How much do you know of family law? We really can not have the definitive and concrete discussion of marriage and family law, that Tentative insist upon in the Futurist Textbook, without first knowing what all you self governing people know of your laws. And yet no other subject is more important than this one, for people who are planning our future.
So let us begin- How are family and marriage laws made and changed?
Like all laws, they are spiritually created through philosophical theories of forms & ideals.
What I was looking for here, is the actual legal process. In the US each state determines its own marriage laws, and then the marriages are suppose to be respected by all states. However, gay marriages are not likely to be respected in all states.
I am not an expert on marriage law and maybe as self governing people we should be better informed? Marriage laws determines the age at which someone can marry, and this varies from state to state. Marriage law determines how material wealth accumulated during the marriages is divided and this variers from state to state. Right next to marraige law is determining what happens to the children, and how many of us pay any attention to that? If a man wants parental rights, he had better marry the mother of the child, and if he doesn’t want the responsibility of a child, he better make sure he doesn’t produce one. Which moves into child support law and things like having pay checks garnished, and ruined credit, and possibly loosing a driver’s license or going to jail. I am talking reality, because the laws are made.
Where is the person who started the Futurist Textbook and the person who demanded discussion of marriage, be defined and concrtete? Here is the demanded requirements for a marriage thread. Where are the replies?
One other thing that is very important for us to talk about is how the Great Depression and then WWII effected marriage law, and the efforts the US government made to reduce the divorce rate, and the change in education that increased the divorce rate, then technology greatly increased the power of bureaucrats in child protection agencies to take children, and the federal government made mandates that greatly reduces the chances of parents getting their children back. That is, marriage and family law is effected by the events of our lives. That makes the discussion of marriage and family law, one of the most important things we need to discuss when planning our future. For example is it a good thing for the state to take children from parents who use meth, and for the states to follow the federal mandate that these children be placed with the family or in an adopted home in a year? How about keeping files on people, and everyone deciding what happens to the child, basing that decision on what is in the files, written by a case worker who words everything to make herself look good?
Recently individual liberty and power have been crushed as the power has shifted from individuals, and from state governments, to the federal government, and there is talk of a one world government. If you want to protect individual liberty and power, you better start thinking things through, and start making in a plan for protecting individual liberty and power. You better consider marriage and family law, even more important than the price of gasoline, and take responsibility for your future, because failure to do so, can have very unpleasant consequences.
Athena,
You asked some specific questions that deserve answers, but if I have to deal with:
Now, this may be just the case, but it belongs in a philosophy or sociology forum. What ever pragmatic considerations might come of this sort of discussion is waaaaay down the line.
As you have noted, in a pluralistic society the concept of marraige is a bit fuzzy. It is even worse when trying to decide what is a family? There are the traditional in the past perspectives, but have little or nothing to do with the reality on the street. You speak of family values… Which values? How do we account for the millions of single parent families? Either the questions need to be narrowed down or there is little to be gained in discussion.
In general, I’m of the opinion that marraige and family are defined by the pervasive environment and not the other way around. In short, there is no “one way”, but many, which is why I introduced citizenship as the “umbrella” concept to unite all of the different ideas of what is marraige and what is family. It aims at the pragmatic results leaving people free to decide for themselves what is marraige or what is family. That a society may imply certain values necessary to gain citizenship is the umbrella statement of ideals in what is the social perspective of marraige and family.
To attempt to create a universal definition of marraige or family would require a fascist state of governance which is incompatible with a society of many different cultures, religions, and traditions. In short, such an attempt is to take the same route as did religion - with the same likelyhood of success.
How are marriage laws made and changed?
Give examples of marriage laws, and your opinion of if they are good or not.
