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Entry: The State, Marriage, and Contract Law Link: http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/a_thought_on_the_state_and_marriage#27612 Post contents: My point above was not to oppose gay marriage, per se. Nor was my point to defame the honor of all men as pigs. But to my critics, I must ask: why does nearly every society regulate sexuality? Why are so many single moms perpetually unmarried and unlikely to get married? Why is marriage on the decline? Why, with marriage on the decline, are so many men finding it so easy to get laid on a regular basis without responsibility? So, even if "legal blandishments" never crossed anyone's mind while getting married, the lack of real social and legal benefits to a lifelong and potentially very expensive commitment may cross someone's mind if he's getting the milk without having to buy the cow, so to speak. Or is this news? My chief point was to show that the "state being in the mariage business," particularly by making it somewhat hard to enter and (in the past) very hard to leave, has analogs in the contract law, particularly areas of law that relate to third party effects, formality, and the prohibition of certain contracts on the grounds of their impact on third parties. Since any contract is an implicit call for state enforcement, it's perfectly reasonable for the state to enforce some contracts and not others for any number of reasons including ease of enforcement and social benefit (or cost) to making a particular contract legally enforceable. It is a longer, more detailed argument to say why the western marriage arrangement is the ideal and that this also implies something about how the law and society in general should treat so-called gay marriages. I realize my point above was more circumscribed. Of course, these mental gymnastics of explaining and defending marriage (as in the mental gymnastics of dealing with any complicated taboo) are important if you don't believe long tradition is reason enough to keep marriage as it is in the absence of some compelling reason for change, as I do. Sent at: 2009 01 09