Opponents of gay marriage often argue that accepting that practice will put us on a “slippery slope” to the acceptance of polygamous marriage. (See, for example, this piece from the Weekly Standard. Today the Inquirer published an essay by Martha Nussbaum that grasped the challenge of the “slippery slope” argument by saying that there is nothing problematic about polygamous marriage.
I have to say that, as a supporter of gay marriage who looks askance at polygamy, I wasn’t fond of Nussbaum’s essay. But I had some trouble saying why. So I looked around for writing on the subject and found one in a blog post, by of all people, Marc Stier. Stier argues that the under conditions of modern life, companionate marriage is something good for most human beings and that this is why the government has encouraged it in the past for men and women and should not merely allow it but encourage it for members of the LGBT community today. And, he argues, this kind of marriage is not compatible with polygamy.
If it were not a long essay written in a style more reflective, I suppose, of Stier’s academic writing than his political writing, I'd post some of it. But given that gay marriage has recently been of some interest to folks at YPP, some of you might find it interesting.
polyamory
I don't think polygamy has to be the opposite to marriage. Polygamy to me means men being allowed to have many wives, but not vice versa. Polyamory means people being allowed to have multiple relationships at one time. Those can still be companionate, not economic and politically motivated. I like Nussbaum's article. also, this debate makes me think of the "don't like abortion? don't have one" bumper sticker - "don't want an open relationship? don't have one." But if it works for me or for others, I really don't think society is worse off for the diversity.
Besides, are we sure that marriage is really good for society? I'm with Nussbaum that it has a history of supporting patriarchal norms, giving property to men, taking power away from women, etc.
Polyamory revisited
Thanks to APP for posting a link to my essay.
As I point out in the essay, our government does not and should try to stop people from having multiple sexual relationships. The question is should we encourage marriage of a certain kind, a companionate marriage based on romantic love and not allow other kinds of marriage, such as polygamous marriage.
I think the answer is yes. It is hard to find good social scientific evidence for a lot of things. But the evidence that marriage is good for people and good for kids is pretty powerful.
As I point out in my essay, while contemporary marriage grows out of previous practices that were patriarchal in nature, the tension between the romantic ideal of companionate marriage and patriarchy is one of the forces that has slowly undermined patriarchy.
I do think it is possible for companionate marriage and polyamory to co-exist. That is to say, some people can carry on sexual and perhaps even quasi-romantic relationships with third parties without undermining their marriage. Indeed, with marriages lasting so much longer than they once did, I suspect it is relatively rare that people don't form some other emotional attachment over the course of their marriage.
But (1) that is very different from saying that companionate polygamous marriage is possible. I very much doubt it. The Jefferson Airplane song Triad is lovely. But if I remember correctly, the relationship that was the source of the song was over by the time the album was pressed and released. And (2)when those emotional connections lead to sex, marriages tend to flounder--not always and not necessarily but some of the time. Making it a policy of being open to sexual activity outside of marriage is, for most but not all people, a good recipe for divorce.
Saying that doesn't mean I favor laws against adultery. Married couples have to figure out for themselves how to deal with the issue. But it does no one any good to pretend that polyamory and strong marriages easily coexist. To think that there is no issue here strikes me as the triumph of ideology over good sense.
sure, it doesn't work for
sure, it doesn't work for everyone. but given the number of affairs that we hear about, I'd say monogamy doesn't work for everyone either. I do know folks who are doing very well at polyamory, some of whom have marriages and/or primary relationships and/or multiple primary relationships, and from experience I can say that it takes a level of honesty and commitment and communication that, sure, sets a high bar but if you can do it, then you know where you are and you're strong. may I ask for some background on your evidence that polyamory leads to failed relationships?
but I'm not sure that's the point, since this is a political blog, not a relationship one. I think we disagree on a premise - my ideal government wouldn't push one type of family structure over another. I don't think that's government's role.
