Three Strikes and You're Out

Marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples leads naturally enough to gay divorce. Along those lines, I was thinking recently that if you really wanted to do something to shore up the sanctity of marriage then rather than ban gay marriages you ought to ban, say, fourth marriages. It's one thing to say that people who make a mistake ought to get a second chance, but serial nuptuals really do make a mockery of the institution's basic premises in a way that same-sex couples don't. Maybe some people just need to admit to themselves that they have no business making promises of life-long commitment.

Initially, I wanted to ban third marriages, but it seems worth watering the proposal down in order to enhance political feasibility and secure access to the much-vaunted "three strikes and you're out" catchphrase.

Comments

Haven't you heard of the dread slippery slope? Once you start down the road of banning fourth marriages, you'll find yourself banning fifth, then sixth, then seventh marriages, and soon it'll be all over for western civilization as we know it!

Posted by BarryG | July 25, 2008 4:20 PM

How about banning third divorces? It would make people think long and hard about entering that third marriage.

Posted by blah | July 25, 2008 4:23 PM

Widow(er)s would have to get a pass. But once you address that, I suppose it's feasible.

Posted by Bryan | July 25, 2008 4:24 PM

"Initially, I wanted to ban third marriages,"

Well, you avoided the wrath of Rudy Giuliani by going with four.

Posted by fostert | July 25, 2008 4:26 PM

Please tell me you aren't actually advocating this, MY. You start out by saying "if you really wanted to do something to shore up the sanctity of marriage" -- does this describe you? Later on you say flat out, "I wanted to ban third marriages." I can't tell if you mean an imaginary "[while pursuing this thought experiment]."

Let me be clearer than you are: banning third or fourth marriages is a really dumb idea no matter what your feelings on "sanctity" are. I prefer to leave sanctity out of my policy prescriptions.

Posted by Martin | July 25, 2008 4:28 PM

I won't vote for it. If a future divorce from Elizabeth Taylor is taken off my "To Do" list I can't support it.

Posted by steve duncan | July 25, 2008 4:29 PM

I think Martin's browser is having trouble reconizing sarcasm tags.

Posted by eriks | July 25, 2008 4:34 PM

Why would people who hate gay marriage be against gay divorce? Someone should tell them that gay divorces end gay marriages.

The current system is one of de-facto gay covenant marriages.

Posted by phil | July 25, 2008 4:34 PM

How about banning third divorces? It would make people think long and hard about entering that third marriage.

I have a feeling that once a third marriage was entered though this would create some fairly bad incentives. Specifically, I'm thinking Henry VIII.

Posted by David | July 25, 2008 4:35 PM

Does anybody actually try to amend anti-gay marriage bills with proposals like this? I'd be up for it.

And I'm friends with a guy on his sixth marriage The 6th marriage has now lasted 20 years. His first wife died in a plane crash. He's very normal, just overly inclined to a) marry people he seriously dates, b) tends towards withdrawal and walking out during crises. Not sure that banning his later marriages, including the one that finally worked, would have helped anyone. Banning the 3rd through 5th marriage would have been a good idea though.

Longer waiting periods, on the other hand, might be a good idea. Say 6 months or a year.

Posted by stefan | July 25, 2008 4:38 PM

I believe that the Eastern Orthodox churches already ban fourth marriages. This seems like a pretty reasonable idea. With exceptions of course in cases of abuse and neglect and so forth.

Posted by Hector | July 25, 2008 4:41 PM

I have a feeling that once a third marriage was entered though this would create some fairly bad incentives. Specifically, I'm thinking Henry VIII.

Good point. Do states or countries with tougher divorce laws experience a higher incidence of spousal murder?

Posted by blah | July 25, 2008 4:41 PM

No kidding. Find a sense of humor, Martin.

Posted by CHoward | July 25, 2008 4:42 PM

No, no, NO! Can't a trust fund scumbag realize that divorce is no threat at all to marriage? But if two consenting men can call themselves married, then my marriage is DEVASTATED!

Posted by John McCain: More of the Same | July 25, 2008 4:45 PM

Should you get a walk on excess balls?

Posted by JimPortlandOR | July 25, 2008 4:46 PM

And my favorite heterosexual self-interest argument for gay marriage: take the gays off the straight marriage market. That way straight people are less likely to end up in failed marriages with gays. Why raise the risk of your kid marring a gay man or woman? And it happens.

Posted by stefan | July 25, 2008 4:57 PM

Uh, perhaps we should start thinking of marriage as a contract that two people enter into and, if need be, terminate. Marriage, marriage, marriage, I'm sick to death of the pedestal that this abstract relationship is elevated to. People should behave well when kids are involved. They should also behave well with friends and partners. It sucks when they don't but government shouldn't be in the business of governing our private lives. If we choose to serially entangle and unentangle our legal responsibilities via a contract, then so be it. If there's financial costs incurred, then people should pay for it. If there's social costs, then sure, make people incur some cost. But, sheesh, I wish we could all get a collective grip.

ps. I do love my wife....

