If you don’t already know this about me, it may come as a bit of a surprise: I’m not a fan of marriage. I do believe that if you get married, you should be serious about it, and that it’s too easy to get divorced…but the simple fact that it IS so easy to get divorced and to marry numerous people in one’s lifetime and build little or no commitment with each renders state-sponsored marriage as it currently exists entirely meaningless. Sure, marriage offers some financial benefits, but should it, really? The tax benefits and ability to cover your spouse on your medical insurance and such hearken back to a day when marriage was a lifetime commitment that created a family relationship. It’s difficult to find a justification for those benefits (and the obligations they impose on others) when the spouses themselves aren’t obligated to much of anything.
Two of my closest friends are in long-term same-sex relationships, and they tell me that the implications are much larger than money. I know that’s true, but I also think it’s true only because our laws have artificially attached those implications to the legal construct of marriage. Without that institution, we’d have to find another way to designate our powers of attorney, decide who got into our hospital rooms when we were ill and pass on our property after death. And we would. In fact, unmarried people do it all the time.
I’ve given this issue a lot of thought, the way we as a society seem to want to hold on to all of the perks of marriage without necessarily locking ourselves into everything, and how most of the truly important “rights” associated with marriage are only associated with marriage because that’s the system we created. My answer to the same-sex marriage question has been consistent for as long as I can remember: do away with legal marriage altogether, and the question will be moot.
But recently, I had occasion to think about the issue on a more personal level. I spent the weekend waiting for the arrival of my new grandson–who won’t be my grandson at all. His mother was always only my stepdaughter, but her father and I separated more than six years ago, leaving me technically no relation. I thought about this late on Friday night, as I sat in the emergency room with a grown-up version of the little girl I’d taught to write her name . Neither of her blood parents–her legal parents–was there. They’re both local; I’d driven 200 miles to be with her. And it worked out fine, because we’re both adults and we’d both made the choice.
Couldn’t the same be true for all adult interactions, if we let it? Couldn’t we simply choose whom we allowed into our hospital rooms, where our money went when we died, who had access to our records and could make decisions for us in a pinch, the same way we choose who has keys to our homes and who cares for our children and all of those other equally important issue? Of course we could. Only legal complications stand in the way, and one of those complications is the false assumptions created by even the most fleeting of legal marriages.
Those who are fighting for the “right” to marry, I think, have it all wrong. There’s no such thing as the “freedom” to marry legally; freedom is the ability to make your own choices and form your own relationships and determine what they mean to you and how to extend without obtaining a license and fitting them into a box the state created.
I think marriage needs to go back to the original intent of being a spiritual and personal thing, and should have nothing to do with the city/state/government. It is a life covenant between two people and their maker (God in my case), and is something that should be held sacred. Now, I have been married before, and have remarried, being divorced, but in looking back on my life, I would have done things much differently and waited before marrying the first time and would have looked at it more clearly.
I do think the state/city/government needs to get back out of the habit of being involved in marriage…
I’ve often wondered if a good Lawyer couldn’t make an argument that the whole idea of state-sanctioned marriages is a violation of the separation of church and state. If marriage is a religious rite and sacrosanct then how is giving married people tax breaks any different than giving people tax breaks for being baptized? Or for going to confession? If marriage is a civil contract between two people, then why should it only apply to heterosexual couples? Shouldn’t this type of contractual agreement be open to anyone? I’m not talking about just gay marriages either. Why not open it up to purely platonic relationships? Step-mothers and step-fathers can be better mothers and fathers than the sperm/egg donors. I see my step-father at least once a week. I haven’t seen my “real” father in several years. The “traditional” family model has broken down. I think this is in part because the idea of marriage is now stuck in some fuzzy area between the church and state. The church(es) have their rules regarding marriage. The state has its own. The main difference? In many of the churches there are consequences to divorce. I think our goal should be to find a way to separate the religious side of marriage from the legal side. The way society insists we find one relationship that fills all our needs and that this relationship has to fit within the societal norms makes my brain itch.
Wow! some well thought out points in this post.
I think not only is divorce too easy, but so is getting married. So you don’t think the state should be involved with marriage, ok but maybe some institution should. One that would make all wannabe married people go through a test, financial, compatibility etc, they would need to pass before they step anywhere near a church or registry office. I know it would never happen, there would be a politician involved somewhere!