A Follow-Up on Nurturing: Unruly Males and Adelphopoeisis
Jason Kuznicki on Oct 30th 2005
Two longtime blog neighbors, Josh Claybourn and Paul Musgrave, have replied to my post on nurturing as the purpose of marriage. I’ve also gotten a stimulating reply from Pseudo-Polymath’s Mark Olson.
First, I find it gratifying that my original post does seem to have shifted the terms of the debate, at least for the small circle of people who have replied so far. Rights-talk, romance-talk, and baby-talk (if you’ll pardon the expressions) all fall short in explaining the institution as most people seem to understand it today. All three replies clearly appreciate this, even if none are quite ready to sign onto the nurturing model wholeheartedly.
Before responding to these posts, I’d like to reiterate what I see as the advantages to my thesis that an all-encompassing, lifelong nurturing relationship is the best way to describe how most Americans think of marriage.
–Nurturing has a clear meaning for all stages of life, which baby-talk and romance-talk both distinctly lack.
–Nurturing explains why rights-talk exists in the first place. By contrast, explanations from baby-talk and romance-talk do this only imperfectly and with many glaring exceptions.
–Nurturing explains why we often admire people who overcome adversity or adultery in marriage. If marriage were purely a legal or more narrowly self-interested transaction, we would inevitably consider people in difficult marriages to be dupes and be done with them. More often than not, though, we hope that they can turn things around, because the deeper fulfillment of both partners will be better served if they can.
–Although I’ll leave it to Christians to elaborate, I suspect that nurturing is more in tune with Christian ideals of marriage than any of the three alternatives I’ve criticized: Rights are a concept of civil government; kids may be a blessing to a Christian, but so is chastity; and romance is superficial compared to love in the Christian sense, a love that (if I’m reading Corinthians right) goes far deeper than infatuation.
–Lastly, one blogger termed my post, “probably the most compelling argument I’ve read to date in favor of same-sex marriage.” I strenuously insist that I did not mean it that way.
I wanted only to change the terms of the debate so that we could discuss something that looked more like the values that real people bring to real marriages. I didn’t want to make a statement about same-sex unions at all, except to say that these are the standards by which they should be judged, since it appears clear to me that this is exactly how we already judge heterosexual unions.
Note that when we think of traditional marriages, neither sterile social contracts nor prolific baby-dropping really gets to the heart of the matter, and we all know that passion fades over time. The hope that we have for heterosexual unions is that they persevere and that they are in the long-term best interests of both marriage partners no matter what — whether the passion cools or stays hot, whether you meet material success or failure, whether the children are many, or few, or none.
The best I could, I tried to describe what most people think a marriage should be, but I don’t think I ever addressed the question of whether same-sex couples actually could have the kind of nurturing bond that I described. It’s an open question, one I’ve left for the reader to answer. What I’d like more than anything else is to hear opponents of same-sex marriage stop saying, “Two men can’t make babies,” and to hear them say instead, “Two men can’t (or won’t) create an all-encompassing nurturing relationship.”
This brings me to Josh Claybourn’s post, which homes in on a problem that I acknowledged in my essay but didn’t take very far: It may well prove that men are inherently more suited to nurturing women, and women, men. If this is the case, same-sex unions will tend to fall short of the ideal. (With a deft touch that today’s conservatives often lack, Josh disavows the public policy implications that his thinking might have. A lesser writer would have declared them self-evident.)
To make his point, Josh invokes evolutionary psychology, which has theorized that men and women have evolved different reproductive strategies for passing on their genes: Where men naturally try to breed with as many partners as possible, women naturally try to settle down with one partner who will help her offspring survive to adulthood. Marriage, then, is a happy compromise between the two. It tames the wild, uninhibited male, while repaying him with the promise that the children he’s raising are really his own. Women have to live in close proximity to men who might cheat on them, but at the very least they can expect them to provide for the kids.
But a union of two men isn’t a compromise at all. Both partners pull in the direction of promiscuity, and the result is… well… orgies. Josh writes,
This is no slam or knock on homosexuals, but rather a statement of fact about men of all orientations. As it has grown easier for men to be openly homosexual, the promiscuity of the bathhouse and orgy has become more the norm as well.
I disagree that bathhouses and orgies have become more prevalent as homosexuals have increasingly come out of the closet. On the contrary, bathhouses were most common in the earliest days of the gay rights movement, when gays had most deeply absorbed the common prejudice that they were unfit for anything else. Today, however, bathhouses are far fewer and much less central to gay social life, a point Andrew Sullivan noted in his recent essay on the End of Gay Culture. AIDS no doubt played a part, but I don’t think it’s wishful thinking to find that gay culture has improved of its own initiative, developing a more healthy outlook on sex as a constructive response to the crisis. I mean, consider the alternatives: We could always have faced the crisis by wallowing in nihilism and having even more orgies than before. Instead, we built a community.
All of this aside, however, Josh’s main point remains: Male-male unions may tend to fail where male-female unions succeed. Dress them up however you like, men remain wild, promiscuous creatures underneath, and therefore they may fall short of the marriage ideal.
I admit I’ve never quite understood this argument, as it seems that genetic arithmetic would guarantee that men, just like women, would have a compelling interest in making sure that their children are reared in good households.
Can it ever be a “good” reproductive strategy, for humans who are all born helpless, to have males impregnating females whenever they have a few seconds to spare? This strategy makes no sense whatsoever, as it would leave the progeny of both males and females alike in desperate straits during the most vulnerable time of their lives.
