On what used to be called marriage

On what used to be called marriage back in the days before marriage was something disgusting that gays did to épater les bourgeois.

My personal observation is that every successful marriage is quietly and furtively eighteenth century, so thoroughly politically incorrect as to be illegal.

And a little reflection reveals that the New Testament/eighteenth century form of marriage, in which both parties give consent to sex once and forever, and the wife submits to the husband, is simply the only kind that can work.

All is fair in love and war.

Love is a battlefield

Love is war.

If the male does what is best for himself, and the female does what is best for herself, the outcome is likely to be unsatisfactory for both parties.  To solve this problem, the New Testament commands an indissoluble contractual commitment to mutual support, and sexual availability, so that, once married, you are stuck with each other, for better or worse, and required to have sex according to the other’s desire.  “Marital rape” is not only permitted, but absolutely mandatory. This contract changes the incentives, creating an incentive for good behavior, among other things giving the man the ability and incentive to invest in his children. 

Absent contract, the incentives are for bad behavior. Women always want better, and they can get it, if only briefly, and men always want more.

If two people are close, they cannot be equal,  Equality requires fences, requires some separation, requires each has his own turf, his own things.  A single household, must have a single head of household, thus the contract must designate one person as the head.  And, in practice, women will not put up with being the head of household.  They will struggle to take charge, but if they succeed in taking charge, will not have sex with their husbands.  So the contract, necessarily, commits the wife to submit to the husband.  The contract must designate the man to be in charge. The New Testament prescription – indissoluble and patriarchal marriage, is the only practical solution.  A society with some other form of marriage will have trouble reproducing biologically, culturally, and economically.

People say the rot set in with no fault divorce, but it is worse than that. The rot set in with George the Fourth’s unsuccessful attempt to divorce Queen Caroline. We then, in 1820, first see the doctrine that women are angels, with no sexual character, therefore do not need restraint, supervision, and discipline. Around 1960 or so, the left doctrine that women are angels with no sexual character was replaced by the doctrine that woman are angels even if they have sex, and history was abruptly rewritten to attribute the previous version, that women are sexless angels, to the right.

Of course the actual right wing point of view was always that given half a chance, a woman will bang a total stranger like a barn door in a high wind, should he superficially appear sufficiently high status, with utterly disastrous results for her family, her children, and herself, and that therefore women had to be restrained for their own good, and the sake of society.  As various Youtube videos show, it is women that are the uncontrollably lustful sex.
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This left wing doctrine, the angelhood of women,  led the state’s destruction of the family, starting in England with the Matrimonial causes act of 1857. It set in a fair bit earlier in the US, though this is complicated to track in the US, being primarily done in state rather than federal law, with some US states obstinately holding out until the civil war, which was fought not only to free the slaves, but also, among other things, to destroy marriage.

The British Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 meant that a woman who left her husband had the legal status of an independent household, but not a man who left his wife – thus began what in due course became unilateral divorce at female whim, and the requirement for continuing moment to moment consent to sex, rather than consent to sex being formally given once and forever. A woman could wash her hands of her husband, but not a husband of his wife. Hence the 1860s begat the 1960s. Smash monogamy and all that. If a wife left her husband, perhaps in the hope (seldom realized) that her demon lover would visit her more frequently, she gained, under the 1857 Matrimonial causes act, full control of her income and finances, but did not automatically and immediately lose the husband’s obligation to support her. Every change since then as just been doubling down on that big 1857 change.

The 1857 act fatally undermined the new testament prescription for marriage, in which both parties give consent to sex once and forever, and the wife submits to the husband.

Old Testament marriage favored polygyny:  A wife could have only one husband, but a husband multiple wives.  The New Testament does not explicitly prohibit polygyny, but the requirement that the husband always be sexually and emotionally available to the wife implicitly prohibits, or at least strongly discourages, polygyny, and arguably explicitly prohibits it: “Let every woman have her own husband”.

The British 1857 change gave the woman a bomb and a detonator to blow up her family at any moment, thus increased her power, and decreased the husband’s power over her, and every subsequent change to the present day in every country increased the power of the explosive and inducements to press the button.  But this necessarily results in husbands being less inclined to marry in the first place, and reduces their investment in what could be capriciously destroyed, reduces their investment in things that reduce their power and freedom – which is to say, their sons and posterity, which change is not to the advantage of wives.  That a woman cannot irrevocably commit herself to marriage, necessarily reduces the husband’s commitment, no matter what the law may say.

Making contracts non binding on women is the same thing as forbidding women from entering into contracts. It disempowers women, not empowers them.  Taking the marriage as given, it empowers them.  But the marriage is not given.  Giving them the power to capriciously destroy the marriage that they momentarily don’t want, denies them the power to obtain the marriage that they do want.

Feminists interpret the Matrimonial causes act of 1857 as partriarchally favoring men, because they interpret everything as partriarchally favoring men. Supposedly, it favored men in that female adultery was grounds for divorce, but male adultery was not. Men, however, do not bring their bastards home, so that is a perfectly reasonable law. The big high explosive, society smashing bomb in the 1857 act is that a woman could walk out of marriage, get a job, or get her lover to let her stay with him, and she was just fine, it was as if the marriage had never been, none of her former obligations entangled her, other than that she needed to get a divorce before marrying again, but if a man walked out of marriage, and had a job, he was in deep $%!#.

This fundamentally and radically altered the balance of power in marriage – which of course made women less satisfied with marriage, and less inclined to get married, because it deballed their husbands.

People say that marriage was fine in 1950, if only we could go back to 1950. And marriage was fine in 1950, because church and society socially enforced the rules that the state no longer legally enforced, indeed was busily undermining: That the husband was the head of the household, and that it was utterly unthinkable for a wife to walk out on her wifely duties.

But these rules were under social and cultural attack starting with the attempted divorce of King George the Fourth, and had ceased to be legal, had come under legal attack with the Matrimonial causes act of 1857. So from 1800 to 1950, we were running on cultural capital that was under social and legal attack, and around 1960 or so, just ran out out of cultural capital.

For society to reproduce itself culturally and biologically, husband and wife have to have incentive to behave well.  To have incentive to behave well, have to be stuck with the marital roles they have agreed to, with bad legal and social consequences should they abandon them.  The rot set in when, during the the divorce proceedings of King George the Fourth, the left got away with arguing that it was so extraordinarily unlikely for a woman to behave badly, that extraordinary evidence of bad behavior was required, thus in 1820 effectively negating the existing laws against such bad behavior, which laws were finally repealed in 1857.  Social and cultural enforcement of these laws, however, continued until the 1950s, revealing that the attack on marriage was a state centered attack.

Well of course it was a state centered attack, the state attacking society.  The state is the left and the left is the state.

If it is extraordinarily unlikely for women to behave badly, then obviously the entire apparatus of coercion to make people fulfill their marital vows was completely unnecessary for women, and only needed to be applied against men.  Applying it against women was supposedly just sheer gratuitous cruelty.

And thus, the left completed their attack on marriage that they began during the reign of Cromwell, when parliament declared marriage not a sacrament.  Marriage was indeed smashed in the sixties – the eighteen sixties.