On Marriage as a Permission Slip
Jason Kuznicki on Apr 20th 2007
I’ve taken some heat from longtime commenters Scof and AMW regarding my claim that much of what Americans see or value in state-run marriage is essentially a permission slip to have sex. I’d like to take a bit of time to develop that claim and maybe answer their objections.
First, AMW writes,
Since fornication is either a) legal or b) tacitly legal in every state, I don’t see how a marriage certificate is a de facto permission slip. People have sex before/outside of marriage hourly without any fear of prosecution.
They certainly can; the type of permission granted is not an immunity from prosecution. It’s about the perceived moral rectitude of the act: If you do it with the state scrip, then you are moral. If you do it without, then you’re immoral. We can’t prosecute you, but we can and should think less of you as a person. If you have gotten married through the state, however, we ought not to think less of you.
I know that many people feel differently. Yet among conservatives, state blessing — and not church blessing — is seemingly the key to what makes a sex act permissible. Without the government document, sex is wrong, but when the government puts its stamp of approval on a couple (of whatever religion, or of none), then their sexual intercourse is morally unproblematic.
The clearest example of this lies in the conservative opposition to same-sex marriage. Conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage consistently declare that they do not wish to affirm or approve of man-on-man sex. When you try to tell them that marriage is a contract of responsibilities and delegated rights, they typically ignore you and head right back to the man-on-man sex.
“Marriage is sacred,” they declare, and it bothers them not one bit that a state entity is pushing something sacred — on members of all faiths, and of none. The key thing here is the social approval to have sex, which, they argue, ought to be reserved for heterosexuals, owing to the special nature of heterosexual relations — all of which, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or atheist, should ideally be conducted only with a government marriage document.
Scof, meanwhile, finds the permission slip model too “ivory tower.” I’m not sure I know what this means, except that this charge has tended to follow me around ever since I earned a Ph.D. I’m not saying it isn’t a valid criticism, but if it is, I don’t get it.
I’m not talking about some vague theory here. I’m talking about how people actually regard the sex acts of others. Even among ostensibly liberated people, sex without marriage is often seen as shameful by default (unless, of course, I’m the one having the sex). Meanwhile, sex within marriage (as long as it’s consenting and non-abusive) is never seen as shameful.
What separates the two? A piece of paper, issued by the state, with the couple’s names on it. There are legal obligations to one’s sex partner, true, but these are not as a rule invoked as reason for the shame or the lack thereof. It’s the permission that matters.
Filed in The Boudoir, The Bureau
Sounds plausible. Those of a communitarian bent might think that sexual relations must be embedded in a broader social context — hence the need for a “permission slip” or blessing from the broader community (as represented by the state, in modern society).
It’s strange how widespread this implicit attitude remains, though, given that I’d expect most people these days to avow the liberal view that what people do in their bedrooms is no-one else’s business. Is this a tension in popular thought, or have I misdiagnosed it?
The state also had approved at times to who could get married, just not any heterosexual couple. If they were considered retarded, or two different races, it was opposed mainly because they would have sex. Not only was it thought immoral, but there were pseudo scientific reasons to justify this.
Richard –
I do think it’s a tension, and I think that many people hold conflicting views here, at least in the U.S.
Interesting stuff.
As a Christian, yes, I’m pretty closed-minded about this subject as it pertains to my own personal life. I played by the rules I chose to follow: I was deflowered on my honeymoon and my spouse is a woman.
However, I’d rather not have the state pushing my agenda on the unwilling. Christianity was always supposed to be about choosing to follow Christ by choice (and 2,000 years of the church not getting it doesn’t change it).
As a Libertarian, I see no reason why the government should issue its piece of paper to sanction marriage. I made the vows to my wife and I intend to see them through. The license was an afterthought.
I do think the marriage license is exactly what you say it is (a pastor friend of mine and I called marriage “legalized wild thing” back when we were single and Tone Loc was in). I don’t think I’ll be framing the document any time soon.