And, with all due respect to Josh, this view of masculinity begins to sound a bit like a confession of the very worst sort… in the service of nothing in particular.
I don’t mean to sound like Maureen Dowd here, but… How gratifying this must be to the ego of all those who worry about, say, the death of the y chromosome, or the, um, pussification of the western male. “We need women to domesticate us,” this argument seems to say. “Otherwise we’d be full-fledged monsters.”
What ever would these men do if they had to domesticate themselves?
A more nuanced approach to the same argument might run like this: Jason, you claim that nurturing, and not sex, is the heart of marriage. Why don’t you at least consider, then, that the ideal nurturing partner for you might turn out to be female? Why does it oh-so-conveniently happen to be a gay guy with whom you like to have sex?
It’s a tough question, but fortunately, there are many answers to it. A perfectly good one might be, “Well, I need a lot of sexual nurturing.” Or, less contentiously, “I find that the best overall caregiver is someone with whom I have a lot of life experiences in common. Few can compete with other gay men, who also bring sex as an added benefit.” Another, and the one I prefer by far, is that sexual intimacy helps encourage other types of intimacy: I find it easier, for example, to talk about my bodily health with Scott than with anyone else, my doctor included. Having someone like this is important, and if sex helps bring it about, then so much the better.
Soon afterward, Paul Musgrave responded to Josh here, pointing out that our genes are not everything, and that what we do with them is really what counts:
It is not just our genes, but their expression, and hence their environment, which matter. “Environment” in this sense is not limited to climate or geography, but the social context that partly determines our actions every day. (As a brief example: The formal establishment of harems is nowadays frowned upon, which has led to the extinguishing of a once not-uncommon sexual “identity,” that of the eunuch, as well as providing more grist for the celebrity tabs.) What is expected of men and women in the expression of their sexual drives changes from age to age; Charlotte Simmons, for instance, couldn’t have lived her life twenty years ago, and certainly not two hundred. To speak of a “natural” reproductive impulse is to tread on dangerous ground, because reverse-engineering drives from only part of the available experience is likely to lead to error.
Regulars at Positive Liberty should be familiar with this argument from our discussions of Daniel Dennett, among many others. Paul continues,
But equally interesting are the variations in sexual urges among members of each sex (as opposed to the variations between sexes). There must somewhere be a cousin of the Kinsey scale ranking how over- or undersexed people are… the existence of a distribution in itself undermines the larger part of Josh’s argument, which is that the inherently greater sex drive among males works against the nurturing institution of marriage. If, however, it is not the sex drive of “males” or “females” in general, but that of individual males and females, which matters — and it is — than variations between sexes are less relevant than the drives of individuals.
This is a fundamental argument against prejudice simply restated. One’s actions cannot be judged because he is a member of a group which displays certain proclivities on average, at least if any principle of individual rights is to be respected. Marriage, as a nurturing institution, will succeed better for those partners who are more interested in acting out their nurturing selves than their natural instincts.
Very true. Whether or not same-sex unions merit government recognition (and so far, we’re nowhere near the question), it’s important not to make these kinds of easy categorical judgments.
I think the most challenging response I’ve gotten so far comes from Mark Olson, who writes,
Mr Kuznicki has done a fine job of describing marriage from, what I would term, an inward perspective. Looking outwards, as it were, marriage serves to enlarge and unite two families across generations. It links families (clans?) of parents, grand-parents, children, cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers, and grand-children in a web of responsibility, companionship, affection, and love. Both views of marriage are necessary.
And I agree, actually. I could try to sweep all this under the rug and say that it’s just another part of personal nurturing, but that would really be overworking the concept. Marriages do aim at creating new family networks, and this aspect of the institution should not be overlooked.
In reading Mr. Olson’s post, I couldn’t help but think of John Boswell’s The Marriage of Likeness
Whether or not the adelphopoeisis — the ceremony of brother-making — represents a “real” marriage, a diplomatic alliance, or some third thing unknown to us, it seems quite clear to me that these unions worked in precisely the same territory that Mr. Olson describes. The ceremony of brother-making aimed to unite families with an enduring bond that found its focus in the relationship between two individuals. The men in the ceremony were expected, indeed directly instructed, to love one another, and the ritual that joined them was in many ways quite parallel to the marriage rites then being used. Critics of Boswell have often emphasized that this love is never supposed or assumed to be sexual; supporters (and Boswell himself) have countered that sexual attraction in all its forms was frowned upon then, even within the context of heterosexual marriages, and that, if uniting families was the essence of marriage at the time, then these rites begin to look a lot like marriages after all.
The past, as they say, is a foreign country. Probably the most modest conclusion that can be drawn from Boswell’s work is that a lifelong union of two men was once considered a perfectly legitimate vehicle for bringing their families into an enduring alliance, and that these unions were formally blessed by the Church as an expression of love. In today’s contentious debates over same-sex marriage, even that’s saying quite a lot.
