The term “marriage” can be used to refer to two different ideas: a personal commitment or legal commitment between two people, though, both meanings often coincide with one another. Characterizing marriage as a legal commitment puts the tradition of marriage in the government’s hands, allowing them to cultivate and define it. While the government appears to be working to protect marriage, it’s involvement ultimately hurts marriage’s tradition and meaning as well as gives the government unnecessary power, which is why marriage should be privatized, or moved from government to private control. Fueled by a desire of control and power, the government is grasping on to and essentially weakening marriage by claiming their role in it. The state not
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Objectors of marriage privatization are concerned that if the government isn’t regulating marriage, there will be no authority to determine right from wrong. Currently, marriage is defined to exclude dangerous relationships such as incest and pedophilia. The concern that these acts can be part of a non-governed marriage is minor, since, outside of marriage, the United States has laws to protect the people from such wrongs. Another concern of privatizing marriage is following legal issues. Opponents claim that if the government isn’t controlling a marriage, then a case of divorce would be chaos. While this concern is rational, it isn’t too troubling. A contract can and should still be made between a couple, and while this contract would now be defined by the individual parties, it would still be enforced by the state as a legal contract. Furthermore, a popular concern about severing the government’s tie to marriage is the lives of American children. Protestors of privatization worry that if marriage isn’t being encouraged, it won’t be as common, resulting in the childhoods of the next generation being put in danger. It’s possible that marriage rates could decrease if the legal concepts of marriage changed, but this doesn’t mean that the children will suffer. In his article “On Privatizing Marriage”, Borders includes statistics relating to children in unmarried households. He cites Child Protective Services, saying that in 2007 “nearly 40 percent of… unmarried American households include children.” (Borders). This statistic not only proves that children of unmarried parents is already a common situation, but suggests that it’s already a problem that the government provides solutions for. Privatizing marriage is a debatable idea, but can be found to be healing to
Objectors of marriage privatization are concerned that if the government isn’t regulating marriage, there will be no authority to determine right from wrong. Currently, marriage is defined to exclude dangerous relationships such as incest and pedophilia. The concern that these acts can be part of a non-governed marriage is minor, since, outside of marriage, the United States has laws to protect the people from such wrongs. Another concern of privatizing marriage is following legal issues. Opponents claim that if the government isn’t controlling a marriage, then a case of divorce would be chaos. While this concern is rational, it isn’t too troubling. A contract can and should still be made between a couple, and while this contract would now be defined by the individual parties, it would still be enforced by the state as a legal contract. Furthermore, a popular concern about severing the government’s tie to marriage is the lives of American children. Protestors of privatization worry that if marriage isn’t being encouraged, it won’t be as common, resulting in the childhoods of the next generation being put in danger. It’s possible that marriage rates could decrease if the legal concepts of marriage changed, but this doesn’t mean that the children will suffer. In his article “On Privatizing Marriage”, Borders includes statistics relating to children in unmarried households. He cites Child Protective Services, saying that in 2007 “nearly 40 percent of… unmarried American households include children.” (Borders). This statistic not only proves that children of unmarried parents is already a common situation, but suggests that it’s already a problem that the government provides solutions for. Privatizing marriage is a debatable idea, but can be found to be healing to