Talk:Marriage of convenience

Australia

Australia never had a national government during World War II, refer John Curtin - 192.43.227.18 06:41, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Typo

There is a typo in this article. "Ones'" should be "one's". I will change it. jcm

Odd formulation

"for reasons other than [...] love [...] such a marriage is orchestrated for personal gain" And here I thought love was one of the greatest personal gains one could acquire? Did I miss something? Did love suddenly become a burden? 90.230.76.159 (talk) 15:59, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

contract marriage should redirect here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.37.24.95 (talk) 08:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Clean up

I will be cleaning up the article by deleting the arranged marriage section as there is already an article about that and also creating a "see also" section. Miagirljmw14 Miagirljmw_talk 20:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Merge

What would be the difference with Sham marriage? Texts are already equivalent. --VanBurenen (talk) 18:37, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Marriage of convenience is for the political purpose? It should be rewrite.--Player23 (talk) 08:21, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Immigration Marriage Fraud UK

One of the confusions with the term Marriages of Convenience is that it does not differentiate between a 'Sham' marriage where two people are complicite and a 'Scam' marriage where one is being deceived. The EU is now calling these 'Scam' marriages 'Marriages of Deception' in other countries the terms 'Immigration Marriage Fraud' and 'Mariage Gris' are used. In the UK the term 'Immigration Marriage Fraud' is used in line with Canada and America to define a 'Scam' marriage.

Immigration Marriage Frauds use loop holes and therefore the pattern in countries can be different. In the UK because the UN Resolutions have not been implimented regarding Polygamy and Registration of Marriages one fault line is Bigamy/Polygamy. The fraudsters are often already married in Nikah or Civil marriages. The four main scams we see are 'The Game' from West Africa (often involving Bigamy), the Nikah Scams from Pakistan and Bangladesh (often involving Polygamy without consent), Bezness from the Middle East and North Africa and the Domestic Abuse Visa Scam where spouses aledge abuse to fast track into the UK.

Where victims of this crime suffer in the UK is that there is no easy way to get out of their marriages as fraud is not a category for annullment therefore hard paper evidence has to be obtained from countries that may not have sophisticated administrative systems. In other countries only fraud has to be determined.

The British Nationality Act 1981 Section 40 - Fraud, misrepresentation and concealment of material fact are grounds to deprive Citizenship but are rarely applied.

There is a very clear link to these Scam marriages and other ancillory crimes. America has identified the link with terrorists and papers on the subject exist at the Center for Immigration Studies. Other crimes include people trafficking, money laundering, fake documentation, visa fraud, sham marriages due to the fact that a 'Fraudster is a Fraudster'.

Several groups have set up in the UK to research, support victims and to campaign to get the Home Office and UK Government to address. Immigration Marriage Fraud UK is the leading authority on the issue. The extent of the problem is hard to determine. A minimum of 1000 cases a year where fraud could be proved rising to thousands within the Muslim community. No statistics are currently kept by the Home Office/Immigration — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.6.69.61 (talk) 16:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

References

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Scope creep: divorce

This article is not about divorce, it is about marriage, and if the media wants to coin a novel phrase then we will need to find a new topic to fit it into, not shoehorned into this article where it does not belong. Elizium23 (talk) 01:54, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

I came across this due to a note on Talk:Derek Chauvin. I had removed the entire section before I saw your comment here, but I completely agree. It should be easy to find sources using the phrase "divorce of convenience" but I doubt that Divorce of convenience has a common definition. Mo Billings (talk) 03:55, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Mo Billings's edit summary was "This entire section is misplaced. If "divorce of convenience" is a thing, create a new article. (But these two examples don't seem all that similar, so maybe don't create an article)"

I think the references I supplied document that divorce of convenience "is a thing".

The last sentence of WP:Notability#General notability guideline says "If a topic does not meet these [ie GNG] criteria but still has some verifiable facts, it might be useful to discuss it within another article." Geo Swan (talk) 06:02, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

It might be useful, or it might be a WP:COATRACK. Elizium23 (talk) 06:20, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Appearance of homosexuality?

What does this mean? An idea that you can tell somebody is gay just by looking at them, but somehow getting married would disguise this? Or a widespread belief in the past that anybody who is single must be gay? Or something else? — Smjg (talk) 15:42, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

I've just realised that the section as written doesn't make sense at all. "Another common reason for marriages of convenience is to hide one partner's homosexuality in places where being openly gay is punishable or potentially detrimental." How can this possibly constitute a reason for marriages of convenience, when one can avoid punishment simply by not being openly gay, and it would be necessary not to be openly gay anyway?

