I think a lot about rights. Not rights vs. lefts, or rights vs. wrongs, but those unaliable ones that we’re supposedly endowed with by virtue of being human. Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness being the ones the Declaration of Independence talks about, and if you replace “happiness” with property you have Locke’s initial rendition. But people also talk about the right to bear arms, the right to health care, the right of prima noctis (a concept I first heard about in the movie Braveheart which leads to rebellion!). I’ve long been interested in what rights really are self-evident, and to that end, what rights we have a moral obligation to enforce.
Anyway, a friend of mine who knows about my fascination with this topic recently directed my attention to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When the U.N. accuses a country of human rights violations, these are the rights that are being referred to. I had never seen it before, and I was stunned by some of the “rights” that I’m not sure I agree with and a bunch of other things in the document that annoy me. This will undoubtedly be the inspiration for several future posts.
That all serves as background for today’s post, which is about Article 16 of that document, which I find particularly interesting/provocative:
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Let’s work backwards. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society? Sure, in current western society. In ancient Sparta, the basic group unit was military in nature. Other cultures have been tribal in nature. This certainly doesn’t seem like such an indisputable claim as the statement makes it seem, and certainly not something the U.N. should be enforcing (to the extent the U.N. enforces anything). And what does this say about us single folk? How do we fit into society if we’re not part of a fundamental group? Regardless, I’m not sure how a statement about families being fundamental says anything about human rights, so I’m not sure why it’s in there to begin with.
Now let’s go to #2. I think I agree with this one. If you force somebody to marry against his or her will, then that’s basically treating that person as property. Which, to the extent that we have any rights at all, would be a violation of one of the primary ones. I’m not sure that it’s necessary to have an article about it, since it violates about a dozen of the other articles, but it might be nice to reinforce because it is an issue in some parts of the world.
Now #1. I find it interesting that while they specify race, nationality, and religion, the topic of sexual preference is left curiously unaddressed. There’s also nothing about polygamy or polyandry.
Here’s how I see it. This right is more fundamentally “a person should have a right to legally bind him/herself to anybody (assuming both parties consent), and the resulting group, in the eyes of the law, should be treated as an “individual unit”. Under this version, regardless of what your vision of family is, you can be part of it. And that seems much more fair than only protecting a particular view of family that happens to be the current dominant cultural construct.
The other possibility, is that marriage shouldn’t be a right. Now, not being a right doesn’t mean that it is outlawed. We don’t have a U.N. Declared Right to get a haircut, but as far as I know, every country in the world allows it. And my guess is that every country would continue to allow marriage as well. But if family is going to be a fundamentally protected right, it should be fundamentally protected regardless of how one thinks of family.
So, what do other people think? Do humans have a fundamental, unalienable right to marry? If so, should there be constraints on who they marry, and what marriage looks like? Should the family be the fundamental group unit of society — and more specifically, is this something that the U.N. should specify in its declaration of human rights?
Recent Comments