Brian Gallimore's Blog

What if we decided to get government completely out of the marriage business, and allowed couples to get married by whatever authority they deemed appropriate? Gay couples could get married in a church or organization that issued marriage certificates. All the Vegas wedding chapels would issue marriage certificates. And of course, good old fashioned churches would marry couples also.

Now, given that situation, what if it was shown that some marriages worked better than others?(couples were happier, more successful, had smarter kids, whatever better is, lets just say better for now) And what if there was a system of ranking the quality of marriages, and WHERE the marriage certificate was issued was reported also. So now we have a system where some marriage certificate issuers are MORE DESIRABLE because there is a correlation to BETTER MARRIAGES. There would be competition to go after these higher-rated churches/whatever-they-are-places because you are about to spend the rest of your life with one person, and obtaining the highest possible chance of having a good one is worth some extra work.

This would change the culture. People would be looked down on because they didn’t care enough about having a successful marriage to bother going to a reputable place when they got drunk and got married in a drunken stupor at Elvis’s chapel of love. Some would work for years at pre-martial counselling and workshops to ensure they had the skills to pass the more prestigious ivy-league marriage boutiques. The religious folks would argue only church weddings were acceptable. There would be real numbers and data that linked to real reputations. All kinds of rich discussion and debate would occur to decide the merits of all the different situations that would occur.

Maybe when you wanted to adopt a dog (or a baby), the adoption agency picked the ‘best’ applicant couples from the list of high quality marriage certificate providers. I don’t know, there are all kinds of possibilities here, but I’m pretty sure that some couples would be VERY serious about choosing good marriage certificate issuers. They could be ensured to have a happier life because of the more rigorous standards and tough acceptance screening process.

Introducing free-market competition into the marriage certificate business would improve our morals by shining the bright light of truth on the subject. Even if this is a goal too lofty, can we at least compromise by getting the government out of the marriage business?

RON PAUL ON DRUGS WITH JOHN STOSSEL

“When you defend freedom, you defend freedom of choice and you can’t be picking and choosing how people use those freedoms” -Ron Paul