And in the lead, "Instead, such a marriage is entered into for personal gain, hiding one's homosexuality..." – why would one go to all the trouble and expense of getting married in order to do this, rather than just not making a show of being homosexual in the first place? — Smjg (talk) 21:05, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Because historically single people were doubted of being homosexual. Securearth (talk) 20:43, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

@Securearth: That doesn't make sense. Surely that's a reason that getting married wouldn't help you? Furthermore I realise now that, even if it were the opposite, I can imagine that such a marriage would lead to feelings of awkwardness that would make the appearance of homosexuality even worse. — Smjg (talk) 15:57, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be clearer to change the existing text:

'[such a marriage]...is usually performed to keep the appearance of heterosexuality to prevent negative consequences of LGBT discrimination.'

to read something like:

'[such a marriage]...has usually been performed to make it appear to others that the married partners are both heterosexual, even though one or both of them may not be, given the underlying historical assumption that marriage, being between a man and a woman, involved only those who are heterosexual. Sbishop (talk) 16:42, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

@Sbishop: This wouldn't help, as your suggested edit says nothing about how an appearance of homosexuality might come about in the first place. Nor about why they might feel a need to explicitly make it appear that they are heterosexual, given that surely it's tended to be assumed (as a norm, especially historically) anyway. So far, nobody's answered my questions. — Smjg (talk) 17:45, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I've just realised that, a while ago, the wording referred to in Sbishop's comment was instated in place of "intended to hide the appearance of homosexuality", and the clarifyme template was removed. But this hasn't clarified it at all, but merely changed it around, a bit like changing "white moves first" to "black moves second" when talking about the rules of chess, and furthermore brings me to what I said in my last comment. — Smjg (talk) 19:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

Part of the problem seems to be that none of the references in that section had URLs. I should've sooner done a search. I seem to have found that only the Leader-Post article is available online.

It is about a gay man entering into a marriage of convenience. However, while it talks about the criminalisation of homosexuality in some places, it doesn't indicate that it's actually relevant to the particular instance. Nowhere does it say that the subject has an appearance of homosexuality. Indeed, if there is one, getting married isn't going to remove the underlying cause of this pre-existing perception. If he has no appearance of any sexuality, nobody will persecute him for his sexuality, so why would there be any need to create one?

Rather, the marriage is for a completely different reason: pressure from parents and society. This would be no different for a heterosexual person who either hasn't so far found a suitable partner or would otherwise be single by choice. As such, that article implies that the reason for MOCs is not to alter perception (or lack thereof) of one's sexual orientation, but rather to avoid the social stigma of being single that exists in some cultures.

As such, the idea that either hiding sexuality or creating a false impression of sexuality is a driver for MOCs remains unexplained. — Smjg (talk) 23:10, 27 August 2024 (UTC)

There are several cases where prominent GBTQ+ men married women as a way of deflecting questions about their homo- (or bi-) sexuality — Elton John and Rock Hudson both spring to mind. Being a "confirmed bachelor" — that is: being an unmarried man in one's 30s or later — was eyed with suspicion of homosexuality in mid-20th-century UK and US cultures.

It feels like you are trying to address with logic a situation that isn't about logic, but about perceptions founded on emotion and societal constructs. — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk) 17:21, 28 August 2024 (UTC)

@OwenBlacker: What I'm trying to do is make the section make sense. Everything on Wikipedia ought to make sense, whether the underlying situation is about logic or not.

So really what the section is trying to say is: As recently as the mid-20th century, in the UK and US, society expected people to marry by the time they reached the age of 30, and those who did not were widely suspected of being homosexual. As such, some people married in order to avoid such suspicion.

But can you find a source for your statement that "Being a 'confirmed bachelor' — that is: being an unmarried man in one's 30s or later — was eyed with suspicion of homosexuality in mid-20th-century UK and US cultures"? This might be just what we need to fix the section. That said, there are other important considerations:

• As I began to say already, homosexuals, heterosexuals (who hadn't yet found the right person to marry for the right reasons or didn't actually want to marry) and others alike would surely have entered into MOCs for the same reasons. As such, if we're going to mention men who have married women to deflect questions about their sexuality, we shouldn't restrict this mention to GBTQ+s. Furthermore, what about women marrying men for the same reasons? I'd be extremely surprised if those don't exist.
• As I began to say already, the suspicion of homosexuality is really just one part of a wider problem that is the real reason for MOCs: pressure from family and society to marry, and stigma against those who remain single. So the section ought to describe the phenomenon from the point of view of this stigma (and be retitled accordingly), with the suspicion of homosexuality mentioned, if at all, as just a part of this stigma.
• You mention the UK and US specifically. What about elsewhere in the world, both past and present? I get the impression that this stigma is still strong in some places. I don't know whether suspicion of homosexuality is (still) part of this stigma in said places, in which case my same point applies here.
• Being openly gay is irrelevant for the reasons I gave originally, so probably shouldn't be mentioned. The only way in which criminalisation of the way a person's brain is naturally might be relevant is if the judicial system of some country is liable to convict people based purely on a suspicion.
• Of course, persecution of singles doesn't only happen within judicial systems, and there is even honour killing. But I think most of my points apply pretty much equally to judicial and extrajudicial actions and attitudes.

— Smjg (talk) 11:28, 31 August 2024 (UTC)