Is not the moral liberty of the spouses as worthy of respect as that of nuns, priests and monks?
Have married persons more right in Nature and Reason, to alienate their moral and intellectual being, their liberty and their person than the celibates of the Church?
Another inconsistency of the law is that it declares Marriage an association; the contract of Marriage is therefore a contract of partnership. Now I ask whether, in a single contract of this kind, it is enjoined by law on one of the partners to obey, to be subjected to a perpetual minority, to be absorbed?
I doubt not that the law would declare such a contract between independent partners void; why then does it legalize such a monstrosity in the partnership of husband and wife? It is a relic of barbarism, as you will see if you reflect on it.
READER. I hope that, through reason and necessity, the law will be reformed sooner or later: but a reformation which will not take place is that of the forms of religious marriage, which prescribe to the spouses the same oaths as the code, and like it, subject the wife to the husband.
AUTHOR. Well, what matters it to us, since, thanks to liberty, the religious marriage is merely a benediction with which we can dispense. Those who have a disposition to go to the Church, the Temple, or the Synagogue should have full liberty to receive the blessing of their respective priests! this does not concern Society. What we need is that, if afterward their vows should not seem to them binding, social authority should not make them obligatory; they have a right to be absurd, but society has no right to impose absurdity on them. Its duty is, on the contrary, to enlighten them, and to render them free.
II.
READER. Those who subordinate woman in marriage rest on the assertion that unity of direction, consequently a ruling power, is needed in the family; now, your theory evidently destroys this ruling power.
AUTHOR. What is the ruling power? Practically, it is manifested through the function of government. Formerly, it was based upon two principles, now recognized as radically false: Divine right and inequality. It was the right of those who exercised it to call themselves kings, autocrats, priests, men; it was the duty therefore of the people, the church, woman to obey the elect of God, their superiors by the grace of right delegated from on high.
But in modern opinion, the ruling power is nothing more than a function delegated by the parties interested in order to execute their will.