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Most of you know that I'm Intentionally Unmarried and that I'm actually opposed to "marriage" entirely. And by "marriage", I mean a legal contract binding two people financially and legally when the couple involved is joining for "love" and when the marriage contract includes a package of legal and financial rights and responsibilities that the couple is not fully informed about.
Two or more people who want to proclaim their love for each other in public ... fine.
Two or more people who want medical benefits, parents who want to set their beneficiaries, "family" members who want to give each other visitation rights in the hospital ... all fine.
People who think their god ordained some kind of partnership ... also fine (although mystifying).
People who believe they're in love with each other and sign away their lives to the government without fully understanding all the rights and RESPONSIBILITIES that goes along with it ... not so fine.
It's not just the giant package deal that you get whether you want all the clauses or not. It's the fact that most of the people who do get a legal marriage are completely unaware of the entire package deal. Even those who think they are getting this tax break or that benefit and think that makes them knowledgable about all the intricacies of the contract. How many people even know that marriage exempts you from testifying against your spouse in court? Among those who know about it, how many of you said "THAT'S what I'm really in this marriage for! So I never have to be responsible for putting my husband in jail!"?
The subtext to this is that people are just in general uninformed about their relationships. They rarely explicitly negotiate the terms of their relationships. Monogamy comes in different flavors, but everyone assumes that each has the same idea as the other. Our society does not encourage discussion and analysis. It encourages unquestioning faith, not just in religion. And using that for a relationship model is the primary reason for the destruction of most relationships, I believe. Unmet expectations due to implicit assumptions.
And, surprisingly, a commercial for a Credit Report website illustrates my point:
Well I married my dream girl
I married my dream girl
She didn't tell me
Her credit was bad
So now instead of living in a pleasant suburb
We're living in the basement of her
Mom and dad's
We can't get a loan
For a respectable home
Just because my girl defaulted
On some old credit cards
If we'd gone to Free Credit Report.com
I'd be a happy bachelor with a dog and a yard
1) A guy and a girl never discuss their finances before joining their economic futures together for life (or at least the next 7 years, the time it takes for a bankruptcy to go off your record)
2) The government has decided that this guy's entire economic future is affected by something stupid this chick did before she even met him.
It just infuriates me that people don't have any idea who they're dating/marrying and claim it as love, and then they are surprised when the relationship "fails" (and part of that "failure" is that they never discussed what makes a "successful" relationship in the first place).
As for the package of rights and responsibilities, one counter-argument is that a couple can always get a pre-nup. First of all, that doesn't cover all the rights and responsibilities, it's primarily concerned with finances (which, I grant you, are a huge issue, making prenups a good idea, IMO). Second, far too few people get prenups because of the stigma attached. Apparently a prenup is "not romantic" and says that you don't trust me and that you think we will break up someday ... all societally-encouraged myths that manage to personally insult and offend people when presented with this very practical document. If I ever were to consider marriage, I would absolutely not get married without one, and I'm pretty damn sure I would not be the half of the couple who benefits most from this document.
Now, I don't have the greatest credit in the world, not by a long shot. Frankly, marriage for me will probably elevate my credit rating (and bring it down for my unfortunate spouse). So I stand to benefit from this particular clause. I still think it's unfair and I wish to abolish it. I don't really see anything "fair" about any of the clauses in the marriage contract that I am aware of.
I don't think it's right to exempt a spouse from testifying. I don't think it's right to force a couple to be financially responsible, not only for an irresponsible partner, but for a partner's actions that took place prior to the marriage and possibly even prior to meeting that partner. I don't think it's right that married couples receive tax breaks that singles and co-habitating partners do not receive - I see that as discrimination. I don't think it's right that someone can walk away from a marriage and claim half of all future earnings as payment for whatever they think they suffered during the marriage ... particularly if that individual remains capable of earning his or her own living after the marriage. Child support is different. Abusive relationships are again, not in the same category.
I do happen to approve of a spouse being granted the right to hospital visitation, but to limit that right only to married spouses is to ignore all the other legitimate relationships that the patient may want to have visitation rights is extremely offensive. There are many reasons to not marry. The fear of losing one's alimony, for instance, or governmental benefits (the elderly or medically needy) may prevent someone from marrying. So we have a choice, lose medical benefits or lose the right for your partner to support you in a time of medical emergency. What a shitty system.
But the alternatives, those individual contracts that can give you each right and/or responsibility without the others if you so choose, are extremely cumbersome and time-consuming to track down and obtain individually. The benefit to the marriage contract is that it *is* a package deal. But what about those who want them ala carte? That's what prenups are for, to try and separate some of those clauses out. There's a huge debate about re-writing the legal marriage going on in one of the poly mailing lists (probably legal poly or something), and I don't have any easy answers. All I know is that marriage as a legal contract as it stands now, not even counting the possible amendments that limit the contract to one man and one woman, is a complicated package deal that includes all kinds of rights and responsibilities that many people are just not aware about and many people outright oppose (such as those with pre-nups in the common-property states) and many people who get married, do so for lofty reasons of love or religion that the marriage contract was never really intended to cover.
And for many of these people, this is a symptom of a much bigger relationship flaw - the lack of communication in the relationship and lack of information about their spouse which, IMO, prohibits the ability to truly love someone. You can't love them if you don't know them. You can argue that we can never really *know* anyone, but if you never talk to them, then you don't know them at all. And I don't think you can call that "love".