Filed in The Belfry, The Biosphere, The Boudoir, The Bureau
26 Responses to “A Follow-Up on Nurturing: Unruly Males and Adelphopoeisis”
Thank you for another wonderful post. You said:
While expanded family networks are certainly a nice perk, I hardly think they should be required to lend legitimacy to a marriage. I admire your respect for Mr. Olson, whose post I personaly found infuriating. But I am surprised that you feel it necessary to appeal to the past to find an exception to his view. Mr. Olson closes by invoking the tired “baby-talk” argument (which ought to have been soundly quashed the first time someone pointed out that the same reasoning would rule out marriage for post-menopausal women). Olson also seems to assume that SSM cannot logically result in the same kind of supportive familial networks that characterize heterosexual unions. This claim is patently untrue, and stated with no evidence. Same-sex unions can and often do result in just such expanded networks, as you can attest. The sickness is in prevailing prejudicial attitudes, not with the budding institution of same-sex marriage. It would be nice to hear an argument from Mr. Olson explaining why it necessarily follows that SSMs would not result in expanded familial networks. Preferably an argument in which he does not comit a naturalistic fallacy.
‘Marriage is nurturing’ model and evolution
So, other than the fact that I’m in a same-sex relationship with…
The “Men may be inherently more suited to nurturing women” argument fails. On the other hand, men are CERTAINLY more suited to beating the crap out of on average smaller weaker women who may also have the vulnerability of protecting children. I know that gay male domestic violence does occur occasionally, but frankly, I’d expect most men to think twice about thrashing someone their own size.
Jason, I’ve enjoyed both of your posts. I don’t have any grand theory of marriage of my own to offer, but I do have some questions/criticisms for both you and the people who responded to you.
First off, to Josh Claybourn’s claim that men are promiscuous and women monogamous: that is not what the scientists say. Even the evolutionary psychologists who attract the most criticism for their emphasis on sex differences do not go nearly that far. David Buss has been one of the leading figures of Evolutionary Psychology in advancing these theories, but this (pdf) is what he has to say about the theory that he and Schmitt proposed in 1993, and the response it received:
In other words, Claybourn is presenting a view that even the most committed Evolutionary Psychologists dismiss as a straw man that gets put forth by cavalier critics of Evolutionary Psychology. Buss goes on to say that he has since improved his theory by putting more emphasis on gene quality, individual differences within sex, and the commonalities between men’s and women’s mating strategies, which only further undermines Claybourn’s generalization. (For the record, I’m only quoting Buss to show that Claybourn has the science wrong - I’m not taking sides on the debate within psychology, or suggesting that the accusations that Buss makes within that scientific debate apply to anyone involved in our discussion.)
Now, on to your theory of marriage as nurturing. I like the idea - it reminds me of nothing so much as Aristotle’s definition of a character friendship (a.k.a. “virtue friendship”, “complete friendship”, “perfect friendship”, etc.). But one of my main concerns is that it seems too idealistic. How often does a marriage come close to that level of intimacy? And is it reasonable to expect all of that from a single relationship?
A second concern is why this has to be an exclusive relationship. I am not primarily concerned with polygamy, but rather with the way that so many different kinds of nurturing functions get combined into a single exclusive relationship. You say that marriage is “a reciprocal agreement with another individual … to look after the total well-being of that person and of any children that might come into your mutual care” with well-being including “not just the sexual, but also the spiritual, social, economic, psychological, and physiological.” Why not satisfy different aspects of your well-being in different relationships, and some aspects in multiple relationships?
Indeed, we already do have different kinds of relationships for different aspects of well-being. You mention doctors, and there may also be pastors, friends, business partners, and therapists, among others. Why doesn’t it seem okay to add “prostitutes” to that list? A third concern of mine is that, even after suggesting the importance of sexual intimacy for establishing greater intimacy in general, I don’t think you have made it clear why sexual exclusiveness seems so much more important than exclusiveness with respect to other aspects of the relationship. Adultery may not be a deal-breaker on its own, but it seems to be a bigger deal that most other kinds of unfaithfulness, and it is one area where it even seems improper to seek outside relationships with your partner’s consent.
Kris,
I’m sorry you found my essay “infuriating”. Like Mr Kuznicki I was trying less to address the SSM debate than to respond in an affirmative way to Mr Kuznicki’s laudable attempt to reframe the debate.
Insofar as my final comment which you ascribe as a “baby-talk” argument, this does not actually touch directly on the SSM/HSM debate, but speaks more to the idea that the state might treat childless marriages and those with children differently, that goes for both marriages of any type. Inasmuch as SSM get children either by technological solutions or adoption and the scope of my essay was not willing to address questions associated with either of these issues is why I took the shortcut of assuming that SSM marriages are typically not in this category.
Finally, the thrust of that comment was not directly associated with “baby talking” but to the tradition of larger family building for which a significant signpost in a new marriage is the presence of children. I’d welcome other suggestions for how the state might identify a commitment to the “outward” part of marriage as opposed to just the “inward”, which I indentified as a thing which the state might find to be good.
Mr. Olson, I apologize if I misrepresented your views. Permit me to reconstruct my thinking. In the first part of your essay you strove to present the outward perspective (component) of a relationship - comprising an expanded interfamilial network - as a necessary component of marriage of any sort. I have two objections to this view: (1) Expanded networks do tend to be associated with many marriages, and I agree that such support networks are usually beneficial for many reasons, but they are hardly a sine qua non for marriage. Counterexamples will suffice to illustrate the non-necessity of the outward component, as when young couples elope against the wishes of their families (remember Romeo and Juliet?), or when individuals with no living relatives decide to marry, or when individuals incapable of or uninterested in bearing children decide to marry. Yours is a premise I believe to be not only false, but irrelevant for purposes of state legitimization of marriage even if it were true. (2) I do not believe it to be true that interfamilial networks for same-sex couples are necessarily smaller than or inferior to those for opposite-sex couples.
