Posted on 06/10/2012 5:08:04 AM PDT by Conservaliberty
Okay folks, I’m just going to jump right into it. The Huffington Post just posted a piece asking for the government forbidding the practice of marriage for young people. The author writes, "couples should not be allowed to get married before age 25."
I know what you’re thinking…hipsters.
You’d be correct. No longer confined to the ever-changing world of ironically ugly fashion, hipsters are now applying their trendy outlook to their very own values, demanding that the government enforce them onto others in the process.
“Who knows? Maybe there are 20-year-olds that get married and stay madly in love for their whole lives… Maybe there is such thing as fairies and unicorns too.”
Yes, this is actually the crux of an argument that author Jennifer Nagy genuinely believes to be factually sound. Writing a rebuttal almost feels wrong, as one can truly sense how proud she was of her accomplishment. Clearly, she’s very pleased with herself...
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
COMMUNIST GOALS (1963 Congressional Record)
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths. (This includes marriage vows - they are not loyalty to the state, but to each other)
...
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. (Must promote same-sex marriages)
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22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. (Current hipster/emo/goth subcultures)
...
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. (Replace it with Executive Orders and rulings from judicial activists)
...
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
...
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Ed is right on track. Our youngest son, maybe the smartest one on the family got bored with high school and didn’t want to go to college. He wanted to drop out and to to work in the food industry.
We told him he could stay at home and get his GED and then anouther couple of years to get his feet on the ground. He completed his GED very quicly with honors and went to a culinary institute, when he turned 21. He worked as a chef in a few high end restaurants.
He returned to our area a few years ago for better weather and got started in the wine industry as a cellar rat. A premium winery hired him as a cellar master for new winery after one year being in the business. He is still the cellar master and now the assistant wine maker.
Today’s “entitled” wine grads don’t want to work in a hard working industry and want to be Robert Mondavi’s the day they report to work. Like most college grads today, they have zip work experience in the industry and want to start at the top without putting in their time to learn how to make a great wine. They argue, whine about the hard working conditions and are never satisfied.
His boss, a great 4th generation wine maker, has basically convinced their company that hiring non experienced wine degreed idiots is a waste of time and resources.
Like Ed noted, have your son get his GED and spend a couple of years working to find out what he wants to do. Then maybe do an internship to get experience where he wants to go.
Ed is right on track. Our youngest son, maybe the smartest one on the family got bored with highschool and didn’t want to go to college.
We told him he could stay at home and get his GED and a couple of years to get his feet on the ground. He completed his GED very quicly with honors and went to a culinary institute, when he turned 21. He worked as a chef in a few high end restaurants.
He returned to our area a few years ago for better weather and got started in the wine industry as a cellar rat. A premium winery hired him as a cellar master for new winery after one year being in the business. He is still a cellar master and the assistant wine maker.
His boss, a great 4th generation wine maker, has basically convinced their company that hiring non experienced wine degreed idiots is a waste of time and resources. The “entitled” wine grads don’t want to work in a hard working industry and want to be Robert Mondavi’s the day they report to work. Like most college grads today, they have zip work experience in the industry and want to start at the top without putting in their time to learn how to make a great wine.
Practically speaking, it should be a cultural imperative that heterosexual young people be married between the ages of 18-25, and that they not only be able to support themselves, but several children as well, *at that age*.
This takes several axiomatic changes to our society, however.
1) Boy and girl children need extensive chaperoned cross-gender socialization growing up. Today, they get almost none, and it leaves them socially isolated and unable to communicate or cooperate with the other gender when they are adults. Yet they are expected to magically find a mate and marry them, at where? Bars?
2) Society used to recognize the essential importance of marriage and procreation, and how it needs special encouragement in the law, especially favorable tax and housing law. Children are inherently expensive. Government needs to provide greater support, but it must also discriminate against those who are not married and have no children at the same time.
A good way of doing this is to provide tax incentives to businesses in hiring married young people, and even more incentives if they have children, resulting in higher pay and benefits than would be typical for entry level jobs.
3) There is also a strong need to create cultural alternatives to those who should not or decide to not have children. Comparatively, in old China, respectable women whose families could not afford dowry, or who otherwise didn’t marry, could become ‘Amah’, adopted by other families to provide some light services in exchange for a stipend, but as respectable women, not servants or prostitutes.
This is a very alien idea to the US, but is essential to keep such people “out of the way” of married, breeding couples. It is a socially acceptable alternative to marriage and children.
You have made some excellent points, especially (1). Our society no longer supports marriage for young people, then wonders about the declining fertility rate and eroding tax base (no more taxes from households = property owners).
Instead of raising children to be eternal children, maybe we should raise them with rules that are actually rational. Maybe we should help them acquire the skills they need to make it on their own as young as possible, so they can reasonably marry young if they choose to do so.
The older you are when you get married, the harder it is to discard your childish, self-centered ways.
Where the f--k do they think we are, Communist China? What's next, a "One Child Only" Policy?
My parents were 17 and 19 when they married. They are still married sixty-some-odd years later.
I was married at 23, my bride was 22. We have been married over a quarter of a century so far.
