Gays didn't kill marriage. We did.

Gays didn't destroy marriage. Neither did the Supreme Court. Hetrosexuals did that a long time ago. They forgot that marriage is not supposed to be based on romantic love. Historically, it's a contract between four entities. The man, the woman, G-d, and the State. Each party is supposed to have both rights and obligations to the other.

But we (hetros) made marriage about 'feelings' and romantic love. We chipped away at our obligations to the state and forgot that we have actual obligations to our partner. We decriminalized infidelity. We created no-fault divorce. We wanted all of the benefits, without all those messy obligations.

We got what we wanted. A meaningless, hollow union. Now we dare cry that gay people want to play in our park and get the benefits, too?

Conservatives are going about this all wrong. Don't fight gay marriage. Fight to make marriage mean something again.

- require premarital counseling and a six month (legal) engagement prior to the act.
- make prenups mandatory. (and they should include the management of future children and alimony.)
- criminalize infidelity with jail time (even when the sex act has the consent of the partner) and an automatic loss of all parental rights for the offender.
- End no-fault divorce. Make a list of legitimate reasons to leave a marriage and stick to it. (abuse, infidelity, addiction, etc)
- limit child support to $500 per child - no matter how much the father makes (women can't eat their cake and have it, too)
- have automatic 50/50 parental custody (with exceptions for abuse and addiction)
- once a divorce is initiated, there must be a 12 month 'cooling off period' where all of the rules for infidelity apply. They're still legally bound by the contract and if they stray, all of the jail time and loss of fortune and child custody apply.

Make people THINK before jumping into the lake in a fit of lust and infatuation. Create consequences for not honoring the contract. Make the contract difficult to break.

If people still want to make *that* social contract and commit to one another once the institution has weight, then great.

But we won't do it because we (conservative hetros) love not having any actual responsibility. We fear the real commitment. We want the 'easy out'. We don't want to face the consequences for our actions. We don't want to have to pay a price for failure. We want to gimme, gimme, gimme and not worry too much about giving back.

Her prescription is why I posted this.

Infidelity used to be a criminal offense. Until Henry the Eighth, there was NO divorce. Marriage was an unbreakable bond.

Now, it’s so easy to get into. So easy to mess up without paying a price. So easy to get out. How is that ‘sacred’?

She wrote one a few months ago about how women actually benefit by refusing to marry or through divorce and how that further degrades the institution. She did a huge piece on ending all of those benefits and how women would quickly become less emotional ‘creatures of self-control’ once all the safety nets were gone.

So, is she right?

If *we* strengthened marriage... gave the institution the weight that it deserves... would fewer gays marry?

As the vast majority of gay men are NOT monogamous... would they shy away from an institution that criminalized and severely penalized infidelity?

And if we value monogamy so much... why would we argue against this?

Don’t we conservatives honor the sacrament of marriage highly? What would it hurt us to legally strengthen that which we love?

(What makes me sick after reading all of the comments is that they confirm her diagnosis that WE don’t want the weight and responsibility of the sacrament. She’s right. We’re so weak that we allow the holy to be defiled rather than risk responsibility.)

Actually, the feminist movement not only killed marriage, they killed most relationships between men and women!

By demanding to be treated equally, men finally gave in and decided that women and the mothers of their babies, deserve nothing special, the courts decided that wives and mothers deserved no special protections, that children, like other joint property, are to be split between the partners, that one partner could merely decide not to honor their marriage vows and go their own way without benefit of negotiating what was the best for all concerned.

Men repeatedly got the short end of the stick when it came to their children and began demanding "fathers' rights," when it came to physical and material support.

Then as men began realizing women were getting not only "equal rights" in education, professions like law and medicine, they were being given "preferential rights," resentment became a natural fact of life.

The one area men still controlled, marriage, they simply decided to forgo a system that no longer offered them much and - poof, cohabitation not marriage became the rule for Genexers and now Millinials!

The nuclear family must be destroyed… Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process. Linda Gordon

Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage. Sheila Cronin, the leader of the feminist organization NOW

Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Andrea Dworkin

The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately 10% of the human race. Sally Miller Gearhart, in The Future – If There Is One – Is Female

And if the professional rapist is to be separated from the average dominant heterosexual (male), it may be mainly a quantitative difference. Susan Griffin, Rape: The All-American Crime

If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. Mary Daly [i wonder if she realizes she just hoped for harems and such]

“We can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.” — Robin Morgan

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation, and destroy the male sex.” — Valerie Solana, SCUM founder (Society for Cutting Up Men.)

“Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” — Andrea Dworkin

Under patriarchy, every woman’s son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman.” — Andrea Dworkin

“All sex, even consensual sex between a married couple, is an act of violence perpetrated against a woman.” — Catherine MacKinnon

“In a patriarchal society, all heterosexual intercourse is rape because women, as a group, are not strong enough to give meaningful consent.” — Catharine MacKinnon, quoted in Professing Feminism: Cautionary Tales from the Strange World of Women’s Studies.

“All men are rapists and that’s all they are” — Marilyn French, Authoress; (later, advisoress to Al Gore’s Presidential Campaign.)

“The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist” (National NOW Times, January, 1988).

“Since marriage constitutes slavery for women, it is clear that the women’s movement must concentrate on attacking this institution. Freedom for women cannot be won without the abolition of marriage” (feminist leader Sheila Cronan).

“Marriage has existed for the benefit of men; and has been a legally sanctioned method of control over women.... We must work to destroy it. The end of the institution of marriage is a necessary condition for the liberation of women. Therefore it is important for us to encourage women to leave their husbands and not to live individually with men.... All of history must be re-written in terms of oppression of women. We must go back to ancient female religions like witchcraft” (from “The Declaration of Feminism,” November, 1971).

“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them” (Dr. Mary Jo Bane, feminist and assistant professor of education at Wellesley College, and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman).

“Being a housewife is an illegitimate profession... The choice to serve and be protected and plan towards being a family- maker is a choice that shouldn’t be. The heart of radical feminism is to change that.” (Vivian Gornick, feminist author, University of Illinois, The Daily Illini, April 25, 1981.

“Feminism, Socialism, and Communism are one in the same, and Socialist/Communist government is the goal of feminism.” - Catharine A. MacKinnon

“Heterosexuality is a die-hard custom through which male-supremacist institutions insure their own perpetuity and control over us. Women are kept, maintained and contained through terror, violence, and the spray of *****...[Lesbianism is] an ideological, political and philosophical means of liberation of all women from heterosexual tyranny... “ — Cheryl Clarke, “Lesbianism, An Act of Resistance,” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writing by Radical Women of Color

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