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Marriage and the interests of men
Marriage and the interests of women
Marriage and the interests of children
“...in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare...”
from the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States
At the base of our society is a family. Their needs and requirements are identified in the preamble above. The racial and biological function of 'family' is the protection of children and pregnant women. To accomplish that, family organization must be rewarding to all participants.
If families are to be preserved they must offer the members emotional, spiritual, and physical comforts superior to those to be found in casual copulation and living singly.
In the past society successfully relied on marriage between a man and woman to form a family and put the power of the State behind enforcing that institution.
When a man marries, he believes that the woman won't change, and she does; she believes that he will change, and he doesn't.
A man has no biological interest in raising children not demonstrably his own. The State, with the reinforcement of religions, has attempted to ensure paternity by forcing the couple into marriage and establishing a patriarchy to ensure the woman only had sexual congress with her husband.
Birth control was virtually unknown and the only way a man knew a woman's children were his was if she was a virgin when they married and she was never allowed to stray from the marriage bed.
When our country was founded, the average life expectancy was about 40 years, and raising children consumed half an individuals life. Couples married as teenagers and were old, and often dead, by the time their children were grown.
Today, raising children only takes about 25% of the average life span, though it often feels longer. A man or woman at 50 today are relatively young with modern medical care and often ready to begin new lives when the children leave. With longer lifespans, people seldom find a lifetime of love and happiness on the first try.
One result of these changes is that modern marriages have a better than 50% chance of ending in divorce.
Institutions such as marriage endure not because of the desire or power of the State but because they confer substantial and mutual benefits on those who participate in them. Present laws and social changes have removed virtually all benefits of marriage from a man. Instead he is subjected to heavy penalties on the whims of his mate, allowing his wife to take all he possesses and destroy his family, with penalties and imprisonment imposed and enforced by all the draconian powers of the State. For example, see Fred Reed's essay on the topic. As he says, a man with the choice between marriage under current laws, bubonic plague, and infected warts, should go with the warts.
At the beginning of the Twenty First Century, the disadvantages and dangers of having a family far out way the advantages for a man in Colorado. Further, in the virtual absence of disease, and with low risk of his partner becoming pregnant, sex is readily available to most men without any need for commitment. There is a cynical old adage covering this: “Why keep a cow when milk is so cheap?”
Birth control now makes getting pregnant optional and marriage is now usually delayed for reasons of education, economics, career, etc. But, as biology dictates, few women are virgins into their 20's. Even if she does get pregnant, a woman has access to safe abortions. And it should be noted that the number of abortions in America is virtually the same since the Roe vs. Wade decision made them legal as when they were illegal.
Genetic testing now provides a means to ensure any child a woman may have is the offspring of one man, rather than the milkman, or any other candidate. So the underlying need of society to control a woman's sexual relations in order to ensure paternity is known is no longer valid. With the ready availability of DNA testing, the legal interest of the State, and the patriarchy, in marriage is outmoded in a technologically advanced society.
Women, many of whom were never comfortable with the restrictions of a patriarchy, have rebelled against outdated restrictions. Technology and the present economy also allows financial independence for any woman who takes the time and trouble to obtain an education. Thus, many women do not want the restrictions associated with a historical, State-licensed marriage. However, many still want the convention and comfort provided by their religious beliefs.
Having a man around is also still highly valued by most women and provides numerous health and economic benefits for both the man and woman.
The State must not interfere with any religious beliefs or customs a man and woman follow if our society is to survive. Thus, a couple who wish to marry under the terms of their religion should be perfectly free to do so without also obtaining permission or a license from the State.
The interest of the State should be solely in the education and welfare of any children the couple bear.
We have thousands of years of experimentation that show the best results are obtained when children are raised by both their biological father and mother. It is our position that the biological parents of a child must have equal rights, privileges, and responsibilities for the care of the child regardless of the parent's marital relationship.
However, as noted above, the patriarchy, and legal sanctions necessary to control the sexual activity of the mother to ensure her husband was the biological father of her children, have been superseded by more accurate technology. DNA paternity testing consistently shows that ~30% of the time the man tested is not the father of the child. No man should be enslaved to pay for the care and upbringing of a child that is not from his seed.
The other conditions that mandated a lifetime commitment in a marriage also no longer exist.
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, insane, delusive, and transient of passions, they are required to swear that they'll remain in that condition continuously until death do them part.
No matter how much two people may have in common, when they commit to a relationship they soon discover all the ways they are different from one another. Failure comes when the couple mindlessly struggles to get the other to fit into their expectations of how things “should” be. Rather than treating their differences as something to be enjoyed, they treat them as something to be “fixed” in an effort to obtain an unrealistic fantasy relationship. When reality doesn't match the fantasy the relationship falls apart.
At its base, marriage is a contract. Under normal contract law, when one breaches a contract the other party is usually entitled to damages. In present marriages, however, the standard is that any party can leave whenever he or she wants, usually to the great detriment of the other, and with no recourse for the injured party. Marriage is the only legal contract that the government lets people break without negative consequences for the person who breaks the contract.
In fact, with the concept of alimony and child support, the government provides financial incentives for a woman to break the union as discussed by Prof. Baskerville.
