A lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. Plenty of miserable couples have stayed together for children, religion or other practical reasons.
26Mar/110
And another opinion from The Age we just had to publish!
yes, why dont we just throw away all sense of anything. Lets just be like the animals. Lets just "partner up" with whomever and whatever and for however long we think its convenient.I like my dog and cat and I want to formalize the relationship.If I'm sexually and emotionally attracted to my pet orangutan, whats wrong with that? What right does ANYONE have to judge me? Were all just part of the evolutionary way things work. And for that matter, if I am in a "partnership", whats mine is mine OK. What law of nature says that if I shack up with someone (male or female) and we propagate the species (thats all we are here for right?), either the natural way or some fandangled artificial way, that I have to give MY material possessions to the other party? They should go and get a job and acquire their own stuff.If I want to share my stuff, well I'll make sure its documented.The offspring can go and be raised by those who are paid to feed and interact with the young. Yep, lets get rid of all those old ideas about marriage, normal families etc. This is the modern "enlightened" world we live in now.
26Mar/110
It’s time to divorce ourselves from the rites and wrongs of marriage…..An Opinion
Michelle Griffin (Editirs Note: Whilst we may not agree with the points made in this articles we think it raises sufficient points to warrant the interest of all those who support marriage. Obviously marriage is threatened, but marriage as an institution and an ideal around which society needs to be structered is much more than a mere word)
March 26, 2
WHY is marriage legal? Or rather: why does the government have to make it legal? The Marriage Act, says Julia Gillard, has ''a special status''. The Prime Minister is inclined to preserve that status for unions between a man and a woman. For reasons cultural and historical, she says, the act should discriminate against same-sex marriages, which remain unrecorded in the registrars of births, deaths and marriages.
But what if the government did not regulate marriages at all? The call to privatise marriage has had no airplay in Australia's gay marriage debate, but in the US it's gaining support from liberals, libertarians and even some conservatives.
Imagine a nation in which marriage had the same legal force as, say, a baptism or a bat mitzvah. The PM could still believe in marriage between a man and a woman, without the hassle of debating it in the media, the House or the national conference.
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Instead of a long, wearying battle about extending the rights of marriage to gay couples, we could abandon the Marriage Act altogether. The distinction between the legally and the illegally wed has been shrinking steadily, thanks to a raft of amendments over the past decade to state and federal laws governing property, inheritance, stamp duty, compensation schemes, superannuation, health, guardianship, employment, criminal and consumer laws. Gillard's own long-term de facto partnership is already recognised by several acts.
There are still legal advantages to a marriage, but as my own tin wedding anniversary looms, I'm less inclined to celebrate my lawful right to demand my husband's health information in horrible circumstances than the unregulated pleasures of our partnership, such as love, trust and friendship. I certainly don't feel more married than a same-sex couple celebrating the 10th anniversary of their civil union. Why get married at all? As Jerry Seinfeld once said, ''my husband'' and ''my wife'' are great ways to start a sentence.
Rescinding the Marriage Act would solve the gay marriage dilemma, as all unions would be legally equal, regardless of the choice of ceremony they employed to honour it. It would offer some reassurance to those who opposed gay marriage, as they would be free to block same-sex ceremonies in their own chapels and could refuse to recognise them. As it is, the Catholic Church does not recognise state-sanctioned marriages after divorce.
Privatised marriage won't change anybody's mind, as US Republican broadcaster Larry Elder wrote in 2004 in Ayn Rand-loving Capitalist magazine: ''Adultery, although legal, remains a sin subject to societal condemnation. It's tough to legislate away condemnation or legislate in approval. Those who view same-sex marriage as sinful will continue to do so, no matter what the government, the courts or their neighbours say.''
The separation of church and state and the libertarian loathing of big government adds extra spice to the American arguments for privatised marriage, where it has gained support across the political spectrum. Prominent left-wing pundit Michael Kinsey is in accord with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who concurs with Catholic columnist Stuart Koehl, who finds common ground, for once, with feminist writer Naomi Wolf.
They have very different reasons, but they have all argued that state legislation forces uniform definition on a multitude of private relationships that come with different cultural and historical baggage.
Marriage laws used to be powerful family bonds, establishing lines of responsibility and inheritance for legitimate children. But now that unmarried, married or remarried parents can raise children from multiple relationships, the Marriage Act is not a useful tool for defining or protecting a family, any more than a christening is.
Doing away with marriage wouldn't put celebrants out of a job. Weddings are fun, and people will still want to have them. Does this mean that four people could get married, or, like Sue Sylvester on Glee, someone could marry themselves? Sure. But as it is currently legal for Bob and Ted and Carol and Alice to shack up unwed, what does that matter?