evidence
the reason for:
is that it's the only state-sanctioned relationship in the west for ever and ever. so no wonder there's no evidence for any other kind of family formation. more important, forgive me for this three times in a 7 day period, but: polemic!
radical queers/progressives aren't worried about same-sex marriage being framed as a pinnacle issue for LGBT folks just because of an affection for non-monogamy (though that is there). i think the bigger concern is about valuing all kinds of relationships that are as Marc says "companionate," and also economic, but not always romantic. Mothers and daughters who live together and share a household, good friends (think Kate and Allie, or the Golden Girls or Perfect Strangers), collective households (think West Philly)...I mean there are a lot of ways people live that would benefit from more legal protection/economic benefit. and ultimately why are single people penalized by tax laws? yea, there is benefit to someone attaching to someone else for wage support or individualized health care, but...i dunno being single today is easier than ever before.
also, I think the burden of proof re:marriage (whether it's good or bad as a governing tool) falls upon the patriarchy more than anyone else Marc. I also argue that incentivizing one kind of relationship is less a role of government than to identify ways people live that could benefit from enhanced policy (be it on taxes or inheritance or whatever). and lastly, a lot of things that make marriage beneficial (like healthcare) wouldn't matter if we solved bigger picture policy problems.
Polemicize back
The thing about the mother/daughter scenario is that even if the daughter isn't a minor any longer, there's still a recognized legal relationship between parents and children that there currently isn't for nonhetero couples in most states. Also, I think it may be muddying the waters a bit to move so quickly past the "romantic" aspect of these partnerships, since it does distinguish the central cultural issue, the sex that's had between people. After all, "the defense of marriage" is for most conservatives a dodge, since what they really want to do is to stigmatize gay identity and (especially) gay sex. I think acknowledging that sexual relationships are at the heart of this can't and shouldn't be avoided.
i get it
Tim, I get why you are saying that I am "muddying the waters," but so are you. The law has never, until recently protected sex, it's protected procreation. There are of course str8s who can't have kids, but their legal protection has been a byproduct, i suspect, of the intent of government to incentivize pro-creation.
Stier's point in his essay is that "companionate" relationships are good for society and individuals and should continue to be encouraged by government. I think that's a rosy view of why marriage laws were created, but it may well be true that that's why they still exist. if so however, at least when it comes to taxes (a main way for the state to reward or incentivize behavior) the mother/daughter gets nada (except after death). And the larger question is what role the state has in encouraging or rewarding certain relationships over others.
Family legal relationships
are much more varied and denser than you seem to realize, Ray.
A relationship between a single mother and a daughter is recognized and benefited by in a variety of laws that also benefit mother-father-daughter families.
1. Inheritance and gift tax law. The latter do apply before the death of the mother.
2. Dependent tax deduction
3. Child care deduction if one has an income that qualifies; If your income is too high you can also sign up for one of those programs in which you can use pre-tax money for child care and medical.
4. The full range of other tax laws that apply to mother-father-daughter families such as medical deductions.
5. Exemptions from testifying in court against one another.
6. Rights to approve medical treatment
And on and on.
I don't think it is fair to say that two parent families are privileged over single parent families under the law in every or even in most respects.
adults?
an adult mother and daughter marc? i don't think so. yes to inheritance, and yes to medical decisions, but not joint 1040s. and those were just one example of many kinds of family structures, including polyamourous or polygamous relationships, that don't get recognized by law.
my point is unwaveringly simple: i am not sure if i think the state should be in the business of incentivizing one kind of relationship or lifestyle over another. you mention that you do, but don't provide much evidence that takes into account the different kinds of "companionate" relationships that do exist, and benefit society. shouldn't law be as broad as possible in the protection it offers (to the benefit of its own well-being and economy) as opposed to narrow?
What's the difference?
An adult couple can't do a joint 1040 with their adult daughter, so why should an adult single mother?
I get your simple point but I think it is misguided. I think it is totally appropriate for the state to encourage certain kinds of lifestyles or relationships over others. And we do this all the time.
