The Case Against Marriage

A friend of mine recently got hitched, not for romantic love or money, but for friend love. What do I mean? She wanted her friend X to be in a place where he could be happy and financially secure. X had found such a place: America!

But there was a slight problem: X was not American. So my friend and X traveled back to X's country, got married, and moved back to America, where X could continue to pursue his American dream with his girlfriend (not my friend) without fear of deportation. There was no money, duress, or pressure involved; all my friend got out of this marriage was a few hundred international bureaucratic loopholes to navigate and a loud wedding in an EU country.

My friend and X will have to stay together for three years before X will be granted permanent residency. At that point, they are free to divorce. Before that point, the INS will badger my married friend and her legal husband to prove their love for one another. They'll have to show pictures of them recreating together--the longer ago the pictures were taken and the more affection their poses in the picture, the better. They'll have to submit to a series of humiliating questions about each other, designed to entrap them into betraying their ignorance about each other's habits (and therefore betraying, presumably, their immigration fraud). They may have to do obligatory "couple" things--living at the same address, opening accounts together, etc. All of these charades just to convince the INS that they are in a truly committed relationship to one another.

I'm thinking about this. At what point--short of my friend writing "I have married X solely for the purpose of giving him U.S. citizenship"--will the INS definitively say that an international marriage was immigration fraud? If my friend does not know which toothpaste brand her husband prefers, wouldn't an American wife of an American husband be excused for not knowing the same thing? If the INS found out that X was actually dating another woman, couldn't X point to the gazillions of American husbands who carry out extramarital affairs? If my friend had taken money for the marriage, can't my friend just say that plenty of husbands give their wives gifts? I'm not certain where the boundary falls between a marriage like my friend and X's and a "real marriage" like the kind that millions of stupid, incompetent, ugly, boorish, haggard, artificial, creepy American breeders have.

I mean, marriage is a juridical relationship, right? Married couples in which both spouses are American never have onus to prove their commitment to one another in the same way that married international couples have to prove. Would the INS declare an American marriage null and void if Dick and Jane couldn't produce pictures of themselves in front of Epcot Center smiling at a camera because they would rather stick golf tees into each other's philandering eyes than be forced to spend any time together? Or if Dick didn't live in the same state as Jane?

Of course not. So not only do we have a system of marriage that flat-out excludes people who love people of the same sex, but within this system there is a hierarchy of partnerships. Some partnerships can be purely juridical--the partnership of an American man and an American woman--with no romantic love whatsoever. Other partnerships, on the other hand--between an American and a non-American--must prove affection, commitment, feelgood, and lovingkindness.

I can understand if the government wants to prevent real marriage fraud, like the woman who married 27 non-Americans for money. But what's wrong with an unmarried American marrying one unmarried non-American, even if there is the exchange of cash? Can't you just call that a dowry? Isn't that what a diamond engagement ring is?

Somebody who wants to explain this two-tiered marriage system to me is welcome to do so.

Meanwhile, I think this just exposes marriage for the bullshit that it is. I'm thinking of starting a movement against civil marriage--no one should have it. Marriage, if the Christians are so concerned about preserving it, should be purely sectarian. The state should have no interest in regulating "romantic" relationships. In the place of civil marriage ought to be domestic partner registries for all people--het couples, queer couples, two elderly friends who live together to save on expenses, a widow and her best friend, three adult siblings living together and raising one of the sibling's children from a previous marriage--so that the government could give appropriate tax breaks and benefits to the real family units that constitute American society. This is the correct rejoinder to all the crows on the right who fear that gay marriage will lead to polyamory and incest: families are about mutual support and caregiving, not the romantic feelings of penises housed in vaginas. All families should be recognized--and yes, including those families that include more than two heads of household or siblings, as in the cases mentioned above--not just those that churches recognize.

(This from a woman who will be not-so-legally wed to her same-sex stick in three months. Don't get it wrong: it's not about the marriage. It's about the big ol' party that follows it.)