A recent survey of millennials found that 43 percent of them would like an initial marriage that could be easily renewed or dissolved after two. A key fact about marriage remains, regardless of reforms and modernizations. Marriage is much better for men than it is for women. It reinforces the notion of women as property.
It's no wonder that men are happier, have better mental and physical health and are better financially within marriage than women. As feminist writer Bea Campbell argues in her book The End of Equality, married women continue to do most of the household chores and men do almost as little care for children as they did 30 years ago. When my grandmother died, her tenant downstairs was forced to leave the house she had lived in for decades. This was despite the fact that she had run countless errands, shared meals and leftovers, and provided companionship, as well as gentle and informal monitoring of the physical and mental condition of my aging grandmother for much of the time she had lived there.
Although special arrangements could have been made for this tenant in her will, my grandmother forgot to do so, her only legacies were to relatives, such as her children and grandchildren. But couldn't this woman have been considered at least as much part of my grandmother's family as I was, a granddaughter who saw her two or three times a year, on holidays and her birthday? Lindsey and Sarah are a celibate LGBT couple whose blog I follow. They live together and depend on each other in times of illness and crisis, and they see their commitment to each other as something for life, not temporary. However, their relationship is not romantic, and they do not consider marriage applicable to their partner.
But, even if they are not married, couldn't they still consider themselves as a kind of family? In the three-track circus that occurred when the caravan of same-sex marriages arrived in Alabama, one of the strangest side shows has been counties that have suspended marriage licenses for all couples to avoid issuing licenses to same-sex couples. An Alabama Supreme Court judge has suggested that every civil marriage should be abolished if the U.S. Supreme Court finds constitution prohibits states from prohibiting same-sex marriage. These anti-marriage sentiment attacks among conservatives have a hint of tantrum on them, a procedure of taking our ball and going home more suitable for fourth-graders on the playground than adult civil servants.
But what if we took seriously the suggestion of these conservatives to eliminate civil marriage? In our culture, marriage is first and foremost about romantic love, not benefits, property or tax law. We know this because we actively despise people who marry for any reason other than love, and we call these minor unions “marriages of convenience” or even “sham marriages.”. The law, on the other hand, sees marriage basically as a contract between two people. But unlike other contracts, marriage comes with a lot of special things from the state.
These range from the incredibly small advantage of being able to fill out a joint customs form upon return to the country, to life-changing benefits such as being able to get a green card or Social Security survivor benefits. There must be a benefit for all (such as health care or financial security in old age), or it must be linked to practical concerns such as mutual dependence, merging finances or providing stability for minor children. Love should be a private matter, and the state must be kept out. The range of relationships that could reasonably be called family is very wide.
It encompasses relationships that could be called conservative, such as celibate LGBT bloggers, and those that are on the verge of liberalism, such as polyamorous triads or quadriceps. And then there are the people in the middle, like my grandmother and her middle-aged tenant, who might or might not want to see themselves as family if there was the legal framework that allowed it. The concept of marriage could be broadened to include some of these people, but inevitably there must come a point where it is no longer applicable. To support the full spectrum of family arrangements that people create for themselves, we would need much more flexibility in our definitions of family and in our mechanisms to protect and foster bonds of lifelong commitment and care for each other.
If we did, then it would no longer make sense to choose one type of relationship and privilege it above all others, and there would be no clear state interest in doing so. If civil marriage were abolished, we could replace that dying institution with a more personalized menu and a charter of contractual rights and responsibilities. Religious marriage would remain intact, of course. Places of worship will always retain the freedom to perform traditional rites and to be as inclusive or exclusive about them as they choose; the free exercise of religion is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
A tenant could have the right to continue living in the space she had rented for a long time without being responsible for funeral rites or having any rights to the property of her landlord. A polyamorous triad could share the legal rights and responsibility of any child who emerges from their relationship without us having to go through a prolonged political fight over whether more than two people should be allowed to marry. In the current social and legal climate, the abolition of civil marriage in favor of mixed civil contracts between individuals is likely to remain more a wild libertarian dream than a realistic possibility. But that doesn't mean it's a bad idea, or even impractical.
Perhaps one day we will leave it to religious organizations to make room for the state to recognize and protect all the various arrangements that could be considered “family”. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings company. Divorce will be the final stage of about half of all marriages and marriages are the result of stable unions between couples who usually marry by tradition and because they think they will not divorce. For more information, see 5 Cynical Marriage Tips Every Couple Should Learn and 5 Reasons Why 'Traditional Marriage' Would Surprise Their Ancestors.
So how would we create families if marriage were abolished? By hookup culture? Online connections? Getting drunk in a bar and accidentally having a child? Children born out of wedlock are a disaster. In the three-track circus that occurred when the caravan of same-sex marriages arrived in Alabama, one of the strangest side shows has been counties that have suspended marriage licenses for all couples to avoid issuing licenses to same-sex couples. . .