A careless attitude towards marriage and family law is not a good thing. Allowing everyone to do as they please, is not a good thing. The reason for laws is to protect the people. There is talk of a one world government. Some of us also carry a since of responsibility for others. Women have very strong feelings about the wrongs done to women in other countries, and hopefully men who become aware of the problems will also care. Perhaps a more international understanding of the importance of marriage laws and how others deal with the need for law, will help our thinking about marriage and family law. Our new reality is awareness of the whole world and ability to communicate and do business with the whole world, and that means our thoughts of the future, demand more developed thinking than we are accustom to. The increase in of our consciousness can result in a new golden age, far better than any time in the past. Especially for women and children who have been treated very badly throughout history.
By the way, secular laws are based on reason, and when this is understood and the power is democratic, it is far from being a fascist state. I am afraid, your argument is lacking vitally important concepts.
Athena,
topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/marriage
marriage.about.com/cs/marriageli … arlaws.htm
This doesn’t even scratch the surface, as every state in the U.S. has different requirements.
I’m afraid that trying to talk about marraige law requires a great deal of specificity. Another way to look at marraige law is to look at divorce law, but it is also dependent on what state you are talking about.
This says nothing about the multiplicity of different laws in various countries, the issues involved in same-sex marraiges (where allowed).
Again, there are no universal laws that I am aware of. The definition of marraige and the applicable laws are more complex than we would like to think.
This is interesting. The Futurist Textbook is about about defining things and making concrete plans, right? What could be more important than marriage and family law? What? Are we taking responsibility for our self government and the future of our children and their children, or are we going to cope out by saying it is too complex, and leave all the decisions to someone else to make? Sincerely, I do not understand your interest in discussing the future, if that discussion does not include the most important aspect of our lives- our families and private property.
By the way, marriage laws are made by state legislatures, and we can talk to our legislators and tell them what laws we want, and we can write letters to editors, and otherwise contact people, and get the laws we want. This is the meaning of self government. However, before we take action, we need to talk about what is best, and make some agreements, and then work together to get the laws we want. Again, nothing is more important than marriage and family law, and no serious discussion of the future should neglect this most important aspect of our lives.
Tent and every other member on this forum have made one thing clear above all others:
If you want to make a “real” change, then you must force it upon others. Philosophy is dead in this forum…
There’s nothing left to discuss civilly. It’s time to get your hands dirty if you want something done right.
that is the way the world works.
welcome to the club.
-Imp
Don’t you cop out too. You are no better than anyone else if all you are going to do is expond on your romantic notions and avoid the real thinking. What do you think the future of marriage of family should be? What laws should be in place?
You all were educated for a technological society with unknown values, so that military and industrial technology could be rapidly advanced and those in charge didn’t have to do the real work of determining the human values we want and trying to get agreement, and spending valuable tax dollars on liberal education, instead of focusing on technology without values. Now you all are ripping apart the past, but have nothing to offer for the future? As hard as it is, you all must start taking responsiblity for self government and the future, or you loose your liberty and even the ability to think about matters of self government and personal responsibility for something other than paying taxes and the bank loan.
Do we want a future without marriage and family? If not, what do we want? How should we define family and what laws should be in order? This is something I do not I think we should leave of “human nature” because frankly, I think men have done a lousy job of being family people, and now many women are doing a piss poor job of it too because they are overwhelm, and how will our civilization be organized if there is no longer marriage and family ties? How would this effect us? Will the poverty and crime rates continue to climb, and if not, why not?
Life is a mix of living and dreaming. The only “real” thinking that takes place is between actions and thoughts together in “real time”.
one man & woman together
People are only persuaded by physical force – any law that forces people towards the goal (most efficiently) is the best one.
The harsh reality is that First Philosophy is dead & buried. You have seen that my voice meets silence when I try to “discuss” the future institution of marriage. So, in response to silence, I say that my will speaks the next words. The Battle of Ideas has already been underway since the turn of the new millennium.
It’s time to pay homage to the Founding [b]Fathers[/b] of America … who will carry out this task?
I do not.
Yes, you are correct, men in general are bad at raising a family, because they are weak. Now, women are over-burdened and without proper leadership. It is time to reinstate values of old. It is time that men take the helm of society once again. Only the most wise are the most capable.
