| Love and marriage, an explanation |
 Blog For Free! Archives Home 2007 April 2005 February 2005 January 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2003 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September My Links My essay: The Immorality of Marriage The Onion SelectSmart Games to test your logic, faith, morality, and philosophical ideas! Tom Robbins Quotes Funny Name Analysis Bushisms Letters From the Earth by Mark Twain Why I Am Not A Christian by Bertrand Russell Life, Liberty, Logic Wasting My Time RedTigress's Blog Jimmytherighteous's Blog Octo6er's Blog Nivek's Blog Magicjoejoe's Blog Littlemrmahatma's Blog Kurtmaddox's Blog Winstonsmith's Blog Drforbush's Blog Juniperflux's Blog Iron Blog Religion! tBlog My Profile Send tMail My tFriends My Images Sponsored Blog 
|
posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.23.04 (1:33 pm) Marriage does not have to be forever. In my state, it's relatively easy to end a marriage. It becomes trickier if there are assets to divide or child custody, but those issues would still arise if there were anything other than marriage and a couple lived together and later separated. Divorce is disallowed in some religions and allowed in others. In the past, our government tended to base divorce laws on Christian beliefs. This is generally no longer the case, at least in my state. Some marriage laws are still based on Christian notions of morality and I don't think those should be there. But it does not change the other things about marriage, and aside from issues such as bigamy and polygamy and infidelity, those issues are pretty much gone. It's not that I advocate any of those things, but I don't think it makes sense for the government to ban them in marriage but allow multiple partners to live together in a similar relationship without marriage. In other words, the government already agrees that such relationships are legitimate so denying them to married couples for a religious reason is not appropriate. Marriage is NOT an attempt to legislate love. Married people are not required to have sex with any specific frequency or have kids or live a certain way or even love each other. No matter how much the Christian right tries to tell you that that's what marriage is about, it's simply not the case legally. Read the statutes and see for yourself. It's about legal recognition of certain rights. You said yourself that with many of the rights, you agree that they should be there, but you want another way. But what could be simpler than the package deal we get today? If you take away a legal union, rights such as hospital visitation simply do not exist. On what basis would you have them exist? Would you want a court hearing in each and every case? My cousin's life partner died, and she had no rights to go to the hospital, keep their shared possessions, or even her own for which she had no receipts. Fair marriage laws would have prevented that. But realistically, the only alternative is to form tenuous legal agreements such as wills and visitation agreements and so forth and to try to anticipate every possible scenario just to be able to do the things that you want that are currently granted with a marriage. If you don't want to complicate things, then just call it a civil union and agree that it does the things that it does. But if a couple falls in love and the only alternative to signing a simple document in front of a few people to get certain recognitions that are desired is to go through such a complex web of paperwork, I can't see how that would help. It makes sense to treat marriage separately in a legal sense for the same reasons it does for any other partnership including a business one. When a couple gets married, they share a life. If one decides to work full time and earn income to be shared by both, and the other decides to stay at home and work in ways that benefit both but generates no income, the system recognizes it as a partnership. If each chose to work half time, and spend the rest of the time doing domestic things, the government would recognize that even without marriage. This way is just more realistic. The alternative would be to tax one person way too high and pay the other person welfare payments as if the income were not there, or force every couple to distribute their earned income evenly to avoid tax consequences. That's the unnatural part. For almost all of the history of our species, the work has been divided between a partner who takes care of domestic issues and one who brings home the food/money/subsistence. I don't want my government telling me that they get to dictate how family units must operate. If a couple is dividing the work and getting taxed on the overall pay that they both get, it's much more fair. It becomes unfair when they get taxed more than two single people, but that's another issue. Alternatively, we can change the laws so that individuals go by the same rules as businesses. If a wife has a job and the husband does not, we can have her consider him to be her employee and deduct his salary as a business expense. Then her taxable income would go down, and his would be based on what he pays her. But that was the whole point of having a married tax rate in the first place. By admitting that the only problem is that it goes against your personal views, you are admitting that it's not an inherent problem with marriage, but with a certain view of marriage. If yor arguments were viewed to be valid by others across the board, then it would follow that every rational person would see that weakness. But the reality is that you have a problem with a certain view of marriage, which is not even the view of marriage that I share. So it's not even marriage that you are against. You are against the idea of giving a certain set of laws a name that is used by others in a way that is irrelevant to how those laws function. In that case, I'd suggest that you take it up with the religious right and tell them that they misunderstand what marriage is. Legally, marriage has nothing to do with what they say it is. