RESOLUTION: Expiration on marriage contracts

PROPOSITION: Negative

OUTLINE:

I. Introduction
Board of adjudicators, fellow debators, ladies, and gentlemen, I shall tell you this. Marriage is what
we refer to the unity between two kindred souls, either under the Law, or under the dogmas of the
Christian Church. The coupling of two people will always be a causal unit of society. Causal as such,
since it forms offspring – it produces families. Matrimony is crucial to creating a traditional household.
Traditional, since families can and will be different; household, since every unit contributes to the
foundation of the family.

Filipinos recognize the family as the basic unit of society. From a father, the “column” of the house;
the mother, the “light” of the home, and the children, who, in particular, bring joy to the parents
themselves. This key perspective of a family brings up the topic: should Matrimony expire? Should
marriage be a contract, and not a commitment?

The financial, sociological, and political key points revolve around costly renewal, downgrading
values, and complication of legal statuses of children, respectively. That is why my team and I will
tackle the overall argument to why marriage should not have an expiration.

II. Key points

a. The inconvenience to change and add more years to the contract is prevalent, and may cost
money and time.
Having an increasing number of marriages In 2017, the total number of marriages recorded was
434,932, an increase of 3.6 percent from 419,628 marriages in 2016, while 2065 marriages were
recorded in Angeles City alone last 2018. Although the trend of marriages is erratic, the viewpoint
arranges itself that most middle-income workers would have a family living wage of 22 thousand pesos
monthly.

The inflating costs of an average Filipino family cannot be sustained with competitions in work
sectors. Therefore renewal of marriages would add, even merely, to the multithousand spendings of a
middle-income Filipino family, and would probably be more heavier in time.

b. Marriage devalues the meaning of a basic unit of society, and converts it into a contemporary
contract
According to Christine Delphy, a feminist sociologist, views the family as a patriarchal and
capitalist institution holding back the rights of other women. Although sounding contradictory, she adds
that revision of the system that contractualizes should be the main target of change, and not the mere
renewal of that contract itself.

In contrary, Talcott Parsons, a functionalist sociologist, focuses on family as the “building blocks
of society”. Renewal is not the answer to the functionalist perspective, however. He proposes the
reasons of why family is important, which are the following:
1) It develops a framework of stable relationships
2) There is no ‘typical’ or ‘normal’ family
The second statement refers to Filipino tradition, in which the values that regard every Filipino family
should be applied to all family structures.

c. It would complicate the legal status of offsprings (children) of those who wish to end the
contract, while men would remain in solidified power in relations

The 1987 Constitution of the Philippine Republic states these sections:

“Section 1. The State recognizes the Filipino family as the foundation of the nation. Accordingly, it
shall strengthen its solidarity and actively promote its total development.
Section 2. Marriage, as an inviolable social institution, is the foundation of the family and shall be
protected by the State.”

This certainly approves the perspective that marriage should not have an expiration, knowing that
breaking this expiration would violate the current Constitution of the country, so much as that the
Filipino family should be the foundation of the nation.

Although the Constitution has patriarchal roots, it still develops itself as a foundation of solidarity
within the Filipino nation. The Patriarchy is an undeniable social root of misconduct. From oppression
to racism, it has found its way to multiple pathways. Filipino tradition does not distinctly view the
father as the main source of power. Kapampangan women as the powerhouse of the family are a given
example, the society still revers women as the main carers of the family.

In addition to gender differences, Jeffrey Weeks added that male sexuality is a social construct, and
that differences between sexes are cultural creations. Therefore, marriage renewal is in fact a
controlling rule of cultural creations between two sexes - that they should renew a contract in order to
prove that they are committed to each other, when in retrospect, unity between a couple should be
decided and that expiration should not be an option in destabilizing a relationship.

Parsons concludes that functionalist perspectives revere women as natural carers, and men as
breadwinners, but these psychological deviances should not be a hindrance to the developing mind of
humanity as a whole. The importance of family as stable building blocks should be honored as a
pathway to develop societal change, but providing a possibility for a family to disintegrate via
expiration is a non-sustainable option.

III. Rebuttals (Guidelines)

i. Base each rebuttal on the created key points, and how these key points falsify the affirmative
statement
ii. Deform their logic by opposing it (“The statement is not logical because based on our proposition,
etc.)

Write notes here:

 AFFIRMATIVE/NEGATIVE NEGATIVE/AFFIRMATIVE SIDE’S
SIDE’S POINTS DEFENSES

AFFIRMATIVE
CONSTRUCTIVE

NEGATIVE
CROSS-EXAM

NEGATIVE
CONSTRUCTIVE

AFFIRMATIVE
CROSS-EXAM

AFFIRMATIVE
REBUTTAL

NEGATIVE
REBUTTAL

AFFIRMATIVE
REBUTTAL
IV. Concluding speech

Possible rebuttals:
The development of marriage as a contract that is held by the law compared to the proper sanctity
of romance and matrimony is a definite answer to why we are against as such. The due truth to this is
that we are creating an atmosphere of patriarchal, institutionalized definitions of how marriage should
be: the traditional values shouldn’t halt our development, instead, the specific roots of halting should be
stopped, and overall, create a proper value that love, is love – and not a piece of paper.

V. Possible questions
1)

2)

3)