The spiritual disease will take our bodies completely without proper aid. Drugs, frivolous sex, and demeaning pleasures can only stave the existential anxiety of humanity’s soul for so long – and then comes death ready & willing to catch us when we fall. Men have nowhere to go and nobody to lead them. Likewise, women suffer the secondary fate of man. The weakness of the male spirit overflows onto the female one.
When the hunters bring home no food from the forest, the whole village starves… 
Athena,
While this whole issue of marraige and family is important to the future, right now it is a high class problem. We have more pressing issues, issues that are more than likely to unravel the so-called traditional families even further. It is economic pressures that families (both two and single parent)are facing right now, and probably will face for at least the next decade.
The issue for the time being isn’t marraige laws, but how do we keep families together that are being torn apart from economic stress? Family values doesn’t put gas in the car to go to work or to stretch the food budget. If we can’t begin finding ways to deal with the immediate problems, we won’t need marraige laws.
I’ve tried to get this across multiple times and it is ignored. This discussion is starting in the middle. Is it important? Yes. But not right now. We haven’t even begun to see the effects of the energy problem. Give it another year and watch the inflation begin to soar as the cost of moving anything starts coming home.
People are going to be forced to get off their pink clouds and face up to a declining standard of living. We can look for ways to let down slowly, or we can wait for the crash. Family values need to wait until we can insure that there IS a family…
Wait a minute. You are the one who said we must be definitive and concrete. If you can do a thread about family and the pending economic crisis better than Real or myself, get on it and do it, because the pending economic crisis is why the issue of family is so important right now! Without family values making families strong, we are going to learn things about the fall of Rome and we ever expected. Perhaps it is a good thing to learn history by experiencing it, but today we have the Internet and we can come up a better plan than we have had in the past, and you aren’t taking advantage of it, regarding the most important issue- family. HARD TIMES MAKE FAMILY A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.
Do you realize when times get hard, men tend to abandoned their families? This happened a lot during the Great Depression and again during the recession of the 1970-80. That recession was set off by OPEC discovering it could control the cost of oil. When Reagan was in office, research on poverty disappeared from the abstracts and in its place was research on welfare fraud, then the findings of this research was used to slash domestic budgets and we poured money into military spending. (which brings us to Bush trying to keep control of the oil market with the military.) During the recession and under Reagan, Oregon cut welfare to two parent families, when they needed it most. This forced men to desert their families when family needed each other the most. Young families needed welfare, because there were no jobs, and their parents and friends were often hit as hard as they were, so there was no one for them to turn to for help.
This lead to a lot of children being born out of wed lock, and a weakening of family values, and swelling of the welfare population. And parents were dumping their teenagers on the streets, because teenagers are hard to live with, and when times are hard, who wants to support a mouthy, rebellious teenager? An unmarried teen with a baby got welfare. Grasps this, what unthinking people were doing just to survive the recession was making things worse. My home was full of the run-away and thrown away teens, so instead of arguing with me, I hope you question what I experienced and what know, because it is of value right now.
I believe things are going to get far worse than the 1970-80 recession, and knowing what has happened before, I feel desperate to strengthen family.
Today, one of my neighbors told me, a Senior Service financial planning, case worker, told her not to help her grown children, because she would loose food stamps if the government knew she was helping her grown children. This neighbor asked for help paying bills, because she blind, and now she understands my fear of government. She told Senior Services she no longer needs their help. Get it? If we don’t have a plan for helping each other, we are so screwed, because bureaucrats are working for their jobs, and pay check, not for us, and their thinking is equal to NAZI Germany, because that is the nature of the beast. They do not help us like family must help each other. People who live in government housing can not take in family if hard times hit, not even young daughters with babies. Our laws protect property owners not the poor, and government has made a lot of laws that have made family helpless to help family, and in a recession there are a lot of poor people. A lot of poor people, with bureaucrats and laws, over them who prevent family from helping family. Please, give what I am saying some thought!
We need to start bringing this together. I am very pleased that two males are responding.