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 04.23.04 (4:56 pm) Reply to: mblog From a legal aspect, a devoted, long-term loving relationship might take some extra paperwork. But the problem is that a signed contract between two people confers obligation, which is detrimental to love. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.23.04 (5:02 pm) Reply to: therealspartacus007 Obligation is detrimental to love? How is that? Would I love my children more if I were not obligated to take care of them? posted by: blondebondgirl (reply) post date: 04.23.04 (10:23 pm) hey, nice blog :) i like your thoughts on marriage and love. very interesting stuff. posted by: therealspartacus007 (reply) post date: 04.24.04 (10:27 am) Reply to: mblog If you loved them, you wouldn't need obligation to take care of them. The answer is yes. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.25.04 (4:13 pm) Reply to: therealspartacus007 I don't follow you on that one. I love them and do feel obligated to take care of them. I am legally obligated to take care of them too. I don't see how that obligation could make me love them less. posted by: DragonBait22 (reply) post date: 04.25.04 (7:07 pm) Reply to: mblog The obligation doesn't necessarily make you love them less, but the love would be truer if there was no obligation and you loved them anyway. posted by: DragonBait22 (reply) post date: 04.25.04 (7:14 pm) Reply to: mblog My view of marriage has very little to do with legal rights. It's about love and romance. I don't think the government should be involved in such things. Your discussing marriage solely in terms of the legal union, and that's as unromantic a view as I can imagine. If you want to join in a civil union to get certain rights, that requires that you place a certain obligation on the relationship, and that is demeaning to love, in my opinion. Yes, it is only my opinion, and there are numerous things I'd like to take up with the religious right, but this opinion is based on love, not legal rights. True love, to me, can only exist when there is freedom and choice in a relationship. Making an illogical commitment to love takes away the choice that makes love true. I am against forcing love, not giving laws a name. posted by: DragonBait22 (reply) post date: 04.25.04 (7:15 pm) Reply to: blondebondgirl Thank you! :) posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.26.04 (10:17 am) Reply to: DragonBait22 But I explained my views on civil marriage and religious marriage. They are two different things and are done for different reasons. If it is the non-civil aspects you have a problem with, then go ahead and argue against Church weddings and so forth, but don't complicate the issue by bringing things into the argument that are not related to that aspect of marriage. Where I live, my state recognizes some marriages and not others. Technically, they recognize only civil unions (which they call marriages) that are done by filling out the proper paperwork, but they work with some religions so that this gets done at the time of the wedding. On the other hand, they don't recognize certain marriages of people with other cultural backgrounds and it would be illegal for those who perform the ceremony to sign the certificate. One example would be traditional Vietnamese weddings. In Vietnamese culture, marriage ceremonies predate the introduction of Buddhism, and Buddhism never encapsulated that aspect of social life. It was not viewed as a religious event, but as a social one, and a Buddhist monk was no more needed at a wedding than at the opening of a grocery store. That tradition was carried over to this country by immigrants for whom a wedding is a union between two families and family elders perform the ceremony. You can debate all you want whether you appreciate Vietnamese culture, but the bottom line is that there is no paperwork and the government does not consider it a marriage. Most couples who go through such a ceremony will at some point go to the county clerk's office and do some paperwork. But it's not necessarily because of anything romantic. It's because that's what the state wants in order for people to get certain legal rights. You can argue that it's not romantic and has nothing to do with love, but I can make the same argument if I apply for a driver license so I can drive my wife places; It simply makes it legal, and I would even go so far as to say that my desire to drive her places or to commit to taking care of her, our