Position: Government Policies Should be Consitent with Alleged Intentions

Our society is constantly in the midst of various debates involving the use of public policy to preserve, strengthen, and encourage the tradition of the insitution of marriage, particularly in the name of perpetutating marriage as the basis of the familial environment. Included within this debate are the controversies over the legality of same-sex marriage, adoption policies for same-sex couples, the role of the government in mandating marriage, and countless other issues.

Policy-makers continually cite as the basis for the value of marriage, that married people lead longer, healthier, happier lives--and most importantly provide the most stable environment for developing a family, particularly when it comes to childrearing.

But too many inconsistencies arise when considering this claim in the context of policies as they actually, currently exist.

It is no longer the case that marriage and childrearing necessarily go hand in hand. Marriage means something different in society now than it did in the past, and married couples do not necessarily have children in mind when they form their own eternal union--yet they can still benefit from the rights associated with marriage for the alleged purpose of strengthening childrearing environments. So to say that rights are associated with marriage to indirectly benefit children is misleading, especially while trivializing any other childrearing institution in comparison.

Currently, legally recognized marriages only include unions between a man and a woman. But there are many other circumstances (such as single-parent homes, cohabitors, same-sex couples, and even polyamorous relationships) under which children are raised, and further disadvantaging those institutions is not going to eliminate them from our society but only further hinder the maximally successful development of the children of those families. If the primary concern really is the good of the developing children in our society, if the government believes children are already at some disadvantage by being raised in non-married homes, then they would not further deprive them of rights and benefits that would only aid their upbringing. They would instead adapt policies to benefit these alternative circumstances.

This observation and (consideration) brings me to the conclusion that many of these motivations and policies are based on a prejudices and bias that marriage is really the most conducive situation for childrearing, when this really may not be the case.

IF this is the case, the government should focus on strengthening the possibilities that the alternatives offer, so that they may offer the same success as that which we associate with our "traditional" sense of marriage.

The government cannot enforce policy solely on wishful thinking, but needs to actually consider the reality of the situation at hand. It needs to get away from the obsession with marriage--which may not even necessarily be most conducive for family anyway. It's not nearly as much about pragmaticism as it was in the past as it is about love and personal fulfillment at this point--and the law cant dictate that. The law still speaks to something that's past, and the wellbeing of society should not be jeopardized simply because of the government's bias toward a faltering institution.