Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Protecting Marriage to Protect Children

Thank you for your post, Rona! I, too, thought it was beautiful. And thank you, Jen, too.

Ann

Vicki said:
From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be one set viewpoint on the subject of same-sex marriage. This seems to be a subject that has us (I'm a registered Libertarian) split pretty evenly.

Here is one Libertarian arguing against same sex marriage. Here is another one arguing for it.

Tara

Rona,

Marriage is an institution. Wikipedia defines an institution as:

Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior. The term, institution, is commonly applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a society, as well as to particular formal organizations of government and public service. As structures and mechanisms of social order among humans, institutions are one of the principal objects of study in the social sciences, including sociology, political science and economics. Institutions are a central concern for law, the formal regime for political rule-making and enforcement.

As an institution, marriage has what wikipedia calls "a social purpose which transcends individual lives and intentions". It is a mechanism of social order.

I know this sounds awfully cold and unfeeling. But cultural anthropologists study just such things. What are the values of a particular society? What are the rules? What are the institutions? How does the society govern or influence the behavior of its members? etc.

As wikipedia explains, the term institution is applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a society. Society uses institutions to promote social behavior deemed beneficial to the society as a whole. Our society (and, in fact, practially every society known to man) has determined that it is beneficial to the society as a whole to promote marriage as a permenant union between members of the opposite sex, for the purpose of forming a family unity and raising children.

What if you don't like that definition of marriage? Does the existance of childless couples, for example, prove that marriage has nothing to do with procreation? Well, go back and look at the part of the definition which says, "As structures and mechanisms of social order among humans, institutions are one of the principal objects of study in the social sciences, including sociology, political science and economics." It's not a matter of each person defining marriage as they will. As an social institution, marriage can be studied objectively, to determing what behaviors society is attempting to govern, what rules society is using to promote those behaviors, and what benefits society is gaining from the enforcement of said behaviors. You can even determine at what cost, such as at the cost of not allowing every single member of the society the ability to marry whomever they please. Which takes me back to the 4 restrictions to marriage in our society: you cannot marry (1) a minor, (2) a close relative, (3) a person who is already legal married, and (4) a person of the same sex.

So, what about divorce, single parents, and childless couples? Our society allows all three, but we do not promote them. We tell children, "One day, when you grow up and get married,...", "One day, when you are a daddy,...", "One day, when you have your own family..." We don't say, "When you grow up and get divorced..." Because what our society wants to promote is its members joining in permanent union with a member of the opposite sex, for the purpose of creating a family unit and raising children.

If our society changes the definition of marriage to include same-sex marriages, we will not be merely "accepting" same-sex unions, we will be promoting them. And institutions are very powerful forces for influencing behavior in a society.

Well, many societies already have changed their definition of marriage in this way - including the country I live in. I'm not sure what you're specifically getting at when you reference institutions influencing behaviour, Vicki, though one possible influence I can think of is to increase the incidence of marriage as opposed to what is still known in some circles as 'living in sin', which surely should be a good thing?


Wendy

Wendy,

Yes, I am aware that some countries have changed the definition of marriage to include same-sex marriage.

Specifically, I was referring to the fact that in those countries, the society no longer has an institution which promotes a specific behavior (unite with a member of the opposite sex in order to create a family unit and raise children). Yes, there is still marriage, and yes, women and men can still marry and procreate. But the society is not *specifically promoting* that behavior anymore. The behavior society is promoting is something along the lines of "Find someone you love to live with".

As far as "living in sin", it is not clear what the effect will be. Some preliminary reports indicate the incidence of co-habitation actually increases in those countries which have allowed same-sex marriage, although the numbers are not conclusive.

Of course, if you take that phrase in its literal sense, same-sex couples are living in God-defined (or "religion-defined", if that's the way you look at it) sin regardless of their marital status, but I'm assuming that's not what you meant.

Yes, and this is where we come back to divergent values and the issue on which you and I will never agree, because I find absolutely nothing wrong with your final sentence. Indeed, I find it welcoming, inclusive and treating all law-abiding members of society on equal terms, and that's the kind of society I like to live in.

I'm not saying that I believe you're wrong to think otherwise; I'm just reiterating my earlier point that we're never going to convince each other here.


