I guess I agree that there are too many problems with restricting marriage solely to parents. But I think the better point remains intact. If the price for entering the institution were higher, the market, i.e. society, would come up with cheaper mechanisms for those unwilling to pay the price of admission to matrimony.

Many have made the argument that one way of strengthening marriage is to make divorce more difficult and costly. The rise of no-fault divorce, civil marriage and the decline in the belief that getting divorced will send you straight to heck, has made the consequences of divorce far less severe. As a matter of logic, if divorce was made far more difficult and expensive, there would be fewer divorces. But there would also probably be fewer marriages. If people knew this would be a permanent, no-way-out decision, at the margins we’d probably see fewer marriages because the “cost” of getting married would be far greater. In turn, this would result in stronger marriages because only stronger confident couples would take the plunge. I guess one question would be, Are we better off with fewer but healthier marriages or more but weaker ones?

Another question would be, if Kurtz et al are right about homosexual promiscuity being a permanent incompatibility with marriage, we’d probably see quite a few same-sex couples having second thoughts about making the commitment. Anyway, just some food for thought.