Posted on 07/29/2014 8:05:36 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
Thanks. I’ve got a few friends who will be interested in your list. And will more than happy to adjust their viewing schedule accordingly.
First of all, while I am sympathetic to libertarian views, I stopped being one a long time ago.
Your view of marriage being destroyed by culture is a good one, and one that I have argued also. We are focusing at the wrong target, for heterosexual marriage is increasingly a luxury good, and less an universal institution. When the expectation is for every grander weddings, followed by every grander honeymoons, most people equate the ceremony with matrimony.
Add to that easy divorce, serial sexual fornication prior to (and often in) marriage, and most people have stopped seeing the point. However if you look at the old books on Common law and others, it becomes apparent why the State (any State) has a vested interest in preserving marriage. Simpy put marriage is the best way to raise up new citizens and not have them be a drain on the resources of the realm. For that reason, marriage has typically been a binding contract that sets rights and responsibilities on both partners. These are to insure that both parties will remain to raise the children in some form of stability, with some ways to dissolve the union in certain defined circumstances.
What we have done instead is replaced marriage, with the family as the basic unit of governing, with welfare, with the state as the basic unit of support and governing. Until we take a hard look at that, marriage will remain a luxury good.
Now, the fact that it is a luxury good explains much about the gay marriage movement (never mind in the basis of common law, there can be no such thing as “same sex” marriage.) Once it is viewed less as an institution for propagation of children and more as a contract allowing ease of legal niceties, things get messy.
My reason for opposing it isn’t because I think it will destroy marriage, that has already happened and in fact same sex “marriage” is a symptom of this.
It is because I know the next phase is to force churches and other religious bodies to perform the ceremony. Now I know the argument of “legal” marriage vs “church” marriage, but the fact remains that they want to force the churches, temples, and all religious institutions to violate their beliefs. Many churches (including my own) are well into planing to move to underground cell based worship.
I also want to start trying to reclaim marriage. Rather than throwing up our hands and saying “Oh well, got to move on”, there are times we are called to say “Here I stand, so help me God! I can do no other”.
Go out West to the areas with large unreformed Mormon populations.
The first thing that happens in polygamous societies is you have to get rid of a lot of the young men. They often get force out of the area at a quite young age in order to limit the competition for young women.
If Adam and Steve can bankrupt the Social Security system even faster by claiming the benefits of marriage, what is to prevent Steve and Eve and Carla and Susie and Jill from doing the same thing?
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