Okay, during the Great Depression and the 1970-80 recession, men abandoned their families. The number one reason they abanboned their families is the sexism of men- support the family, and women- stay home and take care of everyone. The male self esteem crashes when he can not fulfill his role as provider and the stress on him is unbareable. While the female may deal with her stress by berating the man for not getting a job. Even if she is understanding, or gets a job, the man might not be able to bear how bad he feels for not fulfilling his role, and he may abandoned the family. If he leaves her, she has no morale support, and no help caring for the children, and this is devastating to her and the children.
As said above, Oregon slashed welfare to two parents families when they needed it most. The way all the assistant programs maintain through bad times, is raise requirements for help. We must not count on the present assistance programs and charity. During bad times it is much harder to help and the churches are running in the red. At the same time, family law that once made family responsible for family, has changed to preventing family from helping family, and persent values favor selfishness and oppose caring for family. THAT YOUNG MOTHER WITH A BABY COULD LOOSE HER BABY, THE BABIES DEATH IS NOT LISTED AS CAUSED BY HOMELESSNESS, BUT THE HOMELESS DOES LEAD TO THE CONDITIONS THAT KILL CHILDREN, OR MAKE THEM UNFIT FOR SOCIETY.
There is no force that can make people do the right thing. Only when they have a mind to do the right thing will they do the right things. Before we can change laws, we must build public agreement. The right agreements make laws unnecessary, and that is what makes liberty possible. This discussion which Real began, is the most important discussion we can have.
Athena,
To put it as simply as I can, there is going to be a great deal of pain as we shrink our standard of living, and families will be one of the hardest hit. Why? Because our society hasn’t the necessary infrastructure to cope with family helping family. Getting rid of senseless bureaucratic rules will be easy compared to adjusting to the physical necessities that are no longer in place.
Consider: How many families have the space necessary to care for either small children or elderly parents? The extended family living under one roof ended with WWII. The boomers are now reaching the age where many can no longer care for themselves. That is why assisted care and nursing facilities (warehouses for the dying) became so prevalent after WWII. Ask the people who WANT to care for their parents, but have no space for them. When both husband and wife work, or there is only one person in the house working, who provides the care? The same for grandparents raising grandchildren. Does the retirement moneys allow grandma to raise another brood? These things were either not considered or are now structured so that either the elderly or the children cannot receive the family care that they need. It is going to get worse. But slowly, families will begin pulling resources together and begin living as an extended family again. What will the familiy values be? One can guess but it will probably be a slow movement toward survival. The quality of life isn’t going to be what it was, nor the standard of living be as generous. Many of the most vulnerable will simply be forgotten or written off.
One of the biggest problems is that life expectancy has risen by decades, and the longer we live, the higher the cost and needs of medical attention. What families could manage in the 30’s simply isn’t possible today. We live too damned long. 
If you want to know where we are headed, look back into the beginning of the 20th century. What was family and family living then is the likely scenario as we move into the future. I agree that there are going to have to be some rather severe adjustments to how we think about what is family, but I also believe that it will be a reaction to pressures and not an active planning for… But you haven’t even seen the beginning of ugly. Not yet. About five to ten more years before people come down off their pink clouds and start looking for the best ways to preserve families and family life.
Sorry. Depressing isn’t it?
Athena,
Marriage has a few contexts, where it came from, where it is presently, and where it is going. Let’s fix this problem “now”.
#1 - Marriage must be reinforced as a bond between a man & woman. If a dog and cat want to marry each other, then that’s fine, let the argument be made by people who care about it. It does not nor will not affect our propositions… (that marriage should be between a man & woman)
People in America can’t bash a person for holding a “belief” that affects others without negativity. If you posit that you believe that marriage should be between a man & woman, then nobody has “due cause” to attack your beliefs at face value. This is the counter to homosexuality and polygamy. Beat them at their own game – fight fire with fire!
