Marriage vs. Civil Union?

By: George Wallace

Do I believe in the sanctity of marriage? Yes. So much so that I do not believe in divorce under nearly every circumstance. I say this with some trepidation as many people very close to me have been forced into a situation where divorce seemed to be the only alternative to violence.

I am not trying to upset anyone who has been forced to make another decision. I am not trying to pass judgment on anyone. That is a useless and rather stupid activity as it can only limit, or end, valuable friendships and relationships.

My purpose is to try to more clearly define what I think marriage should be, and also describe what I think a “better way”, a more sensible approach to the whole arena of “marriage” and “civil union” should be.

Marriage is a social institution that carries an extremely heavy load of historical expectations, very purposeful and direct religious ideas, ties, and overtones. Marriage has social and civic limitations imposed in order to ameliorate subsequent disputes primarily around inheritance, disposition of property, and care for children that are issue to the marriage.

Initiating marriage is some form of ceremony, a rite of passage of individuals from childhood to responsible adulthood. The ceremony might be as simple as holding hands and jumping over a broomstick together in front of the assembled village. The ceremony can be conducted by a judge, a minister, a sea captain, mayors, or anyone so designated with that power and authority. Leaders of wagon trains crossing the American prairies were accorded that power.

The ceremony itself can be quick, or slow. It can be solemn, or filed with hilarity. The ceremony is what the participants wish it to be. Commonly there is a sermon of admonition describing the participant’s duties and responsibilities, which also serves to remind observers of the ceremony of their own equal responsibilities, and very commonly there are religious prayers and rites. The ceremony implies sexual maturity and at least some desire for procreation of children that replicate the adults being joined, and marriage adds to the strength and security of society. A very real requirement is that there is some observation of the ceremony by others of the community, especially close family members, and others outside of the marriage.

Long, hard-won experience through history has taught every human society the very difficult lessons that children are best protected, social peace best preserved, and society itself is best served in every way when marriage is healthy (or at least appears to be), and the commitment is lifelong.

Obviously there has been a long period when in Western cultures an experiment has been conducted in changing those ideas about marriage in many ways.

Equally obviously, some of those experiments are in response to the needs to deal with realities of human behavior. Behavior of people in larger groups changes from that inside of small, tightly knit, and ideologically uniform agricultural production villages.

A village imposes its strong restraints on individual’s personal behavior due to close contact and constant observation of behavior by members of the community. Behavior as is found in a city situation, changes. Especially sexual behavior. That is what has always made cities more exciting and attractive to human beings. The sexual attraction of cities is very powerful. Otherwise it is doubtful that all the other problems of living in such environments could long be ignored, or endured.

The evolving growth of cities has enormously increased the choices available to individuals and opportunities for interaction with other adults outside the boundaries of marriage. Marriage is much more economically important when manual labor is a constant overriding requirement of the peasant farmer.

Marriage, and sexual constancy, loses some of its value when labor, and partners, are easily replaced, as in an assembly line production environment. Marriage requires long term commitment, slowly learned intimate relationships with others without violence, and worthy lengthy goals.

The quite natural human tendency to mix and match sexually in or out the marriage bed is well known. Marriage was one of the ways religion chose to combat and limit this tendency. The constant ebb and flow of emotions centered around sexual behavior, and illicit, or even permissive exchange of sexual partners, all too often leads to disruptive violence very undesirable in a tight knit community dependent on each other for communal assistance.

Remember that marriage has clearly long been seen as an economic relationship. Remember Abraham Lincoln’s father’s quest for a new wife, and the speed with which the arrangement was made on the basis of clear economic necessity. He needed a wife. She needed a husband. That was good enough. The economic portion of marriage is deemed so important in many cultures that it is thought simply too important to be left to the vagaries of chance, and marriages are arranged long in advance of sexual maturity.

Where does all this leave us? With a huge problem. What are we going to do about the institution of marriage when we have whole new groups that wish to participate in marriage for emotional, and especially, economic reasons? Clearly the majority of society thinks that the institution is fine just as it is, unchanged and limited to a unique economic/sexual/religious union between one man and one woman. Some members of society, growing significant in numbers, want to be able to enjoy the social /sexual /economic benefits of the institution. An alternative idea to “marriage” that has been offered to these new groups is “civil union”.

