Ross Douthat comes out for banning third marriages meaning that my proposal to ban fourth marriages is now the centrist stance on the topic. Ross says "now all we need is for David Broder to write a column endorsing it" but at this point I'd settle for a link from the DLC's Ideas Primary Blog or some love from Third Way's culture program.
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The Sensible Center
28 Jul 2008 01:03 pm
Comments (14)
I just assumed Matthew was joking about his proposal, but you've got to be careful. There's no amount of authoritarian prudery that a guy like Douthat won't endorse. You don't want to give him ideas.
How about a trade system? Each person is given, say, 2 free marriages. They can then buy additional marriages from other people who don't plan on getting married.
And can you please fix this website so that it actually remembers personal info?
If I propose to ban all marriages, where does that put me on the spectrum?
Can we just ban the idea of banning any kind of marriage at all? And let people do what they want with their own lives?
Or rather, how about we ban all marriages. That is, not have any legal definition of marriage, but have every kind of marriage called a "civil union."
Then we would leave the word marriage for the religious, and call things what they actually are.
Would be the fairest way to do things, and would make it so the wingnuts would never see marriage destroyed by gay people.
I think we should ban drinking more than three sodas in a single day. Also ban having more than three adult cats, or dogs. Also we should forbid people from having more than three televisions in the same house, or having more than three cars. Then ban going to McDonald's more than three times in a week, or moving more than three times in two years.
Wow, this is fun!
Banning children would be better for society than banning marriage. Kids just complicate your life, drain precious time and money and ultimately cause many divorces. Lowering the incidence of children would make a limit on the number of permissible marriages a moot issue. What marriages did fail wouldn't bring into play the old "Who gets custody, oh, woe be the children" harangue. No arguing over child support, custody, visitation, blah, blah, blah. Don't ban marriage, ban kids.
What you really want to push is a ban on fourth divorces, not fourth marriages. Let's not unfairly burden the black widow demographic.
What you really want to push is a ban on fourth divorces, not fourth marriages.
The problem with banning 4th divorces is that one person's fourth can be the other's first. "I really want to divorce that ass, but he's already a three-time loser, so I can't."
In the spirit of preserving the institution of marriage, let's just ban people from being unmarried past the age of oh, say, 30.
I agree that there would need to be a provision for the widowed. And a provision for children wed into bigamous marriages before the age of consent. And anyone married in Vegas between midnight and noon.
What we really need is a ban on Cheetoh-stained single bloggers posting about how the government should intrude on citizen's private lives.
The difference is, Matt's amusing himself / indulging his "contrarian" side, but Ross really means it.
Ridiculous.
If you banned third marriages, Ross and Rachel could never have gotten hitched.
Comments closed August 11, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
If marriage is supposed to be a good thing, why would they ban it? Running out of things to ban?
Posted by Peter K. | July 28, 2008 1:14 PM