JOEBIALEK

With all the debate about same-sex marriages, perhaps it is time to discuss the institution of marriage itself. Webster's dictionary defines marriage as the institution whereby men and women are joined in a special kind of social and legal dependence for the purpose of founding and maintaining a family. Some would argue that the family is a microcosm of society and further that as the family goes so will the society go. Hence, the breakup of the family may cause the breakup of society. The question that remains, however, is if marriage is still necessarily the best institution to found a family. We are constantly reminded that the divorce rate is approximately fifty percent in the United States or that one of every two couples get divorced or you have a fifty-fifty chance of staying in the same marriage. Of the remaining fifty percent of couples who are married, only ten percent admit to being happy with the relationship. Any statistician in the world would say that numbers of these kind would indicate that something is seriously wrong with the institution of marriage. Countless children experience the fallout of a bad marriage but at the same time use that experience as their only guide. People in our society receive the same amount of training about human relationships as they do about child rearing. Therefore it is little wonder that even though most people enter into a relationship with the best of intentions they flounder at communication and understanding. It is not good enough to expect that one can only learn about relationships from their family, friends and co-workers; one must be willing to educate themselves in philosophy, psychology, sociology, spirituality and economics. Another institution in our society, education, is supposed to help foster the growth and development of the individual and family but yet the current public school curriculum does not serve this end. Marriage in the United States today has become an institutional burden to relationships much like religion has become an institutional burden to spirituality. Too much focus is given to adhering to rules and regulations and not enough to fostering loving relationships. Consequently, cohabitating appears to be the natural evolutionary result of the breakdown of the marriage institution. Still, as with marriage, the legally binding requirement is that the children must be provided for. If we are not careful to begin again the conscious effort to cultivate a more serious approach to human relationships, marriage as an institution will cease to be taken seriously and ultimately fade away.

schu

I think that the government should get out of religious rites. Any couple or combinations of people who want a religious ceremony should be able to have it if they can find a church to execute it.

On the other hand, the government should only be involved in contracts between people. These contracts could and should be whatever the individual people agree on if they don't violate the rights of anyone. The contracts would be enforceable just as any other contract is, i.e. the parties would be able to go to court to have the contract enforced.

A special addendum should be attached concerning children. Any children resulting from the union whether born or adopted should be provided for by contract under law.

Any contract between people should be subject to being dissolved by the parties involved consistent with the terms of the contract. In other words, if they have children, they are not absolved of their responsibility of care and welfare of the children.

This is another area where the church and state should be separated.

ex-idaho

I think its important to examine the history of marriage as the current form is still very young in the historical context.

Marriage was and in some places still is an exchange of property. Families would arrange to marry off daughters in trade for livestock, land, money or status. The husband could have several wives depending on local custom. The value of daughters was entirely based on how much that child could fetch on the market once she reached a certain age. This model persisted in Western culture up until the 17th centrury.

The value of a wife was determined by two primary factors: ability to bear many children and strenghth to carry a workload in whatever trade the husband happened to be in. Love was not part of the equation for either the husband and wife or more often than not the children either. A marriage and a family were an investment made by the man in order to produce a good or service in order to provide for himself and ultimately his "family".

This model held true up until the Industrial Revolution when machines began to take the place of people in many industrial settings. As farm equptment became inexpensive enough for an average farmer to purchase a plow or a thresher then the need for wife with a strong back and the ability to bear many children diminished. As a middle class began to emerge we start to see new criteria arise in the selection of wives, physical beauty and to a lesser extent love. This was the beggining of our modern family.

Of course in Europe and the dense ethnic regions and the rural farms of the US a family was not mother/father/children. The family unit was much larger often consisting of the parents of one of the parents, uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents. Each family had a built in support network that pooled resources to better provide for each other creating mini-societies. This is still the norm in Italy, Mexico and other S American locales.

The modern family unit did not emerge on a large scale until after WWII when GI's returning from Europe and the Pacific had big checks from the GI bill and cheap housing in the suburbs began to put distance between families. This deprived the families of the support network that they had relied on for so long and eventually led to the two income family that we see as the standard today.

If you listen to the so called marriage advocates they assert that the family is unchanged and has always been based on a loving covenant between a man, a woman and God. This of course leaves out alot of history and distorts the rest.

lpetrich

Furthermore, check out "Biblical Family Values" some time -- like several of the notable men of the Old Testament each having several wives.

And Jesus Christ and Paul were apparently single all their lives.

Which suggests that the Bible is a very bad example.

Loren Pechtel

Do you think you could use paragraphs? Your stuff is *HARD* to read as a big block like that!


We say that children need to be provided for, marriage or not. After all, that's what child support is all about!

So what if marriage faded away? I don't see that it would be any great harm. I'm married and have been so for the last 15 years. Our marriage is still happy.
If we did have that piece of paper it would have made little difference to us on a personal level. (On a bigger level it would have made a BIG difference--it was that piece of paper that got her permission to stay here.) The day she moved in is more important to me than the day we made it official.