There is no way to establish a norm fairly. Previous standards in which women had no rights, and were literally property, was the norm before. We don’t need norms. We don’t need standardization. We don’t need rulers and governing bodies. We just need free individuals peacefully cooperating and consenting to their partnerships. The rest will sort itself out.
Discussion
Marriage itself is a religious institution. The church has no social power anymore so marriage has no meaning anymore. All the social power belongs to the state; so currently marriage is between you, your partner and the state. Yikes.
I would consider "marriage" currently more of a domestic partnership with the state overseeing your relationship.
I haven’t looked into the history enough to conclusively say this but it seems that marriage is inherently statist. It has all the qualities of control you’d expect from extortionists. Women became the property of her husband and took on his last name. Her father would get some type of payment. What other reason did anyone have for writing a marriage contract before? Taxes? It seems like it was just for record keeping. Whether it’s government, a monarch, or the church. It all seems to serve the same purpose.
Tax and insurance are some mild benefits. I think some sort of dowry system like in the East is much more constructive than the Wests system currently.
The first thing people do when they get married now is head to the DMV.
The first thing people do now when they get divorced is get a lawyer.
I don't see how the church is involved.
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There are two natural forms of contracts between the sexes: marriage and prostitution.
Both predate the church and the state. Those began mediating and standardizing the contracts, to prevent men from killing each other and to limit the amount of alms needed for abandoned women.
yes, before there was a physical church there was the spiritual one that is part of our nature, and that is the source of law, some call it "wisdom"
Right that mediating has totally messed the whole system up. There is no "marriage" in the West anymore, it's all performative.
I think the standard contracts have just worn out their usefulness and we need new contracts. Standards are important for establishing norms and defining vocabulary.
What is a wife? What can a wife reasonably expect? What can your friends, family, church elders, and neighbors expect from your marriage and when should they intervene because you have veered too far off the path?
What sacramental marriage adds, in a practical manner, is a dramatic decrease in the number of dissolved marriages.
I also think that, if the church wants to "reclaim" marriage from the state, they should be providing standard civil contracts and mediation, otherwise there will be discord in the church.
the Church, in all of its break-away sects, is all fully infiltrated by Satan, IMO, though not necessarily all the way to the edges at the parish level
that's why there literally has to be the return of the leader to restore its original function here in the physical universe (and according to several accounts that means migrating off planet for a thousand year period at least, due to the destruction that is coming very soon)
We have to make do, until He returns, tho. Otherwise, we're just another Armageddon cult.
well, i firmly believe that this is coming very soon and the impending collapse of the earth's magnetic field and the disasters that will ensue really is within our lifetime, and you can't get that information without reading apocrypha and other science including archaeology, geological and astrophysical scientific research, and even UFO contact accounts
if He isn't coming soon, we are all gone anyway, if we didn't do our research and position ourselves for surviving the ocean washing away the land all again, and you know that The Lord promised that there would never again befall His people such an event way back as Noah landed the ark on the first patch of dry land, you really should read The Book of Enoch for more detail on that story too, enoch appears in The Book of Jubilees as well and the provenance of the text dates it as at least as old as the rest of the Old Testhament
maybe i've got a bit of an odd, scientific version of christianity... the Mormons also have some funny stuff in there that hints at the idea of advanced technology and they make some interesting prescriptions that could not have been understood until the appearance of modern chemistry
anyway, as you well know, it says repeatedly all over the place that as the time nears the seals are opened
You sound like a statist lol we don’t need all these things predetermined. Let people create partnerships based on consent and everything will work itself out. Keep it simple lol anyway good talk everyone! I gotta get some sleep gn 🫂
And don't get me wrong I'm all for commitment, loyalty and marriage. Those are great things. But why would I involve the state or the church in that with a contract?
People should get married without there being a contract involved.
Yeah, nope. That just pushes the stress of dealing with potential messy split-ups onto the wider population and leads to societal chaos and decay.
Let's not make hookup culture the norm.
Marriage was always a social, ethical and moral contract. Those things are gone. I wish it was not the case.
