Christopher C. Roberts on Wendell Berry's Marriage Reversal:
Consider: If marriage is grounded in the procreative potential of sexual difference, then it is grounded in something prior to the human will, and therefore prior to positive law. If marriage is the way we humanize and acculturate mammalian mating, then marriage has a rationale with which government interacts but which government does not invent.By contrast, if marriage is grounded merely in legislative fiat”if government invents rather than recognizes marriage”then all marriages, heterosexual and otherwise, are premised on political largesse. When a government purports that the form of marriage is something it legislates rather than discerns or inherits, then that government is in everybody’s bedroom. In such a society, you are married only if Leviathan says you are.
Is this a correct observation? The new
legal definition of marriage not only makes the
connection with mating and biology optional but also
seems to affirm that, as far as the government is concerned, any link
between marriage and sex is incidental. This argues against the conclusion
"that government is in everybody's bedroom."
Nevertheless Christopher C. Roberts may be right to wonder why a quasi-libertarian like Wendell Berry should welcome government involvement in the making of marriages now that this has become quite unnecessary.
The rightful allocation of children to responsible adults can happen via birth certificates and children's identity cards (parent 1, parent 2, maybe parent 3 - not all places need to be taken). There would be no need to specify the relationship the adults have with each other or the child, thus guarding against prejudice in favour of mixed-sex or committed relationships.
Couples can enter into open-ended (until further notice) committed partnerships with legal and financial implications which the state can recognise and regulate by way of civil partnerships which could be same-sex or mixed-sex and need not discriminate against siblings and other close relatives.
There is no need on this scheme for the government to have any interest in bedrooms, maybe except for taxing empty ones. The state could limit its interest in sex to enforcing the two rules on which most people agree: sex must be consensual and must not involve children.
Nevertheless Christopher C. Roberts may be right to wonder why a quasi-libertarian like Wendell Berry should welcome government involvement in the making of marriages now that this has become quite unnecessary.
The rightful allocation of children to responsible adults can happen via birth certificates and children's identity cards (parent 1, parent 2, maybe parent 3 - not all places need to be taken). There would be no need to specify the relationship the adults have with each other or the child, thus guarding against prejudice in favour of mixed-sex or committed relationships.
Couples can enter into open-ended (until further notice) committed partnerships with legal and financial implications which the state can recognise and regulate by way of civil partnerships which could be same-sex or mixed-sex and need not discriminate against siblings and other close relatives.
There is no need on this scheme for the government to have any interest in bedrooms, maybe except for taxing empty ones. The state could limit its interest in sex to enforcing the two rules on which most people agree: sex must be consensual and must not involve children.
