Why Is Marriage a State Function?

I've been wondering this for awhile now and have come to only one conclusion. The only reason why marriage is a state function is so the state has an excuse to tax you in a different way than you would otherwise be taxed as an individual. But in many places around the world people pay a marriage penalty. Does this make sense at all? I mean since when is an agreement between two people to take care of each other be something that is penalized? Should they not still be treated as individuals? Why is it up to some bureaucrat who can marry and who cannot? Why is it up to the bureaucrats to dictate where you and your loved can make this agreement? Why is it any of their business? Why do bureaucrats make the terms of agreement rather than the two individuals who are making the agreement? (ex. divorce laws)

These are the questions that ran through my head. What would happen if the government had no laws on marriage? Would we not be more free from their control to dictate our own lives rather than some bureaucrat looking for votes?

Now marriage has been used for a number of things by the state including giving people incentives to have children in order to build up their military in the past.

Just wanted to know some opinions from fellow ats members on why or why shouldn't the state be involved in making laws regarding marriage.

[edit on 16-12-2008 by Cool Hand Luke]

It's just a way for the government/ PTB parasite types to have a unwelcome hand in people's lives. It's been going on for centuries, not just for taxation, but indeed, for population influence/ guidance.

Marriage is nothing more than a contractual agreement. That is why one doesn't need a church to be married, just a judge. It's a way for the gov to collect more money.

Well, disputes has to be dealt with as well. Custody, awards, division of assets, etc. More often then not the state is brought in to settle.

Yeah this is a good point.
Real marriage does not need state permission or license or contract.
They have made it into this to take the true meaning away from it.
Just like they try and do to everything, take a good thing and try and make it evil.
Some religions and cultures living in the west don't take part in the state marriage thing.They have there own marriage.
The fact is a marriage is 2 people who betroth themselves to one another.
That's all it is.
It really annoys me when people say legally married and think it means something more than 2 people who have married themselves or had there religious people marry them.It is no different.In fact I would rather not be legally married in the sense that it is portrayed.Because it makes it meaningless.Turns it into nothing more than a contractual obligation.

reply to post by habeas corpuss


On the most basic level, about love and spirituality, no the state has nothing to do with it. I can understand the frustration of the government dictating.

It is in the event that the marriage dissolves, that the state gets involved. And it can get quite complicated, especially if there are children or more then one marriage.

In the old days the government wasn't involved because everything went to the husband, or the remaining spouse. Then it all went to the first born. it was a cut and dry system. Problem is, that if you want others to get an inheritence, it was up to the will of inheritor.

Or families don't want estates that have been part of the family for many generations. to get into the hands of someone else's family.

These days, even if the family has left a will, people fight it. Look at what happens when a lot of money is involved like with Anna Nicole Smith.

I have seen things get really ugly, even when someone is trying to be fair.

So lawyers get involved and what do lawyers enforce? The laws.

There is your connection.

I have been pondering if there is anyway that these things can be settled without the state getting involved, but I don't see how.

The state is involved in marriage for two reasons: eugenics and taxes.

Many states still require the most primitive form of eugenics (don't confuse eugenics with euthanasia) -blood screening, which was originally built around finding those state undesirables (those with blood borne pathogens and, in early versions, from a 'troubled' heredity) and keeping them from reproducing.

It also took the guise of preventing races from intermarrying.

The second issue is taxes. People get discounts for being married, and you pay a fee to get married initially.

But tracing it back, before the current incarnation of the income tax code, you do find the state denying marriage licenses to those they would prefer to see die off. You can trace this to one man, Sir Francis Galton.

As Wikipedia writes,

Galton invented the term eugenics in 1883 and set down many of his observations and conclusions in a book, Inquiries into human faculty and its development.[4] He believed that a scheme of "marks" for family merit should be defined, and early marriage between families of high rank be encouraged by provision of monetary incentives. He pointed out some of the tendencies in British society, such as the late marriages of eminent people, and the paucity of their children, which he thought were dysgenic. He advocated encouraging eugenic marriages by supplying able couples with incentives to have children.

Not quite the smoking gun we're looking for, until we find this interesting piece in the New York Times from 1912. The headline reads BISHOPS APPROVE PLAN TO APPLY EUGENICS TO MARRIAGE. I recommend reading the article.

Thanks to the Chicago politica machine , the ideas were exported nation wide, until people like Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger climbed aboard the eugenics wagon, making marriage and reproduction a national issue.

Succinctly, because the state retains the right to kill you they can also exercise lesser powers -including who you marry and breed with.

The body politic is the base of the government. Every person legally entitled to vote is the first and most important level of government.

The basic unit of the government is the individual. But the actual original contract of the people with society is through marriage. This is the fundamental unit of the work of the people within society, and therefore the state.

If everything in the world came to a grinding halt tomorrow, and every thing fell apart, and nothing was left, no infrastructure, every coupling torn assunder - by this time next month marriage would exist again. And in existing, it becomes the original need and impetus for infrastructure.

People get together. They settle with others. They WORK together at the work of being together and alive, a unit. That unit in conjunction with the other units of familial structure begin to do things together that are better and easier than doing alone. This is what Infrastructure is. Children are born, requiring more infrastructure - infrastructure being the embodiment of those things that are easier and simpler and better to do together for the benefit of the most members of that community.

The breakdown of these units of governance, society and family is a community problem which is either administered to, or more simply enforced to maintain to lessen the community destructiveness of the breakdown.

While the individual is the basic unit of the government, the basic unit of the existience and the work of the government is the married couple.

Therefore, government will always have laws about it.

[edit on 2008/12/21 by Aeons]

I find this question odd. Marriage is the norm for human families, though it doesn't work for everyone. Athiests and agnostics represent large numbers of the population.