Posted by glockenspieler | July 25, 2008 5:00 PM

Granted everyone, sarcasm tags disabled, sorry, I am aware of all Internet traditions, Etc. At the same time, "mockery" certainly doesn't appear in sarcasm tags, even in FF 3.0.

Posted by Martin | July 25, 2008 5:05 PM

Go back to writing abtou water policy. I agree that fourth marriages are fairly absurd, but there are actually fairly strong social pressures against marrying 4 times. Look woman have the financial ability to leave their husbands. This wasn't true fifty years ago. No public policy is going to fix this, the best we can do is to not have public policies that make it worse. I don't really know how to engage conservatives on gay marriage. I just don't understand where they are coming from and I suspect they don't either.

Posted by Craig | July 25, 2008 5:17 PM

A simpler way to do this might simply be to limit the number of divorces that one person can file under existing "no fault divorce" laws. That way, someone can technically get married or divorced as many times as they want, but they have to actually establish a grounds for legal divorce beyond the second or third one. I think of it as something like having a "get out of jail free" pass that you can use as long as you still have it, but not once you've used it up.

On that note, I also propose that we give all citizens cards--divorce cards--that can be dramatically played/invoked at the appropriate moment to initiate divorce. Preferably these cards should be held high and shown to the audience like a referee in a soccer match. Once you're out of divorce cards there's simply no way to get more.

Posted by Lee | July 25, 2008 5:20 PM

So, eHarmony in effect bans fourth marriages; if you are divorced more than 3 times they won't let you sign on.

In addition, I think Freakonomics details that almost all second marriages are doomed, but third marriages are fairly successful. So don't ban third marriage!

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | July 25, 2008 5:24 PM

Hollywood has already addressed this issue, in the socially conscious 1934 movie "The Gay Divorcee." Of course, they had to bend to the social mores of the time and make the two partners of different genders, which blunts the film's relevance to contemporary audiences somewhat.

(However, "The Gay Divorcee" was a musical, with lots of singing and dancing, so there can be no doubt who its intended audience was, if you know what I mean.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gay_Divorcee

Posted by James Gary | July 25, 2008 5:27 PM

Also, there's the problem of marriage being a fundamental right that the state can't limit unless the restriction is narrowly tailored to meet a compelling governmental objective. Since you would literally be prohibiting people from getting married, it would likely not be narrowly tailored (e.g., there are less restrictive things you could do).

Posted by Charles | July 25, 2008 5:27 PM

On that note, I also propose that we give all citizens cards--divorce cards--that can be dramatically played/invoked at the appropriate moment to initiate divorce....Once you're out of divorce cards there's simply no way to get more.

This is a good idea! Perhaps it might be expanded to a cap-and-trade system under which citizens could buy and sell "divorce credits."

Posted by James Gary | July 25, 2008 5:30 PM

"shore up sanctity" -- why? why?

I do not see it as an advisable function of a government.

About the idea of "divorce cards" of Lee -- ha! cap-and-trade would be an even better system. You see, it is not the outliers that matter but the averages. Hence, the state has an interest in a larger average duration of marriages. So, for every 10 (15?) years of completed marriage a couple could trade their unused cards (but then they would have to re-purchase if they wanted to divorce before 20 (30?) completed years.

There is a question, of course, about locality of those cards. Marriages are run by states and people move. One of the benefits (or demerits?) of a cap-and-trade scheme would be the power of Congress to regulate marriages under the Commerce clause.

Posted by piotr | July 25, 2008 5:35 PM

Humans are not monogamous for more than four years, the age of weaning of infants. After that, the males take off for new pussy and the females hook up with the side males they were screwing during the four years while their ostensible mate was "providing" for the family.

This is the reality of human evolution on the Serengeti plains - not to mention bonobo chimpanzees who are wildly promiscuous and non-monogamous - and human culture needs to stop pretending it's otherwise.

Morons.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 25, 2008 6:19 PM

Should you get a walk on excess balls?

I applaud your knowledge: when two men get married, they should get a free base. And be commended for their discipline.

