LogFAQs > #979729983

Dikitain posted...

Kind of, it was more about the combining/transferring of wealth from one generation to the next. Problem was the best bargaining chip that a lot of people had was "Here, impregnate my daughter and force her into indentured servitude!" Combine that with the fact that being gay 5000 years ago was a foreign concept and you have marriage as we know it today.

So yea, it still surprises me that an outdated, sexist, homophobic practice not only still exists today, but that the LGBT community has actively fought to participate in it rather than abolish it altogether.

Really, it's only been since about the 50's-60's that treating wives as servants/baby machines stopped being the norm, and that's after centuries of marriage transitioning from being a political arrangement to carry on aristocratic bloodlines to being something that common folk did out of love. The institution evolved with that transition to be more about romance and to have more relevant financial considerations for non-nobility, so by the time it stopped being primarily about dudes having a housekeeper they could sleep with, there was enough value beyond that for it still to be desirable for people. There is still practical value in having a defined set of rules for how resources are shared within a couple (which a prenup supersedes, but having a default is still helpful both for people that aren't savvy enough to figure out a reasonable prenup and to establish social norms for what spouses should do for each other if a marriage falls apart) and offering tax breaks to disincentivize bachelor life (which strains infrastructure significantly more than living in pairs does), plus there's the emotional value of making a formal commitment to each other and celebrating that with loved ones. It's also necessary to do at least something to legally identify your partner as family in the event of an accident or critical illness, and while there are options other than marriage to do that, lumping it in with marriage is one less thing to think about when you decide to commit to a partner long-term.

The history isn't particularly pretty and the concept of common-law partnerships makes a lot of the practical benefits kind of redundant, but marriage has evolved over time to still have value to people, and people enjoy that value (and don't want to be excluded from it, in the case of LGBTQ marriage). That appeal does generally seem to be waning, especially with the growing number of couples that have no interest in having kids, but even just as a formality it's still something plenty of people like and will continue to like.

Mostly, people can decide for themselves what marriage means to them. Those who like the idea will like getting married and will therefore do so, those who don't, won't (unless somehow forced into it, but that's another problem).