Marriage related - Since when was/is marriage "for the children?"

[SCBeeland]

Ever since the news from California, the writers of my hometown newspaper have been on a crusade of sorts to "enlighten" the citizens of my town about what marriage really is, as if we're somehow ignorant about it and need to be told.

Anyway, last week there were three whole stories about the gay marriage debate. This week there were two. From the arguments the writers of these stories made, you'd have thought that legalizing gay marriage in California was somehow going to force all straight people in Georgia to marry someone of the same sex. One of the writers made the argument that marriage is and always was for the children. I didn't really understand, but I think that he meant that I, as a man, should be thinking "well I need a woman to marry, one that'll want two kids" or something like that. I remember thinking, who in the world thinks like that? Do these people actually think that when two straight people marry, they're thinking about the kids they'll have? As if that's even a requirement? To make things worse, the same story ended as an advertisement for chastity and waiting for marriage to even have sex. The guy writing it simply left out non-heterosexuals, as if we're expected not to ever have sex at all. All five of the stories in the newspaper agreed on one thing, that allowing gay marriage would "destroy parenthood" and "refuse to allow children to have a mother and a father."

I just don't get this attitude, that marriage is somehow "for the children." Where did it come? How do you deal with the people in the media who spout this stuff out, when they have a monopoly on public opinion in a small town? I e-mailed one of the newspaper writers, asking why he felt so threatened by two people of the same-sex getting married, and I was civil about it, (I'm a civil person, I'm not one to ever spout out name-calling and insults no matter what someone has said) and
his response made it sound like I wanted to criminalize religion. I just don't get it.

[Fredda Weinberg]

1. It's OK if you don't get it ... but I was raised this way

When we didn't have children after ten years, my marriage ended. I might just marry him again, but I accepted that, where I come from, this is traditional and expected.

So, YMMV, but in fact, marriage is about producing legitimate heirs.

[unpossibles]

3. does that make my marriage invalid?

Neither of us wants children and never have. I have a vasectomy.

Does this mean I have no right to marry? What about barren couples?

I'm kind of offended here.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

6. Hey, I've been married 19 years

no kids and it was planned that way. No regrets, either. Anyone who has a problem with it is the one with the problem--not us.

[unpossibles]

17. I know, I am just sick of all of the lame excuses

which in my opinion is all they are. We married because we love each other and enjoy each others' company. That's pretty much it.

Oh, and the free toaster oven.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. Interesting

because in my family, there have been several childless marriages, and no one thought a thing about it--and I'm talking about folks married in the early 20th Century, too, not just recently.

[Book Lover]

7. I find that rather sad

And I would caution you against extrapolating your own experience ("...where I come from, this is traditional and expected") out to the totality of human experience ("...in fact, marriage is about producing legitimate heirs.")

[Zuiderelle]

8. And that's your personal/religious prerogative. It has nothing to do with what "marriage is about."

[La Lioness Priyanka]

12. your religion and tradition are not everyone else's religion or tradition. nt

[Kerrytravelers]

26. There are some people that just shouldn't be parents. They know it, and make the responsible choice

to not have children. Are these people's straight marriages without children less valid of a marriage?

I am married and we don't have children. We may not have children.

I am very offended by your post.

[LostinVA]

29. I have never heard of that in the Jewish religion and I've known a lot of Jewish people

My marriage is 100% valid, and it was a religious ceremony. We're never having children.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Not everyone who gets married has children

My fundy cousin, who was a missionary, didn't marry until she was in her 50s, so you know she didn't do it to "have children", and apparently her fundamentalist church didn't frown on her childless marriage, since she was married in church. So you can't make the argument that religion requires that people breed once they are married.

I'd say that your editor was hiding behind religion and using it as an excuse for his own prejudice. You might remind him that a guy named Jesus had a name for folks like that--hypocrites.

[SCBeeland]

16. That's just the thing though

I know so many people (quite religious people too) who have gotten married and gotten divorced like its the same thing as popping a DVD in a DVD player, but yet if I asked them "what's the purpose of marriage" they would probably give an answer with atleast something to do with children. I've asked lots of friends, both male and female, gay and straight, black and white and otherwise what they believed marriage is for, just out of conversation, and EVERY ONE of them gave an answer that could be interpreted as "marriage is a way of two people in love to let it be known that they're no longer looking for someone else," not a single answer had anything to do with kids, or future kids, in fact based on their responses, kids never even crossed their mind, even with the ones who already had kids. It just feels like this whole argument suddenly came out of nowhere, as an excuse to be prejudiced.

