Posted on 07/16/2004 8:09:37 AM PDT by Voice in your head
Government recognition of marriage has largely removed all meaning from the institution. A couple that is legally married does not need to enter into a union of holy matrimony. They only need to get the government’s permission to marry and take the necessary steps to complete all formalities associated with the marriage. That there is greater outrage over the government recognition of “same-sex marriage” rather than over clergy members agreeing to conduct the ceremonies is an indication of how far the nation has sunk in its view of marriage as a union of holy matrimony versus a legal contract.
The government is an entity that serves the purpose of, among other things, enforcing contracts. Among the most common contract is the contract that is entered into by couples when they marry. By getting legally married, every couple in the same state enters into a similar contract. This should change. The assumption that any two people from any social and economic class can enter into the same legal contract is absurd. Each couple should have its own contract for its specific circumstances. Some couples already do this via pre-nuptial agreements.
As an action that is half corrective and half symbolic, I think that government should discontinue the issuing of one-size-fits-all, marriage “contracts”. Discontinuing this recognition would be corrective in that any contracts formed would need to be specifically tailored to each couple, because each couple would need to draft their own contract. Discontinuing the recognition of current marriage contracts would be symbolic, in that it would send the message that marriage is a religious union that is inappropriate for government to have any involvement in. I can think of no more effective way to pervert a religious ceremony than to taint it with a stamp of approval from the government. For those who marry for spiritual reasons – love and commitment – the marriage will take on greater meaning as a solely religious and spiritual endeavor. For those who seek to form a union for the purpose of shared benefits and legal protections, the marriage will be more of a legal arrangement.
From the perspective of the government, a contract should be just a contract, whether it applies to a man and a woman committing themselves to one another or between a bank and a customer agreeing to the terms of a loan. It is insane to use government as a tool to morally sanction a couple’s lust or love or as a moral compass for our society. There is nothing that so easily gets manipulated for the advancement of our vices as government. To let it continue to have a role in marriage will only further erode the bedrock institution of our society. The surest way to retain the sanctity of marriage is to emphasize the religious and spiritual aspects of it, by giving full responsibility for the recognition and ceremonial procedures to the church.
To take this approach would seem to have many unintended consequences. For example, does this allow “same-sex marriages” or bigamy or polygamy? If there are religions that recognize such unions and will carry out the ceremonies, then the answer is yes. However, the government would not recognize those unions as marriages, because there would be no such thing as a government-recognized marriage. Marriage would be between the family and the church. Would this encourage polygamy, bigamy or “same-sex marriage”? The answer is no, because people who choose those lifestyles already live them, but they do so without government recognition. Nothing would change, because government would still not recognize those arrangements as marriages. There would be no more government-recognized marriages; only religious institutions would recognize marriages. Will this encourage “marriages” between adults and children or people and animals? The answer is no, because those are already forbidden by laws regarding child abuse and animal abuse.
Some would say that my recommendation would further erode marriage, because it would “expand” the definition by opening it up to everyone. I say the exact opposite is true, because it would leave the definition of marriage up to the church. I have infinitely greater trust in the ability of religious institutions to make moral and ethical decisions than I do in the government. Some would also say that this issue needs to be fought and won as we currently debate it, because allowing “same-sex” couples to enjoy the same benefits as traditional couples would only be an entitlement money grab and/or a further encroachment of political correctness upon our society. I say that this point of view is incorrect, irrelevant and ignores the fundamental problems that underlie our society today. Most government entitlements (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, most notably) are nothing more than legally sanctioned thievery that people participate in, because they were forced to contribute to them. In simple terms, entitlement programs are government actions whereby your money is taken from you and given to other people who did not earn it, on the assumption that their “need” entitles them to the money. To accept this assumption and use it as the basis for opposing “same-sex” unions (the opposition being that those couples will share in the money grab) is yet another step towards surrendering to an increasingly statist society – and it illustrates the point of view that worries not about the spiritual and religious aspects of marriage, but rather the bottom line: money and control. The future of marriage is too important to be weighed on the basis of money and politics.
