| | I didn't follow the thread over the weekend. Better things to do. So when I saw the long list of replies, I thought I'd have a lot of replying to do. Turns out I don't. The replies so far have not suggested a single actual value to marriage. The deafening silence tells me a lot! I expected after my last post people would try to decisively prove I was wrong by providing one compelling counter-example. Instead, they've fallen back on the argument that I haven't proved that God can't exist!
People have claimed that I have to prove that there's no value humanly possible. And as I said before, I'm not trying to argue that marriage is some intrinsic evil. If you change the form of it enough, some of the criticisms won't apply! Duh. But just like defending Christianity, you'll eventually have something that nobody recognizes. If that's what it takes for you to continue to believe that marriage is good, you're welcome to your delusions. I still suggest the proper approach is to stop looking for excuses and instead try an actual, objective analysis. Clearly that's asking a lot!
There is some obvious confusion in this thread between a 'marriage' and a 'wedding'. The two are linked, of course, but they're not the same thing. Marriage is a legal/social/religious status (married in the eyes of god is a recognized idea). The wedding itself is a ceremony to celebrate/announce the conversion from single people to married people. Note that the wedding is not a celebration of your relationship so far, like an anniversary would be. Nor is it a celebration of your romantic love (something that would be odd to invite a bunch of people who don't share it). It is a transformational ceremony, celebrating the change in the relationship.
There's been some question about what possible motives people could have for getting married, with accusations of mind-reading and such. The reality is there are a huge number of possible motives. Most are completely unconnected to the nature of the relationship itself. I wouldn't try to create a master list. We had a discussion on this topic at SOLOC4, and some of the pro-marriage people came up with an interesting motivation. They thought marriage was good because they'd be able to easily tell other people what kind of relationship they had. If they were just together in a long-term monogamous relationship, they thought they'd have a hard time explaining it to other people. Boyfriend/girlfriend? Partners? Lovers? Of course, they could just say long-term monogamous relationship, but marriage is easier! Less syllables! Who would guess that that would be a motivation? Certainly I wouldn't. And frankly, I don't actually believe it. But hey, let's pretend it is anyway so we don't get accused of being mind-readers!
There's two things worth pointing out, though. One is that most of these alleged benefits come with cost. If you want the convenience of being able to communicate your relationship to others with one word, then your relationship better conform to a common expectation. If you're married, your relationship must conform to other people's views of what marriage is. Imagine being married but deciding it would be healthier for the relationship to live in separate homes. No way! That's not marriage! To achieve this benefit, you have to be willing to let other people's view of marriage govern your relationship. Should your personal, private, romantic relationship really be organized around other people's views?
It's also worth pointing out that the possible presence of benefits does not prove that marriage is a value itself. Any institution could look good if you pointed at benefits and ignored costs. Ed was talking about communism, and analogy I've used in the past to discuss marriage as an institution with incentives. But if you looked at the positive parts of communism, such as free stuff for everyone (woo hoo!), you'd be ignoring the total package. The argument that there could be a hidden benefit somewhere in marriage is not enough. You'd have to show that the costs aren't larger. After one couple claimed the value of communicating their relationship as a motivation, they found out that they have to pay many thousands in additional taxes. Higher taxes isn't a necessary feature of marriage, of course. But we're talking about choices in the real world.
Teresa brought up inheritance earlier. There are a few legal benefits (and costs!) to marriage in the real world. Inheritance is one. Making medical decisions in emergencies is another. There are some related to having children. Many insurance programs can be shared. You can gain citizenship in the US. And there's a bunch of others! Those can create real incentives to get married. Most of this is government interference, and some of these can be gained without getting married. But note that these are generally not values that directly improve your romantic relationship. They are concerned with other values. It's always possible to add enough legal benefits to make marriage qua legal transaction a benefit. My arguments were concerning marriages impact on your actual relationship, though.
I probably won't respond further since there has been no actual support for marriage offered and I'm not expecting any. For a value that is so unquestionably good, it sure is hard to come up with actual reasons to support it! If the best you can come up with is that I can't prove a negative, you'd think it would be time to have second thoughts about it.
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