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.
- Comment (164)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (28)
Comments:
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy De Seno
Marriage is primarily between the couple, and for we religious types between us and God.
If that were true, why don't people just live together, and leave the rest of us out of it?You're saying that marriage is just a private agreement to live together. Society has nothing to do with it.
In that case, why would a couple care how society treats their relationship? We have SSM advocates claiming that it's a gross injustice that we don't treat their relationship with the same respect. If what you say is true, Tommy, why would they care?
You're saying that society is wrong to treat gay people differently in a matter over which no one cares what society thinks. OK - which is it?
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Trace
So does a loveless marriage. So does abusive parenting.
Well then the answer is not to change the definition of marriage, but to improve the practice of it.
We don't re-define something because some people fail at it.
Re: Marriage Matters
KC Mulville
Tommy De Seno
Marriage is primarily between the couple, and for we religious types between us and God.
If that were true, why don't people just live together, and leave the rest of us out of it?You're saying that marriage is just a private agreement to live together. Society has nothing to do with it.
In that case, why would a couple care how society treats their relationship? We have SSM advocates claiming that it's a gross injustice that we don't treat their relationship with the same respect. If what you say is true, Tommy, why would they care?
You're saying that society is wrong to treat gay people differently in a matter over which no one cares what society thinks. OK - which is it?
I'd LOVE to keep government out. Refund my marriage license money. I never wanted to buy it.
Respect? I don't give a rat's rear end whether you respect my marriage. Do you want my respect for yours? I don't give a lick about your private business.
But once government makes rules, they better be equal for all.
I'd rather ditch the rules.
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy De Seno
But all that couple really had was an irreconcilable difference.
Well, let's not forget what marriage is. As I've said, marriage is when two people want to be treated as one. The implicit premise is that they will reconcile their differences. I mean, that's what they're supposed to be doing in the first place.
It's kind of empty to promise to reconcile all differences, except the ones you can't reconcile. That's what you're promising to do.
Re: Marriage Matters
KC Mulville
Tommy De Seno
But all that couple really had was an irreconcilable difference.
Well, let's not forget what marriage is. As I've said, marriage is when two people want to be treated as one. The implicit premise is that they will reconcile their differences. I mean, that's what they're supposed to be doing in the first place.
It's kind of empty to promise to reconcile all differences, except the ones you can't reconcile. That's what you're promising to do. · 0 minutes ago
No - I'm promising to recognize we are dealing with humans and not machines and some differences can't be reconciled.
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy De Seno
I'd LOVE to keep government out. Refund my marriage license money. I never wanted to buy it.
But once government makes rules, they better be equal for all.
I'd rather ditch the rules.
As Emeril says, let's kick this up a notch.
If your relationship is strictly a private affair, does society (not government or the local bureaucrat) have any interest in your relationship if you have children?
And if so, what interest would that be?
(Note: I say this knowing that you're a dedicated dad.)
Re: Marriage Matters
KC Mulville
Tommy De Seno
I'd LOVE to keep government out. Refund my marriage license money. I never wanted to buy it.
As Emeril says, let's kick this up a notch.
If your relationship is strictly a private affair, does society (not government or the local bureaucrat) have any interest in your relationship if you have children?
And if so, what interest would that be?
(Note: I say this knowing that you're a dedicated dad.) · 3 minutes ago
Children are an incidence of the relationship, so you are changing the subject.
If you speak of interest, you have to weigh the interest and also decide if it's unique.
Were I to beat my child incessantly - the state has the same interest in stopping that as they do my beating my neighbor. Nothing unique or weightier.
There is an in loco parentis interest in my housing and feeding my child, only because the child is at a disadvantage in competing for it himself. That would be a unique interest. But not weighty:
I can house and feed the child married or separate. It's easier married, but the state interest in it being easier is small.
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
KC Mulville
As we've said before ... marriage is when society treats the couple as one. Society has traditionally had two dimensions, both of which are necessary, but neither of which is sufficient. The first is that the couple loves each other, and the second is that they produce and raise a family.
I whole-heartedly agree with the first sentence, but don't see how it relates to the requirement to raise a family. And given the long, long history of recognizing marriage between parties known or suspected to be infertile -- usually for age -- I don't see how expectation or desire to have children together is a prerequisite for marriage.
Feb '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Trace: This is the one and only study always cited and I would argue not relevant. .....
Furthermore arguing that the best thing for a child is a male father and female mother does nothing to address the myriad cases where this is not the norm, none of which I am guessing you are prepared to outlaw.
.....
