Do you want to marry?

Personally I couldn't care less if I ever get married or not. I'd be perfectly happy with a long term relationship without marriage being brought into it. But I will always voice support for the rights of other people to be able to marry.

I found that article (the bits of it I had the patience to read) quite infuriating.

We’re also seeing another alarming story surface: If gays are ready to get married and have children, the AIDS crisis must be over! Gay men shaped up after AIDS hit, or at least the smart ones did. Those responsible enough to survive realized that they wanted children, and promptly settled down into relationships that were monogamous and that, presumably, carried no risk of HIV contraction. Come on. We reject all the moralizing about parenthood, responsibility, and sexual practice that goes on in this story. Besides the obvious fact that the AIDS crisis is not over, in the US or abroad, we realize that parenthood and non-monogamy aren’t mutually exclusive.

So we shouldn't campaign for gay marriage because it will make people magically forget about HIV?

The gay agenda continually fights for increased hate crimes legislation that would incarcerate and execute perpetrators of hate crimes. We believe that incarceration destroys communities and families, and does not address why queer bashings happen.

So gaybashers shouldn't be punished and should be given a heart-to-heart with a cup of cocoa instead of a jail sentence? By all means address why homophobia exists and battle to eradicate it but why should that automatically mean that a homophobic perpetrator has free reign to bash someone's skull in without fear of recrimination?

Perhaps there's merit to the point that the campaign for gay marriage takes up a disproportionate amount of resources and time. But encouraging people to turn their back on campaigning for a civil right that's being denied to them, via a grossly misinformed and unbearably pretentious blog post, isn't the way to deal with that.

Bottom line (and it may be a gross oversimplification but it rings true for me): if you don't want gay marriage, don't get one. But don't stand in the way of those who want one and want to campaign for it.

It's a complicated one, I'm a conservative in my views and beliefs. Up until a couple of years ago I would have said that no I do not believe that any form of gay marriage/civil partnership is something that we need.

More recently I have come to the view that if I was with someone and it mattered to them then I would run with it to make that person happy.

My issues with it relate entirely to the effects that it may have on the constitution of the family. While lots of marriages now end in divorce and that's life I think that they have a better chance of going the distance than a gay marriage and for the benefit of children that may be involved this important. I know that may sound a bit hard and perhaps a bit right wing but there we go that's my own view

I cant wait to get married.
I dont see why the right to make a commitment to the person I love for the rest of my life should be taken away from me because Ive fallen in love with a woman.

I'd still want to get married if I were straight.

Its no rush, Im only 24 - I do want to get married eventually, and definitley will get married /CP before I have kids (if i decide to have them).

I used to be of the 'Civil Partnership is an insult - and an alternative to marriage' ideal - but since my parents divorced and both remarried via Civil Partnerships - theyre straight btw - I see that a marriage is a marriage regardless of wether its in a chapel or not.

Goodshape says
I understand historically women might have been sold off, essentially, into marriage to benefit a families influence, land/money deals, etc., but in modern society? Is oppression / misogyny still an issue for people?

Its not just that women were "kind of sold off into marriages".
Its that marriage was a way of keeping women in the home, away from paid work, access to money, or control of their own bodies and reproduction. It also silenced them by keeping any complaints or abuses as private matters to be kept hidden within the family.

Now you might say that is all historical and nothing to do with the kinds of liberal relationships we have nowadays. But it can be useful to know where certain practices and ideas came from if for nothing else than to figure out whether there are any remenants of the old ideas left in the practices.
Take the practice of the woman and it is always the woman, who changes her name to that of her male partner. There may have been an occasional male who has changed his name to hers but it is very unusual, why is that?
It comes from the practice of coverture which was was enshrined in the common law of England ( which covered Ireland as well at the time) and the United States throughout most of the 19th century. Coverture was a legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a woman's legal rights were subsumed by those of her husband. This was one of the argument for women not getting the vote untill the 1920s.

By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law: that is, the very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband: under whose wing, protection, and cover, she performs every thing;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coverture

Here in Ireland , until the early 1970s, the family law statutes were the same since the Victorian period, a time when women received little legal recognition and crimes such as domestic violence were silenced and hidden from the public.

Laws based on the premise that women’s rights were inferior to those of men survived in, and indeed even appeared on, the statute books.
Despite the constitutional adulation of marriage and motherhood, the legislature preferred to keep women in the home by foul rather than fair
means. Contraception was effectively illegal.
The economically powerless homemaker was denied access to free legal aid. No financial aid was available as of right to unmarried mothers,
deserted wives or prisoners’ wives, even when they were fulfilling their “duties” in the home. The battered wife and mother could not exclude
her violent husband from the home (which was
almost invariably his) except by resort to the most cumbersome procedures. If she fled the home, her husband had a right to damages from
anyone who enticed her away, or who harboured her or committed adultery with her
(Scannell 1988: 73)

http://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/Issue5/Issue5_pdfs/Mary_Ryan.pdf

Under the “marriage bar”, which was abolished in 1973, women working in the public and Civil Service had to resign their job as soon as they married. Many of these women lost their cover under the social welfare system when they left work, and either did not qualify for a State pension when they retired, or only qualified for a smaller State pension.
The recognition of marital rape as a crime entered Irish law in 1990. However according to the RCNI, this legal definition 'has done little to lift the lid on this crime'. http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=8520
So marriage has a bit of a history of institutional control of women and of men in other ways. Im just talking about women here, men were tied in other ways and suffered differently to women. In an unequal relationship of domination and control the humanity of even the one expected to be in the dominant position suffers.

You might say if marriage was that bad why "choose" to get married. If a woman did not get married and was not under the protection of some man like her father or brother she lived a much more impoverished life. Men automatically earned more than women. Most of the big paying jobs were in areas that were considered male preserves, rarely did a woman get into them. Even when women and men were doing the same work it was considered fair that men should be paid more because if he was courting a woman he had to pay and if he was married he had to provide for her and the family. Women looking for equal pay were regarded as a threat to the family and to this system. They wanted women to have to get married and to be dependant. So if you remained single you would probably have to forgo any intimate sexual relationships for the rest of your life as without contraception getting pregnant could wind you up in a laundry or impoverished and socially excluded. If you remained single - a spinster - you would stay on a lower wage than your male single counterparts thats if you could get and keep a job.


For some of us who were involved in or supported campaigns to end such discriminations it can be difficult to now get excited about marriage in any form without being suspicious that it is still a form of control. Marriage has financial rewards to keep you together and punishments to stop you from seperating or at least to make it difficult.
Some of the women who were active and or supported campaigns for womens rights are now active in the Marriage Equality campaign. I think they want to change marriage from the inside and I think thats what some of their detractors are afraid of.
Perhaps we need to look at what marriage has been historically to make sure we get rid of the negative influences of the past and then to look at why people are drawn to marriage, what it could offer us and create something new out of it.