Posted by
Playful Walrus on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 5:02:36 PM
Part I of this piece is here.
So why do I think that marriage may be dead?
Marriage as an institution has traditionally been linked to gender roles and division of labor, mutual respect between the participants and the families from which they originate, commitment, honor, tradition, religion, community, sexuality, parenting, and cohabitation.
Yet, over the years, through our personal actions, through allowing our religious institutions to abdicate their responsibilities and fidelity to Scripture, through our media consumption, through our allowing academic and professional organizations and our workplaces to be hijacked by certain activists pushing the self-serving demands of a tiny minority, through who we’ve elected and who they’ve appoint to the bench… we have torn down too much of the context for marriage.
Marriage is no longer the context for raising children. There is no shame by our society any more for conceiving and bearing children out of wedlock. Indeed, much of our media even encourages it. We reward such behavior through our government. God help you if you don’t join in on that baby shower at the office. Sure, studies show that marriage is beneficial to children, but please… if we really cared so much about children we wouldn’t be killing them by the millions in abortion clinics. We wouldn’t be dumping them unnecessarily in day care and other forms of surrogate parenting.
Marriage is no longer the context for sex. This is linked to the above. There is no shame any more for casual sex. The policies of our institutions even encourage it, and the media certainly does. There was a time when even those who happily engaged in fornication were very circumspect about discussing it, but that went the way of suing people for breach of promise and alienation of affection. Conversely, married women are told by too many sources that it is okay to withhold themselves from the husband on an ongoing basis for any reason or no reason at all.
Marriage is no longer the context for living together. Shacking up is standard. God help the landlord who tries to prevent shacking up on his or her own property.
Marriage is no longer a lifelong commitment to your bride or groom. Divorce used to be a disgrace. Now it is common and not shamed at all. We even have no-fault divorce.
Marriage is no longer the context for joining the sexes and dividing labor. While I’m glad that women obtained equal access to the workplace, our society has done itself a disservice encouraging the two-income marriage and downplaying the differences between the sexes, degrading gender roles and masculinity and femininity. This has done much to get people to think of marriage as simply some sort of affirmation of a romantic or sexual relationship as opposed to something that forms a microcosm of society that is ideal for raising the next generation.
This has made it very easy to recently convince four judges that marriage is something other than something that unites the sexes – that marriage is whatever they want it to be. This is also the result of a confusion over the nature of rights and the separation of powers in the American system.
Marriage originated as a religious sacrament and was reinforced by governments, even secular ones, because of its benefit to society. Our laws did not create marriage – they simply recognized and licensed it. Our media has mocked it, and we have allowed that.
We have somehow allowed a tiny minority to enshrine in law that a “sexual” act that does nothing tangible except spread disease and injure the participants is the equivalent to a sexual act that has perpetuated society for all of human existence and created almost every single one of us. We have allowed the rare exceptions to define the rules.
We have reduced marriage into nothing more than a way to secure benefits for someone who is perfectly capable of obtaining a job with some of those benefits and signing a contract for the others. We have turned marriage licenses into nothing more than a piece of paper that supposedly conveys some sort of societal approval for a relationship, even if is the kind that has no potential to perpetuate society and is of little interest to society. We have turned weddings into nothing more than a narcissistic, materialistic party instead of a sacred moment that changes the lives of the participants and obligates the observers to offer moral support for that covenant.
It doesn’t help that our system punishes men for getting married via 1) alimony and 2) child support even for children conceived in the wife’s adultery with another man.
Hedonistic men say there is nothing a man can get by being married that he can’t get otherwise: it is of no benefit to men.
Sure, family advocates can point to men 1) living longer, 2) earning more, and 3) having more sex if they are married, but intelligent hedonists who understand human behavioral tendencies respond quite convincingly that 1) they’ll gladly trade a few years of convalescence for a lifetime of freedom and fewer obligations; 2) that is an average, they know how to beat those odds especially if they have the freedom for after-hours networking and to relocate, and earning less is just fine without a wife and kids to support; 3) that is an average, and they definitely know how to beat those odds.
Our system encourages women to divorce, and not to remarry (or risk losing alimony payments).
We’ve done much to kill marriage.
And now, because of a ruling by four judges on the California Supreme Court, “bride” and “groom” and “man” and “woman” are getting erased from marriage documents, and people from all over will be able to come to California and force the people of California to issue them a marriage license when there is a bride or groom missing. Then, they will be able to go back to their home states and demand similar recognition there, too. Perhaps this will go up to the SCOTUS, and what will they decide, especially with appointments from our next POTUS?
We will have official policy that says there is no difference between something that joins the sexes and something that excludes one of the sexes, despite all of the previous rulings and laws experiences otherwise.
Sure, there is a constitutional amendment on the California ballot for November. But will that somehow be subverted by the SCOTUS? It also isn’t far-fetched that the amendment could fail at the ballot box, given how younger Californians have been conditioned to reject natural and traditional understandings about sex, gender, and marriage in public schools and in our media and in our workplaces and even our churches.
And so I fear that marriage is dead, as far as our larger society goes. So many have lost the Biblical metaphor of a protective and living Father because their mothers made a poor choice in sex partners or treated him badly. Now, they will also lose the Biblical metaphor of Christ and his bride.
Along with marriage, dead also is the proper role of the judiciary.
Perhaps we should start referring to real marriage as Biblical Marriage, or “God-Ordained”, or “Natural” or “Tradtional”? At least as long as we have a right to speak, anyway.