Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1314

1314. Marriage was thus regarded from the very same point of view as that of a piece of property or gold or any other material object. This object is either one's own "private property" or it is owned by someone else. If it is one's "private property" one has thus in one way or another had one's "right of ownership" of the object legalised, whether it be through purchasing it for one price or another, or by one simply receiving the object as a present. In order that one's claim to "ownership" of the object can be "valid in law" or "authorised", one is required to have a proof that one has come to possess the object in a legal way either as a present or through payment. When this proof has been issued, the object is one's legal or rightful "property". And it is of course exactly the same principle as that with which one legalises a marriage, and by virtue of which one can maintain one's "right of ownership" of the other party in the marriage when his or her love, and thereby fidelity, has ceased to be present. One has thus legalised one's spouse as a mere "item of property". A "marriage certificate" is thus in reality nothing other than a kind of "bill of sale", a kind of "title deed" to the other party in the marriage. That the object is a living being does not change the principle. The "title deed" gives legal claim to certain rights over the "object" precisely as in every other matter of property.