Marriage: What and Why?

As promised, here's Topical Post #2 for today. This topic is much more confusing for me. Where I was fairly confident in my opinions with the last post, this time I'm seriously confused. This is more of a "thought experiment" than an argument per se, and I would very much appreciate comments and discussion on this topic.

So yesterday the New Jersey Supreme Court opened up the door for even more debate about the issue of gay marriage. According to an MSNBC article, the court said that the NJ legistlature "must offer homosexuals either marriage or something like it, such as civil unions."

As such things will, this got me thinking. What is the difference between a "marriage" and a "civil union"? For that matter, what exactly is marriage? The following are my thoughts on the subject, but they are far from complete. I need input from others, particularly if you know something about marriage laws and benefits (more on that later). In a nutshell, I'm trying to answer these two questions:

Why should we have marriages? What is the purpose of marriage?

First, let me offer a basic definition of "marriage": Marriage is a union between individuals in which the participants ("partners") devote themselves to one another for life. That's a rather broad (and therefore somewhat vague) definition, but I think it has to be for the discussion to continue.

On the face of it, it looks pretty simple: an agreement between individuals. Which leaves me wondering: "Why should an outside entity (church, State, the Mob, etc.) have anything to do with such a personal matter?"

Let's get the Christian answer out of the way: Marriage was established by God for a variety of reasons. Christians get married because God said they should (under certain circumstances; Cf. 1 Corinthians 7), and they follow His rules about how to go about it. Other religions have similar guidelines for marriage.

For the remainder of this post (and in all discussion that follows), I'd like to focus on secular (non-religious) marriage. Why exactly does/should the secular world have marriage at all? Why have the State oversee and legalize marriage? Why provide benefits to married couples? (This is where I could really use some help; I know basically nothing about the tangible/State-given benefits that marriage provides. Any information to that effect would be appreciated.)

Reason One: Children
I think the number-one reason for secular marriage is to provide for children. If one hears much at all in the marriage debate, one is likely to hear a great deal about "The Family." "Marriage is the foundation of the Family, and the Family is the foundation of society," it might be said. How is this so? I think it primarily has to do with raising children. Children, an old cliche tells us, are the future. As such, the State has a vested interest in the well-being of the children that live under its influence. This explains why married couples receive benefits of a variety of kinds.

If secular marriage is about raising children, then it should be easy to decide who gets to marry: Any union that benefits children is a good one. If a heterosexual couple can raise a child better than a single parent, let them marry. If a homosexual couple can raise a child as well as a heterosexual one, let them marry. If a single man with a dog provides the same developmental benefits to a child, let man and dog be wed (with appropriate benefits to the man). If it truly does take a village to raise a child properly, polygamy must return.

Of course, the process for evaluating which possible arrangements are beneficial to children is neither easy nor quick. So, until all possibilities have been examined, it seems (from an economical perspective) that the secular insitution of marriage must be either exclusive (some arrangements get benefits while others don't) or nonexistent (nobody gets married).

Reason Two: Validation
Some might suggest that having a relationship "sanctioned" by an authoritative body makes the relationship better. Perhaps it helps hold the partners accountable to their vows. Perhaps it gives the partners a sense of pride (or even superiority) to know that they have the blessings of the State. I suppose there could be any number of such reasons.

If secular marriage is about providing validity to a relationship, then why isn't it available to other relationships: parents and children, siblings, close friends, employers and employees, teachers and students, roommates? What is it about one kind of relationship that makes it more fit for the State's acknowledgement and blessing? Is it physical intimacy? The amount of time spent together? Common interests? Psychological compatibility? The only worthwhile reason I can think of is the raising of children, which has already been discussed.

Reason Three: Social Stabilization
It has been suggested that marriage acts as a stabilizing factor in society. I don't know enough about such arguments to deal much with them here, but I will make a few comments. Just because marriage correlates to stabilization doesn't necessarily mean that it is a cause of stabilization. To put it another way: Is the stabilization caused by the institution of marriage or by the commitment-relationship of the married? If most married couples are religious (I suspect not, but it could be), then perhaps religion is the stabilizing factor. Or maybe it's parenthood and children. My point here is that marriage is a rather complex (and somewhat vague) process/lifestyle, and the bureaucratic "institution" of marriage may play a smaller role in any benefits of marriage than we would like.

Regarding "Benefits"
I've already said that I'm not really familiar with how marriage benefits work, but there is a particular aspect of them that I'm curious about: Are marriage benefits a reward or an assistance? This is related to the purpose of marriage: If marriage is meant for the betterment of children, then marriage benefits are more likely a form of aid to the parents, to help them raise the children. On the other hand, if marriage is instituted for the betterment of society at large, then marriage benefits seem more like a reward or an incentive to encourage people to marry.

If marriage benefits are primarily a reward, I wonder if that could actually be harmful to society. If people get married just for the benefits, the marriage itself could be less stable, and I suspect that divorce undoes most or all of the stabilizing benefits of marriage.

Concluding Thoughts
The long and short of all that musing is this: It seems to me that the marriage debate is all wrong. Politicians spend lots of time arguing about the details of how marriage should work without addressing why it exists in the first place. I see only two good reasons even to have an institution of marriage. The first is for the sake of religion, in which case the State has no business getting involved. The second has to do with raising children, and I outlined by thoughts about how such marriage should work in section one above (exclusivity or nonexistence). I freely admit that there are probably reasons for secular marriage that I haven't thought of, and I hope that readers who know some will share them. But for now, I'm starting to think that secular marriage shouldn't exist.

