Nobody insists that the State set up conditions for initiating or terminating relationships predicated upon sharing bonsai or bicycling or classic British films. And relationships involving property land, homes, exchange of goods and services, can be readily taken care of by private contract.
I have often said this in relation to the irrationality of "gay marriage." What for? What friends demand legally enforced "twosiness"? It calls to mind a banner I saw in a crowd shot of the big pro-traditional-marriage march in Gay Paree: a couple of flamboyant queers proclaiming "We're gayer without marriage."
So it seems marriage is primarily set up, not to secure the consortium and interests of adults, but primarily to secure the rights and interests of children.
Do children no longer have rights? Do thy no longer have interests? If there is truly "NO FAULT" in a marriage (the 5A's: no adultery, assault, abandonment, addiction, abuse) how is it in the children's interest to dissolve the marriage?
It seems to me that the State's interest --- the public interest --- in preserving marriage for the sake of the offspring, would naturally call for disincentives to divorce, and incentives to reconcile.
Not the contrary.
Children have a right to a father and a mother who are married to each other.
They still do.
Well said. The children get lost in all this.