children, and my willingness to leave her everything I own should I die is romantic. I would also say that my unwillingness to make such a commitment would be unromantic. Conversely, I wold find it absurd if anybody advocated against me getting a driver license on the grounds that it's not romantic. I want the rights associated with it just as I want the rights associated with a civil union. Saying that I'm not romantic because I took action to get some rights, is like saying that it's not romantic to buy your wife a car. After all, the latter involves a legal commitment and an obligation to make payments, so if having to make a legal commitment to show your love is unromantic, then buying a car or a diamond ring for somebody you love must be unromantic. So if religious marriage and civil unions really are different things and for some people have nothing to do with each other, then you must debate the merits of each separately. posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.26.04 (10:33 am) Reply to: DragonBait22 If the obligation does not necessarily make me love them any less, then the rest of your argument is a non sequitur. You cannot make the statement above and then argue that it necessarily makes me love them any less. Therefore, you can't argue that the love would be truer one way because that would mean that I would love them less otherwise. There's a difference between a legal obligation and a moral obligation and possibly a difference between either of those and an obligation that comes from love. But if a person feels obligated out of love, the fact that there is also a legal obligation changes nothing in that respect. After all, the person already feels the obligation and nothing changes in terms of the person's desires. So it cannot diminish the love by your own statement. If the person feels morally obligated (as in a case where he has a child he does not even know but feels a responsibility for that child's welfare) or feels legally obligated (because he got somebody pregnant and the court says he must pay this woman he now hates to take care of a child he did not want) then the love might not be there, but there is nothing causal. The lack of love did not come because of the obligation but was an independent event. And finally, there are cases where a person starts off with a feeling of obligation out of love, ends up with a legal obligation, and then falls out of love. In those cases, whatever ended the love was not likely to be the obligation. After all, the person felt that before the legal part was there. Had the legal part not been there, the love still would have disappeared. So again, there is nothing causal. But in this case, the couple must remedy the situation and deal with the legal and financial aspects. If one of them gave up a career as a way of doing his part in the relationship, or if they have children and must decide who gets custody or who must support them, with marriage there is a framework. Without it, there can still be lawsuits and remedies, except of course in the case of a gay lover. So I still cannot see how you have made an effective argument. You may be of a certain opinion, but you have not given anything to support your premises. posted by: juniperflux (reply) post date: 04.26.04 (6:52 pm) I would just like to point out that you two (dragonbait22 + mblog) sound like an old married couple. posted by: RedTigress (reply) post date: 04.26.04 (7:57 pm) "Thanks to a comment left by mblog, you will now have to endure an explanation on my views of love and marriage." LOL! I don't know if we should feel like we're a bad class of noisy kids being punished or not! ;) posted by: jbfs (reply) post date: 04.27.04 (10:08 am) If I may quote Method Man: Word life you don't need a ring to be my wife Just be there for me I'm a make sure we Be livin in the fucking lap of luxury I'm realizing that cha didn't have to fuck with me But cha did now I'm going all out kid And I got mad love to give, you my nigga I have a few questions, though... if a person loves another person enough to enter into matrimony, should the presence of a legal contract (assuming that one should even exist) be a detractor to the relationship? mblog, why do you discuss marriage licenses as a renewal of rights one should naturally be afforded? (without the license, hospital visitation rights are lost, etc.) mblog, can love ever cause obligation or feelings of obligation? this is an interesting thing to think about... if you love someone and do something for them out of love (anything) was it ever an obligation? your ideas of love obligating someone to do something seem rather odd. moral obligations are seemingly unworthy of debate due to their extreme subjectiveness (proof of such is left as an exercise for the reader). So you're left with legal obligation. Thus you're only argument really boils down to "if you enter into a legal contract under legal obligation, then love might not exist there." duh? posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.27.04 (2:27 pm) Reply to: jbfs If these rights should be naturally afforded, keep in mind that they are not. They are afforded by marriage or by contract or legal ruling. Ignoring that loses those rights. An obligation is something that one feels compelled to