Private Marriage

I've just come across this very interesting idea in a book, which is to privatize marriage.More specifically, that would mean removing the terms marriage, married, husband, wife, spouses and the like from any laws or government policies. Marriages would be performed and recognised by private organisations alone, with no influence whatsoever from and on the state.

To motivate this chance, the authors first dwell into the very meaning of marriage. Curiously enough, just a few weeks ago I'd seens this TED talk on "The lost art of democratic debate" where the speaker stands behind the idea that, in order to argue about moral and justice over any activity or entity, one must first medidate on that activity or entity's essential nature, its purpose. In the particular case of marriage, we clearly have a problem of ambiguity or disparity. Marriage is a symbol of union, of affection, of love. On the other hand, it is also a civil state grating its holders special benefits, including but not limited to economical ones. This mess is the source of much of the controversy surrounding marriage nowadays. Does the state have anything to do with my love for someone? Does the catholic church have anything to do with how much taxes I pay?

Take same-sex marriage for instance. Some private entities, such as the catholic church, want to reserve the right to decide who can get married while people feel that being deprived of the possibility to marry is an unfair source of discrimination, due to the social nature of the cerimony. Privatization would solve this issue. Private entities would keep the right to choose which marriages to recognise but, since there is no public recognition of that status, no harm would from that. A tennis club could decide to only hold and recognise as valid marriages the ones involving two professional players. Whatever. For the state, one could have a different status linked only to legal privileges/duties. In fact, I believe Portugal already has something of the sort called União de Facto, although I don't think it comes with the same package of rights/responsabilities as traditional marriage.

This would solve a very silly trait of current marriages, which is to mix taxes with love or union. In fact, as the authors point out, no sane people would come up with marriages as they are, were they invented today.

Still, we can go a bit further. Let's focus on the public part of the now divided marriage, hereon named union. Should it inherit all responsabilities and rights that marriages are entitled to this days? Perhaps not.

Some of these are related  to sharing goods and responsibilities; these should probably stick. For instance, when a spouse has a dementia the other is entitled to take some decisions for him. When one of them dies the other has a share of this inheritance. These kind of properties would still make sense in the union entity.

Others, however, are directly related to economical issues. Consider, for example, some kinds of tax reductions that married couples are entitled to. Should this be kept? The state should only provide tax reductions, or other kinds of economical incentives, to behaviours that are worth encouraging, from the state's perspective. Should the state care about people being together? Well, if we consider that the state's ultimate goal is to make everyone happy and that couples are happier than single people ( are they? ) then we could argue it should. Still, I believe you'll agree with me when I say that's a long shot. What the state should, and does care about, are birth rates. Marriage was once (a long time ago, in a kingdom far, far away...) connected to having children and it thus made sense to encourage it. Nowadays, you can have marriages without children and children without marriages. You can even have both at the same time! Moreover, many countries (such as Portugal actually) allow same-sex marriages but do not allow those couples to adopt children or give birth by artificial means (in the case of women). In this situation it would not make sense, in my opinion, to give any economical incentive for unions.

Marriage will probably never be privatized in the terms proposed, since it is a very touch subject (which politicians often want to avoid). And yet, perhaps it should...


Filipe Baptista de Morais