> > What counts as a "real marriage"?
>
> I wonder if this goes against or supports the Forum rules about family friendliness...
>
> "A relationship of husband and wife involving mutual rights of sexual intercourse, life in common, and an enduring union. The last two characters distinguish marriage, respectively, from concubinage and fornication. The definition, however, is broad enough to comprehend polygamous and polyandrous unions." Pretty much anyone from any culture in history would recognize this as a marriage. It's just foolish to assume that marriage can be changed at this point--in precisely the same way that it's foolish to try to come up with a new meaning of parenthood. It's an objective description. If we tried to change it, we'd end up with something that wasn't really marriage (or parenthood) at all, which would defeat the whole point.

The terms "husband and wife" seem singular to me, so the idea of it covering polygamous (which includes both polygyny and polyandry) relationships seems false to me. But that's just nit-picking. But it seems to me that by removing the gender-specific part and replacing it with "two or more people", you can go from covering "pretty much anyone" to absolutely anyone. Or was there a reason why the same-sex marriages entered into in Sparta and several North-African or Polynesian cultures were ignored?

I'm also not entirely sure what you mean by "mutual rights of sexual intercourse". Does that mean simply that they are allowed to have sex with each other (in which case I'm not sure how it differs from being unmarried), or does it mean rape within a marriage is an oxymoron?

Then, what is an "enduring union"? Is a marriage that doesn't endure for the life of the participants "real"? How long does it have to endure for? I facetiously bring up Brittany Spears' 55 hour marriage as an example of one that didn't endure.

> > If it isn't a religious definition, then what?
>
> An aspect of human life that has been around at least as long as humans have. See above.

There's little or no evidence about the types of relationships entered into before about 20,000 years ago. For the vast majority of time that humans have been on this planet, we don't know that people entered into long-term relationships of any kind, let alone that they were exclusively heterosexual. "An aspect of life that has been around as long as we have records for" would be more accurate, but even then you have to allow for same-sex relationships.

> > Of course, if you believe that the state should have no involvement in marriage means giving up approximately 1,400 legal benefits from inheriting intestate, immigration rights, child support... the list is endless. But, having said that, if you want a wedding with which the state has nothing to do, it's easy to arrange: simply don't apply for a marriage licence.
>
> The site you linked to noted the problem: "Most of these legal and economic benefits cannot be privately arranged or contracted for." I in no way intended "no state involvement in marriage" to mean "no marriage," i.e. just abolishing marriage law and wishing everyone tough luck. I meant abolishing it and allowing persons to arrange and contract their own marriages as they see fit.

I've been trying to work out how I could have been allowed to immigrate via such a contract. This is something that only the state can regulate, and so without state recognition of marriages it would be near-impossible to marry people from a different country.

There are many rights that it would be easy to arrange privately, like joint taxes or next of kin rights. These would simply require the parties to file declarations of intent with several hundred independent government agencies. However, there are others that are more problematical. For another example: without state recognition of marriage, It would be very difficult to collect alimony when a marriage broke down. This may not be as important as it used to be, but in many cases it's still all that keep one party from starvation.

wintermute