American Foundation for Equal Rights

WSJ: Why Do We Need the State’s Permission to Get Married Anyway?

Out in San Francisco, the Prop. 8 trial rumbles on. Following Monday’s opening and Wednesday’s dramatic Supreme Court reversal of federal judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to broadcast the hearings, we’d imagine things will be pretty quiet, barring dramatic testimony, until the end of the trial.

But the whole affair has made us step back and think: why does the state regulate marriage to begin with? After all, marriages are at their heart private arrangements. Why aren’t we able to head to our nearest Office Depot or Staples, buy a blank marriage contract, fill it out, tuck it away in our safe-deposit boxes, and call ourselves married?

Well, let us answer our own question, at least in part. The state, of course, does have an interest in regulating marriage. It has an interest in providing a legal underpinning to the building blocks of our society, the nuclear family, so money can be distributed properly following a spouse’s death. It also has an interest in the welfare of children, and therefore finds benefit in bestowing a special status upon an institution that provides a child, in theory at least, with not one but two caregivers.

But do the state’s interest go beyond these? For a bit of help, we chatted with Stephanie Coontz, a professor of history at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. Coontz is the author of several books on the family and marriage. Her most recent,  Marriage, a History, was called one of the best books of 2005.

Read the rest of Ashby Jones’s Wall Street Journal article here.