Essays in Idleness

Among the excitements, during our repaganization of Western, formerly Christian, society, is the necessity of rewriting all our laws and customs. As an ancient English curse, cleverly attributed to the Chinese, had it, “May you live in interesting times.” It was the English who were capable of irony; and now we are cursed.

Marriage is one of the many institutions that have come up for review. It wasn’t really a legal institution. Only adultery was against the law. Nevertheless, the State kept a form of marriage register, and customary events, such as bridal showers and wild bachelor parties, accompanied the entries. “Natural” marriage continued to exist, in parallel with the formal sort, but without any protection against adultery.

Eventually the “welfare state” and homosexual demands began to dissolve the institution. It now appears to have reached complete dissolution, except that the State continues to invent matrimonial laws.

An understanding that marriage had permanently “evolved” occurred to me while attending a Roman Catholic church-wedding, as a friend of the bride. She came from a fearfully backward, conservative home, as did the groom, but the priest did not, apparently. He purposefully twisted the words in the Rite that he was awkwardly reading. Instead of “this man” and “this woman,” the marriage was between “two persons,” he proclaimed. This made it a same-sex marriage, even though both parties had explicitly requested a Christian service.

All marriages must now be same-sex marriages, I concluded, and cross-sexuality has been banned. (Still, the State enjoys making new laws, and the Church prides herself on her ability to catch up.)

Since our scheme of repaganization may quickly be supplanted by Islamic conquest and forcible conversion, and Islam has numerous laws and customs (for instance first-cousin marriage, and polygyny), there may not be much time in which to compose the new texts. These things, after all, require centuries to settle, and in the absence of an otherwise agreed religion, they will be settled in (ludicrously) different ways.