Wendy

Vicki, I think I see what your argument is, but I’m not completely clear on it, so please feel free to correct me if I’ve got it wrong. You believe that marriage is vital to the function of society, correct? Nobody is proposing abolishing marriage (at least nobody here is, although I know there are people out there who think it is an archaic institution that should be abolished).

Your main point to me seems to be:

I’m sorry, that is just where I can’t agree with you at all. My husband and I are not raising children, nor do we ever plan to. That is not the purpose of our marriage. Perhaps in the past that may have been what marriage was all about, but not anymore. At least, not to everyone. You stated that cultural anthropologists have studied marriage in past societies. Why would they need to study that if the role of marriage always been the same over all the years of history? The answer is that it hasn’t. The role of marriage in society has changed over thousands of years. Right now, you are witnessing a change in that role. And I’d feel pretty safe making a bet that it will continue to change long after I’m dead and gone.

You also said:

But then you said:

I’m sorry, but I find those two statements to be very contradictory. We allow divorce, but we are not promoting it. We allow single parents, but we are not promoting them. We allow childless couples, but we are not promoting childlessness. But if we allow a same-sex marriage, we would be promoting it? I just don’t understand how you’re making that connection.


I completely beg to differ with you. This may be what you have seen and heard in your life, but it is not what I have seen and heard in mine. Once again, we are all different people with different origins, beliefs, backgrounds, values, etc. When I was growing up, what I was told was not “One day, when you grow up and get married…” As far back as I can remember, what was told me was, “You realize that it is okay not to marry. You don’t ever have to get married.” But I got married anyway, despite what I was told all of my life. Because it was my choice.

As far as promoting divorce? I know plenty of people who have that planned in to their lives, sad as it sounds. I think society already promotes divorce as an easy out. It has become ingrained in the culture of my generation. I’ve heard numerous times, “You can marry that guy, and if it doesn’t work out, you can always get a divorce.” I’m hard pressed to talk to many people and not hear the words, “My first marriage…” or “My second marriage…” come out of their mouths.

Which takes me back to my argument. I think people should be allowed to do whatever they wish as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. (1) and (2) would cause harm to someone else. (3) would be irrelevant, because if you’re married to more than one person at the same time, you’re not married by definition (if the definition is defined to mean between one man and one woman, or any two consenting individuals—otherwise, we’ll just cross that bridge when we get to it). (4) does not cause harm to anyone else. Therefore, I just don’t see what’s wrong with it.

Wendy,

I had to stop in the middle of my reply in order to leave the house this morning, and so I did not completely answer your question.

You asked if an increase in marriage as opposed to so-called "living in sin" would not be considered a good thing. My answer is, "No, not particularly." The fact that a couple gets a marriage license and makes it "official" does not, in and of itself, benefit the society in any particular way. The purpose of the marriage is not the signing of the license, and the benefit that society obtains from promoting marriage does not come from the fact that the couples are now "legal". The only reason co-habilitation is frown upon is that society is attempting to promote a permanent union between members of the opposite sex for the purpose of forming a family unit in which to raise children.

Rona,

The reason I pointed out that sociologists study marriage was not so much that they studied marriage in past societies, but that they can, and do, study marriage in current societies. And, although various aspects of marriage do change over time, or from society to society, studies of both past and current society show that marriage has always had one unchanging basic purpose: to promote unions between members of the opposite sex for the purpose of forming stable family units in which to raise children.

I have already explained that childless couples are accepted in our society. In times past, there was, indeed, a social stigma attached to being childless. But such is no longer the case and, expecially with the advent of birth control, it is considered a personal choice. That does not change the fact that the institution of marriage exists in our society to promote the behavior of entering into a permanent union with a member of the opposite sex with the purpose of forming a family unit in which to raise children.

I think it is important to note that an institution encourages the members of a society to engage in behaviors beneficial to society as a whole, but it does not force them to do so. Each individual is free to decide whether to get married or not, whether to have children or not. Yet, the society as a whole would quickly die out if everyone decided not to have children. So, for the purpose of its own perpetuation, the society promotes the general idea of growing up and having children.

