Marriage

It's hard when you want to rant about something but you know it's going to cause offence even if it's not meant to be.

Now, I obviously believe in marriage, because I did it. We got married for the extremely romantic reason that if we hadn't and something had happened to my then boyfriend, I would have had nothing more than squatter's rights in our house. As his wife, it would become mine. The easiest way to do this was to sign this thing called a marriage contract and it quite nicely laid down all sorts of rights for both of us in the events of bad things and children. We didn't do it for the wedding, we did it to be married. And the relationship improved, because we both finally accepted that the other wasn't going to leave any day.

Today on the news they were talking about incentives for marriage. I think this is great, obviously. But there are many people complaining that this is unfair on unmarried couples. That you can get married easily and quickly and that people who do that then benefit over couples who have been together a long time but haven't married.

Now, these are my ranty points:

1) It makes sense, it is just a piece of paper, but it's a useful one. It's not a trick. If you get incentives, then that's just another benefit. You don't have to have wank and circumstance, you can literally grab a couple of witnesses and do nothing more than sign.
2) Yes, it's unfair on civil partnerships, this is why they should be called marriages. A marriage should be between two people, regardless of their sex, and the church should get stuffed.
3) Why have children if you are not prepared to sign a contract of togetherness? If it doesn't work out, you can still divorce, but statistics show that couples who have children within marriage are far more likely to stay together than those who have children out of wedlock. Surely it's worth giving it a better chance. I don't think it is fair on the children to not at least intend to be together forever, and if you intend it, why not make it legal.
4) Being married isn't bad. It's nice. It's not like it's an awful situation to be in and you don't want to be trapped into it. If you feel like that, you picked the wrong spouse! The old fashioned concept of ownership is gone, you have equal rights, you don't have to change your name or title. It's simply a legal state that makes a lot of sense.

And you do get lots of presents :-)