[wryter2000]

5. I guess I wasn't married to my husband for 25 years

Because we didn't have children.

[kestrel91316]

9. If marrige is "for having children" as the christofascists claim,

then we must:
1) Prohibit marriage between the medically infertile.
2) Prohibit marriage between those who use birth control.
3) Prohibit marriage where the woman is beyond childbearing age or where the man is too old to "perform".
4) Prohibit marriage where either party has any genetic defect affecting gender, ie hermaphroditism, intersex, etc.
5) Annul marriages which do not result in the live birth of children within a time frame to be determined.
6) Prohibit all sexual acts not capable of resulting in pregnancy.

Also, to "protect the children" we must prohibit all divorce. Widows/widowers must remarry immediately or the state will confiscate their children to place them in a proper home.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

10. people often use tradition and religion to justify existing bigotry

well its traditional for us to beat up women and deny them the vote. so because we have traditionally been crappy, lets keep doing it.

blah!

[unpossibles]

18. exactly!

It's traditional in America to own people too.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

19. its also traditional in some parts of the world to burn women if dowry hasnt been met

other parts think we should penalize women for being raped

all sorts of fun traditions.

as i said.. stupid bloody excuse.

[Demobrat]

11. Look at all the unhappily married couples who stay together

"for the sake of the children". For them, marriage is definitely "for the children", and it happens a lot. Combine those with the ones who only got married in the first place because of a pregnancy, and try to understand how bitter they are. That's where this argument comes from. Why should you get to live with the love of your life AND be childfree while they're trapped?

[housewolf]

13. Marriage for love is very new in human history

I mean, REALLY new... like within the last 100 years. Prior to that marriages were arranged by parents or advisors for a whole variety of reasons, with love not being one of them. Marriages were arranged for political or security alliances, for property advantages, or some other reason to advance a family's position in society or fortunes. Not for love. Marriage was about the family and society, not about personal feelings. Personal feelings really didn't enter into it.

It's only been within the past 100 years that individuals' feelings came to be given consideration when it came to choosing a marriage partner. Sometimes married couples would grow to love one another; more often they "did their duty" towards each other. In some societies, one or both parties in a marriage had outside love interests, i.e. a "paramour."

At some point during the 20th century, I'm not sure when but maybe starting around the 1930's, America developed into "the cult of the child" and society's vision of "the child" changed to where children became all-important, the focus of the household. Everything became about "the children." Some of it was probably good... child labor rights, education requirements, forus on child health, etc. Today, childhood holds pre-eminent role in society and in family life.

[Book Lover]

14. This quote is from an upper-class Roman's tomb

Another from Rome itself is erected by a mourning wife who claims,

"When we were still boy and girl, we were bound by a mutual love as soon as we met…I therefore beg, most sacred Manes, that you look after the loved one I have entrusted to you and that you will be well disposed and very kind to him during the hours of the night…" (Reading 59, Shelton, 1988;48)

http://victorian.fortunecity.com/lion/373/roman/romarriage.html

What you say is correct as far as it goes but is not the whole picture.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

20. financial security is still important and part of why we as a community need and want marriage

rights

[SCBeeland]

23. I know what you're saying but still

I love history, so I realize all the reasons a marriage may have taken place in say, 500 AD Europe. But things change and today people can be married for any reason they choose, but gay people in most of the world still have no choice at all about it.

[Liberal Gramma]

15. What is particularly insane about this view is that gays can be and are good parents

They might not have their own children, but some are excellent parents to adopted and foster children.

[Zuiderelle]

21. I know several couples who do have their own "natural" children.

At least one of the parents can be the natural parent. Some by previous relationships, some by artificial insemination. It's quite common in straight relationships as well, when you consider second marriages and stepparents who are just as loving of their children as the natural parents.

It's a wonderfully diverse world in which we live where children are honored and loved by a whole host of different types of parents and families. It's about time the US caught up with the rest of the progressive parts of the world.

[Liberal Gramma]

31. Good point, I stand corrected.

"Natural" or not, a parent's sexual orientation has no bearing on his or her ability to nurture children.

[tomg]

22. Actually, it is part and parcel with

nonsense out of The Bible: "Be fruitful and multiply." Genesis 1:28. Of course that is the same passage that dominionists use to justify everything from drilling in ANWAR to destroying civil liberties. Beneath that, though, it is a notion even more firmly entrenched in very early Christianity's insane notions regarding sex, and particularly Pauline theology. Paul, it seems, really had some problems with sex. At the same time, he was one hell of public relations expert. He is 1 Corinthians 7:9 - "It is better to marry than to burn." The ideal, of course was not to do anything at all, leading one early Church father to castrate himself. Origen. He sort of remembered something to the effect of "If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out" or some such other nonsense, added it to "it is better to marry than to burn," knew he was fairly horny, and viola - a preacher who had many Sundays without nuts.

