Abolishing marriage law with a smooth transition

There are several reasons for abolishing marriage law and preventing the government from regulating caring or amorous relationships (of which there are many, besides marriage) but to do this such that the transition is smooth for those affected by it is an important consideration. Many feminists, for example, emphasise marriage’s historical role in discriminating against women, other cultures, religions, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, non-dyadic relationships etc. and that, for this reason, the entire institution should be abolished. My presumption here is not that the institution itself needs to be abolished but that the laws surrounding it do. Brake (2012) wrote that marriage law is usually (though not always) sufficient for ‘amatonormativity’ – the “disproportionate focus on marital and amorous love relationships as special sites of value, and the assumption that romantic love is a universal goal” which also discriminates against other forms of caring relationships such as friendships, urban tribes, adult care networks, quirkyalones etc. She proposes ‘minimizing marriage’ in such a way that caring relationships are still rewarded by the government but that people have to ‘opt in’ to marriage’s legal rights instead of obtaining them by default. Chambers (2013), on the other hand, suggests having ‘piecemeal’ regulation where people can ‘opt out’ of certain rights they obtained (by default) through marriage.

Brake rightly flags up “transitional problems”; transition management will determine public receptivity with respect to announced liberalisations. In dealing with these problems, amalgamating both Chambers and Brake’s ideas may be fruitful. Suppose a legislative body passes a law on date X stating that all existing regulation with respect to marriage (now defined purely by individual preferences and private contracts between consenting individuals, if at all) will be annulled for those who get married at or after a certain future date, Y (the difference (Y–X) being the ‘grace period’).

So if the law is passed in 2015, and 2020 is the specified year that people who are married in or after are not subject to any government regulation whatsoever, then there is a ‘grace period’ of 5 years. For those people who married during or before 2015, we could apply Chambers’ proposal of letting them keep their default rights (so as not to impose change which they might not want) but giving them the option of ‘opting out’ of certain rights. For those who get married during the ‘grace period’, Brake’s ‘opting in’ option can be applied so engaged individuals’ lives don’t become complicated and their plans aren’t frustrated by policy changes. In this way, it would be a gradual, eased-in movement toward a purer, unadulterated freedom with respect to personal relationships.

So marriage is the preserve of the rich these days, is it?

This is something that helps to explain household income inequality in the UK. The idea that marriage is becoming something of a preserve of the rich.

Marriage is rapidly becoming the preserve of the wealthy, twice as common among those safely in the top tax bracket as among the least well-off.

Since 2001 those in the top social class, which includes company directors, military officers and university lecturers, have gone from being 24 per cent more likely to be married to 50 per cent more likely, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

By the time they have children, nine in 10 of the wealthiest Britons are married. However, for those on the minimum wage or less, the figure is about half.

Cue all sorts of worries about the stability of family life and so on. And that's not what we're about here: chacun a son gout is our response to those sorts of concerns. However, this does link very strongly with something else that people claim to worry about a lot, the increasing inequality of household income in the UK.

For we've had something else happening as well. It's not just that the higher income people are more likely to marry: they're also more likely to marry other higher income people than they were in the past. This is of course part of the great economic emancipation of women of the past 50 years. Careers are something for both sexes, not only one. And as it happens people tend to marry those following much the same career path that they are. This is known as assortative mating.

Plug these two things together: professionals marrying professionals, non-professionals increasingly not marrying at all. We're going to end up with a lot of two high income households and a lot of low one income households. Thus, inevitably, household income inequality is going to increase.

And, short of telling people who they may marry or not, there's not a great deal that can be done about this.

Some Reason on gay marriage

There's a lot to like about the Reason Foundation's new report, "The Argument for Equal Marriage". Its basic argument is:

1. Marriage has changed enormously over time. 2. Same-sex marriage is just another change, and on the scale of possible changes that can be made to "marriage", it is far less significant than changes that have already been made to the status of women. 3. "Traditional" marriage as defined by the monotheistic traditions has treated both women and gay people badly, and it is therefore not wise to use it as a basis for law or public policy.

As the report says,

Marriage has been put through the laundromat of the Enlightenment, two waves of feminism, and the civil rights movement: what we have now would be unrecognizable to Bracton or Blackstone or Jesus, and this is a good thing. If one were to isolate the greatest change in the definition of marriage over time, it would come down to a choice between the enactment of unilateral divorce (with its attendant effect on murder, suicide, and domestic violence rates) and the ending of coverture, granting women property rights in marriage and separate legal personality. Compared to these definitional shifts, equal marriage is peanuts.

Read the whole report. Last month I wrote for The Guardian that marriage, gay or straight, should be taken out of the hands of the state.