As I've argued before, this argument about studies and family structure is irrelevant to the discussion of SSM. I don't need a study to assert that it is and should be the responsibility of the biological parents to raise and care for their own progeny. I think that on average this is the best situation (not a scientific opinion) for kids, but my position is entirely separate from the "outcomes" question. I believe it to be a duty of the biological parents along with a desire that I not be held accountable for someone else's actions. I believe that the rest of us are protected and better off when we attempt to hold biological parents accountable and to encourage them in their formation and maintenance.
Feb '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Trace: Mollie -- You exercise editorial judgement in promoting threads, initiating threads, and promoting guest contributors. These are all exercises in editorial judgement. But I can read multiple issues of National Review (for example) and never encounter this issue. Likewise I don't recall it ever coming up on a podcast. I'm not censoring anyone but I am saying that I don't agree with the editorial sensibility that promotes this topic so frequently. I am just one voice to be sure -- but I am on record.
.....
18 hours ago
Yes, I realize that you rarely encounter this issue even at National Review. That's part of the problem; that's how we've arrived at this point. No debate, now opponents are simply incoherent moralizers or hateful bigots.
More debate, please.
Jun '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Ed G.
Trace: Mollie -- You exercise editorial judgement in promoting threads, initiating threads, and promoting guest contributors. These are all exercises in editorial judgement. But I can read multiple issues of National Review (for example) and never encounter this issue. Likewise I don't recall it ever coming up on a podcast. I'm not censoring anyone but I am saying that I don't agree with the editorial sensibility that promotes this topic so frequently. I am just one voice to be sure -- but I am on record.
.....
18 hours ago
Yes, I realize that you rarely encounter this issue even at National Review. That's part of the problem; that's how we've arrived at this point. No debate, now opponents are simply incoherent moralizers or hateful bigots.
More debate, please. · 0 minutes ago
Indeed. Tony and KC have been having a civil discussion that's informed me about arguments on both sides.
Why can't we have more like that?
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Tommy De Seno
Children are an incidence of the relationship, so you are changing the subject.
No, Tommy, that's exactly the subject. To make your argument, you have to say that children aren't included in the essence of marriage. You hold that marriage is simply your chosen relationship, and that family is separate from marriage.
What's to stop someone from alleging that, by your argument, it's perfectly OK for you to have a relationship with Woman A, but have children with Woman B. The fact that you might live with the mother of your children is only a matter of convenience.
By your argument, marriage is here and children are there. It isn't important that they be connected.
(BTW - again, let me stress - I already respect you as a dedicated dad. Anyone who coaches little league deserves a thousand years off in purgatory. I'm not accusing you of anything. My interest is in the details of the argument, and how you answer - - I don't mean it to be personal.)
Jan '11
Re: Marriage Matters
Tom Meyer
I whole-heartedly agree with the first sentence, but don't see how it relates to the requirement to raise a family. And given the long, long history of recognizing marriage between parties known or suspected to be infertile -- usually for age -- I don't see how expectation or desire to have children together is a prerequisite for marriage.
I think this is why I was so eager to start at the very beginning of the thread by citing the distinction between what the law says about marriage and what the culture says.The culture has a tradition of understanding marriage as the core of family life, but the law, for practical reasons, makes a number of exceptions.
I resist the urge to redefine the culture's idea of marriage to accommodate the exceptions found in the law. Life is more than what the law says it is. And although law helps shape culture, it doesn't define it.
Apr '12
Re: Marriage Matters
Reading through KC and Tommy's exchange about divorce, I was thinking... one thing I love about the Catholic understanding of marriage is that it is simultaneously beautiful, mysterious, elevated by high ideals... and completely down-to-earth and practical. Dietrich von Hildebrand can wax eloquent with the best of them in his discourse on the beauty and redeeming power of human love. But every well-catechized, married Catholic understands, first of all, that the marital bond cannot be broken while life remains (even if a physical separation is occasionally approved), and second, that there is a set of reasonably well-defined obligations that he/she must meet in order to keep his/her marital vows.
This realization can have a nice, bracing effect at times when one is not overflowing with warm emotions towards one's spouse. I actually think it's quite reassuring at times to have that, because it spares you the necessity of obsessively searching the depths of your own psychology in an effort to determine whether you're approaching marriage correctly or whether yours is on a firm foundation. Emotions, dreams and daily activities inevitably shift, but the basic game plan is always there.