This is a concept worthy of serious deliberation and discussion. I will start by stating what I think Civil Union is, or ought to be, and then I will explore some of the implications of such a solution to the problem might entail.

Civil union is a written contractual arrangement between consenting adults, recognized by the State, and which may include certain State required limitations and contents, and which may include, up front, a dissolution clause with subsequent limits, provisions, and penalties. There might well be different classes of civil union. Class 1, 2, or 3. Class A, B, or C. Perhaps marriage should simply be considered the highest form of civil union by the State? Perhaps civil unions should have built in term limitations. Two years? Five years? Ten years? Life time? Maybe individuals could work their way up the ladder, learning how to be married?

Obviously with fifty different States, differences are inevitable, but here the Constitution reigns supreme. Each State is required to recognize the contracts created in others.

However, civil unions, theoretically, could be between any two, or more, consenting , age and health qualified adults. Any combination is then theoretically possible. Government does not limit the size of, or profitability of, corporations; another artificial but necessary contractual construct of government. Nor should government limit the size, or composition, of civil unions.

There might very well be huge advantages, particularly for Senior Citizens who have outlived their spouses, to contract into a civil union for purposes of relationships, economy of scale, living arrangements like cooking and consumption of meals, and ease of provision of health care, especially long term aged health and nursing care. Just the economic advantages of economy of scale in transportation needs for Seniors could justify use of a civil union. Senior Citizens are a huge and growing percentage of our population. Civil unions would meet many of their special needs and serve society well in this manner.

Civil unions certainly would carry some of the trappings and privileges of marriage: cohabitation, inheritance, health care, child rearing, visitation privileges; however, it must be seen to be clear that civil unions are not the same as marriage and do not carry the honor and burden of commitment that is applicable to marriage. Marriage should be permanent. Marriage carries the religious connection component and reinforces the value of permanency while merging the values of theology with a clearly civil situation and set of needs

Civil unions cannot have the same value as marriage. Civil union is a lesser level recognition by the State of an essentially non-permanent relationship. Civil unions are only concerned with measurable things like money, property, responsibility, and inheritance.

A further clarification. Yes, there are components of civil unions in marriage. The strength and the weakness of marriage is its dependence on trust. In marriage, trust is everything. There are few avenues for enforcement of trust in the provisions of marriage. Essentially, today, the State is forced into the role of punishment of one, or both separating spouses for some form of infidelity (sexual behavior), and controlling the breakup in terms of money, property, responsibility, and inheritance.

It is simply time to get government out of the bedroom.

Government deliberately intrudes as little as possible in marriages, even to the point of protecting one spouse from the other in instances of court trials. Forcing one spouse to testify against the other is clearly seen as a powerful tool to break up a marriage. Government clearly thinks that marriages are more important than arriving at the truth in a trial. Marriages exist to more adequately provide for children.

On the other hand, government has as a primary concern, contract enforcement. This is one of the primary forces that created the U.S. Constitution. Government has this concern because enforceable contracts are good for business, the economy, and the collection of taxes.

Government has always been forced to deal with marriage, albeit reluctantly, but the role is forced, meaning required by circumstances. Government does have the concerns of collection of taxes, disposal of property (which is taxable), and provisions for support, care, and education of issue (children) of marriage. If this role falls to government, it is expensive. Children are expensive to rear. Education of children is a huge expense. Children must be educated to avoid having the child continue to being dependent on government as an adult.

None of these things traditionally have been clearly spelled out for marriages. Primarily this is because in the past it was simply understood, most people were illiterate and could not read a contract anyway. Inevitably, disputes ended up in the lap of government, in the court system. This is a very expensive way for government to deal with the end of a marriage.

A contract, by comparison, even different classes of contracted civil unions, should be relatively more easy and less expensive for government to oversee and enforce.

Article Source: http://www.retirementlivingarticledirectory.com

(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com

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