Regarding the new rezzes, CP sez: “I'm pretty sure the marriage one [United States law ought not recognize marriage] is trying to say that marriage shouldn't be enshrined in law anywhere in the US. thus it becomes a cultural, religion-separation, etc issue. I rather liked that one...” You’ll no doubt not recall that my take was that it was differentiating between federal and local law. There is, of course, a belief among some that there should be a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, or more specifically limiting marriage to one man and one woman of the human persuasion, I gather because gay marriage challenges the very concept of marriage (whatever that is). This would provide a legal entry into the debate. And there are the issues of whether gay marriage, allowed in one state, must be recognized in states where it isn’t allowed, and although this is the sort of nice point of law that doesn’t allow for much interesting discussion, it nonetheless is a constitutional concern. I’m rather interested, actually, in the differentiation of state and federal polities. What belongs to one and not the other? This is one of the core issues of any federal state, and in our own, has led so far as to four years of civil war. I enjoy tracking the roots of the war between the states back to the Revolution, and earlier. There’s an inevitability much like reading a Shakespearian tragedy, the fatal flaw that isn’t going to work out well. But, of course, that’s just my particular hobbyhorse. Anyhow, aside from gay marriage, I haven’t heard anyone much say, damn, let’s do away with marriage (except, on a case-by-case basis, their own).
This was my least favorite rez of the bunch, and if CP’s interpretation is the one that takes root, that would not change my feelings about it. There are certainly interesting aspects of the civil-izing of naturalistic rituals, and one could take a hermeneutic/structuralist view of marriage and study how it fits into secular societal structures, or, for that matter, into non-secular societal structures: marriage is not at its core an act of religion, despite many religions’ claim on marriage as sacramental; i.e., marriage is more elemental than religion. Thinking along these lines, one starts to track back on a chicken/egg continuum: in the social context, was marriage first a civil act or a religious act? Not that this would determine what it ought to be, but the idea of marriage as something different from mating for life makes one think along those lines.
Anyhow, since we’d be talking about US law in general, i.e, law in the US, one would be hard-pressed to suggest that marriage should not be recognized as a legal action. It is, by any definition of the thing, a contract agreed to by consenting parties, and as such has the intrinsic legal aspects of any contract. (Coincidentally, I have just been polishing up the contracts section of the Hillary Duff, so I’m buff on this stuff.) So on the affirmative we would either have to argue that marriage is some other kind of contract that doesn’t really exist in the wild, or that it is no contract at all. A negative might get up and show the relative portions of the lectures from “The Paper Chase” to make his or her point clearly enough. And I won’t begin to enumerate all the civil issues that radiate from marriage (shared ownership of property, rights of survivorship, child-rearing—damn, I just did begin to enumerate them; I am so untrustworthy!).
Not that I ever disagree with CP, of course. Or anyone else, for that matter. This activity is about unity and fraternity and—no, wait. That’s not this activity.
If marriage makes it as a topic, I owe CP a drink. If I have to judge any rounds of it, he’s going to owe me drinks for life.
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