The Institution of Marriage

[Psychonaut]

I'd like to know what the general feelings of the Apricity are on the institution of marriage. I've got a few questions in particular that I'd like for respondents to answer:

1. Is marriage a fundamentally religious arrangement, or is there an important societal function that it still plays?


a. If you believe marriage to be religious and not secular in nature, should the state cease to recognize all marriages?


b. If you believe marriage to be an important secular affair, what is your rationale for maintaining what amount to essentially religious customs under the guise of secular law?

[Freomæg]

Is marriage a fundamentally religious arrangement, or is there an important societal function that it still plays?
I suppose what marriage does is to allow each man the opportunity to be his own King, and each woman to be her own Queen, in some small way. It could be seen as the smallest denomination of decentralised power and for that reason, I support it. Marriage is inextricably linked to the institution of home-building and family and without it, perhaps the most common of all men would never experience that minor sense of free will and determination - for rather than being the Head of something small, he'd look only to the authorities above him, never to his responsibilities beneath.

So the way I see it, the concept of marriage, in part, serves to maintain the liberties of all men and women. So yes, it has an important social function.

Religiously, I and many of our ancestors recognised the sanctity of Duality. Nature itself fabricated the requirement of a single man and a single woman to join together. The question is whether reproduction itself is sufficient, or whether we go beyond and think in terms of relationships. My own beliefs on this are that our souls, being eternal, build relationships with other souls across numerous lifetimes. When we feel 'love' in this mortal plane, it is the expression of two familiar souls bonding and learning from one another. The act of marriage - beyond civic relationship - is a powerful message to all around that these two souls belong together.

[Atlas]

I'll make a short answer, I still believe kids are more important than getting married...

[Ulf]

Whether religious or not, we took an oath to be faithful to one another. We took an oath to just be there for one another. We act as each others representative to our gods and the state.

Through marriage I go from 'me' to 'us'. Were anything to happen to me there is only one person I would want making decisions for me.

I'll make no mention of reproduction because I feel it's off topic...

[Sarmata]

I don't treat marriage as religious custom etc. but as very important factor who join together man and woman and create familly. Familly it's for me the most important unit of Nations. Marriage suported by oath and aprovaled by law craeate base of each healthy society....I know that sounds a bit like propaganda but it's my honest view on marriage, besides I'm -happy- in marriage since three years:wink

[Æmeric]

1. Is marriage a fundamentally religious arrangement, or is there an important societal function that it still plays?Marriage is a legal arrangement. The fact that most religions - all the major ones - have always recognized marriage is because of the practicality of the institution of marriage to the establishment of stable societies. Always a male-female or a male-females institution. In all civilizations. Because it is natural.





a. If you believe marriage to be religious and not secular in nature, should the state cease to recognize all marriages?
We do not live in a theocracy. We need the civil government to enforce the marriage contract. As it maintains all civil contracts.



b. If you believe marriage to be an important secular affair, what is your rationale for maintaining what amount to essentially religious customs under the guise of secular law?Marriage predates Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism ect.... As I stated it is a natural institution. Many of our common laws - now codified as statutory law - have their basis in religious traditions, some Chrisitian, some pagan. Should we disregard any laws that may somehow imply obedience to the Ten Commandments. "Thou shall not kill", just another superstitious religious belief?


Marriage has fallen out of fashion in the West over the last 40-years, mainly because governments have marginalized the benefits that came with marriage & have tried to make it more inclusive :rolleyes2:. And as a consequence of this social engineering the nations of the West have become disfunctional. I know firsthand what the situation is in America & I have read many times British members at these forums refer to the young of Britain as "feral". Marriage as served a purposed much important then just a religious ceremony & the West is suffering the consequences of the marginalization of an universal institution as old as civilization itself in the name of secularism.

[Skandi]

Hmm my opinions have changed on this, I always considered it a convenience issue, as in the tax and inheritance arrangements, but as these now go to unmarried couples (common law) as well, the argument no longer holds,

I would say that it is just a way of showing publicly that you are committed to each other, and in many cases is for the benefit of the grandparents.

[Ulf]

Hmm my opinions have changed on this, I always considered it a convenience issue, as in the tax and inheritance arrangements, but as these now go to unmarried couples (common law) as well, the argument no longer holds,

In PA Common Law marriages are no longer recognized after January 2005.

[Loddfafner]

I saw a button that said something to effect of: "Marriage is a great institution... if you like living in institutions."

[Skandi]

I saw one like that, the end was ...but who wants to live in an institution

[SwordoftheVistula]

We do not live in a theocracy. We need the civil government to enforce the marriage contract. As it maintains all civil contracts.

The government shouldn't be allowed to set/change the terms though. For example, when most of the states enacted 'no-fault divorce' in the 70s and early 80s, the marriages which existed prior to that law should not have been subject to the new law.

They should just be like every other contract, have all the terms contained in the contract for both parties to review and sign.