Here is a list of things we should and sometimes do encourage people to do:
1. Use public transportation
2. Lose weight, become more fit, get medical and dental screenings
3. Send their kids to public school
4. Reduce their use of energy especially from carbon based sources;
5. Recycle
6. Save more
7. Buy American made products
8. Practice safe sex
9. Do research on certain scientific topics rather than others
There are, of course, many more.
And, on top of that, there are all the public goods we provide that encourage people to live their lives in some ways not others: zoning laws, roads and highways, recreation centers, public colleges and universities and so forth.
Liberals have gotten confused between laws that prohibit or require people from doing certain things and laws that encourage people to do or not do certain things. Some laws in the former category restrict our rights. I do not think there are any laws in the latter category that do unless they raise the costs of doing certain things so far that they are financially out of the reach of people, e.g. a $100 a gallon tax on gasoline.
If you want a government that is always neutral between different lifestyles you will wind up with a libertarian government that protects our right to life liberty and property and does little else. That’s not what we want, I don’t think.
simple is hard for you marc
Marc, i do, believe it or not understand your point. i just don't agree with it:
Maybe you can clarify in simple, brief bullet points why the state should create a law that only recognizes domestic partnerships that are sexual in nature?
See, I don't have the right to marry right now, nor am i likely to have the same rights as you do (and have exercised) for at least 10 years...maybe more. So it's not like I am speaking from a place of great privilege. However, maybe my vantage point allows me space to think about how silly marriage law is--how prescribed it is, when what we really need is universal health care and the right to name anyone you want as an inheritor, and a a redistribution of some power and wealth so that benefits like joint-tax filing are made obsolete.
And a two-person marriage, and the subsequent formation of a nuclear family, is far from a historical norm, and there's little real evidence that it's good for family development or mental health.
Last, I am, believe it or not, smart enough to understand that the abolition of romantic marriage laws is not super likely in my lifetime at all, but if you can enter the land of pontificating (and citing your essay) and expanding the horizons into the realm of theory and principle, why do i get called misguided for doing the same?
I need to get back to communications policy in a second
But I just wanted to back up Ray and the other folks in this thread who are making the point that our culture prioritizes and privileges people who live and work in families -- and that our culture privileges and protects those families which meet a 'traditional' ideal.
Whether at work, in our communities, or at school, we are asked to make financial and personal sacrifices with the assumption that a partner can pick up the slack. If a mom is asked to work late, she might miss her daughter's drum corps performance or basketball game. If she is single, they assume that other family members -- spouses, partners, parents, friends -- can pick that daughter up and take her home. We rely on community in its varied forms to care for our families and ourselves when society proves to be inflexible.
Some of these battlegrounds of making work pay equally for men and women and trans folks, making marriage a choice for all who want it, etc., are being fought in statehouses, the federal courts, and Capitol Hill. Because I believe that people have a human right to self-determination in their relationships, work, study, spirit, and beyond, I look at these political and legal battles as a chance to further self-determination for all peoples.
I want to help people to build relationships and futures which grow organically from relationships of trust and solidarity. That means making sure that all legal protection and opportunity possible is available to folks living and working healthily in those relationships. Wouldn't it be awesome, for example, if we had paid bereavement days for grandmothers who helped raised us, for dear friends who are chosen family?
So I disagree with Marc -- it is not "totally appropriate for the state to encourage certain kinds of lifestyles or relationships over others." The state should bend over backwards to make life easier for folks fighting to make it every day. Who we bring with us along the way is our choice, and the state should work their asses off to respect those choices.
OK, back to low power FM!
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hannah sassaman
prometheusradioproject
building radio stations = awesome
http://www.prometheusradio.org
This is a different issue, Hannah
I’m not arguing that the state or private entities should privilege traditional families in the way you think. My family is hardly traditional and I very much agree that life is difficult for non-traditional families of all sorts largely for the reasons you state. Making child care available to families of all types and challenging the assumption that workers have someone at home taking care of feeding and cleaning is really critical today if we want to make life easier for all of us in non-traditional families, whether they have one or two adults in them. Bereavement policies for grandparents is a great idea.
