Dan Among Den

Risk #1: Longevity

In the long-lost days of marital bliss and purity, say one to two thousand years ago, people didn’t live nearly so long. A man was old at thirty-five, if he even lasted that long. Apart from a hard life being a shorter one, a virtual army of plagues, mishaps, poor sanitation, and yes, even armies, was arrayed against him. His wife had it just about as hard, but she also had to go through numerous pregnancies and labors. Without any real medical care to speak of, a good number of those pregnancies were fatal. Put those two together, and “until death do us part” was a fifteen to twenty year commitment, starting at about age fifteen and lasting until one partner’s luck ran out. And if you married a widow or widower, it was an even shorter commitment.

Fifteen years isn’t all that long. Certainly you can get tired of someone in that amount of time (not you MAW, ok?), but even if you did, what would you do about it? Go look for someone new in the remaining five years of your life? No, just ride it out and hope she’s still there to help you to the chamber pot in your last days.

But now, fifteen years is nothing, especially if you marry in your twenties. After fifteen years, you’re still fairly young and healthy. Good health care has delivered a double-bonus for the wives, with low infant mortality and reliable birth control lowering the number of pregnancies and good doctors and hospitals to make those pregnancies more survivable. Looking down the road, it’s not a dwindling five years ahead, it’s thirty-five or forty. Add it up, and you’re looking at “until death do us part” lasting over fifty years. Fifty years is a long time to wake up next the same face every morning, too long for a lot of folks.

Modest proposal: Give this health care thing the boot. It has caused nothing but trouble for marriage, so let folks have their good thirty or forty years of life and then cut them off. No more antibiotics, no insulin shots, no open heart surgery. Take away their sanitary toilets and the clean food, and while you’re at it, rip the insulation out of the walls. If they’re so eager to stay on this Earth, let them really experience the elements. Divorce rates will plummet, not to mention the savings to the Social Security program.

Risk #2: Easy Divorce and Women’s Rights

These are really two threats, but they’re somewhat linked. They rose together, so I’ll treat them together. Again, back in our state of marital bliss, it was almost impossible to get a divorce. If you didn’t have kids yet, you could maybe get an annulment, but divorce was a step towards adultery, and unless you were a king or queen in the Pope’s good graces, you’d stand a better chance of beating a murder rap. Meanwhile, women had no real property rights. In fact, they almost were property. Hence, a divorce would leave them penniless, and it’s not like there was a robust economy ready to hire them as skilled labor. If they were lucky, an abbey might take them in, but by and large, women had no choice but to stay in a marriage.

Now, divorce is easy. Most states have a “no fault” clause that makes it as simple as dissolving a contract. Even those that make it a little harder don’t really make it that hard. It just makes for more legal fees. Probably the most painful part of the divorce now is the division of the kids (“no, honey, really, you should take the kids…”) and the assets (“I earned that Mercedes, you asshole!”). On the assets, this comes down to the fact that women now have full property rights, so they can end up owning the house just like their hubbies.

And of course, women also have quite a bit of economic opportunity now. While there are still elements of pay disparity and glass ceilings (though, as a counterexample, my penultimate boss is the highest paid women in the world), women can go out and get a job capable of supporting themselves and their kids. It’s certainly not as good as a dual-income household or having a “free” live-in maid/cook/nanny, but it’s good enough that women can consider it a viable choice to staying in a bad marriage.

Modest proposal: Clearly, we’ve been heading in the wrong direction here if it has resulted in the decay of such a sacred institution. Women shouldn’t have these kinds of choices. Strip them of their property rights, and rely on either some nicely repressive laws or at least vengeful social condemnation to keep women out of the workforce and schools. Barefoot and pregnant is clearly the road to marital bliss.

And for those who still try to get a divorce? Well, simple, just make it illegal. There are no divorces. It is “until death do us part”, enforced by unsympathetic law. Any who attempt it, say by separation and subsequent new cohabitation, should be locked up for spousal abandonment and adultery. That’s a real “Defense of Marriage Act”.

Risk #3: Acceptance of Out-of-Wedlock Child-rearing

Once again in our age of marital bliss and respect, sex was strictly for husband and wife. It never, ever happened any other time. I don’t care what you read. No, scholarly research doesn’t count. It’s all lies. I read “The Scarlet Letter”, so I know how extramarital sex was dealt with. Actually, I only read the first chapter and then the Cliff notes, but I got the idea.

You got married to have sex, and you stayed married to raise the kids. If you reversed the order of those things, then dammit, you got married, and did so in a hurry in ye-olde-pitchfork-wedding. Having and raising a child out of wedlock was simply just not done. A young girl finding herself in that situation either married some poor schmuck, prayed for a miscarriage, or left the kid on the steps of the church.

Now it’s quite acceptable to have and raise a child out of wedlock. It’s not easy, mind you, but it’s acceptable. So, why get married in the first place? Get together, have the kid, and then trade off duties. Keep dating, maybe marry someone else. Maybe not. You can still be a good parent, just not a married one.

Modest proposal: Well, since the purpose of marriage is the creation of children – I seem to have been reading that a lot lately in some other debate on marriage – how can we allow children outside of marriage? Clearly, those who would attempt it are immoral creatures deserving of punishment. I recommend jail time for the fornicators, and since such unnatural children could never grow up into normal, responsible citizens, let’s not waste the effort on the little bastards. If they’re born outside of a marriage, then no schooling for them. In fact, let’s just cut off all government assistance to them. That ought to make someone think twice about skipping out on sacred marriage. Either that, or at least they’ll be lining up at Planned Parenthood, both before and after the fact.

Reality Check

For those of you not acquainted with the works of Jonathan Swift, he once wrote an essay, “A Modest Proposal”, suggesting that the solution to Irish poverty and famine was for the Irish to eat their own children. Of course, he didn’t really believe it. He was using over-the-top sarcasm to highlight the hypocrisy of those who took Irish problems lightly. Similarly, I am not in favor of any of my modest proposals here.

However, I do believe I have correctly identified the biggest “threats” to the institution of marriage. You might find my list to be incomplete, perhaps missing one item in particular, but compared to the big three, anything else is a trifle unworthy of note. There are those who are speaking up vehemently about recent threats to marriage, but I note that they never mention these three. Well, I’ll admit that the third threat does rate an occasional sideways glance, but it has largely been unseen since the days of Murphy Brown.

Why are these threats being largely ignored when their effects are so well documented and their solutions so straightforward? It is because we have decided that we want these things. No one wants to give up long life or women’s rights or easy divorce or the choice to be a single parent. These were battles that were won with great difficulty and passion, and no wants to give up the gains. That they have damaged marriage as a side effect is regrettable, because marriage truly is a sacred and wonderful thing, but no one wants to give up the things that got us here.

So the next time someone speaks of doing something silly in defense of marriage, maybe you need to question their real commitment to the cause. If they’re not ready to act on these threats, are they really serious about the fight?