“When marriage is the most sacred, most profound of several related, recognized forms of relationships, then perhaps it will finally be treated with the respect it deserves.” [emphasis added]

A different way I would say marriage - for life - is akin to the priesthood among relationships.

It was thirty-four years ago my girlfriend and I really enjoyed each other’s company and conversation and felt love for one another and wanted that to last, so we got married. Two years later I found out there were some things about which we had strong and opposite opinions - that was during the campaign of Nixon vs. McGovern.

Over the years we’ve been stuck together with two good children, and a mortgage, and still enjoyed being together … sometimes, but we’ve grown apart by sex, politics and religion.

Since there’s no way to legislate wisdom in youth nor is it appropriate to punish for the unforseen future, in our new culture I would like to see something like Giuli’s handfasting, and celebration of monogamous relationship promises where the ultimate, the priesthood is marriage.

Again, male + female = child. No children = no hunting, or gathering.

Among hunter-gatherers, child-rearing is an activity of the band as a whole, not so much of the parents individually. So, among foragers, marriage has diddly-squat to do with child rearing. Only in the isolated compartmentalism of civilization do you see that trend.

So considering one particular kind of relationship to be irresponsible means that one must consider ALL relationships to be irresponsible?

The “one particular kind of relationship” that you have deemed illegitimate is any long-term relationship that isn’t married. So, under your terms, all long-term relationships must be married ones. But you also said, “that doesn’t mean that no value is placed on other kinds of relationships.” What, so long as those relationships all make sure to be terminated before they reach whatever threshold you’ve deemed to be “irresponsible”? No, anecdotal evidence isn’t persuasive in a logical argument, but I’m hoping that personal examples can be a bit more glaring for you to realize that something is seriously screwy with your logic. I often can’t refute the logic of a progressivist case, except for the fact that it just don’t work like that. However intricate the logical models you build, Janene and others are living proof–it just don’t work like that.

So does that mean the first people to farm had no culture whatsoever prior to farming? Civilization was founded by a group of pod people?

Might as well have been–they jettisoned nearly all of their previous culture within a few generations. Almost nothing survived.

When it comes to social norms and values, the general rule should be, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Heh … that was the suggestion that got me labelled a traditionalist in my soon-to-be mother-in-law’s book. Needless to say, I agree. I don’t want to throw out marriage. Giuli wrote this article as an answer to those who are arguing to throw out marriage. But, it is just as obviously not sufficient on its own. We need other arrangements, in addition to marriage, not to the exclusion of it.

When marriage is the most sacred, most profound of several related, recognized forms of relationships, then perhaps it will finally be treated with the respect it deserves. People won’t enter into it because they’re “supposed” to, or because they have to choose between ending a relationship both parties are perfectly happy with because their families think it’s “irresponsible” of them to live their lives in the way that they both find fulfilling. Then maybe we won’t see 50% divorce rates, serial monogamy, or this idea of marriage just for the legal perks. Maybe then it will mean something again, once everyone who’s really not interested in marriage has an alternative that better suits what they really are after.

And all I’m saying that superglue works better than paste.

If you want them to stick together forever, yeah. But sometimes that’s not what you want at all. Sometimes you want to maybe seperate them later. Maybe you don’t want to be stuck forever, just for a little while. Then, paste is much better.

By that logic, there should only be one type of glue in the world, one TV channel, one pizza topping, one religion, one culture, one emperor, and one god.

Well, that’s just not true. Women have historically been far better off getting married. Women who were unmarried without anyone to support them were pretty much as good as dead.

Your knowledge of ancient and medieval Europe must be faulty there, because Giuli’s got you nailed on this point. “Old Maids” were protected by their birth family. When the parents died, she had brothers, and if it came to it, nephews to look after her. Men beat their wives routinely–and children too, but never to death. Children could farm. Women were for producing children; if you broke this one, you could always get another.

What’s an ideal situation? How about one in which society recognizes that people have a responsibility to more than just themselves? How about a situation in which we actually enforce the idea that when you get married you have permanent responsibilities to your spouse, and if you’re not going to get married, then you have no right to waste your partner’s time? Frankly, I don’t see what the problem is with that.

There’s only one problem I see in that … you’ve assumed that one party is looking for a lifetime commitment, and the other is not.

That’s not the situation we’re talking about at all.

We’re talking about the situation where both parties find their relationship fulfilling, but neither one wants to commit their entire lives to it, at least not ritually.

You know, the “irresponsible” ones, like Janene….

In a hunter/gatherer setting the focus will be towards training the child how to survive.

Again, male + female = child. No children = no hunting, or gathering.

So does that mean the first people to farm had no culture whatsoever prior to farming? Civilization was founded by a group of pod people?

… it would explain Cher…

- Chuck

“As Jason has already pointed out, it’s simply not true that tribes don’t use peer pressure. Other societies may not use physical force. But the idea that there’s some culture out there in which nobody uses any force to influence others is just a fantasy.â€?

I wasn’t talking about some culture out there, but about the Anthropik Tribe. You can use force to influence other members, but if you do, I and many others that advocate egalitarian organization and anarchy, would not consider this tribe to be such. Of course no real group of humans can be absolutely anti-authoritarian as we have many ways of manipulating each other. To facilitate individual autonomy it’s necessary to strive to avoid compulsion at all times.

Our society may have some unfortunate ideas about hierarchy and gender roles, but that’s different from marriage. They may be closely associated with marriage. But they’re not the same thing. And I don’t see anything inherently wrong with marriage as we have it now. So why not just keep that custom as it is and deal with any problems that might arise as they come rather than trying to reinvent the wheel?

I may be wrong… but I don’t think I am hearing either Jason or Guili advocating ‘getting rid’ of marriage. The suggestion has been that if you want to make marriage stronger perhaps you can give people other choices as well — so that when people get married they are doing so for all of the RIGHT reasons, rather than for any number of not-so-good reasons. (Like social expectations, ‘because everybody does’, because it is the only way to gain some set of rights or abilities, etc…)

Janene