But note that in supporting these policies, you want, no less than I do, the state and private institutions to support certain kinds of relationships, those that, in your worlds “help people to build relationships and futures which grow organically from relationships of trust and solidarity.” That is encouraging a certain kind of lifestyle, isn’t it? Why, one might ask, should the state encourage relationships of trust and solidarity? Doesn’t that privilege that lifestyle over one in which our relationships are short terms, distrustful, and mutually exploitative? Why should deep relationships be privileged over shallow ones? After all, lots of people--mostly but not only men--seem to want and thrive on the latter kind of relationship. And they can be very hard to manage. Just as we should have policies that give people time off to take care of their sick family members, maybe we need policies that give people time off to handle the inevitable conflicts that arise when they are juggling four sexual relationships at a time?
Presuming you get that I’m joking, let’s look at marriage for a moment. All I am saying about marriage is that the state and private institutions should encourage marriage in the fairly minimal way it does, simply by providing state and church sponsored marriage and by giving married people tax breaks and status. Doing that doesn’t mean supporting only traditional husband at work wife at home marriages. It means supporting all the many varieties of companionate, two-adult marriages we can imagine.
And by the way, if you don’t agree with this last paragraph, are you opposed to marriage for gays and lesbians? I ask this because the context for this whole discussion is my argument for gay marriage. If marriage is not a good thing, then why in the world should we be working for gay marriage? Why not simply work to disestablish and discourage marriage altogether?
One reason life is easy for me
is that I do avoid simple answers to questions that are difficult.
Here is the bullet point which by itself is not simple:
Now, you can criticize this on a number of grounds. You could say why do we need to encourage people to do what makes them happy? The answer is that human beings don’t always immediately know what makes them happy. We have to learn this and one thing our parents, teachers and at one remove the government should do is to try to point us in the right direction.
(Compare: why should we encourage people to read the classic works of philosophy, poetry, and fiction when they are more immediately entertained by TV? The answer is that we have to learn to develop a taste for good literature and that no one who has developed that taste wants to go back and only watch TV sitcoms and reality shows.)
Or you could say that these kinds of relationships are not as important as I think. To this, the easy answer is look at what most people show makes them happy by what they do and say. People try very hard to couple up. And when those relationships break down, they do it again. And most people say that their spouses and children are a major source of what makes them happy in life.
You can just shrug your shoulders and say that this is merely conventional and dispensable behavior or that it just doesn’t work for you. That is the post-modern pose in action. And it is a really simple claim. But that doesn’t make it right. And to understand why it is not right, we have to try to understand how marriage (and coupling up) survives under the conditions of modern life because they respond to some deep-seated longings almost all of us have. Saying what those longings are, however, is not easy. It is never easy to understand the things that are closest and most important to us.
So that’s one reason I’m writing a book about the nature of eros and why I wrote a long essay about why marriage is important as part of an argument for gay marriage.
If someone criticizes me for trying to understand a complicated matter in a way that respects those complications, I think that says more about their limitations than my own. And, I really don’t think that in asking for a simple answer you are doing justice to your own capacity for thinking about the really complicated stuff that makes ours lives what they are. You are being, dare I say it, polemical.
Marc aside, back to you APP
APP's thesis in his/her original post was:
Obviously marriage as is currently legally defined is at odds with polygamy. But I disagree with APP's cite of Stier, and generally agree more w/Nussbaum, and most importantly think the conversation about polygamy and gay marriage is a not very useful distraction from the core issues at hand in the same-sex marriage debate: one part assimilationist desire to participate in an institution that is not flexible enough to truly address modern societal needs, and another the desire of an oppressed group to be recognized and loved by a society that hates it. And perhaps a third category, which i certainly fit into, a desire to get what you can in terms of rights for yourself, even if you know others are being left behind, because it's a dog-eat-dog society and we (LGBT folks) need to just take what we can get now.
