Marriage is not just a piece of paper. It pulls couples together through the ebb and flow of life. It gives children stability. And it says powerful things about what we should value.
David Cameron
There's a little bit of what Cameron says here that that I could just about agree with. When children are planned, or come into the picture, for some couples, a public commitment to try to make their future as a family work, in front of friends and family, might help to cement the relationship. In which case, fine.
But that's about as far as it goes. Couples and families can function (or be dysfunctional) in all sorts of diverse ways and I'm quite happy to be a true localist and trust couples who are old enough to wed or not to wed to make their own decisions, based on the immense variety of individual circumstances, relationship dynamics, beliefs and sheer idiosyncrasies that make every person, every couple, and every family, unique.
As the head of an allegedly pro-individual choice, Big Society / small state government, Cameron seems strangely keen on using public resources in a top-down attempt to vet people's domestic arrangements, using the tax system to 'nudge' them towards officially-documented, state-approved relationships
I can see that some people don't approve of some kinds of relationship. Sometimes the way other people choose to conduct their relationships doesn't impress me much. Take the forthcoming wedding ushered in by that Nazi-themed stag party recently attended by disgraced MP, Aidan Burley. I'm not particularly concerned about Burley, as it's long since been common knowledge that some of the most select members of the establishment find a spot of Third Reich cosplay rather jolly, but the bride-to-be should be having some serious second thoughts about being betrothed to somebody with such a peculiar idea of fun
Some bits of stag party foolishness are forgivable, even endearing to a potential spouse. Ending up blotto in your underpants, singing a medley of Queen's greatest hits with a traffic cone on your head, for example, might mark you out as a bit of a daft lad, but might it also show that you've got a fun side and don't take yourself too seriously. But slipping into a SS uniform, insulting waiters, drinking toasts to 'the ideology and thought processes of the Third Reich' and chanting Nazi slogans? Surely, the only appropriate response from any sensible bride-to-be would be 'the wedding's off, creep!'
In the event that the guy's fiancée already knew of, and tolerated, his behaviour, I'd think it depressing that people like that might actually end up breeding. Mind you, celebrating your forthcoming nuptuals with a "heil Hitler" is so inauspicious that, matters of taste notwithstanding, we might not need to worry about them procreating. Many modern marriages don't last, but at least most are more lasting than the Hitlers', which endured for less than 24 hours and dispensed with the traditional honeymoon in favour of a suicide pact in an underground bunker.
There are lots of people who do and don't want to get married. A few of them might be obnoxious, boorish prats but that's a problem for them and their nearest and dearest. If I find them obnoxious, I'm at perfect liberty to say so, but not to stop them getting hitched, or whatever else they might decide to do as consenting adults.
It's not a matter for the state to approve or disapprove of, either. In any case, the "tax breaks for married couples" idea is such a blunt instrument that it wouldn't distinguish between the anschluss cementing some oaf with an SS uniform in his dressing-up box to his little Eva and other, more wholesome, relationships, so I don't think much of it as an agent for upholding moral rectitude, even if I was a fan of the 'morality police' concept (which I'm not).
I'm not saying there's no role for the state in helping families - Scandinavian-style affordable, high-quality childcare provision alongside comprehensive parental leave policies seems to have a positive effect in decreasing child poverty and increasing the level of female employment (with a resulting increase in tax revenues) - but giving people a small tax bribe to get married, (whether or not children are planned or involved), without such convincing evidence that the expenditure might pay dividends, seems like an dogma-driven, intrusive and poorly-targeted piece of state intervention to me.
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