These seemed more like social contracts. I’m not disagreeing but I see it a little different. When I watch weddings, especially eastern weddings, they are very clearly ritualistic traditions that have been passed down. They put these fancy dresses on and do these specific dances in front of the couple. It’s literally like the tribe is all coming together and acknowledging that only Peter gets to fuck Susan. We do this to keep peace in the tribe because all the men were killing each other over the women. So now instead of having one alpha get all the women, like in the animal kingdom, we have this marriage contract.
We're heading towards the "animal kingdom" type world. In the West at least.
And we can thank the money printer for that smh
Oh for sure.
I'm early 30s and 25% of my good guy friends have already been put through the divorce wringer. No other reason beyond "my feelings changed". Marriage is dead.
Because the underlying contract doesn't fit the nature of marriage and is skewing incentives.
Unpopular opinion:
Wives are a form of human property by Nature, (as are all legal dependents). They're the highest form of property, tho, because they aren't transferrable and they have rights specific to their station, including the right to renounce their station.
Men are expected to protect them and provide for them because they are "his". They can't be his unless he can lay claim to them, in some way, through legal title or Natural Law.
The feminists are actually right about this and pretending otherwise just makes us sound illogical. It says it, right in the Bible:
“You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor's.”
-- Exodus 20:17
yes, employees are property also, within the terms of the contract and that absolute right to renounce
slavery is a violation of that important part of the deal
apprentices are also like this, , something in between a child and servant
Yes, German apprenticeship laws has them halfway between a child and an employee, leaning more toward child, the younger they are.
That's why employees are commonly called "human resources" or "human capital".
Have you seen my neighbour's ox though? I'm coveting that beast 24/7. I'm going to hell I know but I've come top terms with it.
I don’t believe in religion so for me, it’s easier to say that you are not property. I think if you can disagree with your master then you are unfit to be property. You can sugarcoat it however you want and call it the sanctity of the divine union. But if you are property then you don’t have the right to leave the marriage. You don’t have the right to refuse any commands he gives you. Property do not have rights. My car doesn’t have the right to stop serving me.
Also a lot of these words you are throwing out don’t mean anything. Like “legal” and “law.” These words don’t mean anything. They are mental conceptions. Legal and law are just opinions put forth by members of congress, senate, etc. These branches of government are made up of individual human beings. That means the words “law” and “legal” are just opinions of individual people. They are not facts. They are not objective. They are not moral. They are mental conceptions. People made them up, they mean nothing. They’re as real as Santa. But people with guns force you to believe in those words. They don’t force you to believe in Santa.
Late to the convo, but I thought the below excerpt from "The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage" by Will Durant fits in. Pretty interesting read. Note that in the paragraph above he does say that we must remind ourselves how little we really know of its origins.
I do agree that if a pre-nup is used both parties should retain they're own legal counsel.
I like the idea of the multi-sig. 
Yes, polygamy is described in the Old Testament, but Christ raised marriage to a sacrament linking the groom as "Christlike" and the bride as "Churchlike", and obviously Christ only has one Church and the Church only has one Christ, so it must remain monogamous.
indeed, i just got finished reading The Book of Jubilees, which is a much more detailed account of the contents of Genesis and Exodus, and more than a few times there is some strange things involving marrying cousins and multiple wives, not only that, several repeats of the same theme of story as cain and abel, but the one about the mother persuading the son to "steal the blessing" from the old man using pretend hairy strap-ons lol
i mean, seriously, the jews refusal to recognise the Messiah was truly the end of them, what remains now is just the synagogue of satan, at least in the formal, institutional sense, not necessarily the spirit of many of the practitioners
Jews have their own covenant.
They should all convert to Christianity, to be on the safe side, but I think that about everyone who isn't baptized.
well, supposedly the proportion of saved vs damned, according to what The Apocalypse of Yajnavalkya indicates (i forget now - have read it twice but can't remember the justification for this) is the same as it was during the War in Heaven, ie, 1/3 are fallen
so that actually suggests that it's not about which religion you follow, it's that you follow the Law that Christ brings, and Jesus and numerous other writers in the New Testament say this as well, even the Qur'an says that who follows the Law of Allah is a muslim (one who follows the way of peace)
Interesting perspective. I'm not religious, but I can see how the interpretation describes a monogamous partnership.