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You know, I used to assume that societies affirm (or demand) marriage because it was and is better for children— that the presence or even the possibility of offspring is what makes marriage=family.
I’ve changed my mind on this. My second husband and I got married without any expectation on anyone’s part that we would have babies together. Our marriage nonetheless created a family that didn’t exist before. Once it did exist, it did what families can do: It provided support to its members and (therefore) strengthened the community as a while.
I’m squeamish about these things, so forgive me if I blurt, but whether or not marriage has been defined by the presence of children, it has definitely always been defined by the presence and possibility of sex. A husband or wife is—always has been—defined as “the person we all agree that you can have sex with.” Yes, I know: nowadays you can have sex with anybody, anytime… but once you’re married, the expectation still is that you are going to confine yourself to your spouse. If you don’t, we won’t stone you, but we’re still only going to honor an actual spouse. (We all know what Bill Clinton gets up to, but only Hillary shall be his widow…)
Anthropologists have tended to assume that, faced with a whole species full of Bill Clintons, society has ‘confined’ sex to the bonds of matrimony in order to control our otherwise random proclivities and enforce the support of at least the “legitimate” offspring that result: I think it may be the other way around. Bill and his ilk notwithstanding, I think sex naturally tends to bind two people together. (It would make sense that sex would be at least a little sticky, given that sex can lead to offspring who’ll do better if the parents are stuck together, right?) So human societies have learned to exploit and reinforce that bond because there are all these other, useful relationships that get formed when two people who aren’t related by blood are drawn to one another by sexual desire, learn to love each other and begin to regard and treat each other as kin (again, even when children don’t result).
When my husband and I married, my family members gained at least some access to the resources (broadly defined) of his family and vice versa: My sister felt duty-bound to take care of my husband’s daughter, my mother-in-law sends a Christmas present to my mom, and so on. For that matter, if my husband’s ex-wife needed my help, I would feel a familial (not just Christian!) obligation to provide it, in a way I definitely would not if she were merely his ex-girlfriend.
Societies work best when individuals are enmeshed in and supported by a web of relationships, and marriage (a socially-recognized sexually-based pair-bond) creates and extends these webs with or without the presence (or potential presence) of children. In ancient days, when we lived in very small societies, marriage didn’t have to be a state-sanctioned, legal institution. In the Bible, for example, there is no indication even of a formal ceremony… marriages appear to have been arranged between families and marked by a feast.
This is probably why “living together” can indeed begin to seem like and feel like marriage, and function like marriage as long as everyone in the “village” in which a couple lives has implicitly agreed to recognize it as such. The problem arises, as I say, when impersonal institutions such as a hospital ICU or the Social Security Administration needs the piece of paper. At least in my experience, it makes a big difference when you can say, at the door of the ICU, “I am her husband,” instead of “I am her boyfriend,” and I think it would probably make a difference to her ability to cope with some awful medical situation of mine if my step-daughter could say “Kate is my step-mother,” instead of “she’s my dad’s girlfriend.” The hospital personnel may accept a boyfriend as a de-facto husband, but they will probably require confirmation of his status from the patient’s parents… and if the patient’s parents don’t actually like the boyfriend, or if they disagree with him about treatment options, the relationship of the parents to their child may very well trump the relationship of a boyfriend to a girlfriend in a way it would not if they were married.
The decline of marriage long predates any serious move toward same-sex marriage: We heterosexuals have been doing a fine job of trashing the institution without needing any help from our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters—if anything, I’ve found that the debate over same-sex marriage has forced more straight people to consider why (or whether?) marriage matters.
Why not marry? This is the question I have for the live-in-lovers in my life: given that being married confers benefits that will (seriously!) be really, really important one day, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the moment, why not shuffle down to the courthouse and get it done? I can’t decide if they shrug it off because marriage is meaningless… or it means so much, it’s scary?
I loved your entire comment, Kate at #31, because although my husband and I chose not to have children, we believe there is a uniqueness to the commitment of marriage.
It isn’t simply financial. My husband and I owned property and a business before we tied the knot and all the contractual protections had been put into place from the very beginning. We married for spiritual reasons, meaning we valued the special, inexplicable connection of the term “husband and wife.”
Kate and ET–I think the definition of marriage is: The permanent union of a man and woman and any children born to them, which BTW is also the definition of a nuclear family. It says any children born to them, so if children are not born to them, it is still a marriage. Kate I’m completely with you on the importance of marriage. I think we need to do all we can to revive marriage culture because it is supposed to do all the things you say. As I detailed earlier, however, the last 50 years have been brutal for marriage. It does lose meaning and power when its definition is watered down. People are now very confused about what marriage even is and what its purpose is. So we need to do what we can to yes, encourage young people to get married, but also to revive the understanding about what marriage is. Even if no fault divorce exists, we need to teach our children that it is wrong to get divorced if it can possibly be avoided. Marriage is not part of throwaway culture. We need to teach them that it is good if parents feel the responsibility to stay together for the kids. We need to teach them that there is no such thing as casual sex. I teach these things to my Sunday School class every week. So no, I would not say we give up on marriage, rather we need to do all we can to preach marriage to the young people we know and give it meaning again.
Society has removed the guard rails they used to provide (Merina). It’s like society sending a message to married people that we don’t support you. This hurts both people and society. But it’s become difficult to argue for. Sister Michelle (my high school Theology nun in two years of high school, God rest your soul wherever you are) would return to asking us students the difference between what is legal (Jojo) and what is moral. They weren’t that far apart in 1974, but they have become very far apart in 2015. It’s never out of bounds to ask what is moral, I don’t care what group of people you’re talking with. But moral doesn’t come from the secular sphere. You will only get political correctness from the secular sphere. But many people have adopted PC attitudes and whatever is permitted by the law as if they represented what is moral.
Couldn’t agree more, but I would add that people should take time before they make this step. One of the reasons I believe marriage suffers from a 50/50 success rate is that partners oftentimes do not share common values and don’t realize it.
The Constitution says nothing about marriage.
First of all, I find the term “marriage equality” to be insulting, moral preening. It is tantamount to labeling as a bigot anyone who objects. If you’re talking about same-sex marriage, then call it same-sex marriage. If you’re throwing in polygamous and incestuous relationships, then call it “expanded marriage” or something similar.
To the main point — states often promote standardized real estate contracts. This has the practical benefit that when something inevitably ends up in the courts, then the judicial apparatus has somewhat standard ways to handle disputes.
Private marriage contracts will still end up in the courts when the inevitable divorces and child custody cases arise. They are messy enough with the marriage we have now. If everyone is going to write their own marriage contract, then plan on quadrupling the size of the courts.