As Kathleen Parker puts it:
“Marriage is above all a contract, a commitment to create a home together and to provide for children born of that union. Students [considering marriage] could discuss the real issues of marriage and try to answer the tough questions: How should children be raised and disciplined? How should money be spent and saved? How should household chores be divided? Who takes car pool? Who gets up in the middle of the night to feed the baby? Who gets to use the bathroom first? Who buys the groceries and cooks the meals?”
A family and children are basic reasons a man is willing to marry. Such family ties acted to stabilize marriages in the past and acted to build our present civilization. But current laws allow a woman to take a man's home and children from him on any whim or pretext and act to destroy our society.
As noted above, the historical reasons for the State to become involved in marriage to ensure paternity and provide for the children of that union no longer exist. Presently a marriage license from the State imposes many likely penalties on a man, e.g., alimony and child support, but almost no benefits, such as custody of his children.
Thus, there is no remaining basis for State-licensed marriages. Divorce and family courts are a state and national scandal. They are presently operated in a manner that satisfies no one. Al Knight summarized it best in his “Facts don't seem to matter” article in the September 10, 2000, issue of the Denver Post detailing how men and children are treated in Colorado family courts.
Thus, we advocate elimination of marriage licenses. They provide no discernible benefits for men, women, or children in today's society.
Without a marriage license, there is no need for divorce courts.
Lacking the need for, the benefits from, and rebellion against, the State should supplant a marriage license with a voluntary, but irrevocable contract between a man and woman that deals only with its primary interest, the children the couple bear.
Ensuring the security and education of a couple's children was the original intention of a marriage license. But under today's conditions, the marriage license far more often destroys those needed benefits for children in the nightmare of a divorce court than provides the intended protection and security.
A State cannot interfere in the religious beliefs of its members and maintain stability. However, the future of the State is entirely dependent on ensuring that children are raised and educated in a stable environment.
In our proposal, marriage between a couple becomes a matter of their personal beliefs, which is where it should be.
The people have already made their choice. Today there are more households composed of subfamilies (mother-child, father-child, other relatives), unrelated individuals, and couples cohabitating than there are married couples. At least one-third of American children are born out-of-wedlock, a percentage that increases every day. The divorce rate is rapidly approaching 70% of all marriages in Colorado and is reported to be 72% at present in Colorado Springs.
Thus, our proposal merely reflects reality and has the great advantage that it would do away with divorce courts.
Once paternity is determined, the interest of the State should be in ensuring the full development of the child. From all available evidence, that is best done by ensuring a stable family environment that cannot be broken by either of the parents, by a divorce court, or social agency except in cases of death, physical disability, or mental incapacity. Thus, for the first 18 years of their youngest child's life, a fundamental interest of the State is to encourage the parents to live together with their children. That might be accomplished in a variety of ways such as tax benefits, guaranteed housing loans similar to the VA program, medical insurance for the children, or other non-intrusive programs that a benevolent, free society might enact for parents who live together . Conversely, such programs and benefits would not be given to parents who live apart, though they would always have joint custody of the children. Otherwise there is negative incentive for the parents to live together.
Where problems occur in a couple's relationship, particularly as it affects their children, we recommend education, mediation, or arbitration as first steps. Such methods are, on the whole, more effective than the present, immediate use of the full, draconian powers of the State to arrest the man or woman and remove the children.
No government benefits should be given to a woman who lacks the intelligence to use modern birth control methods and who bears a child whose paternity cannot be established, or who cannot get the father of the child to voluntarily sign a paternity contract. If the woman cannot support the child without State help the child should be placed for adoption or, as a last resort, made a ward of the State.
A woman who again failed to use reliable birth control methods and bore a second child of indeterminate or involuntary paternity should be subject to sterilization. And while sterilization may seem extreme, it seems to us infinitely better than the current feminist attempts to justify infanticide, or the Colorado legislature placing baby baskets at the neighborhood fire station in which unwanted children could be placed with no penalty to the mother. And such baskets are proposed in lieu of the dumpsters many women use now for unwanted babies.
Also compare sterilization with the high probability of the woman having multiple abortions. Ask yourself which is the better choice?
Similarly, men who sire multiple children, with one or more women, that they cannot, or will not support should also be sterilized.
We do not have a perfect solution but propose the least of multiple evils.
We cannot continue to reward a system of breeding and single mothers that produces most of our criminals and violence, as does our present welfare system, foster homes, and divorce courts. Attempting to force men into involuntary servitude for children who are either not theirs, or that they did not want, or who have been taken from them by vengeful mothers with the help of divorce courts, cannot succeed. Any free man will resist such slavery.
There will always be exceptions to our proposal. For example, the father may die or be killed between the time of conception and before paternity can be established. However, the current technology is adaptable, as DNA samples from the deceased, or his nearest relative, could still be used.
A free and benevolent State could make many adaptations to special circumstances without encouraging the unrestricted breeding that characterizes the present.
It is our suggestion that the State:
• Move to unambiguously establish the paternity of all children born within its borders.
• Ensure that whenever possible a voluntary, but irrevocable contract exist between the father and mother for the duration of childhood.
• Take reasonable actions to encourage the couple to live together while their children are growing without intruding on their religious beliefs.
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