RE: Human rights, marriage and the importance of understanding natural law
I don't buy it. Rights certainly are granted by governments. Human rights are not self-evident, nor well-defined, and life certainly existed even in ancient rome despite the slave trade and other blantant human rights violations. Moreover human rights change over time and are dependent on culture. For example, now broadband is a human right:
https://www.wired.com/2011/06/internet-a-human-right/
Personally, I don't find this self-evident in the slightest. So you can see that rights are alienable, and human rights must be protected by governments, otherwise the natural tendancy is toward exploitation. This is why anarchism isn't a viable system of government; there is noone to protect those who cannot defend themselves, for example, the elderly and the disabled.
Marriage is not a personal institution. It is a public statement of comittment. Historically in societies with Christian backgrounds, it was foremost a religious one, and secondarily a legal one. Currently it is a solely legal one. You can't just say "We are married" and it is true. It must be affirment contractually, whether by religious vow, or legal documentation.
Everything thereafter is reaching, to say the least.
Anarchy vs government and a resource based economy including the importance of right and wrong
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@johnblaid/anarchy-vs-government-and-a-resource-based-economy-including-the-importance-of-right-and-wrong
The whole premise of natural law is flawed. People do not act rationally. We do not protect others even when basic empathy dictates to do so.
Anarchism is not viable because humans do not tend towards good. Even when intentions are good, we can be mistaken about the correct means to achieve these ends.
Moreover, paradoxically, a government offers increased liberty over a simple anarchy model. It is a fundamental mischaracterisation of the objection to anarchy that it is "but then we have no rights". It is more nuanced, it is that there is nothing to enforce the rights, and hence no effective rights at all.
We are not born with rights. A basic understanding of world history, in particular pre-medieval history will make this more "self-evident" than the rights you claim will ever be. Rights only exist when they are enforced.
Some rights, also, we are obviously not born with. For example, the right to own property. This is spoken of as a right, yet we are not born with it. However, without a government, militias will take your land; very quickly indeed. Other capital will be seized. This obviously decreases economic efficiency.
Also, we create rights all the time. As earlier cited, the right to broadband. Did this right always exist? No, clearly not in th 2nd century, nor in the late 20th century, when internet connections were expensive. These cannot be considered human rights violations.
Once again, to imply there is any set, fixed set of natural laws is misguided. Society has made arbitrary rulings, for example in the form of the UN, to arbitrarily dictate arbitarary human rights. They are only rights because they are widely recognised as such. If the UN were to turn around tomorrow and say that living in Vatican City is a basic human right, would it be? If not, why not? Is it because the UN were "wrong"? How do we know they are not wrong about other things then? The truth is that all human rights are arbitrarily dictated and are not the result of some "natural law" influencing our decisions.
This can be moved past. The two options are to embrace a religious code, or to accept that rights are arbitarary and in fact morality needn't exist. A rudimentary understanding of ethics dictates that this pair is exhaustive.