Civil marriage

“ They are to make exterminating war upon the "impious laws" which allow civil marriages, because those thus united, "desecrating the holy dignity of marriage, have lived in legal concubinage instead of Christian matrimony." And lastly, and no less imperatively, all are to be instructed in the indispensable obligation "to obey their superiors." ”

“ Even marriage afforded a field for the display of arbitrary power. Necessity at first compelled the government to recognize the validity of civil marriages. But as the transformation of laws and usages progressed, no marriages were recognized as valid which were not celebrated according to the rights of the Church of England. ”

“ No human law can abolish the natural and original right of marriage, nor in any way limit the chief and principal purpose of marriage, ordained by God's authority from the beginning. Increase and multiply [2] Hence we have the family; the "society" of a man's house — a society limited indeed in numbers, but no less a true "society," anterior to every kind of State or nation, invested with rights and duties of its own, totally independent of the civil community. ”

“ Reason demands the liberation of marriage from ecclesiastical pressure. It demands that matrimony be grounded on mutual love, esteem, and devotion, and that it at the same time be counted a social contract, and be protected, as civil marriage, by proper legislation. ”

“ The present English law.—It is, indeed, wonderful that a great nation, priding herself on a love of equity and social liberty, should thus for five generations tolerate an invidious indulgence, rather than frankly and courageously to free herself from the shackles of an ecclesiastical tradition! But even in England, so far as the state is concerned, the dogma that marriage is an indissoluble bond has finally run its course. A partial remedy for the scandals and hardships of the existing system was at last grudgingly provided in the civil divorce law of 1857. ”

“ The mores have once more taken full control of the matter, and the religious ceremony is used to satisfy the interests, and fulfill the faiths, of the population. Such is the effect of civil marriage as established in the nineteenth century. At the present time the ministers of religion seem disposed to use their lawful position as the proper ones to celebrate marriage, that they may impose restrictions on divorce, and on marriage after divorce. ”

“ Prudence dictates to Men of Prudence, and Modesty to Men of Modesty; the great Law of Matrimony is a strict Union of the Persons; this Union extends to many other Things, as well as to the Union of Sexes, and, among the rest, there is, or should be, a Union of Kindness moving to a gentle and tender using one another in Matters of Civility and Courtesy, as well as in Matters of Modesty. Certainly the Rules of Civility are not abolished by Matrimony; Should not the Man and his Wife be civil and just to one another, because they may be free? ”

“ Many countries recognize a civil marriage as legal, it is true, but, in the first place it is only introduced into a comparatively small number, in the second, where it is already introduced powerful influences are at work undermining it, and, in the third place, social customs have not kept pace with the law, consequently in those countries where the civil marriage is a recognized, permanent institution it is not considered as a complete marriage. ”

“ As in the case of suffrage, each one has many points identical with many others, and the range of variation is small. All are monogamous; all allow freedom of choice to the marrying parties; all hold marriage and divorce to be civil matters, and consider ministers and priests of religious denominations as civil officials for the legalizing of marriages. ”

“ But it is of no use to pile up citations of decisions further to establish the well-accepted doctrine that marriage is more than a civil contract, that it is a domestic institution, and that a State, by virtue of its police power, has absolute control as to who may contract marriages or live in that relation within its borders. ”

“ Not only as regards her property, but also in her full civil rights and the disposition of her person, the married woman must be placed on an equal footing with the unmarried. It is true that the law is not so favourable as many people believe to “conjugal rights.” But this belief has survived for centuries and in turn influences morals ”

“ An advance towards the recognition of the true principle of legislative interference in marriage has been made in England, in the new law in which the agreement of marriage is made a civil contract, leaving the religious obligation to the conscience and taste of the parties. ”

“ We cannot make men moral by act of parliament, but we can restrict their depredations.
It has long been our feeling that every form and kind of spurious marriage, such as bigamy, polygamy, illegal divorce and remarriage, seduction, adultery, and bastardy, besides constituting sometimes cause for civil action, might with good results be lifted into offenses against the State. National development depends not upon the individual but upon the family unit, and that family unit is non-existent outside the monogamous relation, or, at least, is so frail as to easily crumble. ”

“ But we may remark, the ordinance of marriage lies at the foundation of the ordinance of government; and laws enacted to guard the former against abuse and to protect from pollution this original fountain of morals, will most effectually secure good morals in the civil community. It is of the first importance to lay the foundation of a building well ”

“ By a system of sane education and legislation the paramount importance, dignity, responsibility and sacredness of marriage over other institutions would be impressed on the mind of the masses. Marriage is both a civil and religious institution. Civil law should protect the rights of marriage and judiciously determine who shall and who shall not marry. ”

“ Also by preaching and writing on the obligations of marriage, the blessings which flow from unions which are hallowed by perfect and lifelong fidelity to conjugal and parental duties, and the evils which are the consequence of infidelity and frequent separations. Jurists and statesmen may reform the administration of law in the courts so as to decrease the facility of obtaining divorce, and secure to all parties a thorough protection of all the rights guaranteed to them by the civil law. ”

“ The officers of the bureau should be especially charged to impress upon the freedmen the sacredness of the family relation and the duty of parents to take care of their children, and of the aged and infirm of their race. Where a man and woman have lived together as husband and wife, the relation should be declared legitimate, and all parties, after contracting such relations, should be compelled to legal marriage by severe laws against concubinage. ”