In the Middle Ages, if I recall correctly, official theology at a number of points made any sex without seriously trying to have kids a SIN ( sometimes mortal/ sometimes venial depending on how "liberal" the local inquisitor happened to be). And any kind of sex where the intended purpose was not to produce lots of little serfs (from masturbating to goatfucking)was considered theologically all pretty much the same. Meanwhile, it seems, the reality is that everyone was pretty much fucking like rabbits (I mean there wasn't a lot to do in the Middle Ages, except catch the plague, be burned as a witch, go on a crusade, or have sex - they didn't even have the internets).

Yup. They are crazy, and it all ends in "Don't have sex. But if you do, make sure thee is a future fundy as a result." You don't get it because you are not crazy. I had thirteen years of conservative, pre-Vatican II Dominican/Irish Christian Brother Catholic education in the fifties and early sixties. Which is why I now know about Origen. And sex in the Middle Ages. And James Joyce.

You are far more civil and polite than I am. Not because they are crazy, but because they are dangerous and crazy and they assert that their right to be mad trumps other people's basic human rights.

[SCBeeland]

24. oh yeah, the Bible's got some pretty strange stuff in it about sex

even by today's standards too. I'm still disturbed by God demanding that the testicles of animals that are to be sacrificed are not damaged, or however that line went, its been a long time. I couldn't stop laughing when I first read that, it sounded like a sketch from Saturday Night Live or something. To think, God, the ultimate being and creator of all there is, sitting there explaining goat balls to someone, and its to be taken seriously?

[tomg]

25. Actually, that would be hilarious. nt

[sarge43]

27. Don't know about the rest of you, but the legality of our marriage has never

been questioned because we don't have children. When we applied for the marriage license, we were asked two questions (1) were we of the age of consent and (2) were either of us at the time married. Yes and no, JP asked "Do ya?" We both answered, "Sure do." In 26 years since, no institution from the federal government to the town office has even refused us anything which is our due because we don't have children. None of them seem to care all that much.

So I've been asking myself how is our marriage fundamentally different from a gay or lesbian couple's. A gay or lesbian couple could have children if they're able and choose to, re Cheney's daughter. We can't even do that; we were both surgically sterile when we married. To put it another way, how is our childless marriage posing any threat to society? If it did or still does, why were we allowed to marry and stay married?

"refuse to allow children to have a mother and a father." So, single parents should be forced to turn their children over to ....?

"destroy parenthood" So prove it. Let's take Canada. It's had civil marriage for several years now. The divorce rate skyrocketed? Same sex shotgun weddings? Great herds of abandoned children roaming the streets and malls? Blood on the moon? What cha got?

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That's what I thought.

"they're thinking about the kids they'll have?" If they don't, they should because giving birth is not the only way a kidster can suddenly appear in the middle of a relationship. A couple should agree on this (yes or no) before making it permanent. If my one true love and I had both been fertile as bunnies, we still wouldn't have had children. We don't like 'em 24/7 and no child deserves to be on the receiving end of that attitude.

[TechBear_Seattle]

28. Cons have been saying it for years. The WA Supreme Court said it two years ago

Traditionally, Christian doctrine has held that marriage served two and only two purposes: To provide for a "valid" expression of sex and thus a non-sinful outlet for sinful behavior (see I Cor. 7:1-9) and for the purpose of having and raising children together (many different sources.)

Since at least the 1970s, when the first modern efforts to legalize same-sex marriage were made, conservatives have been surprisingly consistent in proclaiming that same-sex couples had no right to be married on the grounds that they could not have biological children together. The Washington Supreme Court's decision in 2006 regarding the case of Andersen v. King County was based primarily on that claim. In their ruling, the Court stated that there existed a "legitimate state interest" in reserving marriage solely to those couples able to have and raise children together. An initiative effort to put that ruling fully into law (ie, require that all Washington marriages result in children within three years or become automatically anulled), alas, failed to make the ballot.

[readmoreoften]

30. Don't argue; instead propose a campaign inspired by his ideas

Start a movement that everyone needs to be fertility tested before marriage and that any woman over the age of 45 cannot be married unless she can PROVE that she is fertile.

We need to start demonstrating the idiocy of their logic in order to expose them. Instead of arguing with the irrational, let's turn the rational against them.