But the government is incapable of promoting the institution of marriage. It is only capable of destroying it. Since the government will inevitably expand the definition of marriage to the point of destruction, shouldn't it get out of the business of defining marriage altogether?
The heterosexual family is the foundational unit of society. Stable families produce productive citizens which benefits everyone. Of course the government should support and encourage this!
Of course the government should, but of course the government can't. If there is a benefit, it will be given to any who want it.
Now you're just talking about more money for lawyers (by having legal relationships rather than marital relationships). Who else would want to generate more legal documents and contracts? Not me!
The lawyers who are making money now on matrimonial law would be the same ones making money on contractual law. Breaking up any legal relationship is messy, and lawyers always seem to get their cut...
It (FMA) will pass with ease, and it destroys all your above arguments.
Do you think 70% of the population can be mustered to support the FMA? Because at the end of the day, that's what it will take. Absent the FMA, the government will destroy marriage through a slow erosion of the institution. But trying to keep the government promotion machine running hoping that the FMA will bail the whole mess out is a false dream. It will not happen. Keeping the government involved hoping for the FMA will guarantee the destruction of the very institution you seek to promote.
This will only happen if society allows it, and it has been strongly fought whenever government attempts to do so. I predict that the recent law Gray Davis signed in California will be overturned within 3 months.
The lawyers who are making money now on matrimonial law would be the same ones making money on contractual law. Breaking up any legal relationship is messy, and lawyers always seem to get their cut.
Except those lawyers only make money now on divorces. Your way is going to have them making money off of every marriage, and then off of every divorce!
Do you think 70% of the population can be mustered to support the FMA?
Unquestionably! As I said before, it will pass with ease, and destroys all your arguments!
Respectfully, you're probably mistaken. Divorce Lawyers make as much as they do, largely because they are the only class of laborers who spend much of their time keeping abreast and informed of all the changes in law, regulation, precedent, and interpretation by which the shifting sands of legislative and judicial whim alter the definition of "marriage" during the span of a typical marriage.
By contrast -- were the legitimate causes for marital dissolution, and the the legal responsibilities of each party in case of dissolution, spelled out in a private "Partnership Contract" (which, if sanctified by the blessing of a religious official, could be considered a "marriage" within that couple's church, without any need for State control over the Institution), those clauses would be the same 20 years later as the day the Contract was adopted. The validity of the Contract could be contested, of course, but assuming that a court upheld the validity of the Contract the terms of dissolution would already be spelled out in black and white -- thus reducing substantially the typical wrangling over "state family law and precedent" (irrelevant; the private contract says what it says) and therefore the billable hours for Divorce Lawyers.
As usual, State domination of an institution benefits Lawyers far more than Private establishment thereof. But I'm sure that Divorce Lawyers can afford the pay-cut; and if not -- who cares?
As to the individual who suggested that this "flies in the face of all human history" -- quite the opposite. Both Abraham and Sarah, and Moses and Zipporah, were married by Religion and Clan -- not the State, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the definition and establishment of their marriage. Were their marriages "illegitimate", because they were Private arrangements rather than State-licensed ones?? If one believes the Bible, the normative practice throughout most of Human History is the Private establishment of Marriage, with the Courts of Government only becoming involved in case of dissolution of contract. The monopolistic Establishment and Definition of Marriage by the State is a phenomenom of recent origin.
And a dangerous phenomenom at that -- for what the State has the power to Define, the State has the power to Destroy (by definition).
If Privatized Marriage is good enough for the Patriarchs of the Faith, perhaps it is good enough for us.