They should also be able to assign other entities as arbiters, for example churches, or even rabbis and imams if such people are allowed to exist inside our borders.

[SwordoftheVistula]

Here's an article I saw that came out today. The counterpart, of course, is the large number of divorced men who get stuck with picking up the entire bill for their ex-wife and children while having limited at best access to the children. Either way, it seems that without marriage one parent or the other often ends up bearing the entire burden.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/a_nation_of_unwed_drudgery.html

A neighbor in her 30s, a very fine woman, recently had a child with her boyfriend. They live together.

The boyfriend's mother and father enjoy being grandparents. The boyfriend gets to have a son, as well as live-in female companionship. How eager he was to be a father, I don't know, but he clearly doesn't want to be the mother's husband. He's keeping his options open.

Meanwhile: She works full time, baby care is totally her problem, and her day is a streak of maniacal multitasking, from the 5 a.m. wakeup until she drops into bed at 10 p.m.

Nearly 40 percent of babies now born in America are to unmarried women. The birthrate for unmarried women in their 20s is higher than for teens. Sociologists say that these new mothers often assume that the baby will "cement" the relationship. But these arrangements rarely last.

Some single fathers no doubt gallantly pitch in. (And some married ones don't.) But that's not the norm. Most such single mothers become beasts of burden.

A PBS "NewsHour" segment about "people hard hit by hard times" featured Heather Scharf. A 37-year-old single mother, Scharf recently lost her good-paying job. She's scared, stressed and depressed.

We learn a lot about her: She dropped out of a community college at age 20, then worked her way up in the mortgage business. She cares deeply for her 5-year-old girl. She's found a lousy-paying temp job an hour's drive away -- and spends $800 a month on a school where her daughter can stay during her late hours at the office.

But there's not a single word about the father. Was he married to Heather? Is he paying any child support? Where the heck is he?

The story of the struggling single mother has become so commonplace that few even question why she's doing this so utterly alone. There should be a standing newsroom rule that all such accounts include some reference to the fathers.

I wonder most about women like my friend. She was not an impoverished teen lacking a traditional family model. She was not one of those well-to-do professionals buying the sperm of an anonymous high-achiever. She belongs to the hardworking middle class. In olden days, she would have had a frilly wedding before starting a family. (She did have a baby shower.)

Perhaps I'm making too much of marital status. After all, many divorced mothers engage in similar toil. For the legalities, I spoke with Barbara Glesner-Fines, a professor of family law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Regarding children, the law treats the father (or mother) who breaks up with the other parent much the same whether there was a marriage or not. A court will impose the requirements of support and privileges of custody and visitation.

The difference is that when a child is born during a marriage, the husband is presumed to be a father. That is not the case when the couple is not married. "He has neither the rights nor responsibility until he is found to be the father," Glesner-Fines said.

I ask a sociological question: Does a marriage intensify one's sense of duty?

"Formality in the law serves some important purposes," Glesner-Fines responded. "It cautions people that what they are getting into is serious."

Yes, that's it. The seriousness of the legal bond between the parents -- as well as from parent to child -- helps foster a partnership in childrearing, even if that bond later dissolves in divorce. Why so many women take on motherhood without such formality in place is a mystery. The sad result is a growing sisterhood of drudgery.

[National_Nord]

I believe that marriage must be secular in nature, because different forms of marriage existed prior to the emergence of religion, moreover, I personally grew up in a secular environment, people are very distant from religion.

[Psychonaut]

different forms of marriage existed prior to the emergence of religion

Really? Perhaps you could expand on what you mean here. We know that human religion was already established by the emergence of the Upper Paleolithic period, but that it may have developed as early as the Middle Paleolithic. Are you suggesting that some kind of formal marriage ceremonies predate that?

[National_Nord]

Really? Perhaps you could expand on what you mean here. We know that human religion was already established by the emergence of the Upper Paleolithic period, but that it may have developed as early as the Middle Paleolithic. Are you suggesting that some kind of formal marriage ceremonies predate that?
Start here with the need that we believe in marriage. If you take sustainable sex marriage, it can be argued that the marriage was preceded by religion. Early Indo-revered river and committed rituals around them, including the rite of marriage. Change and development of forms of marriage is linked to the human race: Mongoloids are more inclined to a polygamous relationship than evropeoid. The development of religion has been accelerated after the collapse of the Nostratic group of languages. The development of religion has an impact on the ritual and form braka.
The wedding in the Christian church has become fashionable in Russia, as an element of bourgeois life.

