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It is a sociocultural fact that marriages let'S say 150 years ago,. held longer
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I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. It's the view of the cause for this that I don't quite share.
"Selfishness" and "lack of stress tolerance" are rather vague characteristics of contemporary society to refer to.
In the U.S, the most dramatic increase of divorce rates (divorces per 1000 population) according to the 2003 Statistical Abstract was from 2.5 to 3.5 between in ten years (1960 - 1970) and is attributed to what they call "no-fault revolution", that is, the possibility to divorce without having to (as it was required before) argue adultery, felony or other behaviors of this kind exhibited by your partner.
This form of "friendly divorce" was seen as an advance in two grounds: first, it allowed the breaking of couples with less stress to the family (without the need of open litigation) and second (considered even more important by contemporary sociologists) it allowed the breaking of convenience marriages or misinformed marriages brought together by direct or indirect coercion of one of the two sides, generally (from a statistical point of view) a younger woman. I think it is no coincidence that, according to the same statistics by the US Bureau of Census, the median age for marriage began raising sharply and steadily exactly at this date (1969) from 20.8 to 25.9 years.
This works alongside the new professional reality of women after the 60s, who (again, in the US) became roughly equal to men in job opportunities (I say roughly because even today reality is not as pretty and women still have a long way to go to become truly equal).
What in its origin was a patriarchal union in which the woman explicitly swore (as it remains in marriage vows in some countries to this day) to care for her husband and family in the strict atmosphere of the household and to provide offspring (a much needed clause when christian marriage came about), is now largely obsolete in the sense that many women today will tell you to sod off if you ask them to clean the house or cook dinner, arguing that they have as much work to do as you if not more and that you're equally capable of making a sandwich.
Modern society does not need as many children, does not have as much time to look after them (I've seen this firsthand, as a teacher) and does not have a determined member of the couple to embrace such obligations unless he or she agrees to do it. Also gone are the legal barriers if either side considers the marriage to be faulty, and gone is the pressure to embrace the marriage no matter what. In fact, after the first wave of increase in divorce rates, they have been going down *steadily* since 1985, simply because less and less "out of place" marriages have occurred (going with your wish that such people "should not marry in the first place", sounds like society listens to you)
A fair tradeoff in my opinion, as this has made it possible for me to be living with a true woman and not a maid.
In any case, arguing whether this is positive or not is a lost cause. It's a change in the way society works, and it has happened in the past. It's an institution that couldn't stand unchanged after the *drastic* changes in everything else that took place after the 50s.
In the particular case of gay marriage, it is assumed that both parties involved are, well, gay, and therefore would have not engaged in heterosexual marriage OR would have done so in a fraudulent way (as we know has happened before). It does not affect heterosexual marriage statistics and I see absolutely NO reason to favor a fraudulent heterosexual marriage over a legit same-sex one or lack of any marriage at all.
The "destruction of marriage and family" if we were to embrace such a big and opinionated term is a direct and logical consequence of the new work and gender realities, not a consequence of two men getting married. At best, by banning gay marriage we would be forcing gay people to pay for what we heterosexuals already *beep!* up years ago.