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EasterJoy
Guest
Three generations? Have I gotten that old already?
Why does the government care who loves who and for how long?
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SWolf
Guest
Yup. Civil Marriage is a farce.A contract one side can dissolve unilaterally without showing cause and without penalty? Not much of a contract, from a legal standpoint.
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Xantippe
Guest
The government does have a reasonable interest in the care of minors and to make sure that spousal assets are fairly dividedāif either spouse winds up destitute or if minor children are not adequately provided for, that becomes an expense on the public purse and a burden to society in general.
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EasterJoy
Guest
I have wondered how long it will be before the unmarried start complaining about that. That may be the* majority *of the voting population before we know it.
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Joe_5859
Guest
I like the phrase Trent Horn uses on the article thatās on the main page right now: āā¦treats marriage licenses like municipally regulated dating certificates.ā
Indeed, that is pretty much where things are at from the secular perspective. And if that were all that marriage is, then it is a bit curious as to why the government would need to be involved.
Indeed, that is pretty much where things are at from the secular perspective. And if that were all that marriage is, then it is a bit curious as to why the government would need to be involved.
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EasterJoy
Guest
Thatās* it*, though? Is civil marriage really a way to sign up for a list of benefits in return for an agreement to follow some standard procedure about how to divide assets when splitting up? It is not as if parents have no rights under the law when they do not have the benefit of marriage. What does marriage have to do with *parenthood *any more, then?
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Convert_in_99
Guest
Once upon a time the government used to care about many more aspects of marriage. Adultery and even fornication were punishable crimes. Imagine if they still had those laws instated in our modern world of sexual immorality. Would there be a country left?
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SWolf
Guest
According to the Supreme Court, nothing.
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Magdalen2013
Guest
The government doesnāt care āwho lovesā ā the reason the government ācaresā is that the civil contract tells them who is entitled to inherit any property when one or both members of that contract dies. Oh, and who owes taxes on that property or income, too.
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
The state cannot enforce religious vows. The state cannot keep two people married, it canāt keep nuns in convents, and it canāt keep priests celibate. It would be a gross and outright terrifying power grab for the state to do that.
Iām not really impressed with the idea that marriage is something that the state should enforce. What kind of marriage, or family is it when the only thing keeping it together is the threat of fines or imprisonment? If you (general you) claim these lofty āfamily valuesā, then for Peteās sake, live them! But if you have to be strong armed into it lest you turn into an adulterous, gay, fornicating heathen, then you donāt really have āvaluesā at all.
If Catholicism is really the right way, and a lifelong, heterosexual, traditional marriage with no contraception is really the best way to live, then certainly other people will take notice when we see the strict religious people having great success. But right now, the statistics just donāt support the idea that you have it right and the rest of us have it wrong.
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Giggly_Giraffe
Guest
What exactly is a generation? Has the meaning of generation switched over the years?Three generations? Have I gotten that old already?
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EasterJoy
Guest
Civil marriage is not a religious contract. Right now, it is hard to say what kind of contract it is. Two people can sign a business agreement to start a restaurant together and theyāll have greater protections against one of them walking off for no particular reason than married couples have now. Itās ridiculous.
OK, so if the state shouldnāt āenforceā it, how do we defend the tax breaks and the other perks that the married get? The married get more perks than people in other contracts, and yet there is less responsibility to do what the contract promises. When the people making the contract arenāt even protected from each other, how is that institution going to last? Donāt people who fear marriage have decent reasons to fear it?
Letās use integrity as a parallel. Would you say that being honest is something that the law should require, or do you think that if it āis really the right wayā then ācertainly other people will take noticeā and follow suit with no laws to encourage them to be honest?
I cannot think of any area of moral law where people think, āgee, thatās the way that works the best for everyone, even though it is hard for me, so thatās what Iām going to do!ā No! We have laws against theft, against violence, against fraudā¦the list goes on and on. Why? Because people do not do what they ought to do when there is no justice system encouraging them in the right direction. They tell themselves they will, but when push comes to shove, a lack of any consequencesānot legal, not societal, not materialāgives them just enough rope to hang themselves. They may admire those with higher standards, but they do not emulate them.
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EasterJoy
Guest
I donāt know. Iād think a generation is 25 years or so, these days. Marriage seems to have crashed a lot faster than the span of three generations. It seems to me that it took two.
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
Iām not saying that there arenāt big problems with divorce, there are. Itās just very annoying when the family values crowd who claims to have it all figured out gets bent out of shape because the government has again neglected to enforce their self proclaimed values onto them. Again, if you have to be made to live it, then they arenāt your values, theyāre your laws.
