Spoon: You can't see spending that much money on a human being you intend to spend the rest of your life with? Ok, obviously neither of us has that kind of cash lying about, but if I had that, plus some surplus for expenses, and I loved someone enough to want to marry them (an absurd idea for me, I don't believe, personally, in getting myself married) then I would spend it. And not all couples require this. A wedding catered on your mum's stove can be just as good as one done at the Ritz.
The accusation that a lot of females are shallow and materialistic will not be accepted just because you're a female. The wedding day is an important societal ritual, not just some silly party. Photos will be taken that will be kept forever. Your entire family and your future family in law will be there. Considering ones appearance is pretty natural, and weddings are majorly hyped from a young age, so its natural for girls to look forward to it, have a certain image of the event, and try to fulfill said image. But I don't think it's only about the image. You can't say a catholic mass is all about image just because the priest makes sure to get dressed up for it.
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So I'm not sure if I can see the amount of money someone spends on a wedding as a valid argument. I dunno. I kinda think the money one spends on a wedding doesn't necessarily mean what you guys want it to mean.
The fact that, and I can attest to this, people routinely spend thousands of dollars on a wedding, doesn't demonstrate that said ritual pact is important? In what way?
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(And yes, if people stopped spending so much on catering it would affect Jm's business, and that's sad, but that's really pretty irrelevant to the argument, heh. "Get married so catering businesses have more business!" ...Not so much )
No, that is pretty relevant. I am not primarily a caterer, but two of my friends are. They would straight up lose their jobs if people stopped getting married. Therefore, for that reason alone, I have a problem with the idea of eliminating marriage. Why is the negative effect of your idea on my/my friends chosen professions irrelevent ?Would it be more relevent if you stood to lose your job from its implementation?
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JM, you likely didn't benefit from this wedding. They didn't hire any riff raff.
Yeah, but they did have an open bar. WOOOOOOOOOO!
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The benefits of marriage are being given to the wrong people
Married people, you mean? Forgive me but thats a very silly statement.
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especially if you consider that when my parents got divorced (when I was two), they still had a child to raise and lost those benefits. The benefits should be given to the two legal guardians of a child, not to two people in love.
Then they could either work out their differences and remain married, or remarry other people. And what if a child has only one legal guardian? Or three? Should they all get marriage benefits? What if I love my son, but his mother happens to be a coke whore. Now, we are his legal guardians since I cant gain sole custody, and then I die. Now, in your world, even though my only connection to the coke whore is through my son, it means she becomes the heir apparent to all my properties, which she will sell for coke. And what if I have a girlfriend? I would rather that my girlfriend has benefits than the person whom I share child custody with. The more systems you make to replace marriage the more complications and problems you create. Also, what about childless couples? They still provide a rather stable purchasing unit in capitalist society, far more protected from financial chrisis than a single individual, so society should encourage them too.
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assuming liberally that there even was undocumented marriage as long ago as 99,000 years ago) proves that we don't really need it.
Wow. Just, wow. That is an absolutely fantastic jump of logic.
Assuming that mankind survived without Chefelf.com forums for the previous hundred thousand years, I think I'm going to finish up posting, since, clearly, I don't need to be here as the cave men were just fine without forums.
And penicillin
etc.
This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 13 November 2008 - 11:45 PM