What infuriated me (since downgraded to a level-2 frustration, but it took two glasses of wine) was your statement that there was something logical about the assertion that SSM emphasizes the inward component of marriage at the expense of the outward component. The implication is that SSM is somehow inferior to OSM, guided by predominantly selfish motivations, and therefore less deserving of social approbation and, by extension, government support.
So when you say, “…a traditional marriage and family structure might be worthy of different considerations than a nurturing covenantal bond between two adults,” you’ll have to forgive me for understanding you to mean that because the traditional family structure involves children, hetero marriages deserve a little extra recognition from the state. I reject that view.
I view the primary issue as pertaining to the rights of individuals, here the affianced. It is the couple that intends to get married and to whom the relevant rights would apply, not their entire extended families. This is why I think outward considerations should receive little weight when it comes to governmental legitimization of wedlock.
Either all couples receive the same rights, or government should stay out.
I have to say I took a lot less umbrage at the post we’re discussing. Perhaps this is because I’ve been so completely taken in by Scott’s family. We visit for all the holidays, and I’m welcomed as a family member by marriage, just exactly as the other spouses have been. We buy gifts for the nieces and nephews, and probably in a few years we’ll have one or two of our own. I looked at Mr. Olson’s post as an expansion upon, not a contradiction of, my original thoughts. I admit I’m not sure how best to articulate the whole thing in a coherent, unified definition — It might even be that, as with many concepts, there isn’t one (”Family” is another that springs to mind as obvious when you see it but very hard to define. Just ask an anthropologist).
I could live with all that, as long as everything within the larger, messier definition was still good stuff. And I think it is.
I too somewhat agree with Mr. Olsen that marriage has an ‘outward’ component of expanding familial bonds.
In fact, that was one of the very reasons that my partner and I had a commitment ceremony some 8 years ago. It is a bit of a long story, but I won’t let that stop me. We had not considered having a ceremony or wedding or considered marriage if it was available to us. Yet one Thanksgiving as I and my partner were at our annual family gathering, I asked my brother if his kids could call my partner ‘uncle’. His and his wife’s response made us realize that marriage was indeed important in bringing him into my family and I into his. They wanted to know what he ‘meant to me’. I told them we had decided to spend our lives together.. we were married in every sense but legal. From that point on Guy gained another family… he was included. We did have a commitment ceremony based on that experience, and there was a palatable change in each of our standings in each others family. Our familial bonds were indeed extended and deepened to the benefit of both of us as individuals, as a couple and to our respective families.
The adoption of our daughter has extended and deepened those bonds in equally profound ways.
I believe Jason’s point is strengthened by Mr. Olsen’s contention if anything.
I am not sure if Mr. Olsen’s holds to the view that SS couples have lesser or weaker ‘outward’ familial bonds that come with marriage, but I would submit my family as a direct contradiction to that view and isasmuch as SS unions are weaker in those outward bonds (if such was true in the greater gay population) I would submit that it because SS couples are in a catch 22: Require that ‘outward’ component, but not allow them marriage which builds and strengthens those outward bonds because those relationships don’t have strong outward bonds and outlook. Quite a quandry!
One other thing I’ve been thinking about today concerns Blar’s comments above, where he writes,
I am emphatically an Aristotelian in my personal philosophy, so it’s not surprising that my conception of marriage comes out looking a lot like his idea of the best sort of friendship.
I concede that I’ve painted an idealistic portrait… Yet I don’t really see this as a flaw. Again like Aristotle, I have tried to describe as carefully as I could what those around me seem to mean by goodness (here, in the context of marriage). It’s a lot like what Aristotle also did in looking at various ideas of goodness in the Nichomachean Ethics, and philosophers have looked at his many qualifiers and debated whether he thought he was actually describing The Good — or merely the prevalent ideas of The Good. To avoid this confusion, I’ll just say that I hope that I’m doing both.
Do we ever reach this ideal of total nurturing? I doubt that anyone ever has, but that’s not the point of an ideal. Ideals are to help us no matter where we are on the continuum of virtue.
On questions of exclusivity, I would suggest that the nurturing ideal I’m talking about requires a sort of intuitive understanding of one’s partner; this understanding is not well served by compartmentalizing the relationships one has and making do with the various special functions (pastor, doctor, prostitute…). Nor is it well served, I think, by attempting to have many equally intimate relationships at once, with each striving to be THE most important relationship in the life of the individual. Think about it for a moment — reciprocality becomes impossible if each person is striving to be the most important to one other person.
This isn’t enough to dismiss polyamory or polygamy in itself, but I think it’s a start.
I like the seeming synthesis between Jason’s point on nurturing, the dignity of the individuals involved, and Mark’s point of “outward considerations”, which touches on the reality of reproduction. As a Christian Jason’s appeals to this dignity in nuturing run close to Christian ideas surrounding marriage, so I’m amenable to them. However this is only half the story for me when it comes to marriage.
A big reason for marriage is reproduction, keeping a society alive and growing. Marriage acts as a stabilizing institution for the only natural way possible to reproduce, a man and woman having a child. The fact that the infertile get married is incidental to this, being that the ability to immediately diagnose infertility is a quite recent advancement. But we have these advancements now, scientifically and socially, and there are many children who can benefit from adoption. So lets make adjustments for them, civil unions and such, and leave the definition of marriage to what it always has been, a husband and wife as precusor to a family.