I've been working
between meetings on the post I just put up. You all seem to be doing quite well wihtout me but I'm glad my post got this thread started.
Talking about polygamy, I'd have to say, is a distraction from what I really care about, gay marriage. But one reason I started thinking about the question is that I thought Nussbaum's essay was politically naive. If you really care about gay marriage why would you raise this issue, especially since critics of gay marriage have been using the analogy between gay marriage and polygamy to damange our cause?
So I found in Stier's essay what I thought was a good antdote to Nussbaum's piece.
Imagine my suprise then, when so many folks here are agreeing with Nussbaum. I don't either as a matter of political strategy in the effort to enact gay marriage or policy.
So the question is, what's going on? If I get what Stier has been saying recently, it is that progressives have lost the will or capacity to stand for any meaningful distinctions between one kind of life and another. If that is his point, it looks like many of the people posting on this thread exemplify the problem to which he points, if it is a problem.
Is it? Is that what we really believe? Or do we really stand with Hannah S who, while criticizing Stier, does want to say that certain kinds of relationships are better for us as human beings than others?
This is what I find disturbing
As a "progressive," I have lost neither the will or capacity to stand for any meaningful distinctions between one kind of life and another. Seriously, APP, I have heard that kind of comment almost verbatim from right wing religious bigots who believe that marriage (exclusively between a man and a women, on their part) is a godly ordained social arrangement.
See my comments below to Marc for more of why I think that typically "progressive" views on marriage is in no way a confusion about meaningful distinctions betwen different lifestyles.
A difference between public services and lifestyles
Public transportation, public education, recycling and health are public services -- not really lifestyle choices. Practicing safe sex, savings and buying American made products are certainly lifestyle choices but they aren't encoded into law, nor are the penalties for not doing such encoded into the law, unlike what opponents of gay marriage want.
I would have to disagree with this
Non-liberals have gotten confused that the majority of our laws are to provide basic services and guarantee basic freedoms, and that's not a libertarian standpoint. Laws aren't meant to force people to do or not to do, but to provide the framework of a society where even the least enfranchised people live peaceably and with equal freedoms, while providing on the other end limitations to some of those freedoms that otherwise endanger the public good.
Distinction without a difference
We provide public services like transit and zoning because we want to change how people live. We often act like the way we use our land--such as the rampant suburbanization of our society--just happened or is the product of our indivdual choices. Not so. It was created by public policies that creates incentives for people to live one way or the other. Many of us, for example, have argued for a long time that our incentives are backwards and that we should be encouraging denser development in which rely on public transportation, public parks and recreation centers not a swing set on every acre lot and two cars in every garage.
Safe sex, recycling, increasing savings, and finishing high school are encouraged by means of laws that create subsidized programs, public advertising and economic incentives. (Recycling Bank, for example, is all about providing incentives to recycling.) Encouraging people to marry by giving married people a certain status and benefits is no different. Whether it is a good public policy or not is one question. Whether the state has a right to encourage this kind of choice is another. I'm addressing the second question here and my answer is that I don't see any difference in principle between encouraging that choice and encouraging people to do the many other things the state encourages.
not fair marc
you did also say pretty clearly that you thought the law should incentivize two-person, romantic companionships via marriage. i agree with you that the state does have the right to push lifestyles on folks (capitalism anyone?) but what i am saying is different: does two-person romantic marriage law create the benefits the state desires as well as something more flexible? i'd argue no. i think that it's in the best interest of the state to recognize other kinds of relationships whose codification contributes to the common good.
i'd also say that it's a basic injustice that single people get taxed differently than marrieds, without at least some concrete justification of the specific benefit to the state gained from a specific couple forming under the law.
