Marriage. A publically acknowledged, legally recorded, and most often celebrated by religious sanctification and ceremony, physical, emotional, spiritual union between a man and a woman.
While contemporary US society has increasingly dismissed the 'need' for marriage, or warped its application to other kinds of unions, the ancient reality is that the institution of 'marriage' between one man and one woman came about for sound reasons. Millennia of observations of human behavior taught the wiser older members of society - many, though not all - religious figures - that being a young man, from the age of 14 or so on, able to engage in copulate with a girl or woman without later physical consequences to himself, while the girl or woman from the age of puberty who accepts, willingly or not, his advances, runs the risk of becoming pregnant and delivering a child.
In fact both their bodies are designed, and were evolved by nature to procreate sufficiently to perpetuate the race. The reality is that the woman has to care for the unborn and herself for 9 months, during which she often cannot totally provide for herself. And after the child is born it falls to her as a mother, far more than its father in the very earliest years, to care for the infant and begin his or her relationship to others and education for life. This is a critical period in a child''s total development. And if, only for the convenience or neglect by either the mother or the father, that care is not given, the child has a high probability of stunted development - which then appears later in that child's health and behavior - and often perpetuates a society which does not value either life, or children. That is a threat to society.
Marriage was a wise way devised by societies over centuries for humans to deal with the rights and obligations - not just to biological mothers and only to a slightly lesser extent fathers - but above all for the physical and mental welfare of children before and after their birth. Children need both mother's and fathers. Legal Marriage greatly encourages that state, deters its arbitrary dissolution, and continues the obligations for the welfare of the child of both parties.
Circumstance - sickness, accident, genetic traits, the acts of other men or women or self destructive tendencies - may cause marriages once entered into in good faith with the best intentions, which produce children - to fail. But I believe unless the majority of people enter into marriage before their first child is born, and remain married until, at least, the youngest of their children grow to puberty having observed and learned from the model set by both their parents - whether good or bad - their next generation will not be prepared to further the species with wisdom, courage, and a deep understanding of what is good, or bad, for their fellow man.
From those belief's above I do not 'believe in' the modern form of absolute 'woman's liberation' - which has, in the US at least, become, willy nilly, the mantra that women have unlimited freedom and 'rights' - but no corresponding 'obligations' to society as women. Woman are and should be the primary 'care givers' of a society. Males should be the primary providers, and protectors of that same society.
Thus I believe a society that not only permits but actively encourages women to join the armed portion of the Military Forces - whose singular purpose is to 'kill people and break things' - is morally bankrupt, and threatens and endanger's future generations.
Real human progress takes time, even if new ideas are worthy of trying - and I believe new ideas should be tried. Discarding of Marriage is not one of them
Perhaps I am biased after 55 years of happy marriage to the same woman, seeing its benefit to us, our children and grandchildren, and to the communities of which we have been a part. And we have seen where marriage is dismissed, the sad consequences, not just to those who did not marry or stay married long enough but to their children - who are always the hope of the future, not of the present or past. I see the decline of society that does not value 'obligations' as much as 'rights.'
