It's Time to Outlaw Marriage

Marriage and being married might have made sense a hundred years ago, but a changing world demands that we re-examine quaint assumptions from the past. Let's face it: the nuclear family doesn't work anymore; Ozzie and Harriet are dead. The sixty-hour workweek and the fact that few families can afford to survive on only one such income has left the family struggling not just for identity but for survival itself. Since it doesn't appear professional demands on our time are going to be easing up any time soon, it's time we reassess the personal investment. Sound reasoning points in only one direction: marriage is not just outmoded and outdated, but a positive menace to society, and, as such, ought to be outlawed before further harm can be done. As a business arrangement, we can do better-anybody who's paying attention insists on a binding prenuptial agreement. As a solemn act in the eyes of God Almighty it's a colorful charade-not even the Prince of Wales lets tender vows hinder his social life. As a building block of society it's been irrelevant for years-parenting is left to the professionals so we can pursue our own dreams while the kids explore their options. The high-tech, high-speed 21st century calls for new roles, new expectations, and new ideas. Love is perhaps the most private aspect of our lives. It need not be a matter of public record and it's certainly not the business of either government or the clergy. Surely both professions have plenty to worry about without expending precious energy keeping track of who's sleeping with whom.

Left to our own devices, we can (and, in fact, usually do) move freely from one amorous arrangement to another throughout life, as the mood strikes us, and none need suffer the consequences that come with a state- and church-sanctioned ceremony originating in the murky past. I'm perfectly willing to concede that marriage can serve a purpose for some, but there's no need to impose its legal restrictions on those who don't care to be bothered with either the mystic goobledygook of a church affair or the intimidating legalistic language of a civic ceremony.

I would never argue against people voluntarily bonding as they see fit, with all the workplace and tax benefits that logically accrue. While marriage may have other benefits for those who feel the need to submit to its obligations, these can all be obtained in other ways, and none can escape the quagmire at the other end which has felled many, and irrationally transferred the fortunes of those who've rightly earned them to those who married them, often with ulterior motives.

As an example, one need only consider the case of Anna Nicole Smith. Only the most gullible among us would have believed at the time that she was "in love" with the codger who married her, and most made sport of the fact that she was hardly farther than a strenuous morning's effort from inheriting his fortune, which, in the course of time, is exactly what she did. The groom may have benefited, at least to the extent that he had the legal right to snatch her underwear off at the end of a hard day's work, but, again, only the most gullible believed he was capable of her actual satisfaction, whatever that may have entailed. He likely spent his final days wondering where those balloons came from, or why his phone kept ringing but it never seemed to be for him. This case, in fact, offers prime evidence that the institution of marriage is so frequently used for reasons other than uniting a happy couple that it has become little more than a parody.

Need I offer other examples? Consider the continuing popularity of the arranged marriage, in which bride and groom are passive tokens in a game of alliance between families who array themselves more like battalions at war than as voluntary groupings of blood-bonded compatriots. What chance has romance, or even affection, when a couple is introduced at the chapel and instructed to get on with it by domineering parents who are thinking much more of themselves than of their hapless offspring? Infidelity is often considered an inevitable by-product of such a union, where two people who may have no more in common that a mouse has with a rat, are forced to take up lodgings and operate socially. For the sake of appearances, they attend teas and luncheons together, but rather than politley offering witty asides to the hostess, they are apt to overdo it at the wet bar and end up flirting with the domestic help. And who can blame them? Prostitution, Oprah's Book Club, yoga classes, NASCAR, and dozens of other deviate behavioral patterns serve as pathetic surrogates for the love and affection such unfortunate people are unable to find at home, bound to cruel worlds they never made.

As if this was not enough, we are regularly treated to stories of bizarre paternalistic cults of the American West, where one man starts out marrying a woman he might think highly of, but ends up creating his own church after marrying, first her sisters, then her cousins, then the offspring of those unions-often girls far too young to have more than a cursory understanding of what's going on. By keeping his brood in running shoes and long skirts, a sense of unity is promoted, just as it would be in a herd of elk or cattle. Indeed, the patriarchs of these clans see themselves more as founts of DNA, or perhaps vessels of the stuff, than gentlemen. But even the most generous understanding of the holy bond of matrimony is beggared when they shut themselves away from normal society and start proclaiming links to divinity. Institutionalized lechery under color of fabricated piety is more like it. When they so casually flout existing statutes against bigamy, incest, child brides, etc. in fact, our entire legal and social system would seem to be at risk. If a 50-year-old fundamentalist wants to marry his 12-year-old niece, he's going to. The only way to stop him is to make marriage itself illegal. Of course he would ignore that law, but at least then, when the government moves in and hauls his wives out by the busload, they would have a new book to throw at him. If the women are determined to stay in the compound bleaching socks and darning bibles, there seems little that can be done, but if the patriarch himself is bearded and then put away for a stretch in the stony lonesome, those who wanted to would at least be at leisure to go online and look for more age-appropriate dating material.

There may be people, even now, who would insist that society needs the institution of marriage. But when its only real benefit is making a happy but informal arrangement formal and binding, it immediately runs the risk of soiling the pudding. Just as a young Tom Sawyer was happy to whitewash the fence until it became an official chore, many young spouses waken, as though from pleasant dreams, only to realize they have chained themselves to creatures rapidly morphing into overweight, hairy-backed, smelly-footed troglodytes. To say nothing of the men, who really let themselves go, once the dynamic of pursuit and conquest has removed their motivation to watch their diet, shower, and occasionally take a walk.

Men of the cloth may well disagree. But they are by nature long-winded and argumentative, so dispute is to be expected. My proposed new law would in fact provide them with hours of proper sermoniacal topics like "When Is It Time To Tell Her You've Had It," or, "Much Ado About Fidelity," and while they stand the risk of losing what is surely an important part of their income, they would certainly make it up in the reduced demand for unpaid marriage counseling. They would also be free to spend fine June weekends at the ballgame or involved in other useful pursuits like gardening.

It would be fine if we could count on the world remaining somewhat predictable from generation to generation, but as the Atomic Age slides into the Information Age and Who-Knows-

What Age awaits us, we can hardly plan on stability. Change is certain; the only question is whether we as a social group will be its agents or its victims. Banning marriage now, while time remains, offers us what may be our last chance at last arranging things along rational lines. Slavery was once considered a permanent institution, beneficial to many while burdensome to many more. When the time was right, perhaps a bit later, it was abolished with few regrets and many celebrations. The people, once they got used to the idea, willed it, and resistance was, though spirited, futile. I believe marriage can be left behind us in much the same way. It will leave lasting scars, as slavery left us the Jim Crow laws and the minstrel show, but these evils were temporary. Society, freed of this artificial constraint, will be free to adjust itself into a gigantic, free-floating ice cream social, where, when people are good and tired of each other, they will be free to part ways without hindrance. Those who wish to stay together will of course always have that choice. By keeping both the Senate and the bishops out of the bedroom, everyone else will at last stand a chance at that elusive "pursuit of happiness" so optimistically declared over two centuries ago and aspired after ever since.