Dear oh dear.

As I've stated time and time again - our
conversations must shift away from the
mass infantile finger-pointing that now
pervades it. It isn't the Left or the
Right who are ruining this country.
It's the tendency on so many people's parts
to think that their way is the right way and that
people who disagree with them are bad.

Disagree with each other by all means - and argue
logically without stooping to personal insults
or congratulate those who have the wisdom to
see things our way.

I enjoy this Forum - (obviously) and it does make
me re-think many things. However I stop reading
someone's post once I see that it degenerates
into disrespect and insults. We sometimes forget
that there are people behind the computers.

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Love and marriage ...

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It is a common feature in the animal kingdom for males to compete for the right of access to females for mating purposes.

The instauration of marriage civilised this process.

Political rulers used marriage to create strategic alliances and consolidate their political power.

The aristocracy, the elite, the wealthy and other privileged classes used it, and continue to do so, in order to avoid natural dispersion and depletion of their earthly estates and privileges throughout succeeding generations.

The clergy seized on the institution of marriage as a means of increasing their influence and control over their "flock" of submissive "sheep" and its future progeny, thus assuring the prosperity and perpetuity of their religions.

Arranged marriages, forced marriages and marriage by mutual consent continue to coexist in the world today. More and more children are born outside of marriage (74% of all births in Columbia in 2011, 69% in Peru, 68% in Chile, 58% in Argentina, 55% in Norway and Mexico, 54.2% in Sweden,47.3% in the UK, 40.8% in the US, 34% in Australia).

Motivations for marriage by mutual consent are multiple: emotional, sexual, economic/financial/tax reasons, acquisition of citizenship, religious, moral, social obligations and advantages, pregnancy, possessiveness, friendship, pity, love ...

Love, defined as "unconditional selflessness" (Jeremy Griffith) or "to will the good of another" (Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas), is rarely, if ever, a motivation for marriage. What most people mistakenly call "love" is usually some form of "emotional gratification and/or sexual attachment, attraction, admiration, devotion, sense of achievement or well-being, harmony, friendship, personal pride or form of narcissism, a passing fancy, an instinctive impulse, or some other self-serving urge...".

Few are capable of true love or even aware of the correct meaning of the word. Love and marriage are , of course, totally independent of each other:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=14890#256883

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Continued ...

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Marriage is an oral contract imposing legal rights and obligations, possibly completed by certain specific written terms and conditions signed and approved by the contracting parties.

Love is an attitude, a philosophy, with reference to a set of moral values, and a praxis based on this attitude, philosophy and set of moral values.

Marriage is subject to the constraints of society in terms of gender, age, religion, cast or social standing, ethnicity, sanity and various other cultural, social and political criteria.

Love is not. It is available to everybody, for anybody, without exclusion or restriction. It is unconditional, universal and unlimited.

It is because it is unconditional that it is not necessarily reciprocal. It expects nothing in return.

There is no such thing as temporary or partial love. Either it is total, eternal and indestructible or it is not.

That is why it is so exceptional.

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The last person on earth you would ever want to talk to about life's everyday problems would have to be the likes of a Catholic priest. Imagine an ordinary bloke going to a priest with his problems;
Bloke; "Father I want to talk to you about the wife."
Priest; "Ah... I don't know much about wives. I've, ah...never had one."
Bloke; "Okay father I have another problem, the mortgage is a problem;"
Priest; "Ah... I don't know much about mortgages, I've, ah...never had a mortgage."
Bloke; "Okay father I do have another problems, its the kids."
Priest; "Ah... I don't know much about kids. I've, ah.... never had kids."
My point is do we as a society want to be dictated to by some old out of touch fools, such as those that run the Catholic Church. these nincompoops put themselves up as experts on everything from birth to death, all based on a fairytale book, and their own interpretation.

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Continued ...

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The track record of heterosexual marriages in Australia is extremely poor:

- There were 121 000 marriages but also 50 200 divorces in 2010.

- Roughly 50% of divorces each year impact on children aged less than 18 years

- 41% of all reported sexual assault victims were aged 0-14 years (Aust. Institute of Health & Welfare, 2009)

- 19% of women and 5.5% of men reported experiencing sexual violence since the age of 15 ( Aust. Bureau of Stats. survey, 2005)

- 25% of women experienced intimate partner physical violence at least once in their lifetime and in the last 12 months, 1995–2006 (UN Stats. Division:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/Worldswomen/WW2010%20Report_by%20chapter%28pdf%29/violence%20against%20women.pdf)

- Family Violence costs Australia about $8 billion per year, a substantial proportion of which is borne by the victims themselves (Vic. Health, 2004)


According to a survey by The Aust. Institute of Criminology in 2003 :

- 20.8% of all homicides involve intimate partners. This represents approximately 76 homicide incidents within Australia each year.

- Over three-quarters (76.9%) of these intimate partner homicides involved a male offender and a female victim.

- Of these homicides, 65.8% occurred between current spouses or de-facto partners, whilst 22.6% occurred between separated/divorced spouses or
de facto partners.

- 10% occurred between current or former boy/girlfriends, and

- 2% occurred within same sex relationships

Even if there were to be just as much intimate partner violence in same sex marriage as there is at present in heterosexual marriage, at least the protagonists would be boxing in the same category !

On the basis of the latest available statistics, same sex relationships only count for 2% of all intimate partner homicides.

Also, about 50% of all heterosexual marriages today, end up in separation or divorce. The children end up living with a single sex parent, generally, the mother.

Same sex relationships have a far better track record than heteroxexual relationships.

Sounds like a better deal ... if you fancy that sort of thing ... maybe you could have a girl friend or a boyfriend on the side !

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Banjo Paterson,
You give a lot of statistics that indicate the sad and disturbed state of human society. However perhaps statistics on gays indicate loosely formed sexual relationships that do not involve shared property and children so their emotional attachements are much looser and casual. Where children, pets and shared property are involved much more emotion is involved in separation. Children are a deciding factor in heterosexual marriages, as distinct from pets and property in dissolution of other forms of live in relationships.