Leave that aside: why does same-sex marriage matter and why does it need to be set apart from polyamourous or other kinds of relationships?
Because good gays like me are scared to death that they'll lose their shot at getting something they need and want and they don't want to "muddy the waters," by getting into a messy convo about other vitally important stuff (that nonetheless lives down there with the roots of the very same predjudice LGBT people face).
And why do gays and straights want to get married under the law? There are the tangible benefits of course, but there is also belief that a relationship and a love is not real unless the law recognizes it. It's a funny convention to me in that the state offers birth certificates too, but there's no doubt that a baby is alive and exists even if s/he does not have a certificate. Go figure.
Two different arguments
There is the general point about whether the state can encourage (not require) certain kinds of lifestyles. We agree about this in saying yes.
Ther is the particular point about whether the state should encourage what the sociologists call companionate marriage, ie, marriage based on romantic / sexual love.
I'm saying yes, in a minimal way. You are saying no. I tried to explain why I say yes above. You seem to think that it is unfair for singles not to get the tax advantage open to marrieds. To be honest, I have my doubts about the slightly lower rates for married people and I'd happily give it up. Some tax benefits go to anyone who has a child whether married or single. And most the other tax advantages can't be sensibly given to singles.
But given that I think we should encourage companionate marriage--and that various poly marriages don't meet that test--then giving married folks a tax advantage is no more unfair than giving people who heat their homes with solar panels a tax break even if people who live on tree lined streets can't sensibly take advantage of that tax break.
The reason I wrote the original essay is because I don't think that we have to worry about opening up the question of polygamy in order to defend gay marriage, something I gather we both want to do. I don't at all think that opposition to polygamy is rooted in prejudice as opposition to gay marriage is. Marriage is something gays and lesbians deserve because it is something that is important to the well being of many human beings who are member of the lgbt community. I simply don't think you can make a case remotely like that for polygamy or polyandry or any other kind of poly form of marriage.
If you could make such a case, there would be poly families riding the coattail of the LGBT community clamoring for the right to marry. Where are they? My impression is that poly relationships are a way for people to limit their commitment to particular others and that is why there isn't a pro-poly marriage movement today. The people who defend poly marriage are, by and large, not folks are in poly relationships. I've heard of very few who want to enter into a plural marriage and I know of no men or women having affairs who would love to be able to have a second wife or husband. Rather they are people (including many law professors) who have bought into a certain philosophical perspective that calls into question any kind of preference for one kind of human relationship over another. What I'm trying to show in my essay (and in my joking about Hannah's unfair preference for deep over shallow relationship) is that not all discriminations about how we live are a matter of prejudice. Some a matter of reason and experience.
nope
I'm not advocating for a pro-poly marriage movement; I'm critiquing the institution of marriage. right? that's where we disagree. (also, I disagree that polyamory is a way to limit relationships, but that's not a YPP discussion.)
-Rachel
I'm curious about where this goes to
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't non-monogamy tend to simply favor a legal approach that leans on individual rights in the end? The legal disadvantages to same-sex partners in committed relationships are huge when compared to "marriage" as its historically defined. Shared property rights, health care and next of kin considerations, custody rights for kids - these are real every day practical considerations where in most states in the US same-sex couples have a distinct disadvantage. I get that same-sex couple may define "commitment" a little differently from traditional marriage but in terms of the law, "marriage" actually seems to fit the bill well enough.
For whatever sort of radical revisioning of non-monogamy you are imagining Ray, is there the same kind of measurable forms of legal discrimination? I mean the law allows a larger group of people to form a partnership to own property together and still allow individual members to come and go without dissolving the whole entity. It's called a corporation. Ultimately thats how a lot of the "communes" were treated under the law - as corporations.