Kris commented that because “the traditional family structure involves children, hetero marriages deserve a little extra recognition from the state. I reject that view.”
Don’t you think the state has a vested interest in ensuring continuing generations (i.e. its own survival)? If so then yes the traditional family structure deserves “a little extra recognition” from the state — its pretty much responsible for keepin’ us all around. The vast majority of us are heterosexual afterall. And lets not play wordgames, by keeping marriage as it is has always been defined no one is receiving extra recognition. It is the same level as always. Now, those in certain alternative lifestyles do deserve recognition for the families they create, but in an alternative institution with similar legal advantages. (I think Jason had a reply to this line of reasoning before, but I just can’t seem to find it…)
[...] (Update: Mr Kuznicki has a follow-up post here.) [...]
Scof said:
Not sure if this was directed at me, but I’ll bite. First, I don’t think the state is in any danger of disappearing due to low birth rates. I would be hesitant to reward trends that lead toward overpopulation.
And I disagree that traditional family structure deserves extra recognition. Yes, most folk are heterosexual, but it costs society nothing (and would, I argue, benefit it greatly) were equal rights extended to all couples who wish to enjoy the advantages of wedlock. By keeping marriage as it has always been defined, how can you say that no one is receiving extra recognition when there are blatantly discriminatory laws in place dictating who can and cannot get married?
And why must there be an “alternative institution with similar legal advantages”? Why not simply marriage? No one has managed to articulate to me a logical reason for holding this point of view.
Others have articulated these points much better than I could. I hope they will chime in here.
Sure it was directed at you Kris. I hope Jason don’t mind that we get a bit off topic, he did state his post isn’t directed at an advocacy for SSM.
Unlike Europe, we don’t have to worry about low birth rates, thanks largely to religious, conservative red state voters. Still, according to Policy Review, “Not a single industrialized nation today has a fertility rate of 2.1, and most are well below replacement level.” The problems of the “birth dearth” hold significant consequences for societies, which Kurtz illuminates. Another recent Policy Review article on this is also quite informative.
If the laws for marriage are blatantly discriminatory than so is nature, because only a man and a woman can have a child. Marriage as we have known it for centuries was developed in conjunction with this plainly obvious fact of reproduction. Nature itself bestowed this “extra recognition” on heterosexuals, but it is not extra recognition at all, rather it is simply the way life is in order for reproduction to take place. Marriage is the institution for the only way to reproduce.
That being said we have had some advances, scientifically (in vitro, test tube) and socially (increasing tolerance/acceptance of homosexuals). But these scientific advances still require a man and woman, and homosexuals can’t procreate (well they can, but you get what I mean). Thus there is fundamentally a sole way of reproducing, and it is recognized by Marriage and is part of its identity. That is a reason why marriage should not be changed, because the facts of natural human reproduction have not changed and because the vast majority of us live by these facts.
I still haven’t seen a great reason for why the huge majority of heterosexuals should change their defintion of Marriage. It is integral to the traditions of & provides much meaning for the families involved, it reflects a truth about our (heterosexual) nature, and it is largely responsible (and this cannot be easily dismissed) for doing the work of replenishing our societies. Its working for us, divorce laws notwithstanding.
There needs to be recognition of our common dignity, which Jason touches on with his nurturing thesis, but also a recognition that the fundamental act of procreation is a very clear and simple difference between us. This is what an alternative institution does, it recognizes both the dignity of committed homosexual relationships and the fundamental difference between the vastly dominant order (heterosexuals) and the 5% who are not (homosexuals).
But we have these advancements now, scientifically and socially, and there are many children who can benefit from adoption. So lets make adjustments for them, civil unions and such, and leave the definition of marriage to what it always has been, a husband and wife as precusor to a family.
First of all, the concept of adoption is not new (I’m not sure if you are suggesting that). The earliest examples I can think of off the top of my head are Moses and Oedipus, but obviously the practice predates those individuals. Heterosexual marriages that cannot yield children, or that choose not to, do not in any way threaten the ability of a society to perpetuate itself. No “adjustments” need to be made for these situations. If an infertile/impotent couple chooses to adopt, their family is not legally recategorized so as to separate it from nuclear families with closer genetic relationships. I’m still failing to see a compelling argument for separating homosexual marriages from these.
A big problem with the idea of leaving the definition of marriage “to what it always has been” is that the definition of marriage has not been consistent through human history, not by a longshot. Jason has discussed this problem much more fully than I will be able to, but the idea that marriage should have anything to do with love or sexuality has not always been a popular idea. Conservatives like to say that changing the definition of marriage could have dire consequences, but the definition has changed innumerable times throughout human history, and there still seem to be a lot of us around.
(*not trying to hog this area*)
Right, I’m not suggesting adoption is new, I’m saying that adoption plus these advances are reasons for the creation of civil unions for homosexuals and others. The compelling argument for separating homosexual unions is summarized neatly by my comments which immediately precede yours.
As far as the definition of marriage, well I admit I’m pleading “obvious” here. It seems plain to me that pretty much everyone knows marriage involves a man and a woman. I mean seriously, very few think otherwise. Turn on a tv show, read a book (new or old), listen to a song (new or old) — marriage is a man and a woman. Let’s not try to outthink this, it is quite plain to see.