“ We now demand the ballot, trial by jury of our peers, and an equal right to the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And, until the Constitution be so changed as to give us a voice in the government, we demand that man shall make all his laws on property, marriage, and divorce, to bear equally on man and woman. ”

“ He admits that the marriage institution has been, in various respects, beneficially modified with the advance of society, and that we may not yet have reached the last of these modifications; but strenuously maintains that such changes cannot possibly affect what he regards as the essential principles of the institution—the irrevocability of the engagement, and the complete subordination of the wife to the husband, and of women generally to men; which are precisely the great vulnerable points of the existing constitution of society on this important subject. ”

“ All their gallant sympathy and protection explodes, when the angel they worship so far condescends to come down to the plane of mortals as to become a wife.
Admitting that it does not come within the scope of the law to regulate the marriage institution, which is the province of a higher tribunal, the conscience and the affections, it is the true province of legislation to recognize the equal rights of both sexes in entering into the relation, thus removing a great source of selfish motives in the thirst for gain and love of power. ”

“ Now, I ask, how many men would venture to get married under these laws? Would they not be tempted to ignore the marriage laws of our woman government altogether? Now, gentlemen, we are sorry to own it, this is the very condition in which your man government places us. ”

“ They cover the relations of men and women to each other before marriage and in marriage, with all the rights and duties of married and unmarried respectively to the rest of the society. The mores determine what marriage shall be, who may enter into it, in what way they may enter into it, divorce, and all details of proper conduct in the family relation. In regard to all these matters it is evident that custom governs and prescribes. When positive institutions and laws are made they always take up, ordain, and regulate what the mores have long previously made facts in the social order. ”

“ Every marriage, for a thousand reasons, should be public, should be recorded, should be known; but, above all, to the end that the purity of the union should appear. These ceremonies are not only for the good and for the protection of the married, but also for the protection of their children, and of society as well. But, after all, the marriage remains a contract of the highest possible character—a contract in which each gives and receives a heart. ”

“ Your marriage contract, like our own laws, appears to favour the weaker sex more than strict theoretical equality would permit. This is quite right and practically inevitable; but it hardly agrees with the theory which supposes bride and bridegroom, husband and wife, to enter on and maintain a coequal voluntary partnership. ”

“ Our first point (the social law controlling the varying position of married women) brings us at once to the fact that physical unions of men and women must have preceded all legal definitions of their relation to each other, or to their offspring. We begin to call these unions marriage, when the first headland of rude ceremonial selection appears above the sea of promiscuous passions. For a long while yet, no legal enactments fix the status of the wife ”

“ Your celebration of your fiftieth wedding day is one of the strongest proofs of the falseness of the charge brought against our movement for the enfranchisement of women, viz., that the condition of equality of political rights [Pg 313] for the wife will cause inharmony and disruption of the marriage bond. To the contrary, such conditions of perfect equality are the best helps to make for peace and harmony and elevation in all true and noble directions. ”

“ In no nation with a system of polygamy do we find a code of political and moral rights, and the condition of woman is that of a slave. In polygamous countries nothing is added to the education and civilization. ”

“ Under the operation of this Amendment, what will become of the family hearthstone around which cluster the very best influences of human education? You will have a family with two heads—a "house divided against itself." You will no longer have that healthful and necessary subordination of wife to husband, and that unity of relationship which is required by a true and a real Christian marriage. ”

“ Nay, but for the aid of vices to which the male part of society give system and culture, the need of marriage on his part will be more imperative than on hers. Its natural burdens fall with fivefold force on her. She must bear the children. She must give the flower of her life to services full of weariness and of anguish. Now, however the matter may stand between man and woman, the State's need of marriage is imperative. ”

“ Resolved, That in seeking to remove the legal disabilities which now oppress woman as wife and mother, the friends of woman suffrage are not seeking to undermine or destroy the sanctity of the marriage relation, but to ennoble marriage, making the obligations and responsibilities of the contract mutual and equal for husband and wife. ”

“ The world has seen marriage by capture, by service, by purchase, by social convenience, by free and natural choice. The experiment of marriage by free choice has received in our own country its fullest trial. Marriage by social convenience and by purchase still survive, even with us, and there are many among us who think that marriage for love may not be final as a national trait, and that we will discover that the compact of marriage, being in the interest of society and actually under the government of society should be made directly in conformity with the convenience of society. ”

“ Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage. ”

“ Several States still retain upon their statute-books the common-law prohibition of marriage between persons related by consanguinity, or affinity, nearer than the third degree; while other States have progressed to that degree of liberality on the road to individual freedom and universal happiness which permits a person to marry, if not his grandmother, at least the daughter of his wife by a former husband. ”

“ It is whether government action, embodied in common law, and statutes, meets the charter rights that the applicants possess. ... It is a unique institution, and the court has to decide whether to change marriage forever. ... The purpose of marriage has nothing to do with excluding the applicants. That is an effect, but the purpose of marriage, outside the law, at its roots, was to define an institution that would bring together the two core aspects of our humanity; our maleness and our femaleness, because at its essence this is the basis for humanity. ”