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A Pointed 104 Seconds on the Marriage Debate
Here at Stanford this past spring, the Anscombe Society braved threats and intimidation of all kinds to host a conference in favor of traditional marriage. In this video one of the speakers, the marvelously articulate and completely fearless Ryan Anderson, replies to a questioner. Watch the video, if you have 104 seconds to spare, and then note, if you would, my questions below:
Without quite realizing it, I saw when I listened to this exchange, I’d been sliding toward at least a grudging acceptance of the libertarian position on marriage—namely, that we should get the government out of the business of defining marriage altogether. Which leads to:
1) Anderson is right, isn’t he, that such an approach leads inevitably to viewing marriage as merely a subset of contract law? If a man wants to marry a man, fine; let them draw up a legally binding contract. If one man wants to marry six women; or two men, two women; or one woman another—again, fine. Let them simply draw up the proper contracts, and let the government enforce them as it would any contract.
2) This really won’t do, will it? Marriage between one man and one woman really is different, and the state needs to recognize that reality, or—what? Or chaos. Yes?
Published in General
Ryan was cogent. If marriage is not one of the basic building blocks of civilization, then it will be reduced to a contract, amendable, for whomever wants to pretend to be married.
The real question: Can the genie be put back into the bottle at this point? Can a society which has gone this far move backwards to the traditional definition of marriage, or are we on the slippery slope to the dissolution of society with no turning back?
As Frank was pointing out, if not perhaps as explicitly, civil unions in Europe have tended to lead to a decline in traditional marriage. I believe someone mentioned that people often pursue the lowest level of the contract available unless they have strong personal reasons not to, so hetero civil unions happen, too, and eat into traditional marriage. I’m not sure if the numbers are in for various states or if there is a corresponding decline here that was not already part of a trend or of another cause. (Economic hardship traditionally delays marriage.) But with the number of states that already have gay marriage or civil unions, are we already doomed? Or is there some path back to traditional marriage for our society?
Civil marriage is now so degraded that confessional clergy are contemplating renouncing their license to conduct and register civil marriages. In other words, they won’t participate in the parody that the state has imposed and will only conduct sacramental or “church” marriages. The couple would register the marriage on their own.
I don’t believe our pastor has done this, but I’m almost certain some have.
If I’m counting rightly, I think we have 21 with some definitive law for SSM, 18 with constitutional or statues law against SSM, and the rest somewhere in judicial Never-neverland: SSM by State. Has anywhere ever been for and gone back to the against category?
I’m not arguing that the cause is lost and let’s stop fighting. Even if the cause is lost, it doesn’t mean we should necessarily give up the rearguard action. But I am asking: is the cause already lost here in the US or in the states that have already recognized SSM?
Has the decline in traditional marriage been offset by an increase in civil unions? If so, is it necessarily a bad thing that people who were only getting married for the tax advantages no longer have to go through with sham marriages to get those benefits? Doesn’t allowing people to use marriage as a tax dodge do more damage to marriage than making those benefits more widely available?
That is more of an argument for eliminating the income tax in my view. Of course, I’m inclined to recognize those arguments even where they don’t exist.
“If I’m counting rightly, I think we have 21 with some definitive law for SSM, 18 with constitutional or statues law against SSM, and the rest somewhere in judicial Never-neverland: SSM by State. Has anywhere ever been for and gone back to the against category?”
One (or more) of the recent Federal Appeals cases will be taken up by the Supreme Court next term. By 6/30/15, the court will rule that any state constitution or statutory ban on SSM is unconstitutional by a vote of 5-4 – Kennedy being the deciding vote, building on his previous ruling in the Windsor case last year. Anyone who expects otherwise is, frankly, fooling themselves.
And there lies the rub. In the end, it comes down to nine lawyers wearing black bedsheets.
Now that’s kinky!
I assume you mean that question to be rhetorical, but it is a really good question and it has nothing to do with marriage. The support of children born outside of marriage is just as important.
One might, for example, grant legal rights to the child against its biological parents for support, enforceable by the child’s recognized guardian. Any parent, married or not, should (in my opinion) have both a moral and legal obligation to support the child he sired, or she bore, until maturity.
As far as alimony goes, I would be fine with getting rid of it. When it comes to the classically conservative solution of “get a job,” I would apply it here (or anywhere that a disability did not preclude productive work).
But this is the entire point. If you buy into Ryan Anderson’s point, you must take the position that marriage as defined as permanent and 1 man 1 woman must hold a privileged position, or it doesn’t matter.
