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11/19/04 Framing the Debate II: What is "Marriage"? Marriage is now a controversial subject, for the first time since we finally gave in to the pressure to grant the "no-fault divorce", allowing anyone to get out of the most important contract ever entered by human beings without so much as a demonstration that anyone had defaulted on the contract in any way. But that begs the question. Is it a contract? Or is it a celebration of joy? Liberals are defining marriage as a public sanction for a form of loving relationship. Ellen Goodman in a post-election rant in the Boston Globe implicitly equated support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman with opposing "legal protection for gay couples", as if marriage were the only legal protection available to people who form personal alliances for whatever reason. More pointedly, Thomas Friedman, in his New York Times diatribe against conservative election results, posed an intriguing question: "[Are the United States of America] a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make?" Friedman, like Goodman, apparently believes that it is commonsensical to assume that marriage has always been an institution built around people's sexual preferences, as if it is merely a coincidence that until the last decade the only people ever known to have married in other combinations than male-human-to-female-human were the pathologically insane. Unfortunately for Goodman and Friedman, neither of their premises stands up to scrutiny. Marriage is certainly not the only form of legal protection that can be, or even that has been, extended to gays. Many companies treat them the same as married couples when it comes to extending partner benefits and the like. Many states have created civil unions to codify their relationships and grant them many or most of the advantages of marriage. More importantly, perhaps, the answer to Friedman's question whether this is the sort of country that leaves people to make unconstrained choices about whom they can marry, the answer is: "Of course it isn't, and it never has been." Heterosexual men who feel emotionally or philosophically that they ought to be allowed to marry more than one woman at a time have been frustrated almost everywhere and always in this nation by the legal restriction that prevents them from marrying any two women simultaneously. There are people in this country who believe they ought to be allowed to do so, and the law still prohibits it even in Utah, where many of those who feel differently live. Siblings who decide they love each other are also prohibited from marrying. In some places even cousins are prohibited from marrying each other! I am left to wonder, why is it more acceptable for two men to marry than for one man and two women? And if men are allowed to marry each other, why would two brothers be disallowed from marrying? The obvious answer is: "because it is almost universally considered wrong." But so it is for two men to marry, even if they are not siblings. If we accept the traditional or religious reasons for disallowing a man from marrying his sister, then we are at least as justified in accepting the same reasons for disallowing any two men from marrying. Certainly the abhorrence most people feel for siblings engaging in sexual relations is mirrored by a similar abhorrence for members of the same sex engaging in sexual relations, so that, too, is a sword that would cut both ways. So let us lay those considerations aside. There is no practical reason to prohibit a man and a woman who are siblings from marrying except to prevent the proliferation of congenital disorders that would result from their reproduction. Thus a sterilized man should be able to marry his sister, since no congenital disorders would result. This would be true if marriage were really about sexual preferences. But it is not true, because marriage is not, and never has been, about sexual preferences. It has always been about reproduction. Monogamy is not a constant in the institution of marriage, but is the result of the societal rejection of the inequitable institution of polygyny, which concentrates reproductive resources in the wealthy, aristocratic, and royal houses. We need it no more if marriage is about sexual preference. Few men would consider it undesirable to have multiple wives, and I daresay some women would consent to become part of a harem, if we can judge from the number of women who are willing to be concubines of married men of power, influence, or celebrity. In other words, there would be polygamists of both genders if marriage were about sexual preference in the choice of mates. But it is not. It is about reproduction. The only objection I have heard to this argument is easily dismissed. Some will point out that men and women marry for reasons other than reproduction, and this is quite true. Some marriages yield no progeny, and this is not always involuntary. But the fact that a car or truck is sometimes used as a weapon of murder does not make it primarily a weapon: it makes them conveyances that can be used as weapons. Similarly, the fact that some people use marriage to sanction their sexual desires does not make marriage a sanctioning of sexual desires. It is a sanctioning of a reproductive relationship that is sometimes used to claim a sanction for desires. The fact that marriages have always been prohibited where there is either no prospect for reproduction, or where there was a perception that progeny would be unhealthy or accursed, shows that the concern for marriage was that it be a preserve for healthy reproduction. In view of that fact, it is fair to say that the laws of marriage do not discriminate. A man who wants to have six wives, but chooses to have one, is allowed to marry. A woman who wants to have a female partner, but chooses to marry a man, is allowed to marry. A man who wants to marry his sister, but chooses to marry another woman, is allowed to marry. People who try to indulge their desires by forming bonds that are non-reproductive or inequitable or purely sexual in nature, are all treated the same: they are prohibited from marriage. The proposed constitutional amendment does nothing more than bolster and buttress the age-old definition of marriage, preserving its original purpose as a sanctioning of the reproductive bond of men and women. It is not hostile to anyone. It is the liberals who are trying to redefine marriage, to divorce it from its original meaning, and to make it something completely new, so as to wipe out its original purpose altogether, once and for all. But they have to deal with the arguments a lot more honestly than they have, if they hope to win that argument. I am waiting. Modified: 11/19/2004 |
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