June 17th, 2012 by Arvin Vohra

Like most other gov­ern­ment reg­u­lated and sub­si­dized pro­grams, government-backed mar­riage is a spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure. It has a 50% fail rate—a dropout rate more impres­sive than those at the worst inner city pub­lic schools. The finan­cial costs of divorce (mostly lawyer fees) is around 175 bil­lion. That’s about 3 times what we spend annu­ally on wel­fare, and enough to pay 1/3 of every student’s col­lege tuition every year.

Prop­ping up a Fail­ing Insti­tu­tion: The Government’s Role in Marriage

Gov­ern­ment sub­si­dizes mar­riage in sev­eral ways. First, through health insur­ane reg­u­la­tions, tax incen­tives, etc. it pro­vides spe­cific finan­cial incen­tives for the het­ero­sex­ual monogamist view of mar­riage. Through leg­is­la­tion, it pro­vides other ben­e­fits (e.g. only those who hold government-backed mar­riages or unions can visit their life part­ners in the hos­pi­tal.) It also pro­vides spe­cific immi­gra­tion ben­e­fits to those with government-backed mar­riages. Mar­riage dra­mat­i­cally speeds up the green card and cit­i­zen­ship process.

Sim­ply put: government-backed mar­riage enjoys the same unjus­ti­fied priv­iledges and favors that any folly backed by the gov­ern­ment typ­i­cally enjoys.

One Size Fits All?

The notion that het­ero­sex­ual monogamy is right for every­one is just as ludi­crous as say­ing that the same tele­phone com­pany is right for every­one (which the gov­ern­ment used to say) or say­ing that the same edu­ca­tional approach is right for every­one (which the gov­ern­ment still says). Het­ero­sex­u­al­ity is right for some peo­ple. So is monogamy. But it’s cer­tainly not right for everyone.

The Moghul Emperor Akbar used polygamy to help unite India under his rule. He had one Hindu wife, one Mus­lim wife, and one Chris­t­ian wife. He used this to show that the major reli­gions of India were all part of his fam­ily. Polygamy allowed a fairly potent polit­i­cal message.

In The Sym­po­sium, Plato argued that not only was homo­sex­u­al­ity between men okay, it was supe­rior to het­ero­sex­u­al­ity. This was the foun­da­tion for what we call “Pla­tonic” love, but was not described as non-sexual in the orig­i­nal treatise.

It’s true that het­ero­sex­ual monogamy is a fun­da­men­tal part of many reli­gions. And those who prac­tice those reli­gions per­haps should con­sider het­ero­sex­ual monogamy their only option. But why should those rules apply to those who don’t prac­tice those spe­cific reli­gions? Do we require Pres­by­te­ri­ans to keep Kosher dietary prac­tices, or require Methodists to eat only Halaal food? Do we require Mus­lims to cel­e­brate Easter, and Hin­dus to give up foods dur­ing Lent?

Should we to believe, in the face of thou­sands of years of human his­tory, in the face of the direct expe­ri­ences of mil­lions today, that the ONLY pos­si­ble appro­pri­ate form of human rela­tion­ship is het­ero­sex­ual monogamy? Or should we use some mis­in­formed chil­drea­r­ing argu­ment, that tells us that sons of (polyg­a­mist) Chi­nese emper­ors got an infe­rior upbring­ing to the sons of mar­ried cou­ples who send their kids to inner city, government-run pub­lic schools?

Judaism, Hin­duism, Islam, Sikhism, and spe­cific sects of other reli­gions all have scrip­tures that sug­gest polygamy. The Greeks and Romans, who cre­ated our notions of Democ­ra­cies and Republics, had no short­age of homo­sex­u­al­ity. And while both cul­tures fell, most his­to­ri­ans agree that it was their insis­tence on expen­sive empire build­ing, not bug­gery, that lead to their collapses.

The Cost of Mis­placed Trust

Peo­ple often trust the gov­ern­ment to make their edu­ca­tional deci­sions for them. After all, they think, if a school has been approved by gov­ern­ment bureau­crats, it must be pretty good. So they send their kids to a pub­lic school, and take no real active inter­est in their children’s edu­ca­tion. The result of this mis­placed trust is often a pretty poor edu­ca­tion. On the other hand, par­ents who don’t trust the schools to do every­thing per­fectly usu­ally take mea­sures to ensure a qual­ity edu­ca­tion. They work with their chil­dren at home, send their kids to learn­ing cen­ters, etc. Or they home­school. The result is often a bet­ter education.

Right now, most peo­ple basi­cally take a default mar­riage con­tract handed out by the gov­ern­ment, put no real thought into cre­at­ing some­thing that works for them. The result is the cur­rent 50% fail rate. If we all ordered the same entre at a restau­rant, one that had been selected by the gov­ern­ment, there’s a good chance that 50% of us would be unhappy with what we got.

In fact, inno­va­tions as sim­ple as prenup­tial agree­ments, while they don’t make a bad idea into a good one, at least limit the dev­as­ta­tion that results from the bad idea.

Inno­va­tion and the Future of “Marriage”

I’m not try­ing to argue that every­one needs to be gay and polyg­a­mist. But I do believe, as Socrates put it, that the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing. An unex­am­ined choice in some­thing as momen­tous as a per­ma­nent rela­tion­ship is not a good choice to make. Some peo­ple, hav­ing thought about the choices openly and deeply, will choose het­ero­sex­ual monogamy. Oth­ers won’t. And with three hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple really think­ing and inno­vat­ing, we will prob­a­bly end up with some ideas that end up hav­ing a higher suc­cess rate than the cur­rent 50%.

Het­ero­sex­ual monogamy does not deserve spe­cial sub­si­dies. Nei­ther does homo­sex­ual monogamy, or het­ero­sex­ual polygamy, or Chris­tian­ity, or Islam, or any other pri­vate, per­sonal behav­ior or belief. It’s time to get the gov­ern­ment com­pletely out of mar­riage.
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Arvin Vohra is the author of Lies, Damned Lies, and Col­lege Admissions.