My daughter just turned 7. I would like to arrange her marriage. I
would like to find a family that shares my Marxist-Leninist values and
match one of their kids with her. If I left the matter to my daughter’s
heart, she could marry anyone, even a Republican. She could connect my
family with one that believes in driving big cars and bombing the shit
out of poor people in countries that happen to have too much oil. I
just don’t trust what her heart might do. Cupid can be so stupid.
Instead of leaving the future to chance, I’d like to interview
several families in the Central District who hate Bush, use electric
cars, donate money to organizations that help the needy, and grow
vegetables in urban farming programs. I want one of these liberal or
commie families to become a part of my family. And because we are
unified, our liberal values are strengthened.
But why bring up this subject in the first place? Because if we are
going to talk about the institution of marriage, we must not only
discuss its romantic form (marrying because of love) but also its
practical one (marrying because of an agreement between two families to
join forces and resources). Love, however, is not banished from the
realm of arranged marriages. Indeed, it is its final destination, its
terminal point. With an arranged marriage, love is something you hope
to eventually arrive at. With romantic love, it is the point of
departure, and then you drift and drift to the nowhere of a long
marriage or into the storm of a divorce. With an arranged marriage,
love is the target, not the bow. Yet another way of putting it: If you
remove a boiling pot from a stove and let it cool, this is marriage in
its romantic form; if, on the other hand, you put a pot on a stove and
heat it up to the boiling point, this is a marriage in its arranged
form.
Despite the apparent strengths and time-testedness of arranged
marriage, people look down on this custom. Many see an arranged
marriage as a sign of backwardness. Romantic marriages are celebrated
as progressive and liberating. They offer an individual the freedom of
choice. Therefore, the political system mostly associated with romantic
marriages is democratic; as for arranged marriages, it is despotic. But
what is lost in this way of seeing things is a little history. One must
understand that the transference of the right to select a marriage
partner, from the parent to the offspring, essentially weakened the
power of the family. In fact, one can see the history of the family in
the West (and the world, as it is now totally Westernized) from
late-antiquity to today (the period that charts the rise of
Christianity) as one of the church and state reducing the social
position of the family. This reduction is continuous with the current
Christian war against abortion rights. What the church/state wants to
maintain (and increase) is the power to intervene and manage the
institution that produces individuals—the family.
And so romantic marriages actually empower the church/state and
disempower the family—and how can that be progressive or
democratic? Also, arranged marriages can easily accommodate and promote
the principles of the left. For one, a teenager whose marriage has been
arranged is still free to have sex with other partners until the day of
his or her wedding. What the parents don’t want is a pregnancy to come
out of this free premarital period, and so contraceptives of every kind
must be available over the counter and sex education is a must.
Secondly, an arranged marriage does not have to be heterosexual. If it
turns out that your teen is sexually oriented to his/her kind, then a
family with a teen with a similar predilection must be located. In the
ordered system of arranged marriages, love becomes a rational and
controllable creature—it does not spring out of the jungle of
desire and cause all kinds of misery and mental havoc. 
