39 posts tagged “marriage”

I've not so far written about the Tiger Woods story because I viewed it as yet another story about a straying celebrity and that it would quickly become yesterday's news.  Reports such as these are now rather commonplace and are hardly worth reporting on, let alone commenting on.

But this story outlived its fifteen minutes a long time ago and, personally, I'm getting tired of hearing about it.  I don't see what all the shock and fascination is with this story.  It's not as if he's the first, nor will he be the last celebrity (or non-celebrity, for that matter) to fall off the monogamy wagon.

I also don't see why Woods is off the golf tour.  I don't see what one thing has to do with the other.  The state of his marriage should be a private matter between him and his wife and it in no way impedes his ability to play golf.  It's not as if being monogamous would make him a better golf  player. 

And it's not as if he beat his wife and had done something criminal.  Indeed, if anything, the shoe is on the other foot in this instance.  It seems the only reason he had an accident was because his wife bashed in the back window of his SUV, thus distracting him, as he tried to drive away.

I've read comments from people cheering her on for this; taking the opinion that he got what he deserved for his infidelity. The sexism of such statements boggles my mind, as I'm quite certain there would be no cheering if their roles were reversed in this drama.  People would be calling to have him locked up and the key thrown away if it had been him bashing a window in with a golf club while she drove away.  It seems when it comes to domestic violence and infidelity, the double standard is alive and well.

Other people are shocked, asking how could he do such a thing.  Again, with the ubiquity of stories about celebrity infidelity and its corresponding prevalence in the lives of ordinary people as well, I think that people are asking the wrong questions.  They take the view that people are failing marriage, but in reality, it would seem that our idea of what marriage should be is failing people.

Instead of asking why so many people are unfaithful, we need to be asking such questions as, why are all marriages expected to be monogamous, why was monogamy originally instituted in the first place, are the original reasons for monogamy still relevant in our society today, what is the exact nature of "fidelity" -- is it summed up by sexual exclusivity or can it refer to other aspects of a marriage and, if so, must sexual exclusivity always be a part of it. and so on.

Perhaps we need to be re-examining and re-evaluating the structure of marriage and the purpose it serves in our society and be willing to make some changes, instead of trying harder to cram people down into the same old, ill-fitting boxes.

Thoughts?

Reading the webpage of one of my local TV stations, I came upon a story about a man who had been arrested for bigamy.  He'd married his first wife in 2005, and had married a second woman this past October.

Neither wife had been the wiser until the first wife intercepted a text message for their husband from the second wife.  After texting back to the second wife and determining who she was, the first wife called the police to report him for bigamy.

After an investigation, police arrested him and charged him with bigamy.  The man is now out on bond awaiting trial.

Arresting someone for bigamy boggles my mind.  First of all, I don't think the government has any business meddling in the private relationships of consenting adults, except for cases of domestic violence.  If it were up to me, I'd abolish marriage as a legal category altogether.

Knowing that this isn't likely to happen any time soon, I think that as long as legal marriage exists, it should not be limited to monogamous couples.

That being said, with the law as it stands now, bigamy should not be a criminal offense.  At the most, it should be a civil matter.  In fact, I'd thought it was something that had been decriminalized -- that when discovered, the second marriage would merely be annulled and the offender given a fine.

The police have much more important things to do than being in the business of enforcing monogamy.  They should not be involved in the personal relationships of private citizens if there is an absence of domestic violence.  In my opinion, the first wife should have handled the situation herself, perhaps by contacting a divorce lawyer, rather than calling the police and keeping them from doing more important things.  Sue the guy for breach of contract or some such thing, but don't put him in jail.

Thoughts.

Most people by now have heard of the justice of the peace in Louisiana who recently refused to marry an interracial couple.  When I first heard the news, it boggled my mind, as I could not imagine such a thing happening anywhere in the United States in 2009.  I'm not at all surprised that such racism still exists now, but it was a shock to see such an overt expression of it.  One would think that he would be well aware of the Supreme Court decision of 1967 which made interracial marriage legal in all fifty states.

The judge, Keith Bardwell, said, "I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves.  In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."  Yeah, they might grow up to be, oh, President of the United States or something.

He added that he came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, Bardwell is also of the opinion that that most interracial marriages do not last long.

My disgust for his racist attitudes aside, what business of his is it to speculate on how long any individual marriage will last, regardless of race or any other characteristics, or to predict how any children born of that union will fare?  He's a justice of the peace, not a social critic or a psychiatrist/psychologist, and it's his job to conduct marriage ceremonies for anyone who requests it who meet the legal requirements, regardless of his personal opinions.   If he will not perform a legal function of his office, then he needs to find another line of work.

Thoughts?

