On Marriage and How to Save It

A few days ago, New York passed a law that redefined the word marriage in the state of New York to be a state recognized union between any two unrelated persons. I know not the purpose of this creation, nor do I know by what power the state government presumes to redefine the word "marriage", which has had the same definition since time immemorial (since at least 1189, according to English Common Law). On top of that, previous attempts to redefine marriage in America, such as the 19th century miscegenation laws, have been struck down as unconstitutional. However, this law, and others like it, are symptoms, not the disease. They could not have succeeded, and would not have been tried, if marriage were not already redefined in the hearts of the people.

Modern society has developed curious and erroneous opinions about marriage. Chief among these confusions is that a subjective feeling of "love" for a person is central to a marriage. As subjective feelings are but temporary, we have had to modify marriage to reflect the fleeting nature of our emotions. To achieve this, we passed "No-Fault" Divorce Laws. These laws are far more destructive than our Same Sex "Marriage" laws will ever be. Whereas, previously, a marriage could only be dissolved if infidelity, abuse, or deception could be proved, now a marriage could be dissolved on the basis of any dispute, or even simply because the couple had "fallen out of love" with each other. These laws degraded marriage to the status of a lightly binding legal contract.

The ramifications of this are hard to miss in today's world. Marriage is seen as another life achievement, and, increasingly, a luxury reserved for the rich. Others see the modern, watered down conception of marriage as (rightly) meaningless, and throw out the whole idea of marriage. Most importantly, children are living without two loving parents, and are having to deal with the unfortunate emotional consequences of divorce, not because of any tragedies, but because of our own misconceptions and choices. Alarmingly, this effects lower class children far more their higher class peers. According to a recent New York Times article, Generation X couples with a Bachelor's degree or higher divorce at 11% over the first ten years, while their less educated peers divorce at 38% over the first ten years. Coupled with lower rates of marriage in the lower classes and higher rates of out-of-wedlock pregnancy, children born in a lower class have a very limited chance to have an intact family, while their higher-class peers have a rather high chance. Because of this, lower class children lack not only the material and social benefits of their peers, but will also likely lack an intact family, which will increase the divide between the rich and the poor in America.

It doesn't have to be this way. We should not have to live with the radically watered-down version of marriage that we have inherited. In fact, we cannot live with the current situation, or our children will suffer. We must start with our own hearts and our culture, and we should also work to get rid of the laws, such as the No Fault Divorce laws, that have help ingrain our grave errors in the minds of many Americans.

A Nation of Men

We often fuss too much about rights, and not enough about responsibilities. This seems rather strange, considering that our founding fathers put the weight of their democratic experiment on the shoulders of the people living under it. "The people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty," as Jefferson once said. For one thing, this helps highlight a drastic difference between our modern conception of freedom and the conception used by our founding fathers, who were much closer to the ancient and medieval philosophers in their assessment of freedom and liberty. For them, freedom is not simply the elimination of external constraints. Freedom is also something internal, and something that must be worked at.

When looked at properly, we often do think this way. Very few would say that a drug addict is completely free. He is, in fact, enslaved by his own desires and passions, in particular, his desire for the drug. For some reason, however, we do not apply this insight to our politics. A nation of people enslaved to their passions is not a free nation, whether the government lets allows or blocks their attempt to get what they want. But we do not see it that way. The only requirement we place on freedom is that the government get out of the way of whatever we want. This creates a government not with firm and just leadership, but a government who is like a doting mother so paranoid that she spends most of her energy trying to make sure her children don't have to face the consequences of their actions. Ironically, the doting mother can become as oppressive and tyrannical as the controlling father. This may seem all too familiar to those who remember the Bush and Obama bail-outs, and our government's insistence not to face any consequences or lay down any responsibility for our massive debt.

It seems that we do not have a government in America today, we have a paranoid babysitter. But we aren't babies, and we don't need a sitter. Freedom is not something granted from above. It is our responsibility, and it is something we must cultivate in our own hearts first. We should be a nation of men and women, and a nation of fathers and mothers. Only then will we truly be free.