Sure, but one could also argue the same about per-marital sex, divorce and homosexuals.
A family's structure and agreements is not public, nor should they be. Unless said family choose to disclose that fact by their own volition.
S/he is just like all the other people who engage in electing law makers that create laws that control how we live. Part of being in a democracy like government is that everyone gets a little say in how we all live our lives with a majority rule. Things like constitutions might mean a super majority is needed for some things instead of a simple majority, but the right to have a say is still there.
You're forcing your point-of-view upon others.
Churches have no ability to enforce promises with violence or confiscation. And they shouldn't. So it's important for governments to establish some sort of lowest common denominator and hold people legally accountable.
I understand the impulse to be non-judgmental, but when both laws and the rest of society get out of the business of enforcing marriage contracts, you actually take choices away from people that want a stronger marriage contract. They can no longer enter an enforceable contract that requires monogamy.
We're not adding more choice for everyone that way. We're just choosing (as a society) a different lifestyle.
Isn't that what prenups are for? (modulo the fact that it is sometimes difficult to enforce prenups).
Let's say you like the marriage rules pre-1970 (no no-fault divorce). You can't write up a prenup that resembles that and have it be enforced by the government (reject applications for divorce and applications to marry someone else).
More options and freedom weren't added when each state adopted no-fault divorce. One option was taken away (pre-1970 marriage contracts) and another was picked (no-fault divorce).
Someone might not like with pre-1970 marriage contracts, but who are they to judge someone else's culture and preferences?
If anything I would argue the problem lies then on how the estate sees marriage, not the other way around. The agreement I have with my wife is between us, no one needs to judge what we do with our private lives.
The point is, we have to deal with how things are actually now, and not only with how they may/should be.
They don't define a family as one male adult, one female adult, and some children by birth. So, personally, I use a broad definition of family that includes homosexuals and fostering and polyamory, while rejecting stuff like forced marriage or child marriage.
I think the burden of proof goes the other way, considering marriage laws (including those that punish infidelity) have been part of common law for hundreds of years.
That family is a fundamental unit in human societies is a pretty much self-evident thing at this point. The burden of proof lies squarely on those who disagree with observable reality.
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Eh. So you think the people exposing husbands and wives cheating on each other are the ones breaking families, not the ones actually cheating?
Don't shoot the messenger, comes to mind (okay, maybe imprison the messenger if he obtained the data in an illegal way, but I don't think he should be imprisoned or worse for "breaking families", when he wasn't the one committing the act that ends up breaking the family apart).
Isn't that kind of how private eyes work, too? Should they be punished for "breaking families"?
I am definitely not arguing for shooting the messenger (I apologize if my comment was not clear enough about that) - what I want to say is that I may agree the boundary between "ok hack" and "not ok hack" may lie on the public concerns/private concerns line, but IMO one could argue that Ashley Madison lies on the "public interest" side.