Marriage may not be worth defending.....at least the kind that requires a government license. There are so many miserable marriages and so few joyful marriages that one wonders what the fuss is about. Kids do not thrive in dysfunctional systems and adults who are miserable stuck in a dead partnership with no option of getting free do not make good parents or good citizens. So what are we defending here?
Speak for your own unhappy marriage! Mine is going great.
Marriage is a cornerstone of a decent society.
Perhaps the institution of marriage was meant to be loving and nurturing to all involved in it, giving people strength to face the world every day.
Without that strength, each person is weakened and needs something else or someone else as a substitute, like the state-big government.
Its obvious marriages are failing, but the only response I can give is to consider where I have failed in the marriage I am in and can improve.....
Government licenses and marriage are a topic I’ve heard discussed over the years.
Any institution licensed by government has the potential for sinister controls to be imposed on it.
But the deeper spiritual significance of marriage stands regardless of government.
A totalitarian society like Nazi Germany or the USSR and other Communist states are ones where family was or is subordinated to the state.
This destruction of marriage Hitchens alludes to destroys family and leaves big business or big government as alternative ‘family’ structures.
My sense of the forces at work in the world today is that of Corporatism-big government, big business, big banks taking charge.
You really don’t have any idea what a “marriage license” is, obviously.
A “marriage license” is simply a recording device. That’s it. The “license” part is a misnomer. There are no competency requirements, no exams or quizzes, no periodic renewals, no anything. Just two people who want to officially (meaning recognized by everyone, including the government) join themselves together in what has traditionally been recognized throughout history and have that fact recorded. Even the fee for such is extremely nominal and the deal of a millennium - one small cost keeps your recorded document viable for eternity.
I really am getting tired of this “government in the marriage business” nonsense. It’s like the government (courts) won’t ever be enlisted to officiate the issues surrounding marriage, ever.