Marriage

(Editorial note: This is pretty U.S.- and California-centric.)

For the past few years, there’s been a fair bit of chatter about same-sex marriage. Many of those who argue against it speak in terms of “defending marriage”. For instance, the National Organization for Marriage describes itself this way:

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it.

Founded in 2007 in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures, NOM serves as a national resource for marriage-related initiatives at the state and local level. …

I find it remarkable that these people don’t seem to notice that they’ve already lost the war — that marriage, as it had been understood for generations, started dying in 1969, and is (in the U.S.) good and dead today.

What is Marriage (Practically)?

Marriage, as experienced on the ground, is a system of laws and social pressures. In a legalistic culture like the U.S., that means it’s really just a matter of law. Most people tacitly assume that the laws kinda sorta reflect some version of the traditional marriage vows: “… for richer or poorer … in sickness and in health … ’till death do us part …”. This assumption is dead wrong.

The law in the U.S. (which varies only a little by state) is that marriage is an arrangement lasting only until one party decides it shouldn’t last any more. Not only is there no legal compulsion to uphold the traditional vow of permanence, there isn’t even any penalty associated with abrogating it; property division is generally unaffected by questions such as who filed for divorce, whether the respondent agreed, and, indeed, whether or not either party had been a good spouse.

Consequences

To put it in blunt, man-centric terms: You can marry a woman, be a good and faithful husband, and work hard to support her and your children. She can cheat on you with half the guys on Craigslist, key your car, poison your dog, drink your wine collection with her girlfriends, and then file for divorce and almost certainly be awarded half the marital property (i.e., in CA, everything you accumulated while you were married). There is nothing you can do about this. You can’t contest the divorce, and the courts don’t care who did what to whom when they’re cutting up the property. (There’s also the question of alimony, but that’s not as cut-and-dried as the issues of incontestable no-fault divorce and property division.)

You might think that you can protect yourself with a prenup. Well, maybe. Those don’t always stand up so well. More seriously, prenups generally have no effect on questions of child custody and child support. (Spousal misbehavior also has little impact on these questions.) Not only can you do nothing to stop your (ex-)wife from destroying your children’s home, but there’s an excellent chance that she’ll end up with custody of the (i.e., “her”) children, while you’ll end up paying to support them: a support obligation that will make it almost impossible for you to afford to have a proper family of your own.

Of course, most women aren’t out to destroy their husbands and children; the hypothetical example given here is hyperbolic only to illustrate what the law says marriage is: nothing at all at best, an onerous financial obligation at worst.

No-Fault

How, one might ask, did we get here? In my opinion, via one of the sneakiest bits of wordplay/bait-n-switch ever. “No-fault” divorce is the idea that marriages should be able to be dissolved without having to prove that one spouse “had committed adultery, abandonment, felony, or other similarly culpable acts”. This is a huge redefinition of marriage in and of itself; on its own, it undermines legal support for the permanence of marriage. Of course “reformers” went further, and instituted unilateral no-fault divorce: Not only could marriages be dissolved for any (or no) reason, but one party could now do the dissolving.

“No-fault” and “unilateral no-fault” are two radically different concepts, marketed under one less-alarming name. Unilateral no-fault divorce is now essentially the law of the land in the U.S., and that legal regime is incompatible with marriage as it has been traditionally understood. Since the legal regime practically defines what marriage is, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that marriage does not exist in the United States.

Protecting Marriage

And what does NOM have to say about any of this? Well, let’s try a search on their site for “no fault”: Hmmmm, “Nothing found”. Ok, “no-fault”: “Nothing found”. “Unilateral” does turn up two hits, both dealing with Gov. Patterson in NY. Well, in 2010, Patterson signed a bill introducing unilateral no-fault divorce to NY. Was NOM upset about that? Nope. They were whining about same-sex marriage.

NOM is a joke.

For The Record

Notwithstanding the foregoing, I consider same-sex marriage to be a silly idea — essentially an oxymoron. We’d be better off without it. It’s just not a threat to marriage; you can’t threaten something that’s dead.

To any married guys reading this: Good luck, fellas. Marriage is the cornerstone of civilization, and if you’ve been fortunate enough to marry a woman of strong principles and good character, good for you. Just know that the law is less than useless to you.

To any men considering marriage: Don’t take my word for it. Look up the law for yourself.