just speaking of gay marriage here). But I don’t have to like it. Just as those in favor of gay marriage do not have to like it when gay marriage is denied.

Many marriages do not involve raising children, and many gay marriages do, so this argument fails on both sides. The only thing all marriages have in common are two (or more, if you insist) people committing to spend their lives together.

To the extent that married couples cannot or choose not to have children, this weakens the basis for legal recognition of marriage. Other than the raising of children, society has really very little interest in couples committing to each other. I think the main reason that legal recognition of marriage has not been tied to the raising of children explicitly is that it would be an administrative nightmare to explicitly tie legal recognition to whether or not children are involved, and if so, how many. Remember most of the legal structure surrounding marriage was developed before birth control and modern medicine. In those days, when a couple got married, the arrival of children was seen as a random variable, or a blessing from God, depending on your perspective. In either case, it was seen as a possibility. And in most cases, a highly desirable one. There did not seem to be any need to complicate the social institution of marriage, so all marriages were treated as potentially having children. It is in recognition of this possibility that societies all over the world (not just Western societies) have developed some legal recognition of the married state.

If we want to improve this institution, the thing to do would not be to fling open the doors and make the institution apply to every possible couple, for then its original purpose would become irrelevant. We might as well do away with the legal institution entirely. Or we might make legal marriage depend on the presence of children, although I still think that approach is impractical, even if it does have a valid purpose.

As for couples staying together for life, that is pretty much a joke anyway. Divorce is so easy in most countries that the legal aspect of the commitment means nothing more than a dividing up of assets. What does the couple offer to society in return for this legal recognition?