The attached article and link is a few years old, however, this is the first time that my lovely eyes have gazed upon it. It’s entitled “The Case Against Marriage”. Admittedly I haven’t read it all the way through, but I did read enough for it to hit home and prompt me to write upon what I did read.
I’ll put my initial thoughts before the article and then post sections 1 and 2, you can go to the site for the remaining 28 chapters if you like.
Excerpt:
What is marriage?
This may seem like a complicated question. There are many dimensions to it: emotional, sexual, religious, cultural, financial. If you ask a hundred people on the street what marriage is, you are probably going to get a hundred different answers.
However, if you ask a hundred lawyers the same question, you are more likely to get a consensus. Under the law, marriage is quite simple: It is an economic contract to share future income and liabilities. You can layer on top of it whatever emotional meaning you want, but what the law sees primarily is a merging of your economic activity.
Throughout history the need and requirements for marriage has changed and to each culture they have their own idea of what marriage means. This is one of many reasons why gay and lesbian marriage not being widely acceptable is baffling to me. It’s NOT about a religious institute (except to those who CHOOSE to view it as such, the origins beg to differ)- sorry, some people need to pretend an invisible sky daddy is there to control EVERY f’in aspect of their lives. Many historians do view it as a way to control women, to ensure the offspring were his, to merge families for financial and power gain- very seldom was it for romance and trying to live up to a moral and ethical code. I think the latter happened after much of society decided to wedge sticks up their arses in more attempts for control as they gave up the reigns for personal responsibility and ownership.
You can be a happy couple and a happy family without throwing law into your glorified ‘going steady’ ego trip of a relationship. It’s rarely these days about “I love you and I’ll die without you” as much as it is “You’re MINE- you belong to me and this is an added measure to make sure I can control you.”
If you pull the emotion and fantasy out of the legal union and view the other person from an intellectual stand point (of course the thought wouldn’t enter your head if you weren’t at least attracted to them and had some sort of chemistry with the person) you might have a more realistic view of the relationship and whether or not it’s something you wish to legalize.
Too many people get married because their social circle encourages the step even though they may not be ready, they don’t fully trust the person or feel comfortable enough to open themselves up to them mentally, emotionally, physically or financially.
I personally feel it’s best to keep any and all relationships out of the hands of the government and take full personal ownership of what you do with your life. If that’s just not going to happen, then the government should allow any and all consenting adults to share their assets with whomever they found fit to do so with.
I’ve seen marriages work out until the death they did part and I see many people my age (under 40) entering their 3rd and 4th “holy” union.
Regardless of your stance on the topic, so far it does seem to be at least a decent thought provoking read.
The Case Against Marriage – Chapter 1 – 5/13/07
You’re probably not going to listen to me, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway. You’ve been considering marriage, and I am here to dissuade you. I’m not against love, mind you, or even against bonding for life if that’s the way things turn out. It is only the public contract I object to. Why does a private relationship need a public sanction? Why can’t you negotiate your relationship on your own, as it unfolds, just between the two of you, without the social or governmental license?
Instead of enhancing your relationship, marriage might screw it up permanently, replacing true attraction with a dull institution. At the least, it reduces your flexibility, making it harder to respond to inevitable changes in yourself and your partner.
There are plenty of married people out there, and I’m not saying they should get unmarried. We all have to make the best of our current circumstances. I only want to address you, the naïve young dilettante, while there is still a chance to save you.
Let’s think this thing through together, shall we? What does marriage really mean, and what are its practical effects? Is it really going to help your relationship or hurt it? What are the legal, social, economic and psychological ramifications of walking down the aisle? Why do people think they need marriage, and how are they deluded?
Gays and lesbians are always crying because they can’t get married in most jurisdictions. I say they should count their blessings! It is like women fighting for the right to join the military and go to war. Before you make a big deal about it, you ought to think things through: “Do I really want to go to war?” Why should gays fight to join the same prison everyone else is trapped in?
Gay relationships, in fact, may be leading the way to an enlightened future that heteros ought to embrace. Think about it: Gays can’t get married, so what do they do? They piece together the elements of marriage á la carte, as it suits their needs. If they want to share death benefits, that make up wills. If they want to share a bank account, they open one together. They don’t try to share everything all at once from this day forth, which, legally, is what marriage makes you do. Gays have to negotiate every act of sharing on a case-by-case basis, which is the essence of a healthy and dynamic relationship. In the absence of specific negotiated sharing, they remain free and independent individuals.
I know something about marriage from having been through it once. I also see the tail end of the institution as an unofficial observer of Family Court in Las Vegas. Las Vegas, of course, is the marriage capital of the world, but you learn far more about the institution by studying divorces as they pass through court. There is a Yin and Yang between marriage and divorce. Campbell’s First Law says that the nastiness of the divorce is proportional to the unreality of the initial delusion. Divorce is the paying of the piper after an overdose of fantasy.
During divorce, there is plenty of blame floating around, but in the end, you have to acknowledge that it was your own damn fault. You were the one who bought into this fantasy. Before you got married, you believed the fairytale nonsense, that this was really going to change your relationship for the better and make it more “secure”. The trouble with security is that it often works both ways: In trying to lock out the uncertainties of the world, you may be locking yourself in a cage that reduces your own freedom. Because you can no longer easily step away, you may have lost much of your ability to negotiate with your cellmate. Instead, you make accommodations and more accommodations and sweep problems under the carpet until—Kaboom!—things finally blow up.
People are fundamentally independent entities. The urge to merge with someone else can be huge, but there is a practical limit to how far you can go. If you get too close to anyone for too long, there are bound to be problems. It is like being handcuffed to the one you love: After the novelty wears off, it is going to be a pain in the ass to get anything done. The person you are trapped with is bound to fray on your nerves. Once you have already shared everything you can share, you hunger for new experiences as an independent being so you can maybe come back later and share again.
The healthiest base position is one of discrete individuality. We should each be self-contained entities with our own careers, assets, goals and relationships. We should come together with others only as it suits us, negotiating each engagement on its own merits. Over time, we might share more of ourselves, and this is fine, as long as it happens naturally. You never have to take any “Big Step” to make a relationship work. Instead, a lot of little steps could conceivably lead you to the same result. If you move slowly and incrementally, what you will probably have in the end is a more solid and stable relationship, because everything was carefully built stone by stone to suit your needs, not purchased as a prefabricated unit.
The institution of marriage replaces an independently constructed relationship with a single social contract that attempts to compact years of development into a single sentence: “I do.” It is like buying your diploma from a mail order company rather than actually going to college. It is a waving of the magic wand that is supposed to build everything all at once. You stand up before all your family and friends and say, “This is all I am ever going to want for the rest of my life.” Do you think that by saying this you are really going to make it happen?
If it does happen—you remain attached to each other for life—how do you know it was really a free choice? Did you stay together because it was truly the best arrangement, or was it because you were imprisoned together and escape was too painful? If you are married, you are never really going to know.
In this book, we will explore marriage and relationships and sexual attraction and law and contracts and loneliness and fear. What are people afraid of when they get married? No institution can be all positive; there have to be demons under the surface, and we will try our best to dig them up.
Continue on to Chapter 3 Sex and Intimacy
Preach on sister!!!