Sorry, I keep coming back to this topic, and am still working things out, so I\u2019m not as coherent as my incisive commentary on pension- and healthcare-related topics (ha!).<\/p>\n
But I wrote yesterday on the traditional (= present-day Catholic, and somewhat abandoned Protestant) view on marriage:\u00a0 uniting a couple in a \u201ctwo become one flesh\u201d manner, permanent, and open to children.\u00a0 As a culture, we\u2019ve abandoned the openness to children.\u00a0 The permanence has been impaired by no-fault divorce, and the \u201ctwo become one flesh\u201d is faltering, too.<\/p>\n
My first thought is this:\u00a0 how far has the \u201cnon-permanence\u201d gone?\u00a0 Obviously, we\u2019ve got a high divorce rate (though it seems to be that it\u2019s dropping, attributed to fewer people marrying in the first place), but, more than that, to what extent do couples, when marrying, even intend for the relationship to be lifelong?\u00a0 It may just be coincidence, but the first time I read of the \u201cmodern\u201d vow of \u201cas long as love shall live\u201d was in a book writing (favorably) about gay marriage.\u00a0 I\u2019ve read pundits and others suggesting that marriage be a series of short-term renewable contracts (lowering the divorce rate by redefining the term), to accommodate couples where one or both of the partners change their behavior, their religion, their outlook on life, during the marriage.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
And how far as this concept of \u201cunion\u201d disappeared?\u00a0 Of course, the notion that marriage is the only suitable institution for sex (thus, the literal \u201cbecoming one flesh\u201d) has been abandoned by most in the West.\u00a0 And, of course, the notion that there is some deeper meaning in the sexual complementarity of a man and a woman has also been abandoned by everyone who supports gay marriage.\u00a0 But among gay men, there is, from what I understand, an increasingly public acknowledgement\u00a0that in their view marriage is not about sex, or sexual exclusivity<\/em> at all, and CNN and other media sites now also\u00a0periodically report on swinging and polyamory as a perfectly legitimate way of life.\u00a0 <\/p>\n If marriage is nothing more than a legal means of becoming next of kin and being obliged (to varying degrees) to share the other\u2019s financial obligations, is it still marriage?\u00a0 <\/p>\n If we remove laws that oblige spouses, in various ways, to share jointly in financial obligations, so that it\u2019s purely a declaration of \u201cnext-of-kin-ness\u201d for medical decision-making and inheritance (with state laws, employers, and others choosing to treat married couples different in other ways that are not fundamental to the meaning of marriage), is it still marriage?<\/p>\n When is marriage not marriage any longer?<\/p>\n And when do we adopt a different term entirely than the clumsy \u201ctraditional marriage\u201d when we want to invoke notions of permanence, sexual exclusivity, and openness to children?\u00a0 And what is that term, anyway?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sorry, I keep coming back to this topic, and am still working things out, so I\u2019m not as coherent as my incisive commentary on pension- and healthcare-related topics (ha!). But I wrote yesterday on the traditional (= present-day Catholic, and somewhat abandoned Protestant) view on marriage:\u00a0 uniting a couple in a \u201ctwo become one flesh\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n