Ethical Slut - Dossie Easton [95]
Marriage, as it now stands, is the inevitable outcome of government imposing its standards on personal relationships, legislating a one-size-fits-all prescription detailing how people in sexual or domestic relationships ought to run their lives. Here in California, for example, we have community property laws, which means that whatever income or debt either spouse creates during the marriage belongs to both spouses. We know a woman whose soon-to-be-ex-husband deliberately threw them into bankruptcy because she was planning to leave. Other states have laws just as arbitrary: in some places, if you live together for seven years you’re married whether or not you want to be, by what is called, with startling narrow-mindedness, “common law.”
Marriage is, we’re told, a sacrament—a loving ritual where your faith and your community bless your union. Why, then, is our government, the one that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” requiring us to get marriage licenses?
If marriage is sacred, as we think it is, why is legal recognition of a relationship, along with privileges like health insurance and inheritance, restricted to those who are willing to shape their lives to conform to somebody else’s design?
If we ran the world, we would abolish marriage as a legal concept, allowing people to enter into contract relationships as allowed by the perfectly adequate laws that already govern other forms of legal partnership. Sample contracts could be provided by institutions, attorneys, churches, publishers, and support networks. Those who wished to perform marriage as a sacrament could do so under the auspices of whatever religious or social institution felt like a good fit for them. Under such a system, no agreement would be taken for granted; sexual exclusivity, money sharing, inheritance, and all the other issues currently covered by inflexible marriage laws could be consciously chosen. We really like conscious choices.
There is, of course, always a need for laws about the basic responsibilities adults have for children and other dependents. Tax breaks and other support should still be available to those caring for children and dependent elders, who really need them. It’s sort of like supporting public education: we have a hard time imagining a better use for our tax dollars than meeting the needs of the disabled, the aging, and our next generation.
Love is a wonderful thing, and we think it would be even more wonderful if we all acted like responsible adults and entered into thoughtful arrangements about the physical and financial foundations of our lives. If we really took care of business instead of letting a pro forma piece of paper dictate our decisions for us, we would be much freer to love in whatever ways fit for us.
Special Challenges for Couples
The commonest form of relationship in our culture, and many others, is the couple: two people who have chosen to share intimacy, time, and perhaps space and possessions for now and the foreseeable future. While couplehood has a great deal to be said for it—it’s a lot of work building a life, and many hands make light work—it also offers some special challenges.
The ideas in this section are written for two-person couples for the sake of simplicity, but most of them apply to threesomes and moresomes as well.
COMPETITION
One problem that sometimes