(October 29, 2012 at 7:07 am)genkaus Wrote: There is just one - if one of the participants is not in the relationship out of his/her own volition.Apologies, I ommitted a base assumption which acts as a qualifier: 'all relationships are between consenting partners'.
(October 29, 2012 at 7:07 am)genkaus Wrote: That is the case with most of the social contracts. The validity in this case does not refer to emotion or commitment on your side but to whether the contract is enforceable by law.The concept of 'marriage as a contract' is one of the 'co-opted' points to which I referred in my previous post: marriage is only a contract because the governmental/religious institutions insisted that it be so (for various purposes of social control/engineering). There is no need for legal responsibilities to be defined as a consequence of a group's relationship status and it's a fallacy to suggest otherwise. In the UK, these responsibilities are catered for by other legislation (e.g. 'Common Law' relationships, maternity/paternity law, housing law). There's no need for 'marital contracts'.
Sum ergo sum
