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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.politics
Date:         Wed, 9 Sep 1992 17:00:00 EDT
From:         GRACZ1@ITHACA.BITNET
Subject:      Re: let's rephrase the question

  In answer to the question "why legal marriage?"

>Hmm.
>
>Let's try "to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of
>liberty to ourselves *and our posterity*.  Posterity requires a
>male/female union for the production of offspring, in which the state
>has a long-term survival interest.  So, to encourage this activity,
>and to make it as streamlined as possible, we provide incentives to
>marriage and the bearing of children.

   Actually, the human species has a definite survival interest in
  NOT producing offspring. The single largest environmental
  problem is overpopulation.

>Besides which, this privileging of marriage is a custom we share with
>most societies.  Important rites of passage (such as marriage--the
>lifetime commitment of two individuals from different families to an
>entirely new family, for the purpose of creating more families down
>the line) are always marked by greater benefits and responsibilities.

    Yes, but should customs really be a part of law?  After all, it
   is something of a disadvantage to those who choose not to follow
   the customs.

>What seems to be occurring now, in this society, is that increasing
>numbers of people have lost interest in continuing the line, but
>are wild about the idea of having sex.  Somehow we have begun to
>believe that marriage is somehow about having sex, rather than
>contributing to the continuation of society.  And now we've decided
>that sex is too important to be confined to marriage, and that families
>aren't important enough to preserve.  So we've made it easier to get
>out of marriage, easier to have sex, and harder to find anyone in this
>society with a clue as to what a "long-term commitment" might mean.

    Do you think humans haven't always been wild about the idea
   of having sex?  And what about (as someone else mentioned) those
   who are married but don't want children?  Does this apply to them?
   Should people be required to sign an "intent to bear children"
   form in order to get the legal benefits of marriage?

>Plus which, we've passed all these wonderful ideas on to the few
>children we actually managed to have (while simply choosing to
>dispose of the other 2/3 of them), and now *they* don't want to

     Where DO you get the numbers?

>stick around *our* families either (ingrates.)  Not that it matters
>much, since we managed to educate them amazingly well about only
>2 things:  sex and abortion.  They don't know enough about anything

     Funny, I don't remember anything about abortion in school
   (and remember - I was in school a mere 2 years ago).

>else to contribute much to mom and dad (or dad and dad, or mom and
>mom, or dad and mom and their friend Lassie) and the family, and they
>aren't really all that fond of them anyway.

      You should really do some research before assuming what has
    caused families to break up at such a rate.  Many people I
    know (including myself) have benefitted from growing up in
    a "non-traditional" household.  I hesitate to say what kind of
    childhood I might have had if my father had still lived with
    us.  You can't improve society by removing people's choices.

>Boy, are we gonna be in good shape when we get old, huh?  Might as
>well put that reservation in now at Dr. Jack's Eternal Retreat.

   Yup.  That's when that national debt will be a REAL burden.

>--Missy P 2 B

         --G. Racz
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