Re: is marriage extropic?

From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Mon Nov 13 2000 - 10:46:49 MST


"J. R. Molloy" wrote:
>
> Greg Burch (an extropic attorney) writes,
>
> > I can think of a lot of "extropic" people who HAVE maintained long-term
> > stable pair-bonds: Einstein (albeit after one failed try, and then in a
> > fairly ideosyncratic way) comes readily to mind, as well as Salvador
> Dali,
> > Thomas Jefferson (until his wife died), Eric Drexler . . . just to name
> three
> > other random examples . . .
>
> Okay, we can probably cite an ample number of examples on both sides of
> wedlock. As extropy accelerates, will marriage gain or lose adherentsand/or percentage points? As people live longer and healthier lives it
> seems to me they will tend to include more than one pair-bond, and so they
> will extend their families (their significant others) beyond the tenets of
> marriage. IOW, the trend toward dissolved marriages will continue (as it
> has for the last three decades).

Sure, but how long is the average duration of a marriage? How has this duration
changed? What about the quality? Prior to women's lib, it seems the prevailing
wisdom was that 'quantity has a quality all its own', and screw it if some of
the women didn't enjoy being brood mares, or if too many kids died from abuse
and neglect. While I agree that some states make it TOO easy for couples to
divorce, because marriage is WORK, and kids should be the primary priority of
concern for both parents, not jobs, careers, personal development, politics,
etc. I don't mind homosexual domestic partnerships at all, but I think that the
bar for both marriage and child bearing is too low. Marriage laws in most states
are essentially permitting two illiterates to incorporate as a partnership
without any business experience or training, no assets, and allows them to
assume major 18 year debts (children) every nine months with no credit record or
proof of ability to pay, and the ability to declare bankruptcy on those debts
while retaining ownership of the assets. If that's not a recipe for disaster, I
don't know what is.



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