Government on a Neighboring Planet

72:3.1On this con­ti­nent it is against the law for two fam­i­lies to live un­der the same roof. And since group dwellings have been out­lawed, most of the ten­e­ment type of build­ings have been de­mol­ished. But the un­mar­ried still live in clubs, ho­tels, and other group dwellings. The small­est home­site per­mit­ted must pro­vide fifty thou­sand square feet of land. All land and other prop­erty used for home pur­poses are free from tax­a­tion up to ten times the min­i­mum home­site al­lot­ment.

72:3.2The home life of this peo­ple has greatly im­proved dur­ing the last cen­tury. At­ten­dance of par­ents, both fa­thers and moth­ers, at the pa­ren­tal schools of child cul­ture is com­pul­sory. Even the agri­cul­tur­ists who re­side in small coun­try set­tle­ments carry on this work by cor­re­spon­dence, go­ing to the near-by cen­ters for oral in­struc­tion once in ten days—ev­ery two weeks, for they main­tain a five-day week.

72:3.3The av­er­age num­ber of chil­dren in each fam­ily is five, and they are un­der the full con­trol of their par­ents or, in case of the demise of one or both, un­der that of the guard­i­ans des­ig­nated by the pa­ren­tal courts. It is con­sid­ered a great honor for any fam­ily to be awarded the guardian­ship of a full or­phan. Com­pet­i­tive ex­am­i­na­tions are held among par­ents, and the or­phan is awarded to the home of those dis­play­ing the best pa­ren­tal qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

72:3.4These peo­ple re­gard the home as the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of their civ­i­liza­tion. It is ex­pected that the most valu­able part of a child’s ed­u­ca­tion and char­ac­ter train­ing will be se­cured from his par­ents and at home, and fa­thers de­vote al­most as much at­ten­tion to child cul­ture as do moth­ers.

72:3.5All sex in­struc­tion is ad­min­is­tered in the home by par­ents or by le­gal guard­i­ans. Moral in­struc­tion is of­fered by teach­ers dur­ing the rest pe­ri­ods in the school shops, but not so with re­li­gious train­ing, which is deemed to be the ex­clu­sive priv­i­lege of par­ents, re­li­gion be­ing looked upon as an in­te­gral part of home life. Purely re­li­gious in­struc­tion is given pub­licly only in the tem­ples of phi­los­o­phy, no such ex­clu­sively re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions as the Uran­tia churches hav­ing de­vel­oped among this peo­ple. In their phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion is the striv­ing to know God and to man­i­fest love for one’s fel­lows through ser­vice for them, but this is not typ­i­cal of the re­li­gious sta­tus of the other na­tions on this planet. Re­li­gion is so en­tirely a fam­ily mat­ter among these peo­ple that there are no pub­lic places de­voted ex­clu­sively to re­li­gious as­sem­bly. Po­lit­i­cally, church and state, as Uran­tians are wont to say, are en­tirely sep­a­rate, but there is a strange over­lap­ping of re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy.

72:3.6Un­til twenty years ago the spir­i­tual teach­ers (com­pa­ra­ble to Uran­tia pas­tors), who visit each fam­ily pe­ri­od­i­cally to ex­am­ine the chil­dren to as­cer­tain if they have been prop­erly in­structed by their par­ents, were un­der gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion. These spir­i­tual ad­vis­ers and ex­am­in­ers are now un­der the di­rec­tion of the newly cre­ated Foun­da­tion of Spir­i­tual Prog­ress, an in­sti­tu­tion sup­ported by vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions. Pos­si­bly this in­sti­tu­tion may not fur­ther evolve un­til af­ter the ar­rival of a Par­a­dise Mag­is­te­rial Son.

72:3.7Chil­dren re­main legally sub­ject to their par­ents un­til they are fif­teen, when the first ini­ti­a­tion into civic re­spon­si­bil­ity is held. There­after, ev­ery five years for five suc­ces­sive pe­ri­ods sim­i­lar pub­lic ex­er­cises are held for such age groups at which their obli­ga­tions to par­ents are less­ened, while new civic and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the state are as­sumed. Suf­frage is con­ferred at twenty, the right to marry with­out pa­ren­tal con­sent is not be­stowed un­til twenty-five, and chil­dren must leave home on reach­ing the age of thirty.

72:3.8Mar­riage and di­vorce laws are uni­form through­out the na­tion. Mar­riage be­fore twenty—the age of civil en­fran­chise­ment—is not per­mit­ted. Per­mis­sion to marry is only granted af­ter one year’s no­tice of in­ten­tion, and af­ter both bride and groom pre­sent cer­tifi­cates show­ing that they have been duly in­structed in the pa­ren­tal schools re­gard­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of mar­ried life.

72:3.9Di­vorce reg­u­la­tions are some­what lax, but de­crees of sep­a­ra­tion, is­sued by the pa­ren­tal courts, may not be had un­til one year af­ter ap­pli­ca­tion there­for has been re­corded, and the year on this planet is con­sid­er­ably longer than on Uran­tia. Not­with­stand­ing their easy di­vorce laws, the pres­ent rate of di­vorces is only one tenth that of the civ­i­lized races of Uran­tia.