The other night I was changing stations while listening to the radio in the car.  I happened upon a station where they were talking about a survey of Americans who had been married at least once and it said that out of that groups, 76% had been married only once, 20% had been married twice, and only 5% had been married three or more times.  A spokesman for the religious right group, Focus on the Family, said that the results were proof positive that most Americans still believe in and supported "biblical marriage".

Feel free to roll your eyes now.

Before I comment I on the faulty logic surrounding this conclusion, I have to point out that Christians didn't invent marriage; that marriage existed well before the Abrahamic religions did.  One should also be aware that there's more than one kind of marriage mentioned in the Bible.  So one would have to ask "Which type of so-called 'biblical marriage' are you talking about?"

But let us return to the original faulty assumptions made here.

First of all, the 76% of people who had been married once in their lifetimes were not necessarily currently married -- they'd just been married only once in their lives.  This included widowed and divorced people, as well as the currently married.  

It's quite possible that many of those not currently married may have simply chosen to live with any subsequent romantic partners and decided not to involve the government or the church in any new relationships.  In other words, such people remaining legally single had nothing to do with any adherence to fundamentalist ideas about marriage.  Similarly, there are no doubt many others who hadn't found another partner yet at the time of the survey, but who are open to being married again.

Secondly, out of the 25% who have been married more than once, this includes widowed people who have married again.  Are these FotF fundamentalists saying that it's "unChristian" to be married more than once regardless of circumstances?  I'm guessing that quite a number of religious people would beg to differ on this point.

Third, it would seem to me that many people who have a string of failed marriages and have several divorces under their belts have a misplaced belief in the institution of marriage and would do better not involving the legal system in their personal, intimate relationships in the first place.  Marriage doesn't fit everyone and there's no shame in that. 

Using myself as an example, I've only been legally married once, but they're definitely barking up the wrong tree if they think I'm a supporter of "biblical marriage".   I'm one of those people in the third category who is better off remaining legally unencumbered, as marriage as it is currently understood is a bad fit for my non-monogamous, libertine lifestyle.  Unlike those who have several marriages and divorces under their belts, I learned my lesson the first time.

Thoughts? 

With all the recent outings of politicians engaged in extramarital sex, my favorite liberal news site, Alternet, has been doing a flurry of articles relating to this subject.   In a recent article, Relax: Adultery Is Not That Big Of a Deal by Samara O'Shea, she explores the idea:

A recent article on Alternet, For Many, Marriage is Sexless, Boring, and Oppressive:Time to Rethink the Institution? by Amanda Marcotte, asks the question:

Religious insistence on monogamy was soon added, as it gave the force of law to a practical idea in societies where religious leaders were the law. "God said it" leaves no room for debate.

People did not marry primarily for love until around the 18th century. It was strictly a practical arrangement, a vehicle for joining powerful families for the rich, along with inheritance reasons, and to have a socially sanctioned partner to have children with and work together for survival for the poor. Love, if it happened, was icing on the cake, not the reason to get married in the first place.

People lived shorter lives then, so "until death do us part", did not include decades of the "empty-nest syndrome". Most people were lucky to live long enough to see the youngest child to adulthood. Life itself was harder and more survival oriented, thus people did not worry overmuch about love or personal fulfillment then.

Still, infidelity occurred all throughout history for both sexes, despite sanctions against it, as it's very difficult to overcome basic human nature. It's always been a big scandal for women, but not so much for men until the 19th century or so. The feminist movement no doubt influenced the increasing disapproval of male infidelity, rather than freeing women to male norms.

Today, we marry for love, life isn't strictly about survival, DNA tests prove paternity, overpopulation discourages large families, we live longer lives, women can support themselves, and the abolishment of legal distictions between marital and nonmarital children have removed much of the valid reasons for legal marriage and monogamy. Thus, marriage as it's currently understood has become maladaptive for modern needs. It's no wonder we're seeing what we're seeing.

In light of this, marriage needs to be redefined if it is to survive in a workable form(s) and adjusted to reflect the realities of modern life and human nature. One of the first steps would be to cease mandating monogamy.

The other day I was having a conversation with someone and we were discussing whether or not it was likely that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford would resign his office.   The other person -- a Republican -- took the attitude "why should he resign -- Bill Clinton didn't!"

Yes, both men strayed from the monogamous straight and narrow, but the difference is that Bill Clinton ran his job while doing so instead of going AWOL for a week like Sanford did.

I think he should resign, but it's not because he had an extramarital affair.   That is a private matter between him, his wife, and the other woman involved and I wouldn't give a flying fuck who he screws as long as he ran his job.