So, there ya have it ... a rant about marriage sparked by a silly TV commercial.
Two or more people who want medical benefits, parents who want to set their beneficiaries, "family" members who want to give each other visitation rights in the hospital ... all fine.
People who think their god ordained some kind of partnership ... also fine (although mystifying).
People who believe they're in love with each other and sign away their lives to the government without fully understanding all the rights and RESPONSIBILITIES that goes along with it ... not so fine.
It's not just the giant package deal that you get whether you want all the clauses or not. It's the fact that most of the people who do get a legal marriage are completely unaware of the entire package deal. Even those who think they are getting this tax break or that benefit and think that makes them knowledgable about all the intricacies of the contract. How many people even know that marriage exempts you from testifying against your spouse in court? Among those who know about it, how many of you said "THAT'S what I'm really in this marriage for! So I never have to be responsible for putting my husband in jail!"?
The subtext to this is that people are just in general uninformed about their relationships. They rarely explicitly negotiate the terms of their relationships. Monogamy comes in different flavors, but everyone assumes that each has the same idea as the other. Our society does not encourage discussion and analysis. It encourages unquestioning faith, not just in religion. And using that for a relationship model is the primary reason for the destruction of most relationships, I believe. Unmet expectations due to implicit assumptions.
And, surprisingly, a commercial for a Credit Report website illustrates my point:
Well I married my dream girl
I married my dream girl
She didn't tell me
Her credit was bad
So now instead of living in a pleasant suburb
We're living in the basement of her
Mom and dad's
We can't get a loan
For a respectable home
Just because my girl defaulted
On some old credit cards
If we'd gone to Free Credit Report.com
I'd be a happy bachelor with a dog and a yard
1) A guy and a girl never discuss their finances before joining their economic futures together for life (or at least the next 7 years, the time it takes for a bankruptcy to go off your record)
2) The government has decided that this guy's entire economic future is affected by something stupid this chick did before she even met him.
It just infuriates me that people don't have any idea who they're dating/marrying and claim it as love, and then they are surprised when the relationship "fails" (and part of that "failure" is that they never discussed what makes a "successful" relationship in the first place).
As for the package of rights and responsibilities, one counter-argument is that a couple can always get a pre-nup. First of all, that doesn't cover all the rights and responsibilities, it's primarily concerned with finances (which, I grant you, are a huge issue, making prenups a good idea, IMO). Second, far too few people get prenups because of the stigma attached. Apparently a prenup is "not romantic" and says that you don't trust me and that you think we will break up someday ... all societally-encouraged myths that manage to personally insult and offend people when presented with this very practical document. If I ever were to consider marriage, I would absolutely not get married without one, and I'm pretty damn sure I would not be the half of the couple who benefits most from this document.
Now, I don't have the greatest credit in the world, not by a long shot. Frankly, marriage for me will probably elevate my credit rating (and bring it down for my unfortunate spouse). So I stand to benefit from this particular clause. I still think it's unfair and I wish to abolish it. I don't really see anything "fair" about any of the clauses in the marriage contract that I am aware of.
I don't think it's right to exempt a spouse from testifying. I don't think it's right to force a couple to be financially responsible, not only for an irresponsible partner, but for a partner's actions that took place prior to the marriage and possibly even prior to meeting that partner. I don't think it's right that married couples receive tax breaks that singles and co-habitating partners do not receive - I see that as discrimination. I don't think it's right that someone can walk away from a marriage and claim half of all future earnings as payment for whatever they think they suffered during the marriage ... particularly if that individual remains capable of earning his or her own living after the marriage. Child support is different. Abusive relationships are again, not in the same category.
I do happen to approve of a spouse being granted the right to hospital visitation, but to limit that right only to married spouses is to ignore all the other legitimate relationships that the patient may want to have visitation rights is extremely offensive. There are many reasons to not marry. The fear of losing one's alimony, for instance, or governmental benefits (the elderly or medically needy) may prevent someone from marrying. So we have a choice, lose medical benefits or lose the right for your partner to support you in a time of medical emergency. What a shitty system.
But the alternatives, those individual contracts that can give you each right and/or responsibility without the others if you so choose, are extremely cumbersome and time-consuming to track down and obtain individually. The benefit to the marriage contract is that it *is* a package deal. But what about those who want them ala carte? That's what prenups are for, to try and separate some of those clauses out. There's a huge debate about re-writing the legal marriage going on in one of the poly mailing lists (probably legal poly or something), and I don't have any easy answers. All I know is that marriage as a legal contract as it stands now, not even counting the possible amendments that limit the contract to one man and one woman, is a complicated package deal that includes all kinds of rights and responsibilities that many people are just not aware about and many people outright oppose (such as those with pre-nups in the common-property states) and many people who get married, do so for lofty reasons of love or religion that the marriage contract was never really intended to cover.
And for many of these people, this is a symptom of a much bigger relationship flaw - the lack of communication in the relationship and lack of information about their spouse which, IMO, prohibits the ability to truly love someone. You can't love them if you don't know them. You can argue that we can never really *know* anyone, but if you never talk to them, then you don't know them at all. And I don't think you can call that "love".
So, there ya have it ... a rant about marriage sparked by a silly TV commercial.
