Marriage, again.
12:51 p.m.
I would like to direct everyone to tcklyrpharsn�s most recent diatribe as it is brilliant. This girl could write anti-theological treatises and make them page-turners on best-sellers lists. Seriously! This is where the money is at, not office temping.
There�s been a lot of talk about marriage here at D�land and I admit that I have instigated quite a bit of it. Tickles brings up a really good point, though. Why bother getting married at all? In prehistoric societies, there is evidence that people practised serial monogamy, staying together for as long as it took to raise the most recent child, usually about four years. Women breast fed for as long as they could, delaying the onset of ovulation and reimpregnation. Anthropologists have speculated that once the child was weaned and the mother was freed up and more �mobile�, there was no reason for the father to hang around (unless he wanted to) and the two went their separate ways, both free to find new mates and establish new family units. There is some evidence in modern unions to support this, as many divorces occur at the four-year mark, and of course we�ve all heard of the seven-year-itch.
Many unhappy modern marriages (and I mean in the last couple of centuries) have endured �for the sake of the children�, or for appearances� sake. Homosexuals were forced to suppress (or hide) their nature, and lead �normal� lives, boasting a wife and children and being totally miserable with it all. This was true in our society as recently as 30 years ago. It is only a very new phenomenon that gays are an accepted feature in our sexual/cultural landscape.
But why marriage? The whole thing comes down to a legal arrangement designed to protect the wife and children, believe it or not. When a woman is pregnant and/or caring for young children, she is disadvantaged both in her mobility and her ability to provide for and defend herself and her babes. She needs help, and it is the father of those babes to whom she looks for succor. By legally binding the breeding pair together, the father is obligated to provide for his offspring and their mother. This legality makes the harassment of �dead-beat dads� a common-enough occurence these days.
But, you may interject at this point, many people get married and never have children. Yes, I reply, you are quite right. This would also apply to lesbians and homosexuals who would probably not have children either in the natural order of things. But marriage has come to mean so much more than just a protection for lactating mothers. When little girls dream of walking down the aisle in Cinderella gowns and tossing their bouquets to all the married-wannabes in their acquaintance, they are not thinking of the resulting anemia from childbirth and the following year of sleeplessness and fatigue from breastfeeding. No, my friends, they are dreaming of LOVE.
So, what this all boils down to is the desire of two people, be they men, women or one of each, to declare their love for each other in a public and permanent way, sanctioned by church and/or state, with the same guarantees of shared pensions and medicare benefits that should be available to all. We marry so that we can say to the world: I have chosen to bind myself to this person so that all can see because I love him/her and want to grow old with him/her (at least, that is how I feel at this moment, but thank the gourd that divorce laws exist, because this feeling might not endure). Now let�s have a party and open presents!
Here is an aside, an anecdote that shows the need for spousal protection. Two women, both spinsters, lived together. One kept house, the other had a job. They got older, developing health problems, but still stayed together as before. The employed one died from heart failure, and the other was left with no means of support, no pension (other than old age security), and no family. Because the two were not �married� in the traditional sense, there was no protection for the stay-at-home. This is a travesty.
Marriage is a legal contract and should not be entered lightly, just as one doesn�t buy a house without shopping around first. It is a commitment recognized by the state and enforced by law. But when people marry, they are not thinking about those things; it is the promise of being together that entices, of having the recognition �we are a couple� proclaimed to all and sundry. The party and presents are pretty good too.
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