Same-sex marriages are now legal today in California.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I am thrilled for the people who want to marry legally but haven’t been able to up until now. I wish every one of you who have wanted to marry and now can the best of luck and a lifetime of happiness together. Love is important, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.
On the other hand (and those of you who feel like I’m being Captain Buzzkill can stop reading now. I’m not gonna trash your day).
Marriage as an institution needs a serious revamp. The laws around marriage and family reflect a social structure that we don’t actually have any more. Society has changed, but some institutions haven’t quite caught up. Lags like these aren’t unusual, but it’s important to look at them clearly so that when we make our changes, we’re doing it usefully.
I’m asking questions in this article rather than presenting solutions because when confronted with the enormity of the problem, I find myself waving my hands around and looking like a deer in headlights.
You see, society has changed, but human nature hasn’t. People connect and want to live together. Plenty of us fall in love and decide to have kids. Some decide that they want to live together, but don’t want kids. Some decide they want to live with more than one person — and on it goes.
Sure, you could say marriage is for the protection of pregnant women and their offspring. That’s a necessary social function. We need to ensure kids are provided for.
But marriage ain’t just about kids. Plenty of people who don’t want/can’t have kids want to be married to partners.
Why?
Part of it is cultural. People who are in love marry, right? How many “happy ending” romantic stories end with people not getting married — especially if the story is marketed for the under 13 set? A lot of it is simply cultural expectation.
Part of it is for the legal benefit. There are about 1,400 benefits and advantages (State and Federal) that one gets when on marries. There’s the big, obvious stuff like tax advantages and visitation rights in hospitals, and then the stuff we don’t think about as often like rights in lawsuits and inheritance issues. Many of the legal benefits are based on the “and the two shall become one” principle. A married couple is often treated as a single unit for financial and some legal issues. Ferinstance, if someone is driving drunk and kills your husband, as a wife, you can sue for wrongful death and loss of intimacy. If you’re not married? The law is a whole bunch fuzzier on the issue.
For myself, I’d like to see a disconnect between the legal institution of marriage and the social behaviors of romance. We humans are social creatures and I think it’s important for the legal structures to recognize and support the very natural human desire to form partnerships for mutual benefit. However, the whole romance thing is really muddying a lot of the waters.
I’d like to see cohabitation and parenting contracts that specifically exclude the concept of a romantic relationship, which marriage is presumed to be right now. (i.e. “I don’t give a damn if it’s Twoo Wuv or not. The kids need to be taken care of, and the damn bills need to be paid!”)
Thing is, it’s easy to theorize. Actually coming up with workable solutions (and we do need them) is something else entirely!
I’d love to know what my readers think about his one.
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