As a reminder for would-be commenters, I'm basically trying to address these questions:
Why should the State have marriages? What is the purpose of secular marriage?

Flaming doublespeak

Note: I was originally going to cover two topics in this post, but I also hope to get at least some dialogue going about them, especially the second. For the sake of keeping conversations orderly, I'm going to do two posts. The second will come a bit later.

Here's an interesting article about post-abortion practices. It seems that at least one UK hospital has taken to disposing of aborted fetuses in the garbage incinerators. This strikes me as a rather disgusting development, but what really astounds me about it seeing the reactions presented in the article.

This one should serve as a good example: One woman, after learning that her aborted fetus suffered this fate, had this to say: "I am furious and very hurt. Imagine my horror when I discovered that my baby was incinerated in the same furnace as the hospital rubbish."

Wait a minute: "my baby was incinerated"? Isn't it a primary tenet of pro-abortion arguments that fetuses don't count as "babies" (that is, humans) and therefore "babies" are never aborted?

The most surprising thing to me about the article is that the doctors and the women who had abortions (the "pro-abortionists") talk about the fetuses as if they were human beings. I expect that kind of language from anti-abortionists, but pro-abortionists base their arguments largely on the claim that fetuses are not human beings.

If fetuses are human beings, then aborting them amounts to murder. It seems odd for murderers (the doctors) and their accomplices (the parents who seek abortion) to say that their victims deserve "dignity in death" after they've denied them the chance to have dignity in life. It is a confused (I might even say "deranged") mind that gives more respect to the dead than to the living; the murderer who dignifies the murdered seems to be an extreme case of this confusion.

(As an aside: My comments about abortion in this post generally do not apply to abortions that are meant to save the life of the mother. Such circumstances don't change the fact that abortion is (or is not) murder, but an abortion that is medically necessary for the safety of the mother allows for both "murder" and remorse for the victim.)

On the other hand, if fetuses aren't human beings (the contention of most pro-abortion advocates), then what's wrong with tossing them out with the used Kleenex? We dispose of the latter collection of nonliving biological matter without a second thought; why get worked up over any other collection of nonliving biological matter?

I am disgusted by the post-abortion trash-incinerator-disposal for the same reason I am disgusted by abortion itself: It violates the dignity of a human being. I don't understand how a woman could be horrified about how her baby's corpse was disposed of without also being horrified by the fact that her baby wouldn't have been a corpse apart from her own choices. But to my mind, if you consider abortion acceptable, you have no place condemning such disposal practices.

A member of a pro-life organization is quoted in the article as saying, "Has our society lost even a minimum concept of the humanity of the unborn child and the respect due to these tiny victims of our ruthless legislation?" I think "society" lost the "concept of the humanity of the unborn child" when it decided that abortion was an acceptable practice. I don't see why anyone would be surprised at this turn of events.

The Verdict Is In

My jury service ended last Tuesday; we (the jury) reached a unanimous verdict.

Why has it taken me so long to post about it? Some combination of laziness, busyness, and general lack of motivation. I leave the exact mixture to your imagination.

I found jury service to be a very interesting experience. It was neat to see the judicial system in action. The trial was much calmer and more orderly than the typical TV/movie trial, which isn't really surprising. I was a bit disappointed by the performance of the attorneys; the prosecutor, in particular seemed a bit underprepared.

The real fun began with the jury deliberations. As you can imagine, getting 12 people to come to a unanimous agreement is no small achievement, especially when the prosecutor's argument was spotty at best. We spent about six hours or so deliberating. The case ultimately came down. to a question of the accused's intent, and figuring out a person's motivations and thoughts isn't the easiest thing to do. Being the philosophically-minded guy that I am, I spent a lot of time (inside and outside the deliberation room) thinking about the connections between thought and action. This naturally reminded me of James 2:14-26 and the long-standing debate over faith and works. But such musings are for another time.

In the end, we found the defendant guilty on both of the two counts, which involved failure to register as a sex offender. We agreed that it wasn't malicious (he probably didn't plan to start stalking people), he was just tired of needing to register as often as he did (every 30 days, at that point). Since failure to register is a felony, a guilty verdict usually means 3-5 years in prison. Which is actually rather sad in this case, but it wasn't our job to determine the sentence.

Jury duty can certainly be inconvenient, but the service itself seems to be a worthwhile and (in some ways) fun venture. I wouldn't mind serving again in the future, I think.

That's enough for a quick summary (I've gotta get back to work). Feel free to leave any questions/observations as comments, as always.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the delay."

Thus quoth our judge every single time we met this week. Six times we (the jury) gathered outside the courtroom at the appointed hour, and six times we didn't actually get into the courtroom until 30 minutes after the appointed hour. We (the jury) were, on the whole, not amused by this, though there wasn't really anything we could do about it.

I suspect these repeated delays contributed to the fact that we were unable to reach a consensus when we finally started deliberations yesterday. So we have to meet again on Tuesday. Since we're not done, I still can't discuss any details of the case. And since jury duty was basically all I did this week, I don't have too much to write about.

I guess I can report about my current reading projects: Chesterton's Orthodoxy and John Grisham's The Firm, both very good and both recommended.

Happy Weekend to you all.