Quantum Windbag
Gold Member
- May 9, 2010
- 58,308
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I have a friend who is an attorney, and he posted the above image on Facebook, after which a lively debate ensued (involving other attorneys as well). This is my favorite bit.
"But this is a peculiar sort of redefinition that ignores the only reason marriage exists or ever existed."
This is a patently indefensible position. If the contract of legal marriage existed solely, or even primarily, to further the interests of childbearing, then childbearing would be part of the contract. It isn't. Marriage is a contract of domestic partnership, not a contract of agreement to bear children. The roots of marriage as a means of encouraging legitimate childbirth developed under a system of women as property, a system I am more than happy to see abandoned. There are countless tangible benefits to a legally-recognized, socially-normalized domestic partnership that have absolutely nothing to do with two individuals bearing children. Those benefits, and their arbitrary exclusivity, are at the heart of this issue.
Interesting how feminism has actually changed the tenor of the conversation by spreading lies. The concepts of marriage and property rights dates back to the Middle Ages, about the same time the concept of chivalry sprang up. The idea was that the strong was supposed to protect the weak, and that having strength actually imposed obligations on a person. "With great power comes great responsibility" is not just a geeky saying, it is the essence of a code that is rarely seen these days, and is exactly the opposite of what feminist denigrate as patrimony.
This can be demonstrated even in the Bible. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." Gen 2:24
Nothing in there about a woman becoming property, or that property being part of the man's family, is there? That is because, despite the fact that we label that early time as being patriarchal, it really wasn't intended that men control everything. Women didn't become property until it became politically feasible to use them as such, and it really only happened among the noble class, not the commoners.