Marriage as Slavery

Our modern Western concept of "marriage" is an aberration. Christians claim that marriage is ordained by God to be between a man and a woman. One man, one woman. But our modern concept of marriage doesn't really have much relationship to the concept of marriage as given in the Bible, especially when we consider how accepting we are of divorce as a fact of life. Even Christian sects who are ostensibly anti-divorce are forced to accept members who have been divorced, because it's just one of those unavoidable facts of life in our modern world.

I started to get a picture of what marriage really is when I was listening to a broadcast talking about the minimum legal age of marriage in various Middle Eastern countries. In some of those countries, not too long ago, the minimum age of marriage was as young as 9 years old. I don't know how old the grooms have to be, but I'm assuming that they have to be older. I do know that in the Prophet Muhammad's case, he was a middle-aged man when he took his youngest wife, who was 9 years old at the time of their marriage. So regardless of whether or not they consummated their marriage, there remained about a 30-year difference in ages, and the child bride, if held to our standards, would not have had the capacity to make the kind of decision as choosing a husband. We would not have granted her that legal capacity.

So it was in the Bible times, from whence we get our ideas of what the definition of marriage is. And this is where I want to declare that marriage is slavery. The Bible didn't have anything bad to say about the institution of slavery, nor does it have anything bad to say about the institution of marriage. In the Bible times, marriage was a transfer of property. In our times, marriage is still symbolic of a transfer of property, even if that's not the legal reality.

In the modern age, we began to assign rights to all people, or rather, after 10,000 years of barbarism, we finally decided to recognize the inherent human rights and dignity of every individual human being. So it became immoral to be able to own another human being, which is to say, to control every aspect of their lives. So slavery fell out of favor. Except that in some places, slavery was an entrenched part of the economic way of life. Slavery was the foundation of the economy of the Southern United States of America, for example. They (possibly partly rightly) argued that removing the institution of slavery would disrupt the economy of the South. So it took a war to decide the issue. And it did hurt the South. Of course, the ending of slavery was a relatively insignificant factor next to the devastation of the civil war, but the abolition of slavery did destroy a way of life. An extremely flawed way of life, but it did function on some level.

Now, looking at marriage as analogous to slavery, it is also apparent that marriage is taken as a part of the foundation of a way of life. Our modern society is (or was, but I would contend that it still is) based on the nuclear family. Like slavery, the origins of marriage would have the woman function as an item of property. Over the years, women's movements have softened the "slave" aspect of the role of the wife, but the root remains in property, in one person owning another person.

Unlike slavery, there was never a state or country that was able to build an economic base without relying on the marriage unit. (that I am aware of) So marriage has always remained. It has been twisted over the years, almost re-invented, really, as a contract between consenting adults. Divorce became acceptable when marriage was seen as a contract between the man and the woman, rather than a transaction between the groom and the bride's father.

And yet, despite the contractual changes of marriage, the ritualistic aspects of it somehow remained a part of our society, which is why I say that marriage today is an aberration. In today's marriage ceremonies, the bride gets dressed up like some kind of object of desire. The father still gives away the bride, even though he has no legal say in the matter. In essence, the legal aspect of a marriage in the modern world is a partnership between two equal, rational, consenting human beings. But the ritualistic aspect remains a kind of transfer of property.

Unlike the American South, there is no crusading nation that can come and enforce the abolition of marriage on our society, because all nations in the world today are built on the nuclear family. The Christian right argues that society will fall if marriage falls. And for the most part, women seem to be accepting of their symbolic role as objects and property. At least, they accept it in certain contexts.

Until the marriage ceremony is altered to look like a partnership between equal parties, we will never have a psychological attitude of equality toward women, no matter how much we change the laws.

The whole institution of marriage is corrupt and out-dated, just like slavery. Admirable attempts have been made to salvage marriage as a partnership between equals, but all of these attempts are doomed to failure, because these people don't realize that the core concept of marriage is the ownership and power over another human being.

That said, there is something of value in what people have tried to turn marriage into. That is, partnerships between two equal parties, for the purpose of taking care of each other and creating a stable home in which to raise children. Just lose the marriage part.

But I'd also like to speak in favor of religious marriage for a moment. That is, because it seems to have worked so well for thousands of years, maybe it's not such a bad thing for a woman to be owned by a man. Maybe marriage really should be more like slavery. But in that case, I'd say quit pretending to be modern about it. Admit that marriage is a transaction of property, and make the bride feel psychologically elated at the prospect. Obviously marriage as a transfer of property would not be legally enforceable in a country that recognizes the human rights of women, but I say if a man wants to pretend to take a woman from her father, let him do so.