Scof, perhaps we will just have to agree to disagree. The reasonableness of your position may seem obvious to you, but it seems not at all obvious to me. And obviousness is a very poor basis for an argument (especially in the rules governing something as malleable as social custom). You are committing a textbook example of the naturalistic fallacy (or Hume’s is-ought problem).
At the very best, state-recognized nontraditional unions would enable millions of loving couples to enjoy equal rights and protections as the majority, provide loving homes for adopted children, and create new and larger interfamilial networks. At the very worst, expanding the definition of marriage will do absolutely no harm to traditional unions. I mean really, would you expect to see increases in child abuse, divorce rates, or domestic crime because a minority of citizens would be able to legitimize their unions in the eyes of society?
Marriage is not necessary for reproduction, and reproduction is not necessary for marriage. If the intention to procreate were a necessary precondition for marriage, then your same reasoning (citing the facts of reproduction) would limit the marital rights of opposite-sex couples past the age of reproduction, or couples who had no intention of having children.
Would you feel that your marriage to be cheapened if more individuals were welcomed into the institution of marriage? If so, why? Not to get too personal here, but would you love your spouse any less?
“Turn on a tv show, read a book (new or old), listen to a song (new or old) — marriage is a man and a woman. Let’s not try to outthink this, it is quite plain to see.”
This isn’t sound thinking at all. There was a time, not very long ago, when all civilized westerners would have declared something like the following: Read a book, listen to a song, and you will find that government means monarchy. There were a few ancient exceptions, but these were held to be both impractical and un-Christian.
Discoveries are always possible; the most that this sort of thinking proves is that the innovator bears the burden of proof. I freely grant that we do, provided that we may prove ourselves either through the nurturing model or through some other model where we at least stand some analytical chance. It’s a drooling tautology to declare that marriage is a man and a woman… because, well, marriage is a man and a woman. What we are asking of the traditional model is that it come up with meaningful justifications, not with empty self-affirmations.
As to the special place that should be reserved for heterosexual unions, one way to preserve this, I think, would be to term the governmental, contractual element of marriage a “civil union” whether it happened between same- or different-sexed partners. Churches, families, and communities could then declare just which bonds they believed were “marriage” and which ones according to them were not. As I’ve observed in the past, we already do this with many mainstream denominations: Orthodox Jews do not recognize interfaith marriages; Catholics recognize neither divorce nor remarriage after a divorce. These sorts of norms, and competitions among them, are both healthy and good. Government has no place contradicting them.
I am not convinced that the distinctiveness of heterosexual unions is so great that we must call them something different, but if we must, this would be one way to do it that would at least preserve freedom of conscience on the issue.
‘Now, those in certain alternative lifestyles do deserve recognition for the families they create, but in an alternative institution with similar legal advantages’
I am still not sure how bringing in same-sex couples who adopt into the marriage definition diminishes either the ‘definition’ of marriage or your stated governmental state interest in continuing the next generation.
Lets just look at adoption for now. Nearly 500k children are up for adoption today in the state governmental systems, and thousands more placed every year through private adoption. Additionally, there are millions of abortions every year. In some of the larger, more populous states (such as CA, MA and NY) it has reached the point that 1/4 to 1/2 of all public adoptions are to GLBT couples. Right now only about 20% of male ss couples have children, and 33-45% of female ss couples have children. If marriage were allowed, coupling encouraged and having children even more acceptable for GLBT citizens, that number would only rise. This would invariably increase the number of parents willing at adopt. Wouldn’t this fit into the government’s desire to secure the next generation (both in numbers and quality?)
Of course there are those GLBT couples that elect to have children through donor insemination or surrogacy, thus also securing the population in numbers and quality.
Lets face it, GLBT individuals won’t be running off to heterosexual marriages and producing children unless we turn back the clock 50 years (which I will fight tooth and nail), encouraging GLBT marriage, stability, adoption and family life will only assist in government’s role in securing the next generation (and in fact great acceptance and less legal restrictions has already!)… and I yet have seen a good argument how it will diminish the desire among heterosexuals to procreate and get married.
“drooling tautology” I liked that…certainly we agree to disagree, doesn’t mean this is fruitless of course. No worries either about getting personal, this topic is the nexus of individual and societal concerns. Besides I’ve spouted off here enough to deserve whatever I get.
No, Kris, I wouldn’t love my spouse less if gays were allowed to marry. Would you love your spouse less if you were committed to each other under a civil union?
I don’t think my allusion to “tvs, songs and books” is off the mark. Compare the consistency of marriage to the consistency of a monarchy. One has lasted pretty much the same — groom & bride always — while the other is obviously discredited, and quite hard to compare with something as personal as marriage. Further the idea that monarchy is the natural order is a belief, whereas it is reality, a fact, that the singularly dominant order which we could not exist without is heterosexuality, and marriage developed as an institution in reflection of this reality. That we would not and will not be here without it is, to answer Jason, the great distinctiveness of heterosexual unions. It is indeed paramount in terms of distinctions.
Given that this is the plain orientation of at least 9 out of 10 us, and that it is responsible for keeping societies going, it deserves an institution which recognizes this order. That is Marriage and that is why it cannot have its definition changed — it is a definition itself about that order of life and who we are. As funny as it sounds: We’re heterosexuals, we keep this thing going and marriage is the institution which expresses, and thus defines, this order.
