No, actually, I don't.
Very long ago, lightcastle asked me to write up a post detailing my stance against marriage.
Today is not that day, unfortunately (?). But I did just run across this BBC article that inadvertently raises some of the largest practical points. So I'll copy and paste some stuff over, and add in some commentary.
1) "There's supposed to be something transformative about marriage, but a wedding wouldn't change our relationship." This alludes to my other reasons, reasons that are emotional and psychological and have to do with how I define a healthy relationship, the things I think a healthy relationship needs and the overwhelming importance of PERSONAL growth (which I prize above all else, including joint relationship-growth, as I see the latter to be impossible without the former anyway). I could go on and on about that, but that will be for another day. Just take my word for it that this particular quote was "throw hands up in vindication" moment for me.
2) "For Tom and I, the role of the husband and the role of a wife seem very strict and that's not for us," she says, arguing that such categories derive from an era when women were subservient to men. "In our day-to-day life, we feel like civil partners, not a married couple." (which dovetails into...)
3) Both Tom and Katherine explain that their primary reason for not getting married is that they do not want to be part of an institution from which gay and lesbian people are excluded. But they say that, even were the law to change to allow same-sex marriage, they would still choose to having nothing to do with it. In my case, it is not only a protest against an institution that has systematically persecuted and mistreated gays and lesbians, but also an institution with a bountifully-documented misogynistic streak throughout its entire history (and I would argue to the current day), and apparently also a penchant for paedophilia. In general, I am not religious and want nothing to do with a religious ceremony, much less with the last greatest flouting of the separation of Church and State.
4) Note that this isn't in my argument against marriage per se, but auxiliary to it: They don't want to get married. But they still want to make a lifetime commitment to each other.*** And they'd like greater legal and financial security than that offered by simply cohabiting. So what's the solution? It's obvious, really: a civil partnership. There's only one snag. Under the Civil Partnerships Act 2004, such arrangements are restricted to couples of the same sex. Behold what happens when you let the State dictate the structure and/or functioning of your personal relationships. As we can see with other "non-standard" relationships, such as polyamory, the moment you decide to think for yourself and make decisions not sanctioned by 'mainstream' society, good effing luck. Shit will not work out for you. In Canada, I'm pretty sure you can undergo a civil union regardless of sexual orientation, but that doesn't do anything to remove my extreme unease with the idea of having the State involved in my personal relationships like that (it's bad enough that we are so often bound to our families in ways that are not necessarily beneficial to us). And I say this without the slightest streak of libertarianism. I just don't like it. And not just because kitty doesn't like being put in boxes.
*** : My preference has always been the idea of coming up with a highly personal way of committing. Handfasting had been used as part of traditional marriage ceremonies for eons but now seems more prevalent in pagan communities than non-pagan ones, which is an interesting way of existing outside of the institution of marriage while still acknowledging love and commitment publicly/in front of loved ones. So it seems that some have found a 'third way'. But throwing a big party, or booking a vacation to someplace of high emotional importance, or returning to the first-date restaurant, or formally but privately exchanging verse written specifically as emotional self-pledge, or any number of other things strike me as being just as workable. Really, I'd love nothing more than for people who feel they can commit to another person for the rest of their lives to do just that-- in a way that is 100% theirs, instead of de facto buying into a failing social institution (marriage), itself part of a rotten social institution (organized religion), that has all kinds of troublesome binding connotations on a legal level.
My point is that a life-commitment does not NEED a marriage: it is in your heart, and is either there or it isn't. A marriage, flawed on emotional/psychological principle and weighed down by incredible amounts of noxious history and legality, all too often only obscures and/or complicates that. But, I mean, for those who are religious: go get married, it must mean something to you in the context of your faith. I, for one, will do without the white dress meant perversely to signify my virginity/purity, and the flashy ring meant to signify an ownership-obligation, and the changing of my name meant to signify the subsumption of my identity to that (much more important identity, of course) of my husband.
Ok so that was longer than intended and covered a solid 50% of it. GOOD TIMES.
