March for marriage? How about marching for honeymoons too?

Image by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr

Gays and lesbians marched in Washington, DC yesterday, in part to demand their marriage rights.  Obama gave a speech Saturday night rhetorically supporting them (although offering to do nothing to actually make that happen and in fact his Justice Department is actively working to support DOMA).

All of which leaves us with the question:  why is the US government in the marriage business at all and is there any chance it will ever get out of it?

States have always regulated marriage because marriage is, after all, an exchange of property.  Historically, the woman was part of the property exchanged (and in return marriage was her only path to financial security in a world where she was denied access to education, property ownership, and inheritance).

Of course, since then we have witnessed feminism, a restructuring of laws and opportunities, and a country in which most American women work full time (even if they still don’t earn as much as men).  The point is, marriage is no longer necessary as a property exchange and yet the state has gotten more invested, more involved in awarding privileges and rights on the basis of it.

Chrys Ingraham, author of White Weddings, counted up the 1000 plus rights and privileges awarded to married couples for the first edition of her book.  She was shocked to see, ten years later, that there were several hundred more privileges given to the married among us.

No wonder so many gays and lesbians want it.  Clearly we have two tiers of citizenship in this country- a marital apartheid if you will.  But as long as no one is going to question whether or not we should award federal and state rights and privileges on the basis of marital status, then we might as well fight for the right to honeymoon as well as marry.  We can point out that such a right exists in Malaysia.

A Malaysian state government says it plans to offer free honeymoons to save the marriages of couples who are on the brink of divorce.

Ashaari Idris, a government official in northern Terengganu state, says troubled couples will be allowed to spend two nights at the state’s scenic islands or beach resorts to help them rekindle their romance under a “Second Honeymoon” program.

Ashaari says the state government hopes to launch the plan soon “to resolve marital problems and to create models of exemplary families.”

He said Monday that couples who enrol in the program must also undergo counselling.

Marriage on the rocks? Honeymoon by the beach: Malaysia state offers free vacations to couples.

Of course Malaysia is a country that is officially religious (they have an official religion- Islam- although there are other religions too) and officially super conservative.  Their investment in giving away free honeymoons to keep couples married is quite clear.

America’s is more difficult to locate.  It  is obviously the result of a variety of religious traditions’ emphasis on marriage, but if that were all it were, then the state wouldn’t have allowed divorce to become so easy.  It is the result of certain racial hierarchies- white people marry at almost twice the rate of African Americans and this is often used to privilege white families as opposed to the “pathological” and “matriarchal” black families.

But if I had to guess why marriage apartheid became even more strongly supported by the state since the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act 1996 I would say that it is the result of the “wages of straightness.”

As most Americans (80% according the CBO) became worse off than they were in 1980, but a few Americans became spectacularly wealthy (thus the growth in “average” income), the state offered the Americas who were most likely to vote a “wage”- a set of privileges and rights that they got just by being married.

At the same time, people in the  gay and lesbian movement who were similarly situated (white, educated, coupled) began to demand those same wages (making them even more valuable because they are coveted).

But giving white, educated, coupled gays and lesbians the wages of straightness won’t change the fact that the state should not award citizenship on the basis of marital status.  And if it’s going to, it ought to throw in a free honeymoon as well.