What is outside the order society is learning to accept and tolerate. But it is still outside of the order. Therefore it merits its own institutions and customs which are specific to that alternative lifestyle. This still gives homosexuals plenty of ground to stand, it reflects their inherent dignity and (would) provide local protections.
“Marriage is not necessary for reproduction,”
Yes but society is obviously for the worse as the frequency of this behavior rises. Hence the need for marriage for those who can reproduce.
“reproduction is not necessary for marriage.”
The reason the barren are “allowed” to marry is because it is still in the natural order — a man & a woman together.
But by now this idea of the “natural order” I’m sure is ticking a few people off. But it is what it is, you can imagine me blustering here at my keyboard. I just don’t know how more obvious it can get that for humans the natural order is for a man and woman to procreate. It is out of this plain fact of life that marriage developed. The institution of marriage is an expression of the natural order, that is why its definition cannot change, because the natural order does not change. From Adam & Eve to Abelard & Heloise to Romeo & Juliet to Bennifer, and all the billions of husbands & wives living together inbetween, it hasn’t changed.
(I’m done, much thanks to the hosts here. I must give a quick explanation if this commenting annoys them. I only do it because I like to see the discussion kept in one place, makes it easier to track what is going on and keep things flowing. If you couldn’t tell, I enjoy these discussions, thank y’all for indulging me.)
Sorry that I’m basically just kibbutzing here, and you don’t have to reply if you don’t want, but this bit caught my eye:
I presume that when asked to a heterosexual like Kris, the intended answer here is, “Oh gosh, I hadn’t thought about it, but I probably would love her less.”
It amazes me how much some of us seem to think the love in our relationships depends on the civil government. As someone who has been in a seven-year relationship conducted almost exclusively in jurisdictions that explicitly forbid any state recognition, I find this question incredible. (The few weeks we’ve spent in Canada, by the way, were some of the happiest times of our lives, but not because of the state recognition. It was honeymooning and vacation time. But at least we had the security of knowing that if one of us was incapacitated, the most competent caregiver would be on hand to make legally binding decisions.)
No, really, let me try to understand again… Do you mean to tell me that if heterosexual unions were denied the government stamp of approval, that you would love your partner less? I sure hope your partner isn’t reading this.
And then there’s this passage:
I don’t find it at all convincing. Yes, monarchy is discredited — now. In the seventeenth century, however, representative or republican governments were the discredited ones. Monarchy had lasted through all of time, except, as I said, for some ancient and un-Christian societies.
The great defenders of monarchy — like Sir Robert Filmer — even cited many of the very same passages from Genesis that opponents of same-sex marriage now use today: That wife should be obedient to man was taken to mean that the man was the king of the household. That God created Adam and Eve was taken as a model of civil society. “Be fruitful and multiply” was understood as a command for kings to exercise dominion over their subjects, while encouraging those subjects to prosper. Without monarchy, the body of the state would lose its head, and all would be lost. We find this unconvincing today, just as I, personally, find unconvincing the claim that society’s continuance depends on marriage remaining exclusively heteroseuxal.
And finally,
This is an equivocation. Do you mean that we would cease to exist without state-sanctioned, exclusively heterosexual marriage? Or do you mean that we would cease to exist without heterosexual copulation? The latter is obvious, and believe me, I’ve got nothing against heterosexual copulation. The former proposition, however, requires a good bit more proof, particularly since state licensing of marriage is a relatively new thing in itself, dating only to the eighteenth century. I think marriage as an institution is very important, make no mistake about it. I just don’t think that its exclusively heterosexual character is what makes it so good.
Well, I asked the question with a sloppy assumption. What I meant was would a homosexual couple love their partner any less in a civil union? I was attempting to juxtapose the idea:
that heterosexuals would not love their partners less if gays were included in marriage
with this idea:
that homosexuals would not love their partners less if they were united in a civil union.
As far as monarchy, it is a belief. Heterosexuality is not a belief, it is the natural order for humans. Not that homosexuality is some abomination, just again stating the obvious state of affairs for 90+% of us.
My claim is not “that society’s continuance depends on marriage remaining exclusively heteroseuxal.” It is that the singularly dominant natural order of heterosexuality is expressed in the institution of marriage. Marriage developed out of this natural order and in many ways defines it. It should not change because the natural order does not change.
Homosexuality is of a different order, but still we must take into account the inherent dignity of people and their desire for long-term, loving relationships. So we create a new institution to accomodate this. What are you pointing out with the nurturing, it seems to me, is just a characteristic common to making any long-term relationship to work. A homosexual union will encounter some of the similar difficulties that a heterosexual marriage will, no doubt. I mean what makes a marriage work — nurturing and dedication and arguing and make up sex after arguing — will help make a civil union work.
Howerver we should take into account the “outward considerations” of marriage, which is family, which is reproduction, which requires heterosexuality (naturally speaking). This is the natural order. Marriage expresses & defines this natural order. This natural order hasn’t changed, so why should Marriage? Civil unions will still allow a place for homosexual couples to raise a family, but their very ability to do so is dependent on the natural order, that is why it merits separate recognition.
Just jumping into this thread late, but I wanted to add a couple of observations. First, in response to Scof, I believe you are making a logical error which is all too common in these debates, and that is the sloppy conflation of childbearing vs childrearing. While no one argues that homosexuals per se are not equipped to produce a child, the truly germane question is whether a homosexual couple is equipped to raise a child. That is a debatable question, but I think the evidence is growing that a stable homosexual couple can do a fine job of childrearing. Given the “supply and demand” of children available for adoption (let alone the increasingly available medical technology allowing homosexuals to procreate), and given that it is childrearing (the act of two decades), not childbearing (the act of one night and nine months), which is the crucial need for social continuity, I think your arguments against distinguishing marriage as an exclusively heterosexual province fall apart. (See my more full presentation of this argument here.)
