On Marriage: I welcome discussion
Jan. 19th, 2008 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailbheI'm pulling this one out for further discussion. I'm particularly interested in the views of people who thought marriage was meaningless, or that it's just unfair because of hetersexual privilege, childrearing privs, etc. I mean, obviously it *is* unfair, but I'm interested in other people's views.
Are you happy that you married Rob?
Depends on what you mean by married. I'm happy we are committed life partners. I'm delighted we're co-parents. I'm thrilled we plan holidays and DIY and grocery shopping and menus together. I'm pleased some of our friends and family came to celebrate our relationship and offer support for our commitment. I'm ambivalent about the legal and social status the legal ceremony gave our relationship. It was originally because of child guardianship laws - only a man (not necessarily the father) married to a woman at the time of birth got automatic next of kin type rights. That law changed I think while I was pregnant, so I felt dreadful. Then civil partnerships showed up and I felt a bit better. It's complicated.
Are you happy that you married Rob?
Depends on what you mean by married. I'm happy we are committed life partners. I'm delighted we're co-parents. I'm thrilled we plan holidays and DIY and grocery shopping and menus together. I'm pleased some of our friends and family came to celebrate our relationship and offer support for our commitment. I'm ambivalent about the legal and social status the legal ceremony gave our relationship. It was originally because of child guardianship laws - only a man (not necessarily the father) married to a woman at the time of birth got automatic next of kin type rights. That law changed I think while I was pregnant, so I felt dreadful. Then civil partnerships showed up and I felt a bit better. It's complicated.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 05:31 pm (UTC)Why? We have contracts for that.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 06:13 pm (UTC)Sure but that is what marriage is - its a legal contract. No amount of frills and dresses and whathaveyou alter the fact that it is a legal contract between two people, already structured to include potential property, inheritance and family issues. You can cover most of that in a bunch of subsidiary contracts but its a lot more complex in most countries (talking UK (non Scottish) law here).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 06:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 07:48 pm (UTC)Are you addressing me or
As for everyone making up their own contracts - people do make supporting contracts relating to property and inheritance responsibilities (and I'm not talking about pre-nups). You could of course, leave individual couples etc to make up their own contracts and not have a socially understood start point. I can see lots of lawyers doing nicely out of that and lots of women getting screwed by it. A great many of my generation bought into the 'we don't need the paper' only to find themselves years later alone and with no legal protection, no pensions or even rights to their own homes or contents.
I'll keep a standard and generally understood contract available however imperfect and however it needs extending until women really do have an equal share in society's material wealth to go with the rather more than equal share they bear of the responsibilities. You have the option not to use it if you don't like any part of it but that isn't justification for removing it from the many who depend on that cookie cutter contract for the most basic of protections.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 07:53 pm (UTC)Your generation's tales of hardship are why I felt I had to get the paper for my children, in spite of my personal moral objections to it. There are some very scary true stories out there.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 08:28 pm (UTC)I think we're talking past each other. I'm not saying the protections shouldn't be there for anyone. I'm saying they should be there for *everyone*.
And yeah, I have the option of not using those protections. But people I really care about (like the woman I spent four years of my life with, as married as we were legally allowed to be) don't have an option at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 11:05 pm (UTC)Certainly, that's the spirit in which I got married. Unlike Ailbhe, I didn't want kids, and neither I nor my husband still want kids. We did want to make a public commitment to each other - in our case, it took the form of a Catholic ceremony. Not because either of us are religious but because the priest marrying us was a very close family member and we knew there was no-one better to celebrate our marriage. (My mum *had* asked that we do it in a church, and I was happy to fall in with her request, but had I not been happy, I would have stood firm.)
And I think there's enough people reading this LJ to agree that my uncle was pretty damn fab on the whole marriage thing.
The legal thing was a factor, but in that case, it was my issue, since I'm the property owner in the relationship.
The thing that annoys me about "civil partnerships" is that it's exclusionary on both sides. A gay couple who are happy with the concept of marriage are still not allowed to be married legally in the eyes of the law; they're only allowed to make a legal commitment to each other. A straight couple who are not happy with the implications of the word "marriage" still have no alternative.
I think that either everyone's allowed to get married, or the state gets out of marriage completely and just recognises legal partnerships (the latter would have the advantage of, for example, siblings living together being able to enjoy the same property benefits that could enable a survivor to keep their joint family home).
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-20 08:25 am (UTC)Tony & I got married because what we wanted was covered by the standard marriage contract (in particular next-of-kin rights for each other and any children). I'm happy that pretty much every official form I fill in seems to have done a cut+paste s/spouse/civil partner/ which allows a lot more people access to the same contract.
I also think that having a default contract (marriage/civil partnership) acts as a useful model to those who want to draw up their own contract. I believe that between them, marriage and civil partnership cover the majority of long-term relationships people want to protect in law; I'm sympathetic to e.g. poly relationships that aren't covered, but I'm a big fan of the 80/20 principle: have something that works for most people rather than have nothing because you can't make something that works for everyone.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-01-19 09:33 pm (UTC)[5 further lines of rant deleted]