Without incentives, it doesn’t hold a privileged position. If you agree with him, you must also argue that some kind of benefits such as tax cuts must exist only for such marriages. You must also argue that no other arrangement (such as civil unions) gets the same incentives.
Some seem to suggest that merely the title of marriage grants privilege, which I find silly.
Outside of using the word marriage, how many of the benefits that the SSM crowd is asking for are already available individually? So far as I can tell nearly all of them outside of tax benefits. Are there any I’m missing that are inherently tied to marriage in a way that it damages marriage to give them to other contracts?
That’s my answer to Ryan Anderson….Marriage doesn’t hold a privileged position, so his entire point is moot. Whatever damage he thinks will be done, has already been done.
He is staring at the remnants of a dam which has long since failed (the privileged position of marriage) and is telling us that SSM will poke further holes in it.
I agree marriage does not hold a privileged legal position, and that’s why I question the need to appropriate the word marriage for what is not marriage. If an equal civil arrangement is not good enough then this can’t be just about rights. The conclusion I’m left with is its about legitimizing SSM by saying it’s not just equivalent to but is the same thing as marriage.
The thread vanished yesterday just as I composed this reply:
Marriage has two aspects: contractual and sacramental. The sacrament is religious, not civil. For the sacramental aspect, yes, I do care that our marriage was made before God. For the non-sacramental aspect, I don’t care whether the state officiates or pronounces – I only care that I will be held accountable to basic marital duties.
Like many people, I wouldn’t have been interested in a boutique marriage contract. Many people probably would prefer to sign boilerplate contracts enforcing traditional marriage boundaries, such as no cheating, abuse, or abandonment.
I agree marriage can have two aspects, civil and religious but neither is contractual. In the case of civil, the civil society (represented by the state) sanctifies and recognizes the union, sets the terms for such recognition, and officiates over the forming of the union
So in your opinion, marriage is both a religious and a civil sacrament?
How many civil sacraments are there?
Agreed, and as previously stated, this means you are only opposing it to delegitimize SSM, therefore I find both sides use of the government to answer what is a strictly moral question to be ill-advised.
Marriage is both a civil and religious institution. I would restrict the use of the term ‘sacrament’ to especially significant religious institutions or ceremonies.
Good question. First: I don’t think that in actual practice we have much of functioning republic left. That being said, Gov’t has gradually assumed the controlling/regulating role in Western society over the last 100 years or so. I think that allowing gov’t to assume the controlling role in society and even culture has been the key error made by Western Civ.
I don’t 100% agree with this, but I respect the heck out of it. If more more arguments like this had been made 10 years ago, we wouldn’t be in our current bind and SoCons would be in a much stronger position than they are now.
Is not government, by definition, the means by which society controls itself?
If it’s not a contract and not a civil sacrament, what kind of civil institution is marriage?
If the only useful thing civil marriage does is to make a specific type of agreement between two people public and binding, then why should civil marriage be anything other than a particular type of contract?
If civil marriage does more than that, then what is the “more” that it does?
I’m opposing it because the government has no authority to redefine a term for an institution which predates and exists outside of government. It is another example of the Left abusively using our own government against us and distorting language itself to advance their agenda. None of this would be an issue if SSM advocates accepted what they claim they want: equal legal benefits. But this isn’t about equality, and they refuse to be honest about it.
Thankfully, no.
Society controls itself by several means other than government, including informal norms, market forces, religious beliefs, and non-government institutions. Government is no more than one means out of many.
If I had to compare it to anything else it would be a licensing scheme. Society, through the government sets standards for recognition of a particular activity and grants specific privileges on the basis of meeting those requirements.
But then you don’t agree with Ryan Anderson, which is the point I’m trying to make. Most conservatives on this site don’t agree with him when you test their beliefs against what he is saying here.
Government: The governing body of a nation, state, or community:
an agency of the federal government
1.1 The system by which a nation, state, or community is governed:
a secular, pluralistic, democratic government
1.2 The action or manner of controlling or regulating a nation, organization, or people:
Peter,
Can you tell me in what way you believe the arrangement of 1 man 1 woman marriage (we’ll ignore permanent, which Ryan Anderson evokes almost as if in an effort to undercut his own point) is currently privileged in the United States?
If marriage doesn’t have a privileged position, then where are the teeth in Anderson’s argument?
How many licensing schemes do actual good?
And what is this particular licensing scheme for? Evidently, civil marriage is not a license to reproduce and raise children. So what’s it a license for?