The Laughing Wolf

In Consideration Of Marriage

Tuesday night, I chose bed over the State of the Union speech and attendant follies. Bed was the much more attractive option, even with the fact of it being an empty bed. Besides which, I knew that many other responsible parties were covering it, some live, and some upon reflection. I left it to them, but the phraseology used at the start is deliberate, and I have decided to address one important issue raised last night.

What is marriage?

If you study history, you will find that marriage is many things and has been done many ways around the world and through time. Regretfully, romantic love has not truly been the norm for most of history, rather marriages were often mergers of land, power, and other such commodities. Many were arranged, in one fashion or another, and the idea of romantic love treated often as an aberration and scandal.

Marriage, however, truly falls into two categories: religious and civil. Religious marriages are those conducted within the dictates and regulations of a religion or similar school of philosophy. Much of this appears to have started simply as a means of calling down the blessings of the gods, god, goddess, or other on the couple so that they would have health, plenty, and plenty of offspring. Offspring were help around the farm or house, secured income, and provided for the parents in their dotage. They also helped spread the ranks of the particular religion, a fact not lost on most priests or spiritual leaders.

This, in turn, led to a number of religious edicts about marriage, and sex, for the two were interlinked by procreation. Smart leaders realized that conversion was fine, but that another way to expand a belief is to expand the population. Smaller, more aggressive religions took this to some interesting extremes over the years but the key to most of their directives was to decree that anything that did not result in pregnancy was a sin.

If one can set aside belief and bias, and examine the Bible, this is in fact the basis for deciding what was sin and what was acceptable. Anything which spilt seed except in a fertile womb was a sin: masturbation, anal intercourse in any description, sex during menstruation, etc. Anything that secured future generations was good, including the bedding of new widows, the taking of multiple wives (early Old Testament), and forcing a mate to do their duty (rape) are all okay according to scripture. Pleasure of the partners is rarely addressed, and indeed is greeted with some suspicion as it was felt it would reduce the drive for procreation. Particularly in terms of female pleasure or self-pleasure.

Nor is the Judeo-Christian religion the only one to follow this basis. One need only look at the horror of female circumcision and mutilation so as to deny pleasure by one particular religion to get the point.

The final point for today’s consideration here is that religions took to regulating and controlling marriage because it was a way to increase and expand populations and wealth. This, of course, had the effect of also expanding the religion in question, by population, wealth, and control/power.

Civil union, on the other hand, became important during the switch from hunter/gatherer to agrarian civilization. In small bands, or even large clans, pairs or more did bond, and the group in effect helped raise the children. In larger groupings, however, the latter runs into some problems because of differing beliefs, customs, and rites. Smaller groupings became common, and the idea behind a formal bonding comes down to a couple or a group stating that they are responsive for and to each other, and for and to the offspring.

This, in turn, led to more effective means to pass property between individuals and generations. This also provided for continuity that had been lacking in many areas of law/custom and differing concepts of ownership.

Having such joinings be noted by some form of civil authority came about because of a need to document, so that the smooth transfer of assets could occur. Local magistrates and leaders saw the immediate advantages to this, most especially that formal rolls (scrolls) of such records provided a neat and handy measure of the number of subjects, property owned, wealth created, etc. This led to the idea of tax rolls, mobilization rolls (the ability to pull up people to serve in military conflicts), and other instruments of benefit to the state. The concept of growth by population growth was not lost on the state either.

The idea of a marriage on marriage between the church and state appears to be a function of the Middle Ages and the spread of Christianity. The church(es) were everywhere and often kept all the records for any given community, especially rural communities. They had a reach and a power that few governments could match. So, to make things easy for the state, the idea of religious-based marriage became the official policy of all smart monarchs and governments. In this way, the church kept records for the state, that the state could use for a variety of purposes. The church(es) gained secular power in the deal as well, helping cement growing control of the governments as well as individuals.

This is the root basis of marriage in Western Civilization. The alliance between church(es) and state provided near universal insistence on marriage in the church. This also meant that Judeo-Christian regulations/morals became the defacto standard, with only minor variations between countries with different state religions.

This was true in the West until the American Revolution. The creation of the Republic was a major departure because America refused to have a state religion. Freedom of religion has many ramifications, and marriage was one of them. Because there was no central church, the States adopted measures to require that all marriages be noted in official offices, so that all the proper rolls can be kept and prepared. It also brought about two other changes, which are important to consider in the debate.

First, it brought about a larger-scale concept of civil union. With no central church, there was a need to provide for unions by people not of a church, or of a church not represented in a given location. The state moved into this role through judges, justices of the peace, etc., all of whom have been given the power to perform marriages. This further increased secular power

It also brought about more laws in regards common-law marriages. The state, in order to protect its interests, passed laws stating that couples who lived together for more than a given number of years, were considered to be married and subject to all laws and regulations (and taxations) as those legally married by church or state. In some respects, this was just a formalization of practices going back hundreds or thousands of years. In other respects, it was a radical departure because it, in effect, stated that people who did such were not responsible and would not be responsible to offspring or the state.