To truly ensure the preservation of marriage we must rescue it from the political arena and place it under the watch of our religious institutions. As government and politics are further dominated by more extreme communist elements, we need to separate government from matters related to morality. Otherwise, morality will be redefined (legally) by the likes of the Klintons, the Kerrys, and the other Dasch-holes in congress.
" I guess we can't enforce any morality "
Nope. It's America, supposedly the land of freedom. That means the freedom to do whatever you choose, as long as it's not illegal and doesn't impede life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness.
I guess I see women as the "producers", since getting a sperm donor takes only a matter of a bit of money, sometimes it can happen for free. And, yes, one can go outside the relationship to get the needed gamete, but the children are raised within the relationship that the parent(s) provide.
In times when test-tube babies, surrogate mothers, and artificial insemination were not possible, and sperm donation through actual intercourse was the only (deeply frowned on) way, family law was set up. Today, with effective means of conception control, and the forms of offspring creation outside of traditional marriage being considered legal, marriage and family can indeed be considered separate and distinct in the lives of at least some people.
Does this destroy "the family"? The vast majority of our fellow citizens are going to reproduce the old fashioned way, by finding a partner of the opposite sex, marrying and mating (I suppose not necessarily always in that order), and about half of them staying together at least through the period of time necessary to raise the children to their own reproductive age.
I guess being an adopted child gives me a perspective on "family" that might be different from others here.
It is exactly that.
WHAT?! Speak for yourself.
Absolutely. In the early days of this nation, a young feller and his girl thinking about getting marriage would NEVER have thought about asking their government for permission. The church was the source of marriage. Government should be out of the marrying business altogether.
I'm all for it. I use my wife's situation as an example. Her mother lives with us, and her daughter is going off to college, out of state, this fall. If I (or any other man) had not come along, my wife and her mother would be the sole members of the household. Why shouldn't they be able to inherit from each other, tax-free? Why shouldn't they be able to make medical decisions for each other in case of disability? Why shouldn't the survivor have the right to make burial arrangements for the other?
But if we are obligated to equate everything, then you are essentially saying that marriage cannot exist under the constitution.
Marriage is not a Constitutional institution. Civil marriage is a state-sanctioned institution, with state rules. Even the IRS follows state rules on marriage, with regard to who is married, and what property is separate and what is community property for tax purposes.
It is perfectly logical and just for gov't to recognize and define a family according to how nature defines a family.
I guess the difference between some of us in dealing with the question of "who is a family?" involves whether or not we want to examine people's genitals first.
That sounds like a statistical approach. More marriages not resulting in divorce is not necessarily a preservation of strong families.
You wrote: "If folks trying to get married were not men and women, no marriage." I proposed leaving that responsibility to the churches. Can we trust the government to uphold that standard, more than we can trust the churches? I think not.
I'll try and answer that one.
The reason is to protect the family. Historically and Biblically the family is the central institution in law and in society. Although we do not think of the family normally as a law-making body, the family is nonetheless the basic law-making body in all of history. Every point of power and authority is also a point of law, and historically, family law has been the basic law of mankind. In any society or institution, there are basic rules of conduct, and these rules of conduct constitute its law structure. The family is man's basic law-making body because of a variety of reasons, but certainly one of the first of these is the fact that its is the first place man, as a child, encounters law, rules of conduct, and his idea of law is shaped and defined to a great degree by the family. Life is seen through a law-structure which the family gives to the child, and this law structure defines life for the child. But this is not all. The child's attitude towards every other institution and its laws is largely shaped by the family. How the child approaches and reacts to church, school, state, and society depends greatly on his source of law, parental authority. He can face these other law making bodies rebelliously, or he can face them obediently. His attitude can be constructive, destructive, or indifferent, depending on his family background to a large degree. Every parent daily is a law-making person, a focal point of law-enforcement, and the delinquency of parents in this respect is the delinquency before God, their Lord and sovereign.
