Marriage Matters
As the Ricochet editors mentioned, tomorrow Encounter Books releases my new book, co-authored with Sherif Girgis and Robert P. George, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. So while blogging at Ricochet this week, I thought I’d explore some of the issues raised by the book—and recent events, thanks to the Supreme Court. Today I’d like to situate the debate over the definition of marriage within its proper context.
Some people wonder why conservatives choose to focus exclusively on same-sex marriage. The answer is simple: We don’t. First, conservatives always did—and still do—make other social and political efforts to strengthen the marriage culture. The push for same-sex marriage was brought to us. Second, now that this is the live debate, we can’t ignore it, for its outcome will have wider effects on the marriage culture that really is our main concern.
Long before there was a debate about same-sex marriage, there was a debate about marriage. It launched a “marriage movement,” to explain why marriage was good for the men and women who were faithful to its demands, and for the children they reared.
Articles in mainstream magazines such as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s 1993 cover story for The Atlantic, “Dan Quayle was Right,” documented how family fragmentation was wreaking havoc on society. In 1996 Mike and Harriet McManus launched Marriage Savers to combat marital breakdown, and in 2001 Wade Horn championed the Healthy Marriage Initiative for the Bush Administration. Their targets were high divorce rates and the rising birthrate for unmarried women. From pre-Cana programs to various fatherhood initiatives, examples could be multiplied ad nauseam.
Same-sex relationships weren’t on anyone’s radar. (It may be hard to remember, but until just recently same-sex marriage was inconceivable to almost everyone.) The marriage movement leaders’ concern, like that of today’s leading conservative scholars and activists, was much broader.
So it’s not surprising that the leading opponent of redefining marriage today, Maggie Gallagher, was active throughout the ’80s and ’90s in this marriage movement. She wrote a book in the late ‘80s on how the sexual revolution was “killing family, marriage and sex” and “what we [could] do about it;” in a 2000 book she made “the case for marriage,” showing the many ways that marriage is better for couples than cohabitation.
The question of whether to redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships didn’t take center stage until 2003, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court claimed to find a constitutional right to it. Those who had been leading the marriage movement for decades had to ask themselves: Would recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages strengthen the marriage culture, or weaken it?
They saw that redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships was not ultimately about expanding the pool of people eligible to marry. Redefining marriage was about cementing a new idea of marriage in the law—an idea whose baleful effects they had spent years fighting. That idea—that romantic-emotional union is all that makes a marriage—couldn’t explain or support the stabilizing norms that make marriage fitting for family life. It could only undermine those norms.
Indeed, that undermining already had begun. Disastrous policies like “no-fault” divorce, too, were motivated by the idea that a marriage is made by romantic attachment and satisfaction—and comes undone when these fade.
Same-sex marriage would require a more formal and final redefinition of marriage as simple romantic companionship, obliterating the meaning the marriage movement had sought to restore to the institution.
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Comments:
Re: Marriage Matters
I understand you have an objection to no-fault divorce.
What sort of "fault-based" divorce would you accept?
Dec '10
Re: Marriage Matters
Doesn't writing "marriage matters" set up a utilitarian position? Isn't the more fundamental question whether or not marriage exists as a "moral reality?"
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy De Seno: I understand you have an objection to no-fault divorce.
What sort of "fault-based" divorce would you accept?
I'm sure that Ryan will answer on his own, but I wanted to make one point here.
There is the legality of marriage (which includes divorce laws, like fault or no-fault), and then there is its character and role in society. These should not be conflated.
Marriage as a matter of law is one thing. Marriage as a matter of culture is another. For me, culture first, and then law should follow.
Re: Marriage Matters
KC Mulville
Tommy De Seno: I understand you have an objection to no-fault divorce.
What sort of "fault-based" divorce would you accept?
I'm sure that Ryan will answer on his own, but I wanted to make one point here.
There is the legality of marriage (which includes divorce laws, like fault or no-fault), and then there is its character and role in society. These should not be conflated.
Marriage as a matter of law is one thing. Marriage as a matter of culture is another. For me, culture first, and then law should follow. · 6 minutes ago
I'll be glad to have an answer from anyone who wishes to opine.
