Marriage and Long-Standing Relationships Marriage Term Paper

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" It said that an expanding range of adult parenting arrangements and the growing disconnection between marriage and children. The report believed that it would be wise to examine the events, which have been happening. Canada recently stood at the forefront of Western nations in instituting radical changes in family law. The U.S.A. seemed to be taking the same direction (Cere).

The dominant stand among legal elites, including the two groups, which wrote the two reports, was that the family law should not aim at protecting the rights of children to grow up with their own, married parents (Cere 2005). Instead, it should protect and promote a concept called "family diversity." The stand drew from the belief that societies flourished when people of different backgrounds lived and worked together. The authors of the reports argued that society would be better off with all kinds of families co-existing and viewed as equally advantageous for children, for couples and for society itself. The avoided ideal types or authoritative standards, which could violate the norm of family diversity. They contended that the individuals should have the freedom to choose from a variety of family forms rather than standardize that freedom or choice into a certain type of nuclear family. They objected to all forms of intimate relationships, which privileged marriage. The reports, in essence, sought to de-privilege marriage and revise it into just one of the many kinds of recognized relationships (Cere).

These major trends in law appear to be attempts to channel public law into an entirely new and authoritative framework "beyond conjugality (Cere 2000)." If they managed to make marriage as only one of many equally valid forms of close relationships, any kind of close relationship could be legally recognized and deserving of social support.

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The observation was that, recently, the most controversial subject in marriage law was not gay marriage but polyamory. Polymory is distinguished from polygamy. Polygamy means many marriages and polymory means many loves. A polyamorous relationship could consist in multiple-partner sexual relationships, whether in marriage or not. Advocates of polyamory advanced "ethical non-monogamy," which involved more than one person in an open, communicative and honest way. These advocates pushed for liberal religious traditions to recognize multiple-partner marriage (Cere).

The authors of the reports did not recognize the connection of parenthood to marriage (Cere 2005). The traditional concept of marriage established an orderly framework wherein the couple could express their commitment to each other and to voluntarily assume a scope of legal rights and obligations. The attempted reformulation of marriage would strip children from the core meaning of marriage by redefining it as a close adult personal relationship. They would be thrown into a sphere, called "intergenerational relationships," involved in the rearing of children. This would mean an end of parenthood. But institutions, like marriage and parenthood, are not mere mechanisms to fulfill individual needs and aspirations. They are also rich, multi-level realities on the need for meaning and identity within the human community. Changing the basic features of marriage would affect real people whose lives would be substantially shaped by the institution. The advocacies of the American Legal Institute and the Law Commission would systematically marginalize the core features of conjugal marriage and parenthood. The social institution of marriage may need some change to sustain and enrich human culture but denormalizing its core features can also threaten the well-being of children, parents, couples and society as a whole (Cere)......

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