You have to consider the fact that up until the Middle Ages, most marriage were of a type that would today be called common-law. The people bound together, lived and died together, and never was there an official church or state wedding. Formalizing this closed a huge loophole for the state.

We must also consider the fact that a two-person, monogamous relationship has never truly been the norm. There have been group marriages, line marriages, and a number of other interesting variations. There have been two major drivers behind such (and behind marriage in general): protection and care of the children; and, protection and expansion of property.

Even within the West in and after the Middle Ages, monogamy was not and is not the norm. With arranged marriages and mergers, love was never a consideration. In some, cases, love or something like it did develop. Yet, the standard practice was for a male, particularly one who was well-to-do, to take a consort or consorts who did please the eye and heart. Men got the better end of the deal, since procreation was an important consideration. The women, as bearer of children, rarely got such liberties during child-bearing years. To do so before menopause invited ruin and death. Yet, any children from the consorts were often brought forth and made full heirs (hidden pregnancies, miracles, or just plain business as usual).

So why then does the U.S. government have such a strong interest in defining marriage?

First, there is the myth that America is a Christian nation. Yes, some (or even many) of the Founding Fathers were nominal or true Christians. Yet, they deliberately created a secular government that expressly does not endorse or enshrine any religion. This frustrates the devil out of the religious right (and not just the Christian right), because it means that they can’t control things. Such diminishes their power, and that is not a thing to be borne lightly.

Second, it is seen by many as a threat to that major drive behind marriage as a whole: the expansion of wealth. Secular and religious power depend on growing population and property.

Face it: since the dawn of recorded time same sex couples have not been able to procreate. They could adopt or take in, but until the last half of the last century, procreation was not an option. Today, only lesbian couples can have children, courtesy of artificial insemination.

If you can’t have children, you can’t grow the population base. No growth there, no growth of wealth, taxes, etc. The logic comes down to the question “How can you pay for benefits to such a couple, when they produce no wealth to society?”

This mindset is an ancient one, and it clouds any attempt to examine the situation as it currently exists. Our system of property and inheritance laws is based on the practice of centuries. Yet, the facts of life have indeed changed and mindsets and laws have yet to even begin to consider adapting.

The scientific and sexual revolution have bypassed nature as we knew it. Women now have power over themselves. They can regulate their fertility, and with it comes liberation. Liberation means an end to centuries of male domination in the West. For the fact is, as much as it pains me to agree with some of the wilder feminists, we have been a very unequal culture and the changes are going to take years, if not centuries, to play out. This threatens the hell out of a lot of men in many of the patriarchal religions. Or those who are just plain scared of women.

Couples who would have been pitied as barren just a few decades ago can now have children, through drugs and/or artificial insemination. This also means that women can have children without marriage, and without men, if they so choose.

This is also where the old mindset starts to run into some serious problems. How can a woman provide for a child without a husband? After all, for many years it has been the male who provided protection, money, and more. This is also the basis of the thought against gay marriage. If they can’t have children, how can they grow in size and wealth?

The answer is that the economy has changed as well. We are no longer an agrarian society, nor are we still an industrial society. Things have moved on, and one no longer needs teams of horses, or lots of hands to do work, in order to produce products and wealth. A smart person sitting at a computer can earn more in a month than most people in the past earned in a lifetime. The realization of that change has yet to sink in.

The old models of the creation of wealth and expansion of population no longer apply.

So, that also leaves us with the thorny issue of morality. Much of the indignation on the right deals with morality, since that is an easy hot-button emotional topic. Yet, this shows the major flaw in their campaign: morality is tied to religion. So, this begs the question of which morality and which religion will be honored? It also begs the question of which religions actually practice what they preach on this issue?

The heart of the Judeo-Christian doctrine on unions is that marriage is sacred, not to be set aside, and that they cleave only to one another. Divorce is a major no-no. Okay, so go take a look at the divorce rates. Then take a look at the studies that examine such things as adultery and sexuality. Look at the rates for sex outside of marriage and before marriage. In this respect, it is not a pretty picture. Compare this to the rates for same sex unions and activities.

The net result is that there is no evidence that same sex unions will do worse than current religious unions (and may even do better). There is no evidence that same sex marriages will cause a stagnation or decrease in the development of wealth. Modern science provides options in terms of the growth of population as a factor.

What truly matters here are two things. One, can same-sex unions provide stability/growth, and the resources needed to bring children into productive adulthood? Two, will we honor our Constitution which guarantees fundamental rights to all citizens? The latter may well be the most important question we face. We can turn our backs on it, not for the first time, and disenfranchise a chunk of our Citizens. Or, we can accept it as the sometimes uncomfortable thing it is and try our best to live up to its promise. This means holding all Citizens responsible for their actions, especially when it comes to marriage.

We already have a tradition of civil union. There is no legal or logical reason that such can’t apply to same-sex marriage. What is needed is not a defense of marriage act, but a clear separation of church and state. Let those who desire to have a same-sex union do so, either in a church that supports such, or in a civil action. Let those opposed continue to get married in the church of their choice. To do anything else violates the rights, liberties, and responsibilities of the individual, and poses contempt for the Constitution and the Republic.

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