Society sees other benefits in promoting marriage, such as encouraging members of society to mature, to take on responsibilities, to sacrifice, to participate in the raising and training of the next generation, etc. A definition of "find someone to love" does not *necessarily* encourage the same maturation process. (Not to say all unmarried individuals are immature, selfish jerks and all married people are wise, responsible and mature! I am merely addressing the idea that the current definition of marriage promotes a certain process of maturation.)

Finally, the reason I distinguish between "accepting" a behavior and "promoting" said behavior comes from the force behind a social institution. The institution is, as I said, a mechanism used by society to influence the behavior of the members of the society. In comparison, our society accepts single parents, but we do not have a specific social institution which promotes this behavior as being beneficial to society.

If we change the definition of marrige, same-sex unions will be institutionalize. We will have a social institution which promotes this type of union. The problem is that this type of union is not, in and of itself, of any particular benefit to society. So, marriage itself will no longer be of any particular benefit to society.

Edited: Just to clarify, Wendy argues that the very process of allowing the union is beneficial in that she claims it creates a welcoming, inclusive society. But I am not talking about the supposed benefits associated with process of allowing the union, rather the fact that the union itself (as wonderful as it may be for the individuals) does not result in any particular benefit to society as a whole.

I may drawing a fine line here, but I'll try to draw it anyway. :p Family may have been the end result, but for centuries, the primary purpose of getting married was very economically slanted. I'd have to finish reading a few articles before making an in-depth argument (which, honestly won't happen because work trumps debates *and* I need to find a new job), but there's this great article by Gillian Clark entitled "Roman Women" in the journal Greece & Rome, and it looks at women's rights (which were nothing of course) and how families benefited economically by marrying off their daughters ASAP. Sure, these girls started families; it would have been humiliating to be barren. But they didn't get married to start a family; they got married because it's one less mouth to feed at home.

My small point here is that I personally think Rona is right when she says family hasn't always been the sole purpose of marriage. It's the purpose I personally prefer, but we've had 2000+ years of other things dominate the marriage factor, and truthfully, all this being in love stuff is a much more recent development across the board. So of course it's going to come with new challenges, like who exactly we're going to let get married.

Just my two cents.
JD

I was thinking today about that second Libertarian commentator Tara linked to, and I came to the conclusion that this entire issue would be so much easier on everyone if our society as a whole adopted his approach (or part of it) to marriage. Separate religious and secular marriage, to the point that the marriage licence cannot be signed in a church. Have marriage, as a legal institution conferring rights and responsibilities on a couple, be a purely civil contract, just like buying a house or obtaining citizenship.

Then after the civil ceremony, for those who want it, they can celebrate or consecrate their marriage in a church. Churches can - as they already do - set their own rules as to who may get married under their procedures. It's already the case that people may marry according to secular law who may not be married in church - for example, some, if not all, religions have restrictions on the remarriage of divorced persons. So if churches choose not to allow same-sex marriages, that's their right under their rules, but it wouldn't affect anyone's legal rights, such as rights to property, pensions, next-of-kin rights and so on.

Me? I'd be all for it.


Wendy

I had mentioned this as a possible solution in an earlier post, but Wendy has made the point much clearer than I did. 52% of voters in Califoria have voted to eliminate the right of same sex partners to get married. I wonder how people would feel about eliminating their own "marriage" and calling it a "civil union" or "domestic partnership" instead. Legally sanctioning all unions as domestic partnerships would preserve marriage as a religious ceremony, and it seems that should suffice for opponents of same-sex marriage.

I also wonder how those opponents view religions who allow same sex marriage. For example, the Unitarian Church was active in the fight against Prop 8. The Southern California division of the United Methodist Church went against the wishes of the rest of their church divisions and performed gay weddings. Are those religions "wrong" because of their tolerance?

JD,

The financial aspect is one of the aspects I was talking about which has changed over time. I didn't say that the union of members of the opposite sex to create a family unit in which to raise children was the *sole* aspect of marriage, I said it was the one basic aspect which has never changed.

Also, regarding society benefiting from people forming the family unit and raising their children in it - It really isn't so much that society created marriage in order to get people to reproduce. People are going to reproduce no matter what. So, society isn't so much saying, "Get married in order to have children", but more like, "Since it is a given that children *are* going to be born in this society, we need a societal structure which will provide a safe and stable environment in which to raise them."