Of course, I will be happy to entertain dissenting viewpoints, or just hear out commentary. And if anybody really wants to hear the emotional/psychological arguments I alluded to earlier, I can promise to get to it... eventually. :P
Today is not that day, unfortunately (?). But I did just run across this BBC article that inadvertently raises some of the largest practical points. So I'll copy and paste some stuff over, and add in some commentary.
1) "There's supposed to be something transformative about marriage, but a wedding wouldn't change our relationship." This alludes to my other reasons, reasons that are emotional and psychological and have to do with how I define a healthy relationship, the things I think a healthy relationship needs and the overwhelming importance of PERSONAL growth (which I prize above all else, including joint relationship-growth, as I see the latter to be impossible without the former anyway). I could go on and on about that, but that will be for another day. Just take my word for it that this particular quote was "throw hands up in vindication" moment for me.
2) "For Tom and I, the role of the husband and the role of a wife seem very strict and that's not for us," she says, arguing that such categories derive from an era when women were subservient to men. "In our day-to-day life, we feel like civil partners, not a married couple." (which dovetails into...)
3) Both Tom and Katherine explain that their primary reason for not getting married is that they do not want to be part of an institution from which gay and lesbian people are excluded. But they say that, even were the law to change to allow same-sex marriage, they would still choose to having nothing to do with it. In my case, it is not only a protest against an institution that has systematically persecuted and mistreated gays and lesbians, but also an institution with a bountifully-documented misogynistic streak throughout its entire history (and I would argue to the current day), and apparently also a penchant for paedophilia. In general, I am not religious and want nothing to do with a religious ceremony, much less with the last greatest flouting of the separation of Church and State.
4) Note that this isn't in my argument against marriage per se, but auxiliary to it: They don't want to get married. But they still want to make a lifetime commitment to each other.*** And they'd like greater legal and financial security than that offered by simply cohabiting. So what's the solution? It's obvious, really: a civil partnership. There's only one snag. Under the Civil Partnerships Act 2004, such arrangements are restricted to couples of the same sex. Behold what happens when you let the State dictate the structure and/or functioning of your personal relationships. As we can see with other "non-standard" relationships, such as polyamory, the moment you decide to think for yourself and make decisions not sanctioned by 'mainstream' society, good effing luck. Shit will not work out for you. In Canada, I'm pretty sure you can undergo a civil union regardless of sexual orientation, but that doesn't do anything to remove my extreme unease with the idea of having the State involved in my personal relationships like that (it's bad enough that we are so often bound to our families in ways that are not necessarily beneficial to us). And I say this without the slightest streak of libertarianism. I just don't like it. And not just because kitty doesn't like being put in boxes.
*** : My preference has always been the idea of coming up with a highly personal way of committing. Handfasting had been used as part of traditional marriage ceremonies for eons but now seems more prevalent in pagan communities than non-pagan ones, which is an interesting way of existing outside of the institution of marriage while still acknowledging love and commitment publicly/in front of loved ones. So it seems that some have found a 'third way'. But throwing a big party, or booking a vacation to someplace of high emotional importance, or returning to the first-date restaurant, or formally but privately exchanging verse written specifically as emotional self-pledge, or any number of other things strike me as being just as workable. Really, I'd love nothing more than for people who feel they can commit to another person for the rest of their lives to do just that-- in a way that is 100% theirs, instead of de facto buying into a failing social institution (marriage), itself part of a rotten social institution (organized religion), that has all kinds of troublesome binding connotations on a legal level.
My point is that a life-commitment does not NEED a marriage: it is in your heart, and is either there or it isn't. A marriage, flawed on emotional/psychological principle and weighed down by incredible amounts of noxious history and legality, all too often only obscures and/or complicates that. But, I mean, for those who are religious: go get married, it must mean something to you in the context of your faith. I, for one, will do without the white dress meant perversely to signify my virginity/purity, and the flashy ring meant to signify an ownership-obligation, and the changing of my name meant to signify the subsumption of my identity to that (much more important identity, of course) of my husband.
Ok so that was longer than intended and covered a solid 50% of it. GOOD TIMES.
Of course, I will be happy to entertain dissenting viewpoints, or just hear out commentary. And if anybody really wants to hear the emotional/psychological arguments I alluded to earlier, I can promise to get to it... eventually. :P