My siblings were all older than 25 when they married. They have ALL been married more than once.
Anecdotal evidence to be sure, but I see what I see.
I understand that many people's first, young marriages are mistakes, but so what, you get divorce, whatever. I will say thought that most people should delay childbirth until at least 25, of course the Gov should have no say in that.
Good points.
Of all these posts, you’re the only other one who sees it: this is an attempt to destroy marriage outright. Knowing they can’t just ban it, they propose a minimum age couched in warm fuzzies which even FReepers respect. The real intent is to move tips minimum age to where a huge number will procreate out of wedlock, normalizing the absence of marriage. Between vacating the intent of marriage via compulsory recognition of “gay marriage”, and marginalizing it by pushing it off, it will fade into irrelevancy.
One of the most loving couples I know married at 19 right after their military service - both IDF intelligence. Both very very bright. They were infertile for years, moved to the USA from Israel, and then had some children, after all. They are very happy and busy and best friends.
So there is still hope for me!
>>One might imagine a situation in which marriage was strictly a contractual agreement - any number of parties with any conditions they chose to agree upon. However, the first one would end up in court, with one or more parties claiming the contract was invalid because they were coerced (”He said he’d leave if I didn’t sign!”) or that the agreement was morally negated. Back to square one. <<
Well actually, if it’s handled as a contract, it’s a contract. It’s not much different than those who live together and handle it in that way. Houses bought together, etc. Some kind of court decided kids anyway and at this point, men are left on the losing end of the bargain.
The only difference is that I don’t have some government telling my girls they can’t get married until they are 25.
Garden-variety marriage isn’t a contract at all, in our current system. It can be dissolved at will by either party with no “breach of contract” penalty.
The problem is that “marriage-type” contacts, including pre-nups, are not necessarily going to be upheld by the courts. Don’t like the agreement you signed? Get a lawyer and roll the dice. Maybe you’ll draw a judge and jury who agree that he/she done you wrong.
We have at this point no legal means of establishing marriage as it once was.
Let me talk about your son and his schooling.
A GED is not worth what it used to be.
What I have done with my children, esp my son is to collect credits and provide a transcript. Take him out of the school. Apply and homeschool him. Have him do the work and the courses that he is interested in, either at local college or other programming. Give him credit for the work.
For example, my son took two classes at the regional voc high school this year on heavy equipment, firefighter one and two through the fire departement and is in the midst of a tiling project that will earn him a credit. He built a brick sidewalk last summer that will also earn him credit.
Next year he is taking trucking courses, and the following year he will take a building course for adults at a local company all for credit. He will earn credits. He also will take graduation required courses such as English. Most of his other required credits are done.
A national homescooling program based locally will provide hime with an offical transcript. If I need a diploma they will issue one.
Give him the life he wants and get him out of prison
Freep mail me for further info
Let me talk about your son and his schooling.
A GED is not worth what it used to be.
What I have done with my children, esp my son is to collect credits and provide a transcript. Take him out of the school. Apply and homeschool him. Have him do the work and the courses that he is interested in, either at local college or other programming. Give him credit for the work.
For example, my son took two classes at the regional voc high school this year on heavy equipment, firefighter one and two through the fire departement and is in the midst of a tiling project that will earn him a credit. He built a brick sidewalk last summer that will also earn him credit.
Next year he is taking trucking courses, and the following year he will take a building course for adults at a local company all for credit. He will earn credits. He also will take graduation required courses such as English. Most of his other required credits are done.
A national homescooling program based locally will provide hime with an offical transcript. If I need a diploma they will issue one.
Give him the life he wants and get him out of prison
Freep mail me for further info
>>Garden-variety marriage isn’t a contract at all, in our current system. It can be dissolved at will by either party with no “breach of contract” penalty.<<
Exactly.
However, “pre-nupuals” are just that, before marriage. If there is no legal marriage, there is no “pre” anything. Take the marriage out of a deed to a home and it must be divided equally. Etc, etc. etc...
Get the government out and problem solved. We as Catholics would have a Sacrament called Matrimony, no different from before. Non-Catholic Christians have “Covenant Marriages”, no different from before. The people from “No Greater Joy” ministries preach and encourage this right now. None of their daughters are legally married.
With the bastardization of marriage, the attempts to destroy it and the vain disregard by the left, I believe we need to take the government out of it.
Take the marriage out of the deed to a house or other real property (I reject the equation of a structure with "a home"), and joint-tenancy or tenancy-in-common can be specified in the deep of purchase. However, this cannot be done with children. Custody issues will be in the courts ... just like we have now.
The "No Greater Joy" people are ... colorfully out of the mainstream, bless their hearts. Der Prinz and I have a $37 license from the State of Texas (good in the upcoming Republic of same, I'm sure), endorsed by a nice Methodist Air Force chaplain.
Very true.
But it is equally as true that many people in marriages simply quit trying ..... they stop trying to please the other, consider the other's feelings, pampering the other, dressing up for the other, etc.
When complacency sets in, a whole lot of very special things that make a marriage special go out the window.
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