Posted by George Will's Nightmare | July 25, 2008 6:47 PM

Matt's got it wrong here. A lot of people who get married aren't ready for marriage. Hell, some folks who get married aren't ready for a decent hook up yet. However, they show their "commitment to marriage as an institution" by continuing to try until it works. I have an aunt in her late 70's who was working on her fifth marriage when she was 48 and husband no. 5 had just moved out of the house in San Diego the day before I pulled for a visit. My poor aunt was just as blown away by no. 5's departure as Snow White would have been if Prince Charming left her. However, she hung in there, No. 5 eventually back and she's still married to the guy 29 years later. What would she have done if Matt's silly "three strikes" idea was in effect? More to the point, how would Matt's idea have helped her given that either she or her third husband weren't ready for marriage (at least to each other). My aunt's story is one of the reasons why legalizing gay marriage is important. People all over the country put an incredibly high value on marriage and are willing to go through any number of traumas to make their marriages work--even their fifth. The fact that gay people are largely banned from marriage is an incredibly harmful form of discrimination that excludes gay men and women from one of the major dramas of human life. Marriage is something that my aunt was willing to go through five times before she got it right. It's something that everybody should be allowed to experience.

Posted by Ric Caric | July 25, 2008 8:27 PM

Matt's got it wrong here. A lot of people who get married aren't ready for marriage. Hell, some folks who get married aren't ready for a decent hook up yet. However, they show their "commitment to marriage as an institution" by continuing to try until it works. I have an aunt in her late 70's who was working on her fifth marriage when she was 48 and husband no. 5 had just moved out of the house in San Diego the day before I pulled for a visit. My poor aunt was just as blown away by no. 5's departure as Snow White would have been if Prince Charming left her. However, she hung in there, No. 5 eventually back and she's still married to the guy 29 years later. What would she have done if Matt's silly "three strikes" idea was in effect? More to the point, how would Matt's idea have helped her given that either she or her third husband weren't ready for marriage (at least to each other). My aunt's story is one of the reasons why legalizing gay marriage is important. People all over the country put an incredibly high value on marriage and are willing to go through any number of traumas to make their marriages work--even their fifth. The fact that gay people are largely banned from marriage is an incredibly harmful form of discrimination that excludes gay men and women from one of the major dramas of human life. Marriage is something that my aunt was willing to go through five times before she got it right. It's something that everybody should be allowed to experience.

Posted by Ric Caric | July 25, 2008 8:30 PM

and human culture needs to stop pretending it's otherwise.

Bonobos don't type, juggle, or use their 7 irons in the right situations. Maybe "culture" is different than "nature"?

Morons.

I was thinking along those lines, too.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 25, 2008 8:35 PM

In the 18th century, Johann Kaspar Lavater wrote his Aphorisms on Man, and William Blake annotated his own copy. One of Lavater's maxims was "Be not the fourth friend of him who has had three, and lost them." Blake wrote, "An excellent rule."

Not a good rule for today, with friendships as fluid as they are. But I've long believed, "be not the fourth spouse of one who has had three before, and divorced them." Widowhood doesn't count, unless initiated by the surviving spouse.

I think three is the right number. It strikes a balance between human frailty and the seriousness of the marital bond.

Posted by mim | July 25, 2008 9:31 PM

As I often do, I posted before I'd read all the previous comments. Ric, your point is well taken. And I believe in "be not the fourth spouse" as a guideline for individuals contemplating marriage, not for government to impose restrictions.

Posted by mim | July 25, 2008 9:41 PM

who care how many times people wish to marry. it's a contract; nothing more.

Posted by neal peart | July 25, 2008 9:45 PM

Maybe "culture" is different than "nature"?

It is, but modern culture--especially the widespread availability of safe and effective contraception, the decline of marriage, and the strong legal and social sanctions against the use of violence and coercion in response to sexual infidelity--tends to support rather than suppress the expression of the natural human desire for a variety of sexual partners.

Posted by Mixner | July 25, 2008 9:57 PM

Specifically, I'm thinking Henry VIII.
Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. So it wasn't the third marriage there that caused the problems. Add in Beaudrot's point and clearly Matt is right about doing in the fourth marriages.

To turn briefly serious, marriage does help kids. A lot. One of the most striking bits of demographic data I've run across in the past few years was that something like 90% of Harvard's freshmen had 2 parents married to each other. In my fairly well-to-do town with its great schools, divorced parents are rare. As to the cause-and-effect aspect of marriage and better socioeconomic status, I admit it's naive to assume the arrow only goes marriage-->better social outcomes, but I don't think there's any evidence for a one-way arrow the other way.

As for Hack's point, I've seen it many times, and challenged to name one human society that actually uses this "default, natural, everyone's programmed this way" standard, it grinds to an embarrassing halt. (Also weaning does occur at 4, but the 4 year allotment doesn't allow for almost 1 year of gestation time. To make any sense at all the bonobo people should be arguing for 5 years.) I could just possibly buy a predisposition of women to reevaluate their mate with a colder eye once their infant is less dependent on them, and thus view a tendency to beat one up as outweighing an ability to bring home the mammoth steaks.

But in reality society is more complex than this, as the marriage/divorce/childrearing/parent-caring norms of 100s of societies demonstrate. As Richard Dawkins has noted, we're wearing clothes.