[Tabiti]

Some would argue with me that I don't have any "christian" values, but I'm not religious and was raised by atheists, so have special attitude towards marriage and family values at all.
I don't believe in marriage as institution, but rather something sacral lost its values in the nowadays society. Marriage meant the union between two people, the main moving force of nature, which give birth of a new individual, so the circle continues. Due to different cultures, customs, traditions those union had to be proven and regulated in most cases to prevent appearing of illegitimate children and to set certain moral values for sex and infidelity.
However, marriage today is more like a contract, which people sign mostly to promise to themselves to be with one person for whole their life or just because the tradition. Observing the number of divorces leads me to the conclusion that marriage nowadays is just good lost of money, since no paper agreement can make you live with someone you don't get along well with.
If you love someone there is absolutely no need to have that relationship "approved" and "legitimated" for god, society, traditions. There are no such thing as "illegitimate children" and sexual contacts. In the past, most cultures insisted on both husbands to be virgin. Now, what is the % of people that make sex for first time after the marriage?
Do we need to wait "for the moment" for half of our lives, missing lots of opportunities, which can turn out to be our perfect mates? You can never know enough good your partner since you don't sleep with his/her, since the sexual act itself is sacred, intimate union. I'm far not promoting "free love", since I'm rather conservative on that matter, just saying there is nothing wrong or sinful to be intimate with person you have feelings.
About children and family issues - as long as you love and respect each other no one would ask to see if you have a marriage contract or no. What is the difference between married and unmarried couples living together?
At last, we are continuing the same eternal tradition of uniting the female and the male beginning, just in different form, more suitable for the nowadays way of life.
Personally, I would never sign such "marriage" contract or make a glamorous wedding party just to "prove" my love and dedication. I tend to stay away from certain "social activities"...

[Psychonaut]

If you take sustainable sex marriage, it can be argued that the marriage was preceded by religion. Early Indo-revered river and committed rituals around them, including the rite of marriage.

Are you just talking about mating? Animals mate, but they are not married. Many humans also mate without marriage. What leads you to believe that mating was formalized into a system of marriage (of any sort) prior to the development of religion? I'm only pushing here because this seems like an outlandish claim.

[Phlegethon]

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
This I tell you, brother
You can't have one without the other

Love and marriage, love and marriage
It's an institute you can't disparage
Ask the local gentry
And they will say it's elementary

Try, try, try to separate them
It's an illusion
Try, try, try, and you will only come
To this conclusion

Love and marriage, love and marriage
Go together like a horse and carriage
Dad was told by mother
You can't have one without the other

[Óttar]

I think that marriage is a religious function, and that civil unions with all the benefits of what we think of as a "marriage" today should be a matter of the State, i.e. there should be a separation of Church and State here.

In the UK, marriages are not recognized unless they are performed in the CoE or other Christian churches. After performing a Hindu or Muslim marriage, the married must get the rest taken care of at a civil office. This latter case, I believe should be required of ALL Religious weddings.

I believe that all "marriages" should ultimately be a civil affair (i.e. a contract with whatever benefits there are). I also believe that this should be extended to gays.

Opposition to gay marriage is ultimately spearheaded by Abrahamic religious movements attempting to impose their religious beliefs on others.

We cannot be so sure that *all marriages, at all times, and in all contexts and cultures* was only between a man and a woman. The French had a practice in Medieval times known as enfrerement i.e. "embrotherment" where men could join themselves together legally. I'm sure there are other examples, but I'm not going to do the research.

We should not concern ourselves with what gays do. No one would impede the civil rights of a couple who, frequently engaged in sating a fetish or getting whipped as their way of getting off, even though fetishism and S&M is supposedly "non-normative sexuality" because *What people do in the bedroom, is none of the State's
f%^&ng business.*

[SwordoftheVistula]

At that point, I don't see the need for a registry of 'marriages' or 'civil unions', and without state monitoring of them we could eliminate a lot of the problems currently associated with divorce/probate/family court

[Sally]

Marriage, in my view, is a natural and social institution for all people, be they Jews, Muslims or pagans. I believe it was Thomas Aquinas, in Summa Theologiae Moralis, who defined marriage as a union to generate offspring to propagate the human race. If this type of marriage is witnessed by some authority (civil or religious), it is certainly legitimate.

For Catholics, though, marriage is more than a natural contract between two parties; it is a sacrament. Christ himself elevated marriage to the level of a sacrament. Though most Protestant churches don't recognise marriage as a sacrament, a marriage between two baptised people is considered sacramental.

Protestantism, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution all changed marriage considerably. A ceremony in the Church was no longer sufficient for a couple to be considered married before the state, something I firmly disagree with. I do not believe that the state is the only necessary witness. Recently, I heard that in Germany, couples have the right to a marriage only in the Church, and can bypass the civil marriage. Who chooses this option (and why) is of extreme interest to me.

[Angantyr]

The state has no business in regulating my relationship and love for another person. That is a matter between me and her (and the Gods).

If two fags, a poodle and a Victorian chair want to get "married", that is their business. The state should neither sanction nor condemn. If they sign a contract of support, it should merely be a matter of contract law and nothing else.

(My case is somewhat unique. I have to marry my beloved in a civil ceremony for immigration reasons. I want to marry my beloved in a religious ceremony, without state involvement for moral and faith reasons. The first one has legal effect...the second one confirms us as a couple.)