do. It can be legal, moral, or social as in the case of marriage, but if I feel a sense of duty because I love somebody, I have an obligation by definition. Dismissing my argument because it seems "rather odd" to you does not refute my argument. If it did, I could merely say that yours is "extremely odd" and declare myself the winner. It's already well understood what an obligation is and you can argue with the publishers of dictionaries if you wish, but arguing that words don't mean what they mean is not a constructive argument. Also, your notion that moral obligations are unworthy of debate seems rather odd. posted by: jbfs (reply) post date: 04.27.04 (6:34 pm) Reply to: mblog obligation tends to carry at least the connotation if not meaning of being indebted (cf. impulse, desire, yen). Do you feel that being in love with some indebts you to them? Or are the things you do out of love more impulses/desires/yens? moral obligations are unworthy of debate due to the subjectiveness of morals. Morals are highly situationally dependent. Is it okay to steal? What about a loaf of bread for a starving family? What if the family is starving because you squandered all of your earnings on alcohol and lottery tickets? What if its because some socially repressive agency took over your country and discontinued your job and prevented you from employ? If morals can fluxuate so much "stealing is wrong, except for this case, unless this, except for this, unless this, ad nauseum", how can we use obligations based on them to defend any given point? What is morally right to you might be morally wrong to someone else. What's morally right to you in the situation you are currently in, might change tomorrow if some unforseen thing happens. (I think I might be repeating myself, but I keep flipping to other windows.) (btw, arguing that words mean what dictionaries say they mean is a rather fruitless argument, but one that I will not engage here.) posted by: mblog (reply) post date: 04.28.04 (9:06 am) Reply to: jbfs Your first argument begs the question. You are arguing based on a certain premise, yet you have not shown the validity of that premise. Yet you are trying to use it to prove itself true. Obligation does not necessarily mean indebtedness in that sense of the word, and I already explained what obligation means. Furthermore, if you disagree with that definition, then we are left with a merely verbal argument. You can pick another word for what I mean since it is clear to both of us what I mean by obligation. Once you do that, you can no longer argue based on definitions. Anybody who uses 153 words to tell me that moral obligations are unworthy of debate has either already proven that they are worthy of debate by debating them or shown that he is wrong in general. If you think that discussing dictionary definitions is a fruitless argument, then I will explain it. Since you won't engage here, I'll have to thank you for giving me the last word. Dictionary editors don't decide what words mean; they chronicle it. They look at how language is used and they record it. If words are used in a certain manner, and such usage is accepted and generally understood, then that's what the word means. It's that simple. When it appears in a dictionary, it means that the editors made a concerted effort to examine a multitude of published sources to find that words are indeed used in that manner, are done so without the need for further explanation or an accompanying definition, are are presumed to be understood by the readers. The bottom line is that if people use a word a certain way and, it is generally understood to mean what people mean by it, it's absurd to say that that's not what the word means. posted by: jbfs (reply) post date: 04.28.04 (3:06 pm) 1) Would you like some dictionary definitions to show that obligation carries the connotation of indebtedness? *smirk* More seriously, if you choose to use a word that does not connote indebtedness for love--let's use yen for example--then we have love yen and legal obligation. We are now comparing two completely different concepts and it is no longer valid to generalize the two. 2) Until you can prove to me why moral obligation should be worthy of debate, I will stand by my defense that it is not. (Yeah, I'm laying the burden of proof on you; after all, I've already stated my point. I would like to see you refute it.) 3) You make a rather broad assumption, and that is that dictionary editors attempt to capture the meaning of a word in all of its linguistic glory. Consider the following: a word means what a general group of people says it means (I think we agree on this). it is virtually impossible in this day and age to capture each particular meaning of a word based on each sociolinguistic grouping. a dictionary editor has to make sacrifices and generalizations to make it both feasible and possible for a word to be defined in the dictionary. These sacrifices are precisely why I do not believe in using a dictionary as a valid defense for word meaning. The different dictionaries out there have different agendas. OED, for example, which is often cited as the end-all-be-all of dictionaries, has the agenda of defining words in British vernacular. Webster's, Heritage, etc. have different agendas as well. |
|