It's a way of getting right to the center of Ryan's piece quickly.
Dec '10
Re: Marriage Matters
KC Mulville
Tommy De Seno: I understand you have an objection to no-fault divorce.
What sort of "fault-based" divorce would you accept?
I'm sure that Ryan will answer on his own, but I wanted to make one point here.
There is the legality of marriage (which includes divorce laws, like fault or no-fault), and then there is its character and role in society. These should not be conflated.
Marriage as a matter of law is one thing. Marriage as a matter of culture is another. For me, culture first, and then law should follow. · 7 minutes ago
But if marriage has an existential reality, then should not both the culture and the law regard marriage based on the truth of that reality?
Feb '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy De Seno:
What sort of "fault-based" divorce would you accept? · 42 minutes ago
How about infidelity, abandonment, and abuse?
Apr '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy, this is a favorite theme of yours, but I don't fully understand why. Why are the specifics of divorce law so important? Obviously the underlying principle here is that permanence should be seen as an essential component of marriage, and when it fails to achieve that, that should be viewed *as* a failure, not just an unfortunate happenstance.
Edited on December 10, 2012 at 8:32pmRe: Marriage Matters
Polyphemus
Tommy De Seno:
What sort of "fault-based" divorce would you accept? · 42 minutes ago
How about infidelity, abandonment, and abuse? · 3 minutes ago
Abuse is where you'll find your slippery slope that leads right to no-fault divorce.
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Ryan T. Anderson:
...Redefining marriage was about cementing a new idea of marriage in the law—an idea whose baleful effects they had spent years fighting. That idea—that romantic-emotional union is all that makes a marriage—couldn’t explain or support the stabilizing norms that make marriage fitting for family life...
Same-sex marriage would require a more formal and final redefinition of marriage as simple romantic companionship, obliterating the meaning the marriage movement had sought to restore to the institution.
I haven't read your book, but I'm less inclined to given your unfair construction of your opponents' position; it weighs the debate in much the same way as describing traditional marriages as "simple baby-making contracts."
"Romantic companionship" denotes a relationship of convenience and implies that there are no significant obligations between childless spouses. It's as if taking on each other's debts, buying property together, becoming part of each other's families, and caring for each other's aging parents are unimportant. That's absurd.
None of this is to say that good child-rearing isn't the single most important function of marriage; just that it isn't the only one.
Edited on December 10, 2012 at 8:40pmJul '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Ryan -
While I agree with most of the marriage advocates on the right; here's my issue with the defense of marriage.
Re: Marriage Matters
Rachel L.: Tommy, this is a favorite theme of yours, but I don't fully understand why. Why are the specifics of divorce law so important? Obviously the underlying principle here is that permanence should be seen as an essential component of marriage, and when it fails to achieve that, that should be viewed *as* a failure, not just an unfortunate happenstance. · 4 minutes ago
Edited 3 minutes ago
My motivation here is to fully explore this part of Ryan's piece:
I hold that even those who express comittment to marriages staying together have exceptions. Yet we never seem to explore those exceptions, which I'm also predicting will show some very different levels of comittment to marriage, even among those who believe themselves to be in the same camp.
As for it being a favorite theme of mine, I brought it up in one other thread and didn't get any takers on the exploration.
Apr '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy: I didn't really mean "favorite theme" as a criticism. I just meant that I would like to hear the fuller explanation behind something to which you'd obviously devoted considerable thought.
Anyway, even if you hold that divorce is metaphysically impossible (at least in some cases), you may want civil law to recognize the fracturing of couples as an occasional practical reality with legal ramifications. I expect you're right that there would be disagreement about what, precisely, should qualify as sufficient grounds to justify a separation. But I would argue that even getting rid of the *term* "no-fault divorce" would be a step in the right direction. Ceasing to recognize "incompatible personalities" as sufficient grounds would be a good further step. It's important that people understand that marriages are *made* to work by the spouses themselves. It's not as though there's some mysterious underlying chemistry that either succeeds or fails just all on its own.
