MARRIAGE WITHOUT WOMEN: Maggie responds
Briefly, Jonathan, because this is too big a topic to handle just before we are going to switch topics (so you and Dale can beat me over the head about civil unions, etc.): I think you have it pretty much backwards. The reason marriage as a legal institution has benefits is primarily because it helps support a natural social institution: the bonds that are created by the desire and the need to be good for the opposite sex, the frequently denied but big brute fact that sexual unions between men and women continue to produce children unexpectedly and irregularly.
The law does not impose a pattern by strong norms of social engineering; it protects and reinforces the boundaries of a naturally recurring social institution, with social norms that arise out of the need to reconcile the differing sexuality of men and women and the personal and social consequences of thereof.
posted by maggie at
9:09 AM | Link |
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