Parent-child incest is outlawed anyway. Provision may be required to prevent the sexual union of siblings, but powerful societal taboos already enforce that prohibition. (Yes, marrying uncles or cousins is already legal.)
The only marriages that would be blocked by scrapping the act are the fraudulent ones: students claiming benefits after Austudy marriages, mail-order bride deals. They, too, have a special status in our legal system, while long-term loving commitments do not.
As long as people try to make a life together, whether they pool their finances or raise a family, there will be a need for legal contracts. But, like business contracts, we could tailor them to fit our circumstances. Discussing property shares isn't as easy or as romantic as saying ''I do'', but everyone knows where they stand. And, as anyone who ever bought a house with their de facto knows, poring through those contracts together is a greater test of a relationship than discussing the playlist at the reception will ever be.
Michelle Griffin is social affairs editor.
28Jan/110
The Happy Marriage Is the ‘Me’ Marriage
But for many couples, it’s just not enough to stay together. They want a relationship that is meaningful and satisfying. In short, they want a sustainable marriage.
“The things that make a marriage last have more to do with communication skills, mental health, social support, stress — those are the things that allow it to last or not,” says Arthur Aron, a psychology professor who directs the Interpersonal Relationships Laboratory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “But those things don’t necessarily make it meaningful or enjoyable or sustaining to the individual.”
The notion that the best marriages are those that bring satisfaction to the individual may seem counterintuitive. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be about putting the relationship first?
Not anymore. For centuries, marriage was viewed as an economic and social institution, and the emotional and intellectual needs of the spouses were secondary to the survival of the marriage itself. But in modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership, and they want partners who make their lives more interesting.
27Jan/110
A quote from a couple with divorced parents
Almost every day of our honeymoon, and off and on throughout our newlywed year, one of us would say: “Hey, honey, let’s get divorced for five seconds, O.K.? Great, now that that’s out of the way ...”
People look askance when we joke like this and laugh uncomfortably when my husband (still) introduces me as his “first wife.” But the gallows humor is something positive, part of what made us seek out couples therapy instead of throwing in the towel when things got tough, part of what made my husband say, “No, I will not,” when I asked him to leave during a rough patch in our seventh year of marriage. The real possibility of divorce and the firsthand experience of how marriages fail have made us fight for ours rather than take it for granted.
(by Rachel Zucker)
13Nov/100
Why Get Married?
If so many couples live together prior to getting marriage and if most of those couples don't have a strong belief in, or allegiance to the power of institutions who confer on them the idea of “marriage” them why do so many couples get married? When asked why they are getting married most couples will say something about loving each other, (as if they didn't already). When the vagueness and inadequacy of this answer is pointed out the response becomes a little more detailed and varied. These are examples of what couples say:
“We want to make a public announcement of our commitment to friends and relatives”
“We think that we will start having children and we would like them to have married parents”
“Our friends and family are putting subtle pressure on is by regularly asking us about it”
“ We like the sound of the words 'husband' and 'wife' rather than saying we are with our partner or boyfriend
. “ We want to make a more formal and affirming statement to each other about our commitment to each other.”
“ I have always dreamt of the idea of a wedding for myself when the focus will be on me, and I don't want to miss out on such a special day”
Most couples consider marriage as being a ceremony involving a vow about commitment to each other for life in front of other witnesses. It is as if they voluntarily make themselves accountable to someone other than themselves for the success of their relationship. It seems this vow can be made more definite and have greater strength and meaning if it is placed within a ceremony often involving traditions dating back many centuries. The place of this ceremony also seems important to the couple as they seek somewhere aesthetic, natural, or even grandeur, to make the day more memorable. The involvement of friends and relatives is almost a universal ideal, as is the attempt to make the ceremony customised to the couples requirements.
It seems that nearly every young girl dreams of a wedding day when all the focus is on her and she can feel complete. Merely living together doesn't fulfil this picture and whilst western culture no longer applies the same degree of pressure on couples to get married, the fulfilment of the picture remains as strong as ever.
The difficulty faced by many modern couples is the desire to have a day which formalises their commitment to each other and so belong to the idea and institution of marriage, when they have had little experience or sense of connection to institutions which will most support that sense of belonging. Here is another way to put this: Couples want witnesses and approving support for their relationship which provides a substance, permanence and “concreteness” to their vow (something many of their parents or grandparents had and is embedded in traditions of the past which created the idea of what marriage means). However most young couples have grown up in a society which values independence in thought and action from past ways and the institutions which cultivated the marriage tradition.
This makes it that much more difficult for couples to have an “authentic' wedding where personal desires and traditional context are both catered for. It is fortunate that genuine love can truly conquer all .
