....one comment, where someone referred to marriage as a “magic word”, got me to thinking, and to asking a question no one else seems to ask very often:
Why should a society have an institution like marriage in the first place?
When I proposed that question, the first answer I got was another question: “Do you have any idea how hard it is to raise a child when you’re a single parent?”
Aha! It’s about children. If you’re entering into a marriage, it’s for the sake of any children that may issue.
The next sound I heard was a bit of back-pedaling, and a statement that childcare was part of the reason for marriage. After all, if we consider it purely as an institution focused on children, it becomes a lot harder to justify same-sex marriages.
What about other reasons?
Well, another person mentioned inheritance. Marriage provides clear rules of inheritance. But then so does having kids, and so does having a will. If you want someone to inherit your property when you die, you can arrange it without combining two lives into one.
Love and commitment are frequently mentioned criteria. But you can love whomever you wish. You can love more than one whomever. You can move in to a building together and form a commune. You can make public statements of commitment, and invite friends to witness, and have a party, and make a big to-do over it. Why do you need a to tell a bureaucrat at the hall of records you love this or that person? He’s not going to send you any wedding presents.
Child care? Sharing of household duties? Sharing of resources? Our culture has all kinds of legal mechanisms for this sort of thing without requiring that people join their lives together. Day care center and school staff don’t have to marry the parents of their charges — it’s enough to have a binding contract for services. If you want to build a support structure around the parents of a child, where resources can be shared, the family could form a corporation. That takes care of community property, and inheritance.
Marriage is more than just love and a ceremony of commitment. It’s more than a way of sharing resources and labor. It’s even more than building a structure to raise the next generation. There is a magic inherent in marriage that people seem determined to ignore. There are religious roots.
A big clue lies in a special privilege extended to married couples — neither member of a married couple can be compelled to testify against the other in a court of law.
This is an amazing privilege. It’s very rare in our society. I can think of three other areas where such a privilege exists: doctor-patient, lawyer-client, and priest-penitent. And even these only apply during communications that take place while the doctor, lawyer, or priest are engaged in their profession with their clients. Lawyer-client privilege doesn’t cover remarks I make in a casual conversation with a friend who happens to practice law. But a spouse is never off duty in this regard. Everything that passes between a husband and wife is privileged, and none of it can be compelled in a court of law.
Why create a special relationship in the law, and endow it with this kind of power?
In the Bible, and in other religions, marriage combines two lives into one. In many senses, man and wife become “one flesh”. If we take this seriously, we realize that compelling a man to testify against his wife is the same as compelling the wife to testify against herself. Marriage is a religious and spiritual union of two individuals, far beyond anything mere law can achieve.
A society either believes this and acts accordingly, or it doesn’t.