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Jun. 18th, 2004 10:53 am
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Interesting article about gay marriage and traditionalism
The fundamental problem with all of the "tradition" arguments is that they fail to acknowledge (as somewhat illustrated in this article) that marriage has already morphed significantly from its original purposes, and that marriage has had somewhat different purposes, definitinons and details in different cultures. Civil marriage and religious marriage are indeed two entirely separate things. Having one's partnership blessed by the clergy of one's choice has existed for a very long time and will continue to do so. But getting a blessing from God-- a deital stamp of approval-- for the union you're creating doesn't have any bearing on what the government's involvement in marriage is. So we can toss out the religious argument entirely (as that article does) and focus on the traditions of civil marriage.
Governments get involved in marriage because there are certain things that traditional marriage has brought with it, largely involving money and property rights, which have need for legal binding and enforcement. Heirs are only one of those things, and really, the only one which could, in any way, be construed to have any connection with male/female partnership. As children are not, and never have been the sole purpose of marriage, they can't be used as a defining criteria for it. Other things which traditional marriage was for that are gender-dependent have already, as the article points out, been abolished or are no longer part of the legal tenets of marriage in Western culture (dowries, the concept of wife as chattel, etc.) Feminism, bless it, has made nearly all gender-dependent components of traditional civil marriage go entirely away in the process of defining a woman as a full, equal person, and not merely the property of men. So since civil marriage has already morphed in that sense, and the institution as we know it has become more like a business contract-- two parties agreeing to share legal and monetary responsibility for each other-- than anything which has to do with gender, there's no legitimate reason to deny the institution as it exists today to any two people who are legally able to enter into a contract.
The slippery slope arguments always start from here, and frankly, I see no reason to try to defend against them. I do see same-sex marriage as simply one more step on the evolutionary path of domestic cultural structure. I think further down the road, as the institution continues to morph, we will see things like group marriages, and temporary domestic contracts, and communal household contracts (where a group of adults, whether related or no, or sexually/romantically connected or no, sign on to share legal responsibility for each other.) The other ad absurdium slippery slopes: that people will want to marry their dogs or a refrigerator, etc., have no real chance of happening because there are already legal relationships set up for those things.
Gay marriage advocates like to talk about how marriage is about love, and about marrying the person you love more than anyone else. I disagree. Marriage is about contract law. And since denying a contract to a person based on factors which have nothing to do with the fulfillment of the terms of that contract would be unconstitutional, there's no reason to deny it to same-sex couples. Any person who wants to claim legal responsibility for another person, with all the bells and whistles that go along with that, should be able to do so. Civil marriage should be something like mutual adoption for adults, if you will. As the article points out, cultures are always morphing. The cultural concept of marriage in the Western world has already morphed significantly. Legalizing gay marriage is merely acknowledging the reality of the change which has already happened.
The fundamental problem with all of the "tradition" arguments is that they fail to acknowledge (as somewhat illustrated in this article) that marriage has already morphed significantly from its original purposes, and that marriage has had somewhat different purposes, definitinons and details in different cultures. Civil marriage and religious marriage are indeed two entirely separate things. Having one's partnership blessed by the clergy of one's choice has existed for a very long time and will continue to do so. But getting a blessing from God-- a deital stamp of approval-- for the union you're creating doesn't have any bearing on what the government's involvement in marriage is. So we can toss out the religious argument entirely (as that article does) and focus on the traditions of civil marriage.
Governments get involved in marriage because there are certain things that traditional marriage has brought with it, largely involving money and property rights, which have need for legal binding and enforcement. Heirs are only one of those things, and really, the only one which could, in any way, be construed to have any connection with male/female partnership. As children are not, and never have been the sole purpose of marriage, they can't be used as a defining criteria for it. Other things which traditional marriage was for that are gender-dependent have already, as the article points out, been abolished or are no longer part of the legal tenets of marriage in Western culture (dowries, the concept of wife as chattel, etc.) Feminism, bless it, has made nearly all gender-dependent components of traditional civil marriage go entirely away in the process of defining a woman as a full, equal person, and not merely the property of men. So since civil marriage has already morphed in that sense, and the institution as we know it has become more like a business contract-- two parties agreeing to share legal and monetary responsibility for each other-- than anything which has to do with gender, there's no legitimate reason to deny the institution as it exists today to any two people who are legally able to enter into a contract.
The slippery slope arguments always start from here, and frankly, I see no reason to try to defend against them. I do see same-sex marriage as simply one more step on the evolutionary path of domestic cultural structure. I think further down the road, as the institution continues to morph, we will see things like group marriages, and temporary domestic contracts, and communal household contracts (where a group of adults, whether related or no, or sexually/romantically connected or no, sign on to share legal responsibility for each other.) The other ad absurdium slippery slopes: that people will want to marry their dogs or a refrigerator, etc., have no real chance of happening because there are already legal relationships set up for those things.
Gay marriage advocates like to talk about how marriage is about love, and about marrying the person you love more than anyone else. I disagree. Marriage is about contract law. And since denying a contract to a person based on factors which have nothing to do with the fulfillment of the terms of that contract would be unconstitutional, there's no reason to deny it to same-sex couples. Any person who wants to claim legal responsibility for another person, with all the bells and whistles that go along with that, should be able to do so. Civil marriage should be something like mutual adoption for adults, if you will. As the article points out, cultures are always morphing. The cultural concept of marriage in the Western world has already morphed significantly. Legalizing gay marriage is merely acknowledging the reality of the change which has already happened.
