The Hate-Filled Totalitarian Gay Lobby!

You jumped in before me

 

In the old days, married women had a variety of legal disabilities. And since I'm only talking about marriage as a legal institution, that doesn't even take into consideration the discrimination against women preventing them from having equal educational and employment opportunities at the time. So, to say that in the old days many women depended on their husbands for support, yes that is true, but it is only because of the very discrimination in the social system that created the very one-sided legal aspects of marriage in the first place.

 

I think marriage is relevant because family is relevant, both socially and politically. The law recognizes familial relationships for a reason, don't you think? It provides stability to society. It provides a network of protection for individuals.

Marriage is the only means we have to create official new families. When two people marry, they are not just expanding a family (as they do when having or adopting children). They are creating a whole new family. Marriage is the means by which the most fundamental social structure, the building block of all society, can be perpetuated.

I'd call that still relevant.

 

Marriage and the divorces that follow stimulate the economy. Imagine how many jobs would be lost if people didn't make much of a fuss about getting together and splitting up their stuff when they broke up.

 

This is the fundamental problem. Marriage is not the only functional way in which to create new families, but the law views it as the only way that deserves protection, thus perpetuating a social meme that marriage (often prefixed with the superfluous term "traditional") is also the only justified way. This leads to social pressure, which in my experience is the main reason anyone gets married. The stability of our society does not seem to really be on anyone's mind, and for those mind's that it is on, the stability of society has more to do with maintaining ownership of property within a small group of families than it does with raising new citizens.

 

This is an interesting way of looking at it.

 

No, I don't think it's male driven at all anymore, at least not in Western societies. I mean, we could get into the advantages of marriage for men and various theories on how the institution still promotes the subjugation of women, but that's not what I was getting at.

The law recognizes family members as having special rights, responsibilities and privileges vis-a-vis each other. Marriage is a way for two individuals who are not related to become related -- kind of like adoption, except that adoption is a way to legally create a relationship which could, but doesn't happen to, exist biologically. Marriage is a different kind of legal relationship, one that can only be created through the law and is unlike any other kind of legally recognized relationship.

I don't agree with bright that social pressure is the only reason people get married. People get married because they realize that, at some point, they might be incapacitated at the hospital and want their life partner to be able to make medical decisions on their behalf. They want their partner to jointly own what they own, and be entitled to continue owning it, should they die. They want the law to recognize that the person they live with is not just a friend or lover or a roommate, nor a sibling nor parent nor child, yet still a member of their family.

I guess most people who get married don't think about those things. They get married because it's what people do, or because it's what their partner wants, or it's what's expected of them. But when you're not given the opportunity to make that choice, when you and your partner are simply barred from participating, then the reality of what marriage really is comes into clearer relief.

The truth is that there are couples who genuinely want to do more than share a household and share their lives; they want the legal and social recognition that they are in the same family. It's plainly different to be "like brothers" with someone and to actually be born of the same parents. In a similar way, being committed to a partner is not the same as being married. That's the state of things culturally and legally.

Why the genders of the two partners should matter in that equation is beyond me.

 

I bow to Gynostar.

 

I understand what demo's saying but I think the 'social' aspect is changing and, IMO, not before time. Bluntly, what the hell's it got to do with someone else, even one's family. So all we're left with then is the legal side and, for me, that's not enough of a reason to do something. Of course, that's different from seeing how it makes life simpler for people which I fully accept.

But again, none of this relates to the issue of whether gays should have the 'rights' extended to others unavailable to them which, IMO, is a nonsense.

Edit: Of course, if I'm honest my position on this is probably due to an extent on the fact that I'm a life-long atheist.

 

Well that was my point about recognising the practical aspects of the matter. Truth is there are sound legal reasons for it but, bearing in mind what marriage is MEANT to be about, (love, basically), it reflects a rather imperfect situation. That's all I was saying.

 

Never do...

 

I might be mis-reading what you wrote, and I possibly did not explain myself fully or went too black-and-white, but it appears that we do agree. Read on ...

Most people take these privileges for granted until they are actually face-to-face with what those privileges allow. The younger we are, the less foresight we have and the more we fall prey to "romantic" notions. Thus, I don't believe most people marry for those privileges. It's a deeper social conditioning, IMHO. That is not to say that those privileges are not important. In fact, they are all that is important when it comes down to it.

Social pressure.

Exactly.

I agree with you. My stance is that the institution of marriage is fundamentally not inclusive enough nor versatile enough to enable the variety of deep social relationships that people have with each other. For example, I have male friends that I have no intention of marrying or having sex with, but I still consider them my family. I know trios who in my eyes legitimately deserve the rights of marriage. Relationships like these contribute to the stability of society because they provide civility, love, and nurturing to the participants. And since these kind of relationships are often engaged in without the social pressure endemic in marriage, one could say they are more sincere and thus contribute more to the stability of society than marriage does, at least in terms of psycho-social stability of the individuals, not in terms of maintaining the overall existing power structures.

 

That's always been my problem with marriage. By it's very nature it's inflexible. I mean, that's what it's MEANT to be... it's not an accident. The problem is once you introduce the law into something the matter tends to have to be either black or white. You can't be 'sort of' married any more than you can be 'sort of' pregnant.

 

Even if marriage is silly and ridiculous and pointless, why should heterosexuals have more of a right to something silly and ridiculous and pointless than gay people? That's the issue here, surely.

 

Exactly... they've just as much right to be miserable as the rest of us

 

That is one good point; it is much more expensive to divorce than to just walk away.

That is probably the main reason some people have a mistress but do not seek a divorce.

In the small town where my parents live (in Mexico) it is common for middle class women to be house wives, their husbands have women on the side, the whole town know about it, even the wives know about it, but they do not divorce because 1. The social stigma, and 2. It means that they would have to get a job.

 

Then what the hell's the point of getting married if you think like that? Just stay single.