Apr '12
Re: Marriage Matters
I say all this (from comment #154) mostly in an effort to explain how confused I am by Tommy's continued insistence that we traditional marriage advocates are somehow avoiding or running from the "real" issues. I don't want to run from any important question with respect to marriage, but what are you looking for here? Do you really think it would be useful for us to play Dear Abby, trudging through endless sad and sordid tales of marital decline and issuing judgment for each? Why? Personally I'm always reticent to offer confident pronouncements particularly about hypotheticals like the one Tommy posed, precisely because the dynamics of relationships are so very complicated. A few hypothetical details hardly ever suffice to justify a confident judgment. That's why those who actually do give advice in such matters (pastors, marriage counsellors) need a great deal of patience and prudence to do their jobs well.
I suspect what he really wants to do is "expose" us as hopeless romantics with no real read on the complexity of real relationships. But I have no fear of that, because a correct understanding of marriage is simultaneously beautiful, demanding, and ruthlessly practical.
Apr '12
Re: Marriage Matters
I might add finally that our problems are further complicated by the fact that most people in our society are not well catechized with respect to marriage, so most marital failures stem to one degree or another from a failure to understand marriage properly in the first place. That makes the practical questions very hard, because we have to decide to what extent we want to hold people accountable for serious commitments that were improperly made and ill-informed from the start.
One thing we certainly do not want to do, however, is to make the problem worse by increasing the general confusion about the nature of marriage. SSM advocates are continually asking, "why do we worry about this when we have so much divorce, illegitimacy, etc etc.? Why don't we just bow to reality and recognize that marriage has ceased to be what traditional marriage advocates claim it is?"
The answer: because it hasn't, and it can't, and the more wetryto morph marriage into something new, the more paralyzed we will be in the face of those other domestic problems.
May '10
Re: Marriage Matters
But Rachel, you've fallen back to Catholic teaching. Aren't you in effect saying that Catholics have the "best" marriages? So aren't you making a religious and moral case for marriage, rather than a societal one? Society has to deal with flawed reality which is that many, many would be gay marriages have superior characteristics to many, many heterosexual marriages. So define marriage as narrowly as you like within the confines of your church and your beliefs, but in the collective society do what is best for society as a whole -- and I firmly believe that is encouraging family formation for those who would seek it. The state's interest is in stable social, economic and child welfare units.
Rachel L.:
The answer: because it hasn't, and it can't, and the more wetryto morph marriage into something new, the more paralyzed we will be in the face of those other domestic problems. · 11 minutes ago
Apr '12
Re: Marriage Matters
I only reference Catholic teaching per se because it is so clearly and well defined that it offers a very clear exemplar of the sort of view I have in mind. But none of the things that I have drawn from it depend on revelation or on anything that is distinctive to Catholics. (There is, I suppose, a sacramental component to Catholic marriage that isn't universally applicable, but it isn't important to worry about that here.)
The point is that we needn't to abandon the high ideals in order to "deal with flawed reality"; in fact, that is exactly the wrong way to go about it. A good and proper understanding of marriage ties them all together, and indeed, if we abandon the high ideals, we find ourselves in a race to the bottom which leaves us completely unable to cope with those many symptoms of human weakness and failure. Catholics have been repeating this message for a long time, and their dire predictions about the social consequences of "bowing to reality" (usually greeted with derision at the time they are made) have again and again been proven right.
Edited on December 11, 2012 at 6:50pmRe: Marriage Matters
KC Mulville
Tommy De Seno
Children are an incidence of the relationship, so you are changing the subject.
(BTW - again, let me stress - I already respect you as a dedicated dad. Anyone who coaches little league deserves a thousand years off in purgatory. I'm not accusing you of anything. My interest is in the details of the argument, and how you answer - - I don't mean it to be personal.) · 3 hours ago
KC I want to tell you how much I appreciate your being careful not to conflate what you see as a problem with my political/social philosophy with a personal failing. You are a nice fellow and a more than fair debate companion for doing so. Thank you so much for that!
But no need for either of us to waste any of our 200 word allotment on it. I love talking to you. I don't want to miss any of your great points.
I promise if you bang away at my political ineptitude, I won't take it personally!
And I greatly appreciate the nod about coaching. If I were a rich man (not Obama rich - actually rich) I'd do it full time.
Re: Marriage Matters
Rachel L.:
I don't want to run from any important question with respect to marriage, but what are you looking for here? Do you really think it would be useful for us to play Dear Abby, trudging through endless sad and sordid tales of marital decline and issuing judgment for each?
That is what I'm asking for us to do. We expose ourselves to fair criticism when we make rules for people to live by, but then refuse to look at how those rules affect on a personal and individual basis the very people we are ruling over.
If we are going to limit divorce, as Ryan seems to suggest, then we better well roll up our sleeves and see what that decree looks like in practice. It's an obligation, really.
Edited on December 11, 2012 at 9:20pm