LiT, it's interesting that you associate marriage and children. I don't think our culture should be encouraging anyone to have children, and I definitely don't want any of my own -- much less do I feel any obligation to reproduce, in spite of the pressure I get to do so. As to looking at marriage as a means by which to encourage "healthy" child-rearing -- I disagree with the notion that children produced in a heterosexual marriage are any healthier or better than any other children. More desirable by society's outmoded standards, perhaps, but not inherently better or worse. Suffice to say, I don't see many families with "normal" marriages/kids/etc that seem to be very "happy" by my standards.

Marriage in the USA is a pretty convoluted institution, it seems.

This kind of thing only works when people respond to a perceived injustice en masse. For example, if one lone kid had burnt his Viet Nam draft card, it really wouldn't have made much of a difference -- he would have been socially and/or legally sanctioned, end of story. But when a government has to deal with a huge portion of its population -- and especially those it relies upon do its bidding -- you will see a very different response. Especially if that government's mission becomes manifestly ill conceived (as Viet Nam and in my opinion continuing to sanction only specific sorts of marital unions).

I have a little plan with regard to a similar problem in one of the communities I connect to most strongly. Under Jewish law -- I'm a Jew -- divorce is granted unilaterally by men. It's a long story, but the way marital law is structured was once meant to protect a woman's rights, financial, sexual, etc. That was in the days before divorce became commonplace. Today, the structure of Jewish marriage puts all of the power in the husband's hands -- he can choose to "grant" or not "grant" his wife a divorce, and this often leads to extortion (I'll give you the divorce if you give me the house), and worse. The worst is that the woman can't remarry without the husband granting the divorce, and even if she does choose to flaut the law and partner with another man, any offspring of the second marriage will have the legal status of bastards, and this status will affect who they may and may not marry. The current structure of Jewish marital law also means that if a husband goes out for cigarettes one night and does not return, the woman is stuck indefinitely. A man can be angry and vindictive and just not give her a divorce for the heck of it. The rabbinate is not acting fast enough to fix this egregious injustice, because it doesn't have to -- there is not enough pressure on them and not enough protest. They have it all wrapped up, nice and neat. Sometimes when a woman comes to them begging for them to intercede and help her get a divorce because her husband beats her, they send her back, and tell her not to upset him so much. SERIOUS PROBLEM in my community. Hope I'm not stoking the flames of anti-Semitism with this one, but every community has its crap and this is part of my community's...

So anyway, being a good citizen of my community (or a bad citizen) I want to fix this problem that has been decades in need of fixing. One social action I am considering having folks begin taking is stating publicly and in a media savvy way that they can not and will not sign on for any contract that does not protect their best interests, and the current structure of the Jewish marital contract clearly does not protect them. I would encourage women who feel ill at ease with traditional Jewish marriage to basically say, "Sorry, I'm not stupid." The women's partners to stand beside them and say, "I love this woman and would not want to be joined to her in such a way as might some day be harmful to her."

This is a social action that would work by applying frightening pressure to a rabbinate that is concerned with assimilation -- Jews marrying "out," and more than anything would like to see us preserve some semblance of our culture. The protest would go to the heart of that desire for continuity, and would threaten it in an immediate way.

Even fifty couples doing this publicly would be enough to get the attention of leadership in my community. This is perhaps a much smaller project than finding thousands to standing in solidarity with our gay friends or people who want to tie the knot in various other configurations.

There has yet to be real protest from straight people on behalf of gays, and I do believe the thing to do when you want to get a little change going is threaten to upset the social order quite a bit. So yes, if you and I alone will state to all of our friends that we refuse to marry on grounds that we will not accept all the privileges concommitant with marriage while our gay/poly/whatever friends get the short end of the stick (and are treated as all the more freaky when viewed against the foil of us normals)... well, their going to call us noble to our faces and idiots behind our backs, probably. But when 50,000 people opt out for such noble and thoughtful reasons, change will come. Indeed, change will come anyway, with or without us. When the dust settles, I want to be able to know I chose right over privilege.