Vow for Now

MUCH has been written in the last twenty years about the state of marriage. These commentaries tend to fall into two opposite camps: those which advocate or celebrate the redefinition of matrimony and those which deplore its decline. Two decades ago, the former clearly predominated; the latter are more common today. To my knowledge, however, none of the commentators has stumbled upon the fact that marriage was abolished in the United States in the 1970s. That status which we call “being married” today is nothing of the kind; it is to real marriage what the Holy Roman Empire was to the real Roman Empire, something that borrows the name of a dead institution to give itself legitimacy.

According to Black’s Law Dictionary (1968), in marriage “a man and woman . . . mutually engage with each other to live their whole lives together in the state of union which ought to exist between a husband and wife.” That quotation summarizes definitions set forth by precedents and authorities going as far back as such things are preserved. In simple terms, the essentials of a marriage are: 1) a man and woman 2) in a state of union 3) for life. There are variations from time to time and from society to society. In polygamous cultures, for instance, one man can have many marriages, but each is a one-man-and-one-woman contract.

RP

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Robert L. Plunkett

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MUCH has been written in the last twenty years about the state of marriage. These commentaries tend to fall into two opposite camps: those which advocate or celebrate the redefinition of matrimony and those which deplore its decline. Two decades ago, the former clearly predominated; the latter are more common today. To my knowledge, however, none of the commentators has stumbled upon the fact that marriage was abolished in the United States in the 1970s. That status which we call “being married” today is nothing of the kind; it is to real marriage what the Holy Roman Empire was to the real Roman Empire, something that borrows the name of a dead institution to give itself legitimacy.

According to Black’s Law Dictionary (1968), in marriage “a man and woman . . . mutually engage with each other to live their whole lives together in the state of union which ought to exist between a husband and wife.” That quotation summarizes definitions set forth by precedents and authorities going as far back as such things are preserved. In simple terms, the essentials of a marriage are: 1) a man and woman 2) in a state of union 3) for life. There are variations from time to time and from society to society. In polygamous cultures, for instance, one man can have many marriages, but each is a one-man-and-one-woman contract.