The idea of having the government enforce marriage is frightening. The family is entitled to a very high level of privacy from government intrusion. And letās face it, not everyone even means āforeverā or āmonogamousā when they marry. I think the best way to solve this is to let each couple decide. When you apply for a license you should be handed a quick prenuptial form. Not a full who-gets-what prenup that requires lawyers, just a quick form that asks the couple if there should be a penalty for initiating divorce, infidelity, abuse, etc. If they say yes, as I suspect many will, they will be held to that in court if it ever gets to that.
I think integrity is a great example to prove my point. Many people donāt steal because itās wrong. Sure, some people only refrain because itās against the law, but if thatās the case, I certainly donāt want them to be legally bound to me! I donāt want to be married to someone who is not a thief only because itās against the law. And 1000x more than that, I donāt want to be married to someone who would up and leave tomorrow if only the law would let him.
And no, I donāt believe that there is reason to fear marriage. Nor am I convinced that all that many people do.
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Giggly_Giraffe
Guest
Iām wondering how stable marriage has been for centuries. We get the impression that the big crack in marriage was Henry the 8th with his divorse and split from the Church. Shakespear is portrayed as being an absent adulterous husband and father. Personally, I donāt know my families history fully. I know my Daddy biffed it big ā¦ Not once ā¦ But twice. My husband tells stories about his great grandmother who married for security and not love. This caused pain in the family, but in those days there was no other choices. Some of his family are proud of those who biffed it big and others are still very angry. Has marriage ever had a stable place in society?
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EasterJoy
Guest
There was a time when to divorce was to be socially shunned. It was not charitable to judge so automatically, but it was a very great deterrent, all the same. At that time, too, a faithful spouse was very difficult to divorce. The greater instability in marriage and family life was the rate of premature death due to accident, epidemic, and the complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Husbands did abandon their familiesāa terrible fate in times prior to public assistanceābut more often they didnāt survive to provide for them.
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EasterJoy
Guest
There are people posting here and elsewhere that wish it were harder for someone to unilaterally divorce an innocent spouse who does not want a divorce. Do they want to stay married because the law doesnāt allow their spouses to abandon them without severe consequences? Well, yes. The alternative is to be abandoned without any consequences, and that does not feel too fair, either. Besides, they know that if divorce were harder, it would make the hard work of working to repair the marriage look a bit less daunting by comparison. There need to be some speed bumps!!
You are suggesting a form of what some states have tried as ācovenantā marriages, in which couples decide at the time of their marriage (or after) to agree to limit the grounds for divorce in their marriages. The last time I saw statistics, 60% of people thought it would be good if divorces were harder to get, but in states where couples could choose ācovenantā marriages, only around 1% or less chose to do so. Were there couples in which one member backed out because the other wouldnāt sign on for the covenant? Maybe there were. I donāt know if anyone has done that research.
I would rather not live in a city where the anti-theft program was strictly on the honor system. In a weak moment, the specter of consequences sometimes help good people do the right thing. The same undoubtedly goes for marriage. There are people who stay married through a rough spot and are glad they did, but they only stuck with their marriages at the time because they didnāt want to chance the losses that divorce could put them through. That does not make them bad people. The knowledge that there will be a tangible consequence just help us to get past that near occasion of a sin we could regret for a lifetime. (I do know people who chose to divorce who regretted it later, too. Sometimes, society does us a great favor when it gives us good reasons to avoid rash decisions.)
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jtauke
Guest
The government is in the marriage business because itās vital to things like our tax code, insurance coverage, etc.
That seems fairly obviousā¦
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EasterJoy
Guest
I very much expect some single people to start suing over the fairness of the marital tax advantage, not to mention many other advantages of marriage that single people with a trusty roommate canāt have when their roommate isnāt a sexual partner.
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BlueEyedLady
Guest
Itās very easy for you to say that others should be bound in terrible situations while sitting comfortably in yours. What are you suggesting? Whatās your solution? Use the law to hold people to abusive or dangerous situations until they can prove a good reason to be allowed to leave? I have a big problem with the idea of the government telling anyone āI know that you think it would be better for you to be out of this situation, but weāve read your application and weāve determined that it would be better for society in general if we keep you thereā. Thatās exactly what making people drag out (or make up) dirty laundry for third party scrutiny and judgement amounts to, and that gets ugly.
The problem with trying to legally enforce marriage vows is that you can only enforce the commitment. You canāt enforce fidelity, and you canāt go into someoneās home and keep them from harming their family. All you can do is make their partner stay.
We have a very serious maturity problem in the western world. Rather than trying to make immature and selfish people stay together, I think it would be better to try to cultivate the integrity that you mentioned earlier. Remember, more first marriages succeed then fail, so there are still plenty of people doing it right.
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