Marriage is also a legal contract, which clearly defines the specifical legal responsibilities and obligations of both sides. It is a way of protecting the rights of the children (for example, parents are legally responsible for feeding, clothing, and caring for their children), as well as the rights of the parents.

One of the saddest consequences of the welfare system which was in place in the US for many years, was that it discouraged marriage. The idea was that, if a woman had a man to provide for her, she didn't need welfare. Social servies would actually conduct inspections of the homes of welfare recipients, looking for signs that a man had been living there. Any indication that the woman had a husband, or even a boy friend, and the money was taken away. Of course, although the idea was that a woman with a man should eschew welfare, the reality was that many women took the welfare and eschewed the men. The consequences were devastating.

What does that have to do with same-sex marriage? I made my point at the bottom of my post to Rona. If we change the institution of marriage so that we are promoting the general idea that people should find someone to love and share their life with, then the institution of marriage ends up promoting something wonderful for the individual but of no particular benefit to the society. Marriage, as a societal institution, becomes meaningless. As we are starting to see in countries which have already changed the definition of marriage, when you make marriage meaningless, fewer people bother to get married. And I believe that will have serious consequences on society.

Making marriage a purely civil contract and then allowing churches to consecrate marriages according to their own rules is a great idea, I think. There should be laws pertaining to all forbidding child marriage and marriage between close relatives, and personally I shy away from the idea of polygamy. I just can't stand it. Interestingly, I have to admit that it is possible that my objection to polygamy may be slightly similar to the objections to same-sex marriage. I shudder to think that society would allow people to marry polygamously. The whole idea is just plain wrong, disgusting and horribly sexist to me (because, in 999,999 cases out 1,000,000, a polygamous marriage involves one man and more than one woman). I hate it. I guess, though, that you can argue against same-sex marriage for slightly similar reasons that you can argue against polygamy - because it upsets the balance between the sexes, and to a certain extent, it upsets the 'parental balance' between the father and the mother of a child.

I can see that these are emotional issues. Let me make a confession. Because I don't see same-sex marriage as sexist - since homosexual men and homosexual women would have the same chance to enter into homosexual marriages - I'm not offended by same-sex marriage, but I am offended by polygamy.



One husband, six wives and thirty-two children?

Ann

P.S. I have seen a documentary about this particular family. At the time when the documentary was made, they had twenty-nine children, not thirty-two. But there had been one more child, who had, however, been killed in a fire. The mother of that child talked about the death of her son or daughter with tears in her eyes. But the father, who had twenty-nine surviving children anyway, shrugged it off as an unfortunate accident, nothing more. And I thought to myself, well, if you have fathered twenty-nine children by six different wives, several of whom are still fertile, why should you care about losing one child?

Groobie,

I feel like this is an argument which keeps going around in circle. I have given 4 restrictions to marriage. You cannot marry (1) a minor, (2) a close relative, (3) a person who is already legally married, and (4) a person of the same sex.

I ask, Why do you agree with the first three restrictions?

The answer I get back is, "Because there are valid reasons for those restrictions."

OK, I say, there are valid reasons for restriction 4, also. And, I procede to enumerate the reasons.

To which, I am asked, But what about their rights? What about their happiness?

Well, what about the rights of the sister to love her brother? What about *their* happiness?

Oh, but there are reasons why a sister shouldn't marry her brother.

OK, there are reasons a man shouldn't marry a man.

But what about their rights? What about their happiness? Don't you *want* them to be happy? Why are you so intolerant?

And round and round we go.

All I can say is, people do not oppose same-sex marriage because they are intolerant or because they want to stomp out gay people's joy. They oppose same-sex marriage because they believe there are valid reasons for doing so. As long as you keep asking why we are intolerant or why we don't want gays to have the same rights to happiness that we enjoy ourselves, you are asking the wrong question.

This is Sweden's most famous gay couple, Jonas Gardell and Mark Levengood:



Gardell and Levengood have been together 'forever'. As soon as it became possible to register their partnership as a civil union, they did so, in the early nineties. But by then they had been an official couple for about ten years.

