Reply #53: A person is able to extricate themselves from a "normal" marriage...

[Liberal Veteran]

...with little difficulty, unlike this arrangement which makes it incredibly difficult.

I stand by my characterization of it.

Your knee-jerk defense of this kind of arrangement because it has some ties to xstianity is beside the point.

I will not support a situation that puts people into a potentially irrevocable situation particularly where the issue of coercion is a possible factor.

You don't have to like my characterization of it and you don't have to agree. Your opinion is irrelevant to my support or lack thereof of this.

I wouldn't support this kind of arrangement any more than I would support some of the forms of marriages you find in the middle east that prevents people (particularly women) from extricating themselves from an unhappy sham of a marriage where the only thing holding them together is the force of law.

If you don't like me calling it a form of slavery, so what? How would you characterize an arrangment in which people are pressured into a potentially irrevocable contract?

It makes a mockery of marriage by forcing people who might despise each other to remain legally married. How does that uplift the definition of marriage?

And these two situations are NOT equal in terms of "normal" legal marriage and the so-called "covenant" marriage. Not in the eyes of the law. You know it and I know it, so don't even try to play your silly game there. Normal marriage allows one to easily extricate themselves from the situation. If the two were exactly the same, then there would be no need for a seperate legally binding covenant, now would there?

I won't fall prey to your trying to spell out my opinions for me. I am more than capable of speaking for myself and I grow weary of your constant haranguing me about something I didn't say OR imply. I have very much said that I see a distinction between the two forms of contractual marriages.

Yes, I see this as an unecessary and detrimental form of legal chicanery that is akin to slavery (as opposed to normal marriage law) and I make no apology for it.

Feel free to disagree if you will, but do not try to impose opinions on my words that were neither implied nor spoken outright.

Understand?