It could be that from the cultural side you are interested in imagining some alternative models of how people live together but I'm having a hard time imagining how the law as obviously discriminates against those "alternative" models because it seems like those alternative models tend to have a lot more fluidity in membership than committed two-person relationships do. I could be totally wrong on that because honestly I have no idea. My life experience is way, way, way too "vanilla" to give much insight on this, but do radical non-monogamous groups buy houses together and seek to share "next-of-kin" legal rights collectively? Is that really a legal/"rights" kind of problem?
Or are you talking about the other end of the spectrum - the Fundementalist Mormons and Islamic traditionalists who want to practice "traditional", very patriarchal forms of polygamy? I mean the conservatives are actually right that this issue comes up in real life occasionally and its certainly it has very real legal applications with for example the Attorney Generals in Utah and Arizona having a big press conference where they basically said the aggresive tactics recently applied against Mormon fundamentalists in Texas would never happen on their watch in their states. That's a real issue, affecting real people's lives. The current mess in Texas only underlines that.
Ray, by any chance have you ever watched "Big Love"? Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer are the shows creators and co-producers and a couple and they stumbled on the topic specifically in reaction to conservative arguments about gay marriage innevtably leading to legalized polygamy. Beyond the situation comedy "My 3 wives" element, one of the propelling problems in the show is whether polygamous relationships based on religious belief are compatitible with a society where women are not harshly repressed and forced into a severely subservient position. "On the compound", clearly sometimes they are - by physical abuse with underage "wives" divided up by the church's political structure like chattel, whereas the characters in the main family who live on their own in an idealized suburban setting with 3 houses sharing a backyard have a hard time reconciling their religious beliefs with a desire to be more "modern".
In terms of application of the actual law, I have to say I am torn between concern for the treatment of young women forced into becoming "wives" at an early age and the impression that the rest of society is poorly served by an overly harsh enforcement of the law against members of these small religious communities.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.
No protection of sex?
I don't know; the way I understand Griswold v. Connecticut, and the tree of decisions that stem from it, from Roe to Lawrence/Garner v. Texas (the 2003 decision that struck down the sodomy law) is that nonprocreative sex between adults is protected under the constitution. Forty years may qualify as "recently," but I think all of the relevant case law in state and federal court falls within a sixty-year window.
There's a kind of syllogism in all of this -- if anti-sodomy and anti-miscegenation laws are both unconstitutional, because the gov't can't discriminate against sex between adults or in who can and can't get married, then why is prohibition of gay marriage constitutional? The same argument can be made for polygamy; but if you oppose polygamy (or oppose gay marriage) those are the terms that need to be addressed. The key link between them -- which I suppose can be affirmed or denied -- is that marriage is fundamentally a legally recognized, permanent or semi-permanent relationship between sexual partners, rather than between co-procreators. And both the passage of time, the advent of serious birth control, and the decisions of the Supreme Court seem to suggest that this is one way of looking at marriage. Your spouse is the only person in your family it's permissable to sleep with.
The next question for your argument would be why the sexual relationship trumps other kinds of relationships -- whether in taxes or medical decisions or anywhere else. But at least one argument to be made for the discriminatory aspect of gay marriage prohibition is that currently, straight sexual partners in marriage *do* enjoy those preferences, while gay sexual partners don't and can't.
procreation
marriage is what 200 years old in american law? more? 300? grandfathered in from europe? when did it all start--with the Romans?
60 years is nothing. Marc's argument is that the state cam and should promote certain kinds of behaviors by offering incentives via law. I am pretty confident that the benefits of marriage were in part about creating an environment for procreation.
60 years is not nothing
when it comes to the changing dimension of sex and marriage, both culturally and legally. Even if you take the "300 years" position, we're still talking about a fifth of the existence of the country + colonies. If sex and marriage haven't changed since WWII I don't know what in our culture has.
Also, what benefits are you talking about? The federal income tax is less than 100 years old. I don't know how old marriage exemptions are.
People are more faithful than you think
The only really good random sample we have of Americans suggests that 75% of men and women are faithful to their spouses. Given how many bad or not so good marriages there are; how high our expectations are for marriage; how much longer we are married than our ancestors, how much sexual temptation there is and how easy adultery can be in American today, I find this number to be surprisingly high.