Rather, I think he should resign because the man disappeared without anyone, including the Lieutenant Governor, knowing where he'd really gone and was incommunicado for that week.  He wasn't running the job he'd been elected to do. That is the real scandal.

Thoughts?

The news is full of stories about the latest political "sex scandal" of the day. 

Yesterday, Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign publicly admitted to having an extramarital affair while legally separated from his wife.  His admission was accompanied by the usual insincere, crocodile tears statement:

"Last year I had an affair. I violated the vows of my marriage. It is the worst thing I have ever done in my life ," Ensign said.

Spare me the treacly fake remorse,  Even among many of those who are much less permissive about sexual matters than I am, having a relationship while legally separated isn't identical to having an extra-marital affair while in an ongoing intact marriage.   Though one is technically "still married" when separated and the law would consider it adultery, the de facto reality is that it has already been acknowledged that the marriage has broken down and that divorce is soon likely to occur.   To remain "faithful" to a broken marriage is merely to perpetuate a useless fiction. 

The man was separated.  Obviously, he's not going to be able to get any from his wife.  Is he expected to remain celibate while in marital limbo?   I think most people would agree with me that this is an unreasonable expectation in modern society.

As sex scandals usually go, this one is pretty tame.  He didn't solicit a partner in a men's room, like Larry Craig, nor did he run around on a sick wife, as did Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, and John McCain, nor did visit a sex worker, a la David Vitter.

But like Gingrich, Craig, and Vitter, he is guilty of rampant hypocrisy.  Like these men, he is a social conservative, who has made many judgmental statements about the decline of "traditional" marriage, and is a member of the Christian conservative group, Promise Keepers.

But hypocrisy is nothing new in Washington.

This latest sex brouhaha doesn't rate more than a loud yawn from me.

Many people who oppose same-sex marriage base their opposition on their belief that the purpose of marriage is to provide a legal structure in which to raise children, preferably of their own biological origin. 

But I believe that issues concerning children and those concerning marriage should be viewed as separately for a couple of reasons.

One is the fact that people marry for a wide variety of reasons these days with almost no one marrying for the single purpose of raising children.  People most often marry now for love and because they want to share their lives as a legally and socially recognized unit. And though some people would be happy to just live together to achieve those goals, they enter into legal marriage in order to gain the myriad legal benefits that come with making their union official. 

Though most people do have children, it's almost never their sole reason for getting married in the first place. It's not as if couples who love one another but who don't want to or can't have children decide to simply remain friends because of that fact.

People who have no intention of having children, along with infertile people and people past reproductive age get married all the time, and no one is clamoring to remove their legal rights to do so -- as long as they are heterosexual, of course.

Secondly, the law no longer distinguishes between children born to married parents and those born to unmarried parents. "Illegitimacy" has not been a legal status for non-marital children since the late 60s. The law now focuses on how children relate to their parents, rather than so much on how their parents relate to each other.

Hence, this makes opposition to same sex marriage for the "marriage is for having children" reason moot and invalid.

On a recent Alternet article concerning women's roles in marriage, I could not help but respond to a commenter who is apparently clueless as why he has no success with women.  His comment, then my reply follow below:

His comment (all grammatical mistakes are his):

This view is doomed

I am a highly educated man who thought all this stuff....equality, keeping a maiden name, 50/50 housekeeping-chores...was the proper thing for the 'progressive' male.

In retrospect, after a vicious divorce ( equality is quickly forgotten when so called 'feminists' demand alimony ), i have to say that I will never remarry a girl who is not submissive, takes my name,and understands men and women are not equal.

My first wife became a ballbuster with her ideology of 'equality'. Men ( I was ) are easially badgered and nagged into acquiescenece . The wife become a surrogate 'mother'. And we all know no one fucks their Mother....sex is the first to go.

Femininity is a virtue....and it is base on difference and submission.

The Man has to 'feel like a man'...sorry, but that's the truth of human nature. Intellectual rationalizations don't work here. Sorry 'bout that.

My reply:

Your View Denotes Low Self Esteem

True self esteem, i.e. "feeling like a man" to use your words, comes from within and does not depend on a woman agreeing to take a one-down role and pretending to be submissive. It doesn't depend on the actions of others in any way.

If you can only feel like a man when a woman agrees to pretend to be lesser than you and to take a child's role, then you have no real self esteem at all, but you're merely playing a game.

Hopefully you will never marry a "girl", as pedophilia is frowned upon in our society. I'm guessing you won't be worrying about marriage any time soon, however.

"Femininity" is largely a social construct, unlike femaleness, in that it differs from culture to culture and across history. The same is true for masculinity and maleness.

My self esteem and manhood is entirely independent from how others around me behave, and thus, is far less fragile than yours, apparently built on the house of cards that are gender stereotypes.