MARRIAGE AMERICAN STYLE: New definitions, old problems, still a need for reform

By 5-4 in the Supreme Court, the big debate on marriage ends.    Marriage can be defined as a legal agreement between two people of any  gender combination.   Amid all the rhetoric, political strategies, hostility, defensiveness, and sentimentality exhibited in the public debate of recent years, certain basic definitions got throughly lost in the legalistic and persuasive smoke and mirrors.

Marriage is not a domestic agreement between two people – maybe of two genders.

Marriage is a covenant between at least four entities

1 the man

2 the woman

3a  the culture in which they live

and / or

3b God

4 children, who have a vested right to a solid stable extended family. 

The two entities in the third part of the definition – churches and governments -- have for ages tried to ignore or discount the other.  Neither can.   Church leaders cannot ignore the legal requirements of civil governments in the marriage contract. Nor civil governments cannot just dismiss God as a mythic outside observer.   God invented the institution; he is the key custodian. 

The desperation of people who want to defend marriage as exclusively heterosexual became palpable in recent months.  For example, some started to talk again about how the main purpose of marriage is to support children.   It was laughable.   For decades I heard all kinds of people of the highest rank carefully parse the definition of marriage from reproduction and needs of children.  Children, for years, were the lost element of marriage.  Even in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,  –an institution which sometimes acts as if it invented the family and the family’s chief conservative defendant -- I remember in years past major conference addresses from apostles that noted  the covenant of the man and the woman are the most important part of a marriage, not if any particular union produced children. 

Opposite gender marriage of one man and one woman constitutes an 80 percent market share.  It is true a considerable percentage of people in this market share are single.     Neither governments nor churches have done a great or even a good job in protecting from evil this type of marriage.

Same gender marriage constitutes a 5 percent market share.  Not everyone in this market share is in fact interested in marrying. 

It is hard to fathom what the opponents of same gender marriage believe is possible.    Do they, for example, think that it will become trendy and fashionable among heterosexual American guys in general and LDS guys in particular for them to have an intense bromance and then marry their best male friend?   How many parents think that this is a distinct possibility among their heterosexual sons and grandsons?    Even as a stage or fad?     I personally doubt this scenario will happen, even in jest.

The leftover number between these two market shares constitutes the big 21st Century growth market in marriage:   the multiple gender group marriage.    It will be a big legal topic in American from now to 2045. 

If Martians landed on Earth tomorrow and started studying human sexual habits, would they see any distinction or difference between same-gender sexual attraction and opposite-gender sexual attraction?

Interesting that around here in Utah when heterosexuals corrupted the concept of marriage, they called it "progressive," and when the homosexuals corrupted the concept, heterosexuals called it sin.  Changing the gender ratio in marriage may be a 5 percent market share corruption of marriage.   However, opposite gender marriage is a corruption institution and has been for ages.  Among the various devolutions of marriage in the past thousand years:

Marriage as political alliance.  
Child marriages. 
Bride prices. 
Dowries.  
Legalized acceptable cruelty in marriage relationships toward women
Women treated as property with no rights.  
Polygamy. 
Polyandry. 
"La casa grande -- la casa bonita." 
Mistresses having legal rights along with the wives. 
No-fault quickie divorces.  
Female genital mutilation. 

These practices are not the fault of homosexuals.  Heterosexuals over time have done the most damage to the concept of marriage.  They have certainly done a lot of damage to marriage since 1960.    

Civil governments in general have done a lousy job in protecting and preserving marriage.  However, churches have not been entirely effective, either.    In fairness, though, neither the Old Testament or the New Testament are crystal clear on the subject of when God considers a couple “married.”     The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has sections that do a more convincing job of defining that point.

Marriage was simpler when romantic love was not considered essential to the mix.  Marriage should not be first and foremost about companionship.   Marriage should not be confused with companionship.   Marriage should also be stable, legal framework to raise children.   Eventually most –  if not all –  marriages get various attachments.  In-laws, friends, ecclesiastical leaders, doctors, accountants,  lawyers.   Children.    And then their in-laws, friends, and so on.     These attachments are really  a good thing because no spouse can be everything to its spouse and children. 

Still – If a married couple is not careful, a marriage is a great way to insure that you get what you do not want.


THE CALL TO ACTION

It would be nice to think that marriage is evolving upward like the human race is evolving upward.   We can only hope that is true.  History teaches us that culture goes  up and down in its improvements and corruptions.     However --  marriage does need Defense of Marriage Acts, but they need to be on a variety of heterosexual marriage practice reforms and on an International level of action.