#2 - Marriage must be a spiritual law that is fought for through “civil expression”. In other words, “marriage” as a symbol must be taken in vehemently by religious faiths and those faiths must fight for marriages outside of their secularity! If you are Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or whatever, then it shouldn’t matter. If you have a “successful”, lifelong marriage, then you should be praised by a multitude of religious & moral institutions with or without direct participation in those religions. And why?
All religions are based on morality. All morality is based on marriage (monogamous or polygamous). If marriage falters, then a society falters with it. Where the bond between a man & woman wilts, so to does the expression it represents, humanity itself inside the womb of a mother. Religions must end the bickering and join one another for a common cause – to reinforce monogamous marriage inside the United States first – and elsewhere in the world afterward.
#3 - Marriage, civil or spiritual in context, should only be allowed to American citizens. (And citizenship should be earned, not handed out like lollipops to spoiled children.) Give our young men something to live for, something to fight for, and something to die for … a family. Without a family, the result is social nihilistic expression. Young boys kill their classmates, assassinate random people on the street, or strap bombs to their chest to prove a point.
That’s all I’ve got for now…
RU, how does it harm you if gays are allowed to marry? If they feel the same love towards each other that a man and a woman feel, why shouldn’t society recognize that?
I am not trying to “bash” you here, but I would like to understand why you would deny them that.
Many gay relationships are monogamous and outlast some heterosexual relationships. Their marriages could help strengthen society by building stable families, and isn’t that the goal? If they want to commit themselves to each other, shouldn’t they enjoy the same benefits and acceptance as anyone else?
Like I said, they can do whatever they want. I’m not going to argue for or against their motivations. I’m simply going to ignore it temporarily.
After that, I’m going to fight for marriage between a man & woman by ensuring that men & women who get married and have successful marriages are rewarded in a much higher degree than any other form outside of this. Since this is my personal belief, every American counter-argument about “rights” is negated. I am simply reinforcing and helping male & females wherever I can, and ignoring the rest.
Now, if you want my personal opinions about anything different than a monogamous marriage, then here it is:
It is damaging to children & society in ways most people do not understand (the long-term effects). The effects are ones that eventually harm people.
These harms may appear to be non-existent, but I see them and their results…
If a child is raised by a mother and not a father, then it is harmful.
If a child is raised by a father and not a mother, then it is harmful.
If a child is raised by two men, then it is harmful.
If a child is raised by two women, then it is harmful.
I don’t even need to say “how” or “why” unless I feel that I owe somebody an explanation, but I will briefly say why here. The bond between a man & woman is eternal and Christian monogamy is no fluke of culture & society. It is here in America for a reason although you or others may be very ignorant towards these reasons. It is here, because it is the “strongest” possible form of human relationships. It creates the “best” families. This is my subjective critique – you are entitled to your own – like I said the beauty of this logical setup is that it doesn’t need to be “objective”. It can default to whatever people want.
If you want to marry a woman and adopt children, then be my guest. Go right ahead. I won’t be the one walking your down the aisle, but I’m sure people who are like-minded will.
I will be walking my bride down the aisle. We will have children “the ol’ fashioned way”. Do you envy this? I know I do, because it is a representation of power that has been lost in recent history. American children are spoiled, loud, stupid, and obnoxious – and desperate times call for desperate measures. It’s time for little boys to be tall men and for little girls to be nice women.
Where things will eventually differentiate is between my children and yours, my wife & I will put our efforts and strengths into our children and you will into your own. The differences appear when a little girl goes to one of her two (homosexual) fathers and asks them for feminine advice. Are they fit to give it? Really…?
Hmmm, now follow this road and see where it goes.
In fact, myself and at least a couple I have cared about have been very negatively affected by homosexuality’s “love”…
I know of a daughter who grew up without a father and was sexually abused at one point, because she did not have the father figure in her life to warn her against such dangers.
I know of a young man who was sexually assaulted by a homosexual man, because the trusted him with friendship and was manipulated by the other (a child molester).
Because I cared about these people, homosexuality hurt me by me having to care for these friends…
I have seen many things in my young life and although I would like to say I am “stronger” for it, that is a cop-out. My soul aches in pain.