In 2003, Jonas Gardell became a father. He and Mark Levengood knew a lesbian couple, and the four of them had long discussed the possibility of having children. Gardell provided one of the women with his sperm, and that way the woman became pregnant. Their little son spends most of his time with his mother and her partner, but Gardell and Levengood visit all the time.

Then in 2006, Mark Levengood had a daughter with the other woman, Jonas Gardell's son's mother's partner. (I know, it is a mouthful...)

Anyway, I think Gardell and Levengood are more loving fathers than the polygamous man pictured in my previous post, the one who couldn't be too upset that one of his children had died.

Ann

One of my co-workers and I have been debating the issue for a month. We have a good relationship and know that we have no chance of changing each other's minds, but we appreciate intellectual debate. I also appreciate that those of you who support bans on gay marriage are willing to engage in debate here, even though you must feel like you're on the defensive.

My question is not one about tolerance. It seems to me that fundamentally this is a religious issue. Many supporters of same-sex marriage bans do so out of a moral or religious conviction. However, others (including supporters of same-sex marriages) do not hold those same religious convictions or have different interpretations of those convictions. So the questions that I asked were about religious beliefs.

Our country was founded by people who were being persecuted for their beliefs. We have established a seperation of church and state in order to protect people from the abuses that minority religious groups suffered at the hands of other forms of government. For me, it seems that our government is failing to protect a minority group because of their beliefs. If there is an alternative (such as labelling all marriages "domestic partnerships" and confering equal legal rights), why can't we take the religious meaning out of the state sanctioned ceremony?

Vicki, I'm guessing that Groobie (and others) agree that there are valid reasons for the first three restrictions on marriage because (the first two, at least, of) these reasons can be grounded in some sort of objective fact, or laws existing elsewhere in society for people's protection.

Minors under a certain age should not be allowed to marry because society generally agrees, supported by educational and developmental psychology, that minors are not mentally and cognately capable of making those kind of decisions. Minors are also not allowed to vote, join the armed forces or make their own decisions on medical treatment, among other things. These restrictions are not applied to same-sex couples or gay people generally.

Siblings and close relatives are not allowed to marry not only because of a societal taboo, but for genetic reasons: we know that 'in-breeding' leads to a greater incidence of birth defects and genetic weaknesses being introduced into families.

As for someone who is already married, that's probably the weakest of the three, in that there aren't scientific, objective or legal reasons for this beyond that 'society believes that it's objectionable'. I don't believe that our society as a whole is ready to consider breaching that taboo at present, if it ever well. I do believe that society is ready, or close to being ready, to agree that same-sex marriage is not the taboo that it used to be.

Finally:
I can't even argue with this, Vicki, as I don't think I even understand the basis on which you're arguing. How does marriage have benefit to society now? How does changing it to allow a contract between two people of the same sex as well as two people of the opposite sex make any difference to whether marriage is of benefit to society or not?

I'm also not remotely convinced that the decline in marriage has anything to do with same-sex marriage. Marriage has been in decline in the Western world for the past thirty or so years. Many couples opt to live together rather than get married - either as a revolt against what they consider to be an outdated tradition, or because they can't be bothered with all the paperwork and/or they don't really think of their relationship as permanent. You'd have to show statistics demonstrating a consistent, ongoing decline in heterosexual marriage since the legalisation of same-sex marriage in countries such as Norway, Canada and others to support that particular argument.


Wendy

Well that all sounds well and good to me. I'm all for protecting kids! But it sounds like we're back to the beginning because it asks the question, What about same-sex partners who adopt? Are they not allowed the same rights to keep their kids safe as other couples who adopt? And quite frankly, when I think about unions in terms of the kids, that makes me much more likely to want to find a solution that gives same-sex unions more legal rights, and I can still keep my sacrament of marriage in the church its own party.

Peace
JD

ETA: I'm going to be out of pocket for the next month, so I'll probably just be checking for story updates. It's been a lovely discussion, all!

Hypothetically then, if an incestuous couple had no plans to have children (or perhaps were homosexual), the only barrier in their relationship would be the societal taboo. Correct? And society can and does change...

I'm not trying to discredit your argument, I'm just curious to see what you'll say. I think it's been established here that biological children are not needed to validate a marriage.