Posted by Deborah | July 25, 2008 10:45 PM

A number of my gay friends talk about having opt out clauses in marriage contracts, at pre-determined points, like 3 years, then 6 years, etc. The thinking is, if you know the other person can opt out with no back-lash, then you work harder so the person doesn't want to opt out.

Posted by Andrew fly | July 26, 2008 12:50 AM

A number of my gay friends talk about having opt out clauses in marriage contracts, at pre-determined points, like 3 years, then 6 years, etc. The thinking is, if you know the other person can opt out with no back-lash, then you work harder so the person doesn't want to opt out.

Posted by Andrew fly | July 26, 2008 12:52 AM

Both of my parents are on their third marriage; my dad has been married for 19 years and my mom for 10. I came from my mom's first marriage and my dad's second. On a qualitative basis this seems like by far the best marriage for both of them too.

I guess at some point it's excessive, and I'm certainly waiting until marriage in large part so that I never put my kids through that experience. But I have a hard time telling my mom that she can't try to find happiness again.

Posted by Terry M. | July 26, 2008 1:07 AM

"challenged to name one human society that actually uses this 'default, natural, everyone's programmed this way' standard, it grinds to an embarrassing halt."

Utterly irrelevant to the point. The "complexity" you refer to also refers to the innumerable variants of human sexual behavior in societies throughout history. You have virtually everything considered taboo today espoused and normalized in at least one culture somewhere in history, and if not in history, then probably in pre-history.

Where people go wrong is assuming the way the United States and Western Europe in the last fifty years do it is the only "correct, civilized" way.

That's bullshit.

It is true that there are reasons why humans don't behave rationally in sexual and reproduction matters. I've covered those reasons in other posts. The bottom line remains that those reasons merely emphasize why the cultural norm in current society is so at variance with rationality.

If humans were rational, there would be no such things as monogamy, conventional notions of marriage, and the like. All these things are cultural artifacts resulting from human inability to deal with fear.

Jeffrey Davis: "I was thinking along those lines, too."

Yes, you were.

In any event, Matt's desire to prohibit people from freely engaging in multiple marriages and divorces clearly shows the "liberal fascist" in him and many other so-called "liberals". Maybe Doughty Goldberg wasn't so wrong. I recall many posts here defending the notion that "liberalism" by definition meant not interfering with personal freedom while enhancing people's lives through rational application of the state and had nothing to do with coercive state policies.

Yeah, that works in Matt's proposal - NOT.

Can you say "fucking hypocrite"?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 26, 2008 1:23 AM

Do you get an exemption if you're a widow or widower? Because you can see a scenario where this system really screws somebody over.

But, then, if you create an exemption, you've just created a motive for murder...

Posted by Anthony Damiani | July 26, 2008 3:08 AM

Hack, Matt's given us a modest proposal. Recalibrate your Nazi detector.

Posted by Ian | July 26, 2008 6:07 AM

Didn't say Matt was a Nazi - just a "liberal fascist".

Besides which, I'm an anarchist - so my "fascist detector" is extremely sensitive - more so than Matt's, anyway.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | July 26, 2008 6:09 PM

Mr. Hack appears to view the common precepts of morality, as so much 'liberal fascism'. His utopia would, I suppose, be one in which we were free to merrily indulge all the desires that are displayed chimpanzees on the African savannah, without the restraint of church or state.

This is, I suppose, a consistent argument. It should be noted that it is the same argument that led Mr. Hack to commit a violent armed robbery of a bank, in which he threatened to kill the teller. In commiting armed robbery, Mr. Hack was, I suppose, only following his own desires (in this case, as SLC has pointed out, a desire to feed his smack habit) and living out his own creed. I suppose I can't challenge Mr. Hack's concistency, but I would question whether we should take moral advice from an unrepentant criminal.

Posted by Hector | July 27, 2008 5:41 PM

To Mr. Hack: you should read up on evolution if you want to discuss it seriously. Bonobos are indeed quite promiscuous but e.g. chimps are monogamous and both are equally removed from us. I think the general conclusion is that humans are mostly but not exclusively monogamous although details depend on culture quite a bit. If what you are saying were true the divorce rate would be 100%.

Posted by LB | July 28, 2008 7:02 PM

Was no one here raised Orthodox Christian? One commenter alluded to this. Yes, the Orthodox Church, unlike the Catholics, recognizes divorce, but there is a three strikes rule - the church will only marry you three times. After that, your done. Note that this includes widow(er)s.

I always thought this was reasonable, it allows for mistakes but doesn't allow abuse of the sacrament. If you can't get it right by the third try, marriage probably isn't for you. And the fact that there is no exception for widows seems bad, but if you buried three spouses you gotta show some respect (or maybe something else is wrong).

I've been an admirer of Matt's stuff for a while, but this idea has been plagiarized!

CC

Posted by cc | July 29, 2008 2:08 AM