For Jason: thank you for this wonderful Aristotelian tack you have taken. You may appreciate this analytic philosophical exposition on “what marriage is”. (The philosophical analysis of “what marriage is” compliments your analysis of “what marriage is good for”.) And you may also appreciate this little essay on how marriage is good for building character (in a completely non-heterosexually-exclusive way).
I think your “marriage as nurturing” analysis, while not directly addressing the state recognition of marriage issue, certainly points to some useful arguments in that arena, including that those who are nurtured by marriage tend to be healthier, tend to be more economically secure, and create unambiguous identification of our personal “first responders” (the ones who get the phone call and drop everything to come to your aid when you’ve been in an accident, for example). All of these are outward manifestations of the “nurturing relationship” you’ve described that have clear measurable social and economic benefits for society.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks for taking the time out to address my arguments Tom, and let me second the work Jason has put in.
I completely agree homosexual couples can be fit for child rearing, that is why I support the civil union option. I understand many people who are against SSM also do not approve of civil unions, I am not one of them. I seek a solution that satisfies the legal protections and opportunities inherent to the dignity of the individuals involved.
I read your full essay on the matter and within that context wish to address specifically the criticisms you wrote here. In your essay you “acknowledge that child-rearing is a purpose” of marriage. You also note that procreation and child-rearing “are distinct and separable” acts. So it seems to me that if child-bearing is a part of marriage and is also a distinct act, well then that makes it part of the definition of what marriage is, right? Homosexual couples cannot bear children, thus marriage does not apply.
*doh! it’s real late, and I mis-typed, so egg on my face :0 My logic meant to go like this:
Child-rearing and child-bearing require each other for either to happen. So if child-rearing is a purpose of marriage, than so is child-bearing. Yet the two “are distinct and separable” acts. So if child-bearing is a purpose of marriage, and is a distinct act, then it forms part of the definition of marriage. Since homosexual couples can’t procreate…yada yada
Say someone suggests, “Let society acknowledge SSM as equivalent in every legal and social respect to traditional marriage,” I wonder if it is possible to reduce my (and others’) response to “why not?” and Scof’s to “why?” Would that be fair?
That way, Scof’s position may reduce to a semantic quibble. In other words, if same-sex couples in state-sanctioned civil unions could enjoy all the same legal rights and privileges as hetero couples, what is all the fuss about?
On the other hand, I would point out that if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks, why not call it a duck? Scof’s position reminds me of the old “separate but equal” arguments with respect to racial segegration earlier in this century, as well as similar nonsensical segregationist practices. What is all the fuss about, many said, if blacks and whites have separate restrooms? After all, both sets of restrooms have fully functional plumbing. The only difference is that one room has “black” stenciled on the door and the other “white.” What difference could it possibly make if white people get to ride in the front of the bus while black people are obliged to sit in the back? After all, both still get to work on time.
Is it unfair to compare Scof’s position on marriage to segregation?
Scof, this inquiry begins to have some interesting philosophical parallels with Timothy Sandefur’s excellent post on judicial epistemology, on judges “finding” the law (not “making” it), by taking legislated concepts and applying them to different fact patterns. Here philosophically, we are considering the concept of marriage and inquiring whether it can fit a same-sex fact pattern. I think where you go wrong analytically is in trying to insist that every actual instance of a marriage has all of the attributes of the “ideal” marriage. Even though attributes may be part of an “ideal” concept, and might even be true of most known / recognized instances, doesn’t mean they are essential attributes. Consider the concept of a “bear”. If we ask “what is a bear?” you will probably answer with a description of a large, four-legged mammal that lives in the woods, eats fish and berries, and comes in black, brown, and white etc. Now it would seem like “four-legged” is part of the definition of a bear, and no one would dispute that bears are four-legged animals. But is that an essential attribute of being a bear? Are we categorically denying the possibility of a bear being born with a leg missing? Would we call that a three-legged bear, or would we say “we can’t call this creature a bear because it doesn’t fit the classic definition, so we’ll have to call it something else”? Likewise, if a bright green bear came loping out of the woods, we could still recognize it as a bear, even though no green bears had ever been seen before?
In the same way, the concept of marriage is perfectly applicable to non-child-bearing couples of the same sex. It may be a marriage of a “different color” than you’ve ever seen before, but it’s still perfectly recognizable as a marriage. I posit that most people know a marriage when they see one, and that it’s actually quite a clear-cut concept: either you’re married or you’re not; you were married on a particular day, but not on the day before. The essential definition is this: marriage is the public mutual exchange of vows of lifelong loving commitment, and the living out of those vows. Those are the essential attributes: no vows, no marriage. Not lifelong, not marriage. Notice that children are not in this picture (neither the bearing nor the rearing thereof), nor is anything about the gender of the participants. The “child-bearing” and “opposite gender” attributes are just like the “four-legged” and “not green” attributes of a bear. They may be very common attributes of bears, and they may even be recited as part of the description of a bear (the concept), but they’re not essential when it comes down to it. Three-legged green bears are still bears. Likewise, a same-sex marriage is still a marriage.