[Marxism] Anarchism and The Sanctity of Marriage debate

["eugene plawiuk" <eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

What's Love got to do with it?
Anarchism and The Sanctity of Marriage debate

©Eugene Plawiuk---September 2004
eugene@xxxxxxxxxxxx

-------------------------------------------------
?The popular notion about marriage and love is that they
are
synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and
cover the
same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rests
not on
actual facts, but on superstition.?
Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love
--------------------------------------------------
The hue and cry that has been raised by patriarchal
monotheists over
Gay Marriage belies the real truth about marriage. A
veritable united
front of Christians (all 57 varieties), Jews, Moslems and
sects such
as Mormons, have been denouncing the Canadian Supreme Court
ruling
that declared Provincial marriage acts as discriminatory,
because the
existing law did not provide for homosexual couples, only
heterosexual couples.

The vast right wing media monopoly in Canada has joined in
denouncing
the government for attempting to change the law in Canada
to
recognize Gay Marriage. The federal Conservative Party and
its
provincial counterpart; the Alberta Government, have
declared their
opposition to gay marriage.

And what is this common cause between the Church and State
in
opposing Gay Marriage, ah well there's the rub. It's all
about
the "Sanctity" of Marriage, a sacred act between a man and
a woman,
declared so by some holy book or other. And if this piece
of
historical revisionism wasn't enough to convince you, then
the
opponents of Gay Marriage declare that marriage is all
about the
family, having children, the family as you know is the very
basis of
society, or at least the health of the State.

As a wise woman once said; "the truth shall set you free",
and the
truth is Marriage is about property and chattel slavery,
it's
supposed sacredness is the cloth of oppression that
obscures this
horrible truth.

Yes I did say chattel slavery, for Marriage began before
the advent
of the Jewish, Christian or Islamic faith. Marriage was the
property
law of the Greek and Roman Empires, it allowed men to own
women,
children and slaves as possessions, including taking
possession of
their names and their property. The family was key to the
formation
of both the Greek and Roman states. The family is the
state, as much
as it is community and society. The formal family is
defined by law,
laws being needed to legitimate 'property relations', as
opposed to
moral customs which define and legitimate interpersonal
relations.

The current hue and cry about marriage is a defense of an
institution
founded on slavery and reformed in the 19th Century into
what we know
today as the nuclear family; dad, mom and the kids.



-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
?The modern family contains in germ not only slavery
(servitus), but
also serfdom, since from the beginning it is related to
agricultural
services. It contains in miniature all the contradictions,
which
later extend throughout society and its state.
Such a form of family shows the transition of the pairing
family to
monogamy. In order to make certain of the wife's fidelity
and
therefore of the paternity of the children, she is
delivered over
unconditionally into the power of the husband; if he kills
her, he is
only exercising his rights. ?
Karl Marx
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

>From ancient times, and in other cultures and societies,
the family
was communal, in fact it was the village, hence the axiom
"it takes a
village to raise a child". This is still true today in many

aboriginal cultures. The customs of marriage, rather than
its legal
existence, vary through time and space of human history.
There is NO
one form of marriage.

For anarchists we believe that love should be the condition
of
companionship, and that love is free, not subject to state
or church
recognition. In fact it is the recognition of common law,
or custom
versus legal sanction. This is known as Free Love.

Free Love was the harbinger of feminism in the 19th and
early 20th
Century, its advocates were feminist socialists like
Victoria
Woodhull, Stella Browne, Emma Goldman, and Alexandra
Kollanti.

It was the bane of church and middle class morality of its
day. Today
with the liberalization of social relations, the acceptance
of no
fault divorce and common law relations and even birth
control, we
forget that these were the social outrages of a mere 40
years ago,
and the social improprieties and moral turpitude of the
past century.
The social outrage of editorialists, church leaders and
politicians,
was heaped on the advocates of Free Love. Today it is this
same
outrage that vents against Gay Marriage.

Contrary to the assertions of the radical right, and the
fundamentalist religious types of all patriarchal
denominations, we
as libertarian socialists, need to reaffirm the principles
of Free
Love.
Marriage is NOT sacred, it is a property relationship that
oppresses women. All relations should be civil unions
between
consenting adults, not a special relationship recognized by
the
Church and State.

