I'M A BIT UNSETTLED TO DISCOVER THAT SOME PEOPLE ARE TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY! IT'S MEANT TO BE FUNNY -- BUT THOUGHT-PROVOKING.
Here are totally outrageous statements concerning marriage. They respond to a speculative idea about the Sharia-type draconian view of marriage as ONLY the legal and religious union of two people WITH children genetically produced by those two people. This is an IF. I’m certainly not recommending these statements, but I think some people are hiding them in the backs of their minds. Some friends have suggested that it is dangerous to even post this list because I will be attacked or -- on the other hand -- that someone will propose they actually be passed.
"Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII"
This is inspired partly by the US Supreme Court arguments and partly by the PBS and BBC show, “Wolf Hall,” about the necessity of producing an heir for the throne of England. But it is also suggested by the idea that there are far too many children in the world and far too many people who have children without providing for them or even any prospect or intention of protecting them.
1. Children without parents who can successfully raise them to self-sufficiency are a burden to society and society cannot succeed without families that take care of themselves. Therefore all marriages, as an obligation to society, must fulfill their duties of procreation or be dissolved.
Two-genome cat
2. If marriage can only be between a male and a female, then all persons who are neither or both are forbidden to marry. To get a marriage certificate, all persons must be examined by a physician to assure they have the proper genitals and that each genome is only one sex. (No “chimeras” with mozaic genomes may marry. Neither can gender be reassigned surgically.)
3. Since the mission of the institution of marriage is the production and successful raising of genetic descendants, then all babies must be tested to make sure the milkman didn’t deliver their precursor sperm. (So far anonymous surveys of genomic information acquired for other purposes, indicate that maybe a tenth of children are not related to their supposed fathers.) If a child is not provably descended from his purported father, the marriage is voided. Also, since the genomes are right there at hand, people who have faulty genomes may not marry since medical costs will be high.
Caster Semenya
4. If children are neglected or abused, the marriage is voided.
5. There will be no adoption. Children who have no genetic parents (orphans) will be killed. The cheapest method should be selected since the point is to save money.
6. If one parent is lost through divorce or death, the other parent may not remarry unless all children from the first marriage are killed.
7. If all the children in a family die, the marriage of their parents is voided.
8. A woman who does not produce children within a marriage by the time of her menopause, will be killed.
9. Any man who is not provably the father of a child and married to the mother will be killed, with the proviso that if the man chooses to live, he can be a soldier or a priest. (Soldiers may have as much sex as they like as it is an aid to violence, but priests may not marry since they are already married to God.)
10. No one who does not have the means or capacity to support a family will be allowed to marry. No one may delegate the task of raising children to others, either paid or not.
11. Love has nothing to do with it. Life is a matter of obligations fulfilled. The group is primary.
12. The other obligations of the family, such as legal responsibility for property or taxation, must be managed by other laws without reference to marriage. Likewise, criminal matters concerning one or the other parent or the children, must be resolved in courts who do not consider marriage or descent.
13. Religious systems must manage their concerns without reference to these marriage and family laws. So long as they don’t conflict with the parent/child laws, no regulation by the state of religious rules will be undertaken. This includes abuse so long as the child doesn’t die or its ability to procreate is not impaired. But see #4 above.
14. Sex is not important except for the purpose of producing children. Sex for enjoyment or domination is not allowed. (But see #8 above.) Taunting people by depicting intense coitus between beautiful people is cruel and not allowed.
15. Sex or marriage between species are irrelevant. Don’t even think about it.
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These ideas are meant to sound extreme and shocking, but they are not so far off from reality at both ends of the spectrum.
In a sci-fi tale about extreme authoritarianism, the plot driver is usually the desire to escape domination. The stick is unreasonable punishment and the carrot is love. Are we so far from that? Do our children survive if they don’t have functioning families? Are mothers or fathers who ignore their children, even in the face of extreme need, married at all? Is there more to the definition of mother, father, family, son, daughter, than these scientifically ascertainable concepts?
Is there more to marriage than the binary of female and male entitlement to each other’s bodies and households?
Marriage licensing is relatively recent, and became widespread after the Civil War. Before then, marriages were recorded in parish records and witnessed by congregations. There were three reasons states intervened: One was biological and regulated the permissible degree of consanguinity. Another was age of consent. The third was medical, usually to halt transmission of syphilis. It might be best to get government out of the marriage business entirely, and return it to the realm of religious congregations or private contract. Or for governments simply to establish age of consent, and definitions of incest and let it go that that.
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