What makes gay marriage different from straight marriage, fundamentally speaking?
Reader question: I was reading Pinker's discussions on government in "The Blank Slate", and I had an epiphany on the psychological motives for marriage. Let me know if you feel I'm wrong please, but it's the right to property and inheritance. The comfort in life with knowing that your stuff is protected even after death, that people can't kill you off just to take your stuff. That you've got someone to back you up in the case you stop living. I think there's a minor paradox with marriage with no kids because what happens when both partners die? But I think that has got be one of our instinctual needs: the need to inherit or own our property even after death. Do you think this is off base?
Honestly, what's wrong with consensual bigamy? Would it lower the divorce rate?
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September 8th, 2010 - 16:12
Nothing much, excepting a small pervertion of the mind from being natural!!!!!
September 8th, 2010 - 16:13
Straight marraige was given a blessing by God(Believers only)all others go to hell .
September 8th, 2010 - 16:33
For me, nothing actually. Its just really the ‘looks’ of the society that differs. If the problem is someone who would inherit properties, why not pick an orphan? You’d solve your own problem and even help build a child’s future.
September 8th, 2010 - 17:15
the problem most have is that if you change the constitutional idea of marriage that is a MAN and a WOMAN to an MAN and a MAN or and WOMAN and a WOMAN, then what’s stopping bigamy, or old guys and children or people and.. ducks? It changes something that has been a fundamental part of our society.
If you are want to marry another dude, that’s cool. But then I want to marry my cat.
September 8th, 2010 - 18:08
I think what ultimately motivates “real” (unselfish?) marriages in general, straight or not… is this unconscious connection we can all make (straight or gay) between sexual love and physical death & immortality. Property is secondary to that because it is symbolically (and materially) part of the well-being of our offspring … the symbolism works just as well in a gay or sterile marriage, as in a procreative one; but the material effect on society isn’t felt the same way, so maybe that’s why some people reject the significance of gay marriages (because of the assumed guarantee that they are sterile, there is no continuation of the marriage in flesh, and thus the property claim could be bogus?).
As for consensual bigamy … this is a thorny little issue, isn’t it? I mean, it forces us to address the basic question of who we think gets to decide how our (or “society’s”) reproductive (and thus, material) resources are distributed. Is there a right and wrong, and how do we know? No wonder it’s such an emotionally hot issue.
September 8th, 2010 - 18:14
Probably with the religious beginings of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman, it would seem that the word is taken to mean a specific type of union.
A union however could be either.
I would suggest that the laws would be better addressed as allowing unions with the rights to ownership and inheritance and therefore it wouldn’t step on the toes of the religious ceremony of marriage.
With the whole separation of church and state, marriage really couldn’t be condoned by the law I don’t believe since it is a religious ceremony. The ones done at the court house should be a union.
g-day!
September 8th, 2010 - 18:59
You are not off base, just off point. The first desire for a “spiritual” marriage is to be recognized by other people as “belonging” to each other. It has to do with pride. But if all you are interested in property rights, you are not wrong.
September 8th, 2010 - 19:58
I suppose one has to take into consideration that essentialy marriage was meant to be between man and woman for the purpose of procreation.