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
The King Prawn
But if marriage has an existential reality, then should not both the culture and the law regard marriage based on the truth of that reality?
Sure - but the nature of law and culture is different.
Law sets a minimum standard, conditioned by what can be enforced and/or prevented, whereas culture (I'm using that term until someone comes up with something better) has a capacity for much more. Like other institutions, you can do the bare minimum or make the most of it. Think of education; you can have a barely-passing grade or you can revel in the subject.
If we analyze marriage merely from what can be legally enforced, then we risk restricting marriage to the bare minimum ... and at a certain point, there's a fatigue that comes with fighting such endless small battles, and we just give up on the whole thing.
Sep '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Ryan, can you speak to this? Here's the argument spoken often -- since 50% marriages fail, then why is same sex marriage such a bad thing, when it is for more marital unions?
It misses the point of marriage -- which is that, by definition, it is between a man and a woman who then become husband and wife. It is not forged from a romantic ideal of love and togetherness and never was and never should be. Can you sharpen this up a bit?
May '10
Re: Marriage Matters
Wrong.
I live in San Francisco and within my children's school community are many, many same sex families. The "civilizing effects" of marriage are just as prevalent with this group as they are elsewhere. The marriages are partnerships dedicated to raising children, making a home, participating in a community and engaging in all those behaviors that strengthen society.
The only argument against same-sex marriage is ultimately a religious and moral one. There is no provable case that extending this institution weakens it or weakens society. To lump it together with divorce and other phenomena that do weaken the institution is a significant fault in your logic or whomever the "they" is that you quote.
Bloody sick of this on Ricochet.
Aug '10
Re: Marriage Matters
I agree with Trace. I've looked, and I've seen no evidence that gay marriage has damaged the institution of marriage or caused fewer people to be married. The trend of declining marriage and increasing divorce predates the gay marriage movement by decades, and those countries that have already approved gay marriage have seen no additional decline in the rate of marriage. In Denmark, the marriage rate went UP after they legalized same sex marriage, and that doesn't surprise me.
In addition, I think it's borderline offensive to suggest that preventing gay people from marrying does them no harm other than 'hurt feelings' as another poster said. There are real legal implications involved such as visitation rights if a partner is ill or dying, estate issues if one partner dies, insurance issues, you name it.
Furthermore, an increasing number of gay couples are having children, or have children from previous relationships. Given that they have these children, wouldn't it be better to allow them to marry and codify their relationship to provide stability for the kids?
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Trace
I live in San Francisco and within my children's school community are many, many same sex families. The "civilizing effects" of marriage are just as prevalent with this group as they are elsewhere. The marriages are partnerships dedicated to raising children, making a home, participating in a community and engaging in all those behaviors that strengthen society.
Bingo.
Just as there's a tendency among liberals to ignore or diminish the essential role marriage plays in raising children, there's an equally short-sighted tendency among marriage traditionalists to do the same for the myriad other socially beneficial reasons to encourage marriage.
Dec '10
Re: Marriage Matters
Not so. There is a philosophical case against it as well. I could ask "what is a hammer?" and a functional answer could very easily be "a device to drive nails." Can I not also drive nails with a crescent wrench? Does pounding a few nails into wood magically turn my crescent wrench into a hammer? No, it does not. Just because I use it as a hammer does not turn it into a hammer or change the metaphysical reality of what a hammer is.
Marriage is a definable thing. Just because some use other relationships to the same end as marriage (as per your example) does not transform them into marriages or change the metaphysical reality of marriage.
Sep '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Trace, in keeping with the subject matter, it is about the definition of marriage; not whether marriage is a religious or moral establishment.
Sep '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Tom Meyer
Bingo.
Just as there's a tendency among liberals to ignore or diminish the essential role marriage plays in raising children, there's an equally short-sighted tendency among marriage traditionalists to do the same for the myriad other socially beneficial reasons to encourage marriage. · 4 minutes ago
Did you read the article? It's not about social benefits -- its about the definition of what marriage is and how to keep it from being whittled down to being a social device for stability or an expression of morality or religiosity or a mere love-match.