--------------------------------------------------------------
?That the abolition of individual economy is inseparable
from the
abolition of the family is self-evident. ?
Karl Marx, The German Ideology
---------------------------------------------------------------------------






Marriage is a property relationship, and we have yet to
hear the
Canadian left criticize the statements coming out that make
it
somehow a sacred ancient institution of the church-state.
Have we
failed to read our Marx, Engels or Emma Goldman?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
?Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned
woman to
the life of an inferior, a slave. It has thwarted her
nature and
fettered her soul, yet the Christian religion has no
greater
supporter, none more devout, than woman. Indeed, it is safe
to say
that religion would have long ceased to be a factor in the
lives of
the people, if it were not for the support it receives from
woman.
The most ardent churchworkers, the most tireless
missionaries the
world over, are women, always sacrificing on the altar of
the gods
that have chained her spirit and enslaved her body. ?
Emma Goldman, Woman Suffrage
---------------------------------------------------------------

We do not support church state sanctioned Marriage and do
not believe
that gay marriage is any less oppressive than straight
marriage as
radicals we advocate free love relations, relations freely
entered
into by people under common law.

That being said it is clear that the state can't have it
both ways it
can't have civil unions for some and marriage for others.
Does this
mean we support the institution of church/state marriage?
Not at all,
free love unions should be seen as civil/common law
relations, with
full benefits that heterosexual couples have. It has taken
many years
for the Canadian State to recognize common law relations
between
heterosexuals and then only for the taxes it brings in.

All marriage relations are property relations, even common
law, and
are recognized as such based on the necessity of taxation
by the
state. Where they are religious, they condemn women to the
continuation of oppression by patriarchal men. There is no
sacredness
in such institutional slavery.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau said that the State had no place in
the
bedrooms of the nation. He legalized sexual relations
between
consenting adult's even gay and lesbian relations, back in
1968. This
was done before the Stonewall riots! The fact is that the
Canadian
liberal social democratic state and its Supreme Court,
having ruled
in favour of women's privacy regarding abortion, would
naturally
recognize the significance of the Trudeau law as paving the
way for
gay marriage in Canada.









The provincial Supreme Courts in Canada have taken the
position that
the state cannot define marriage as limited to only
heterosexual
couples it has secularized marriage to mean any two people.
This does
not change the relationship from its bourgeois form it
merely expands
the private property relationship engendered in bourgeois
marriage to
now include gay and lesbian couples.
----------------------------------------------
?The inequalities of property among the individual heads of
families
break up the old communal household communities wherever
they had
still managed to survive, and with them the common
cultivation of the
soil by and for these communities. The cultivated land is
allotted
for use to single families, at first temporarily, later
permanently.
The transition to full private property is gradually
accomplished,
parallel with the transition of the pairing marriage into
monogamy.
The single family is becoming the economic unit of society.
?
Fredrick Engels,
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State
--------------------------------------------
Should the Court in Canada and the US allow for Gay
Marriage?
Absolutely as it recognizes this as a common right anything
less
would be discrimination and an injustice. As long as the
state denies
some of its citizens the benefits of marriage as a
tax-based
institution, then it is discrimination.

But free love unions are common law in that the church or
state does
not sanctify them. Free love common law relations are
freely entered
into by lovers/comrades/companieros and are not formally
recognized
by the state, though after a period of time the Canadian
state and
its tax department will recognize those relations if they
are
declared.

We must continue to oppose marriage as an institutional
form of
oppression, instead we must promote the free association of
lovers.
Down with all forms of patriarchal marriage! Anarchie
Amour!

---------------------------------30-------------------------------------

?Conservatives are not in the least mistaken when they
speak in
general terms of Revolutionists as enemies of religion, the
family
and property. Yes; Socialists do reject the authority of
dogma and
the intervention of the supernatural in nature, and, in
this sense
however earnest their striving for the realization of their
ideal,
they are the enemies of religion. Yes; they do desire the
suppression
of the marriage market; they desire that unions should be
free,
depending only on mutual affection and respect for self and
for the
dignity of others, and, in this sense, however loving and
devoted to
those whose lives are associated with theirs, they are
certainly the
enemies of the legal family. Yes; they do desire to put an
end to the
monopoly of land and capital, and to restore them to all,
and, in
this sense, however glad they may be to secure to every one
the
enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, they are the enemies
of
property. ?
Elisee Reclus




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