Against marriage

All around the country today, people are taking to the streets to oppose Prop 8. I'm with them in spirit (and proximity - the Seattle rally is 3 blocks away), but unfortunately I have too much going on today to take 2 hours to walk downtown. I predict they will get PLENTY of support in Seattle without my help.

Let me preface my saying that I think ALL citizens of ANY persuasion should have the same legal rights and responsibilities.

I just don't happen to think marriage should exist as a legal institution. This is evidently a controversial point of view, but from my standpoint it's obvious.

Marriage for romantic love has only existed for a few hundred years in Western culture (and in some other cultures it still doesn't). Arguably, romantic love does not need marriage to exist or continue "until death" or until whatever expiration date it happens to have.

Marriage began as a form of economic and political negotiation. You take my daughter and we are now allies. The bride is "given away" by her father - a patriarchal exchange of property. Because what was marriage, if not a form of slavery? Women were traded as domestic servants and bearers of children for the man they may or may not know or like. They were legally beaten and abused. And they had no rights as citizens.

At the end of the Civil War women for the first time were recognized as citizens in the united states, on the coattails of the dissolution of slavery, and for the first time in America they could own property, but not until sixty years later did they earn the right to vote, and it wasn't until the 1970's that it became socially acceptable to have careers outside the home.

In the twentieth century, the idea of marriage for romantic love was alive and well. But how many women married below their class strata "for love"? Almost none. It continues to exist as a method to extend a patrilineal line of property ownership among the upper classes, although with more choice and legal rights for the woman.

I believe everyone can and should make private contracts that cover the important things that legal marriage provides. Everyone should have a will, a living will, and a power of attorney designating someone to make decisions for you should you be unable to make them yourself. People with property should clearly define how property ownership is divided between them and their partners/ family, and it should be in writing.

I am all for people who are religious getting married "in the eyes of god" if that's what they're into. I think it's an archaic practice, but I can't and won't argue with religious people about their beliefs.

I think the symbolic gesture of having a ceremony and a party, exchanging rings, tattooing each others' names on your asses is all a-ok. It's nice. It's a proclamation of love, and what does the world need more than love? I find some things about traditional ceremonies distasteful, but I'm not saying they should be done away with.

But I absolutely believe that no one should be given special legal status, tax breaks, or any legal benefits for deciding to get married. If anyone deserves a tax break it's single people trying to live off of one income. Besides, if we get rid of the legal institution of marriage, then the government cannot allow or disallow anyone to do it. Prop 8 problem solved.