What is Marriage?

Posted on June 20, 2003 in Crosstalk Partnership

Shelley is a corner in a discussion over what we’re struggling for in society. Her present remarks answer an odd stand taken by Halley in a much longer article about women on the web is worth addressing:

….README is not about male-bashing, since I’m crazy for men, but rather marriage-bashing, which drives me crazy. There is something new coming along to replace marriage. I don’t know what it’s called, but I know it’s coming and it’s high time.

Shelley blinks her eyes and gasps “Where did that come from?”:

Marriage has nothing to do with women and respect in our fields and other aspects of our lives. That’s the battle we’ve been fighting all along — that there are other options for women other than being caregiver and wife, though these are also valid choices. Women can be police, doctors, soldiers, nuclear scientists, and yes, even computer technologists — and still be content and happy to be a woman, be ‘feminine’, and yes, be happily married or otherwise paired.

To me a great marriage is one in which both partners are free to grow and to reach beyond their internal boundaries if this is what they want and need. However, we go through our lives being who we are, making the most of what we are, regardless of our gender — a good marriage should be nothing more than a perk.

I find both stands to be a little extreme, though I understand where the amiable duelists come from and sympathize. Neither, I think, has touched on what marriage is all about. This is, in part, because popular opinion holds marriage to be something quite different from what it actually is.

Marriage isn’t about children: the age of bastards has passed. The law protects the interests of all children. If a man sires an offspring by a woman, he becomes legally responsible for the care of that child once he claims paternity or once a court declares it to be so. With or without a marriage you can be a father or a mother. A marriage affects this in only one particular: children who are born within a marriage are automatically assumed to be the children of the husband.

I agree with Shelley when she says that we shouldn’t look to marriage to make us “whole through the love of a good man or women” [sic]. I don’t think we should marry someone who we don’t love, however. I do believe that my life with Lynn is better than a life without her. Relating to her and growing through that relationship smooths my rough soul in a spiritual lapidary, makes me feel that I have a companion and a close friend when we turn out the light at night and allow the cats to find niches in the bends of our backs, arms, and legs.

I could have that without marriage, however, as do some of my heterosexual friends and all of my gay and lesbian friends who live with partners. Marriage is a step beyond just living together, having sex, and feeling like Ozzie and Harriet. Legally it is your chance to choose a relative, a person who will share your debts, share your contracts, share your property, and be the one to decide matters of sickness and death when you are incapacitated. I would not advise choosing any person for this role who you did not consider a complete, true, and honest friend.

It’s not the sex thing, it’s not about having children, it’s just that: having a trusted person in your life who will care for you in return for your caring for them. It’s reciprocal. It serves to protect the weak from those who take on partners and cast them away thoughtlessly. It helps to make us more than sex objects and breeding machines. When approached as a super-contract, I think we get at the essence of what marriage is all about. The babies, the sex are the perks and they don’t have to exist to have a marriage.

I predict that what will follow Halley’s barbaric marriage is civilized marriage, arranged for purposes of mutual need and based on mutual respect.

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Roger also comments on the thread at Big Damn Heroes.