The Marriage Institution

83:1.1Mar­riage is so­ci­ety’s mech­a­nism de­signed to reg­u­late and con­trol those many hu­man re­la­tions which arise out of the phys­i­cal fact of bi­sex­u­al­ity. As such an in­sti­tu­tion, mar­riage func­tions in two di­rec­tions:

83:1.21. In the reg­u­la­tion of per­sonal sex re­la­tions.

83:1.32. In the reg­u­la­tion of de­scent, in­her­i­tance, suc­ces­sion, and so­cial or­der, this be­ing its older and orig­i­nal func­tion.

83:1.4The fam­ily, which grows out of mar­riage, is it­self a sta­bi­lizer of the mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion to­gether with the prop­erty mores. Other po­tent fac­tors in mar­riage sta­bil­ity are pride, van­ity, chivalry, duty, and re­li­gious con­vic­tions. But while mar­riages may be ap­proved or dis­ap­proved on high, they are hardly made in heaven. The hu­man fam­ily is a dis­tinctly hu­man in­sti­tu­tion, an evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment. Mar­riage is an in­sti­tu­tion of so­ci­ety, not a de­part­ment of the church. True, re­li­gion should might­ily in­flu­ence it but should not un­der­take ex­clu­sively to con­trol and reg­u­late it.

83:1.5Prim­i­tive mar­riage was pri­mar­ily in­dus­trial; and even in mod­ern times it is of­ten a so­cial or busi­ness af­fair. Through the in­flu­ence of the mix­ture of the And­ite stock and as a re­sult of the mores of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, mar­riage is slowly be­com­ing mu­tual, ro­man­tic, pa­ren­tal, po­et­i­cal, af­fec­tion­ate, eth­i­cal, and even ide­al­is­tic. Se­lec­tion and so-called ro­man­tic love, how­ever, were at a min­i­mum in prim­i­tive mat­ing. Dur­ing early times hus­band and wife were not much to­gether; they did not even eat to­gether very of­ten. But among the an­cients, per­sonal af­fec­tion was not strongly linked to sex at­trac­tion; they be­came fond of one an­other largely be­cause of liv­ing and work­ing to­gether.