Webbing Day

The white wedding is replete with sexist imagery: the father ‘giving away’ the bride; the white dress symbolising the bride’s virginity (and emphasising the importance of her appearance); the vows to obey the husband. Historically, it has been a fundamental site of women’s oppression, with married women having few independent rights in law. In the future, I advocate, then, the abolition of state-recognized marriage and the institution of what I call a Marriage-Free. The family has increasingly evolved from a hierarchical institution based on a fixed status to a set of relationships between individuals based on contract. Free-Marriage is a contract whose terms can be altered and negotiated by the parties involved. I will abolish state-defined marriage altogether and replace it with individual contracts drawn up by each couple wanting to marry. Indeed, a regime of individual contracts would allow partners to decide for themselves how to arrange their lives, enable people of the same sex (or possibly more than two persons) to ‘marry’, and reflect the values of individual freedom and equality so important to a liberal polity.