Blowing Smoke

Monday, June 05, 2006

I'd forgotten how good it feels to lose myself in good fiction. Hobbs' Assassin trilogy is better than I expected - I hope it ends satisfyingly.

Hooray! We're protecting marriage! Wait, what's that? The Marriage Protection Act isn't outlawing divorce attorneys? Not sure how pairs of people are protected by other people not being allowed to pair. Yep, must be election season come early this year. My takes as I'm not running for election:

1) Two of my cousins (they're siblings) are a straight man Buck and a gay woman Betty (names changed). Buck found out his soon-to-be-ex wife was pregnant with their second child while they were divorcing. Neither was in a position to handle this child, but Betty and her partner (I don't know if they've married, but they've lived together in San Francisco for many years) adopted the baby girl. They have more economic resources to help the girl as she grows up, and their relationship record is far better than Buck or his ex-wife. How is their relationship less valuable to society, or somehow damaging, than Buck's marriage? I'm a fairly conservative Christian, but I recognize love and maturity wherever I see it.

2) What is the religious institution of marriage doing in government anyway? I don't want the government telling my church what it can/can't recognize any more than I want my church telling the government. And if civil unions are separate from weddings, then why the gender limitation? Why can't any 2 legally responsible adults make a legal commitment to each other? My understanding is you can, but it's a heckuva lot of paperwork to keep track of as opposed to the single marriage license my wife and I use.

3) I'm not in favor of divorce as a general rule - I think some people take it as an out rather than work to improve their marriage - but I completely support the legal right to it, and believe it's unfortunately the best answer in many situations. I mainly point out that defenders of marriage might better use their energy towards preserving and improving the ones that already exist rather than preventing others from joining in.

Anyway, just my two cents on the idiocy of government today.

posted by Unknown 1:04 PM | 2 comments

Comments:

Actually every culture across the planet, across human history, has had "marriage" in some form or another. The government has a role in seeing society do well and all the research shows, as well as our gut reaction believes, that when two people get married and create children, the children are better off than if people randomly hook up and have children with a lot of different adults.

The way the government can support what it sees as good for all is to create incentives, or remove barriers. In the case of marriage, they give about 1,100 benefits to people who chose to get married, with the assumption being marriage brings about many positive things in society - stability, community, more economic power (two is better than 1) and creates an envirnoment where children will be raised in the most successful possible situation, all things being equal.

The research is fascinating as are these issues. I'm the daughter of a marriage and family therapist, well connected to high up government officials. It's an interesting world out there!

Elizabeth

# posted by

Anonymous : 12:42 AM

I'm completely in favor of marriage. What does the research say about children raised by two committed adults of the same gender? As opposed to children of divorce, or children who never know their father (and/or mother)?

Encouraging commitment and responsibility is fantastic, but it seems like there's a lot of bigger dragons to slay before we start worrying about people who want to make a nontraditional lifelong commitment.

# posted by

Unknown : 9:38 AM