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Denying the transcendent reality of marriage
The transcendent could be defined as that quality of an existent that is more than the sum of its parts. The whole—the essence—of a human being, or a sports team, or a nation, or a book, or a symphony, or anything, is more than its individual parts. The parts can be seen and experienced by the senses or by empirical reason based on the senses; the whole cannot be experienced directly by the senses; it is transcendent.
According to Maggie Gallaher, the authors of the American Law Institute’s “Principles of Family Dissolution” call marriage merely “the sum of its legal incidents.” “From the point of view of family law,” they write, “the distinction between a full-blown domestic partnership, like Vermont’s domestic unions, and a lawful marriage is merely symbolic.” Email entry |