The family is man's first and basic school, and it is the first government in the life of a child. It is the father that is ordained by God as head of the household and his government is under God is the child's basic government. The child is not the only one governed by the family. The mother is governed by her activities by the requirements of her husband and children. The father is governed by the necessities of providing for the family, protecting them, and giving them the example and leadership they need. Where the family is not self-supporting, there is neither power nor authority in the person of the father. Welfare families, from the days of the Roman Empire to the present, have been notorious for their undisciplined, immoral, and delinquent characters, and welfare families have always been marked by a general lack of male authority. A man who will not provide for his family, accumalate respect, and cherish private property, will have neither the authority nor the ability to govern with wisdom and honor. Lacking self-government, he cannot govern others.
This brings me to another function of the family...it's economic function. The father provides for his family, not for strangers. Welfare agencies provide somewhat for millions of Americans, but the family system provides far more support for hundreds of MILLIONS! Under the family system, children are not only intellectually motivated for the best educational results, but they are economically financed through grade and high school, college, and sometimes graduate school. In terms of sheer economic effienciency, nothing in all of history has ever equalled the family. Compare this to the Communist failures. The family brings social stability and order to society.
This is one of the TRUE reasons for marriage. If the government chooses to redefine marriage, they will most certainly destroy the family and destroy our civilization.
Statistics have shown that children in "weak" marriages, that is parents who feel personally unfulfilled, still ending up having less social pathologies than those who grow up without a mother and father. A mother and father act as a support system and guard dogs from the outside world. There's a reason that predator's target children in broken homes. secondly, we can trust the government to uphold that standard because no people has ever voted for homosexual marriage. Even now, it is being imposed by courts. In a democratic republic, the people can, and must be, trusted to guard their social institutions. The trouble we have had has not come from the exercise of democratic will. It seems to me that libertarian minded people have some paranoid fear that their fellow citizens cannot be trusted with guarding society's traditions.
Ping!
Homosexual Agenda Ping - a vanity on how to preserve marriage (by getting the government to not recognize any marriages... hmmmm.)
I don't agree with the assertion of the article. There is much discussion, pro and con, in the thread. Check it out.
Let me know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
Read the thread, and here's one comment.
Voice in my head is saying: the patient is sick so therefore should be killed.
I say cure the disease, don't kill the patient.
Why not just let them read the article, rather than giving them a dishonest summary?
The reason is to protect the family."
I was asking how the government has protected marriage, not why it should.
"If the government chooses to redefine marriage, they will most certainly destroy the family and destroy our civilization."
Redefining marriage is not an issue that I raised.
Geez, you're being a little thin skinned. I run the Homosexual Agenda Pinglist, and I usually (almost always unless I'm dropping with exhaustion) give a little commentary about the articles I ping the list to. I don't discourage the people on the list from reading the articles and threads; on the contrary, I encourage them to read, and join in the discussion.
You're getting off easy because I'm tired. If it was morning, you'd get a lot more commentary. Not all negative, mind you. Just more.
The shortcoming of statistics is that, when all is said and done, they are just numbers. What about divorces that result in one or both of the people getting happily re-married, rather than remaining in a miserable marriage? I know of several (my mother) such cases. Which kids have fewer social pathologies - those who grow up in a household where parents have "strong" marriages or those who grow up in a household where the parents have "weak" marriages?
"we can trust the government to uphold that standard because no people has ever voted for homosexual marriage. Even now, it is being imposed by courts."
Are the courts not part of the government?
"In a democratic republic, the people can, and must be, trusted to guard their social institutions."
Why the insistence that they use government in this endeavor?
Government must be involved in marriage.
At the start of this nation, marriage was only recorded in a non-uniform means. church records were not reliable and inconsistent. Additionally people went to the courts to disolve a marriage with only a church record to prove a marriage.
Thus the governement has to have the central role of record keeper. A license is just a recording and a means on making sure those that marry are legally able.
Laws such as inheritance, incompetency, medical surrogacy are all dependent on a consitent and uniform rule of marriage.
Additionally as a society we reward the insitution not the individual. Marriage is about promoting the insititution which proliferates the society for future generations. Homosexuality only proliferates recreational sex.
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