Or to put the point another way: Dan Savage said when he spoke in Philadelphia, that if you are married for much of your life and have only had sex outside of marriage once or twice, you actually are showing an pretty impressive commitment to the institution.
Dan Savage
just for the record, I've heard Dan Savage talk multiple times about how he has made open relationships work.
That isn't what he said
in Philly last year. He actually surprised me by being moderately pro mostly mongamous relationships.
Long Questions
Two preliminary points:
1, The evidence to which I’m pointing is substantial research that suggests that men and women who are married tend to be healthier, happier and live longer lives than people who are single.
You are suggesting, Ray, that other kinds of relationships between people might create the same good things. But what exactly are you talking about? Would a extended family in which sons and daughters are subordinate to the patriarch who chooses their spouses be as satisfactory? The point I made in made essay is that such a form of marriage would make no sense for us.
So what alternatives are we talking about? How about friends without benefits—that is friends living without either a romantic or sexual connection, like Kate and Allie. (But weren’t they really lesbian lovers?) Maybe that would work, but it is hard enough to live with someone one loves and / or with whom one has sex. I find it hard to believe that friendship without love or sex would be as sustainable or sustaining as one with it.
So, I’d kind of like to know what alternatives to marriage we should be evaluating.
2. I wouldn't say the burden of proof re the benefits of marriage fall upon the patriarchy because I don't think that marriage is an inherently patriarchal social practice. Indeed, companionate marriage is quite the opposite in spirit and increasingly in practice.
Now on to the main issue you are raising: It is much easier to be single than before. And it's easier to divorce than before. That is true because of a general increase in wealth, because more women are in the workplace, and because of government social programs. That leads to a decline in marriage rates and a higher incidence of divorce particularly in Northern Europe. That may be a good thing if you believe, as I do, that companionate / romantic relationships are good for us. It means that more marriages are undertaken and sustained on that basis rather than on the basis of economic necessity. So I'm totally with you in support of the kinds of social welfare programs you advocate even if they reduce marriage rates or increase divorce rates.
I don't see any evidence, however, that there is a decline in the number of companionate/ romantic relationships that have the form if not legal status of marriage. Left free to their own devices, in the modern world, the vast majority of people couple up or want to do so. I think there are deep reasons connected to the nature of identify formation that this is true, not to mention that couples have a lot more sex than singles.
In the book I'm working on I point to two different possible transformations in marriage in the future. One is that marriage rates are going to stablize in the west and even start to rise again because the formal establishment of a permanent relationship strengthens what I call the identify formation function of romantic love and better secures the well being of children.
On the other hand, I see some tendencies for people to form multiple and shifting relationships..this is the vision of some proponents of polyamorous relationships. We talk, for example of "office husbands and wives" who become partners in our lives as important as our "real" husbands and wives. And we make deep friendships with people who share our recreational enthusiasms. Sometimes those relationships become sexual. As our lives become more complicated and different kinds of organized groups--at work and at play--become important to us, we might find that overlapping and shifting relationships become, at least for a time in our lives, the best way to make deep connections with other people. There, after all, different kinds of love and romance and different settings in which those kinds of love are more likely to be important to us.
Ultimately, I think the former tendency is going to be a lot stronger than the latter. The joys and comforts of a good marriage are, I think, going to continue to be more attractive to most people than the excitement of juggling multiple relationships. And given the limits of time and energy, and the potential for jealousy that seems to go along with deep relationships, I do think there is something exclusive about romantic love. Or perhaps I should say that the latter tendency will tend to be stronger in people during the increasingly lengthy period in which we experiment with different identities up until we are ready to have children, when the former tendency will come to the fore. But some people will be more inclined one way or the other over the whole of their lives. And people who divorce might find themselves back in the latter tendency again. And so forth.
All this is just guessing on my part. The the meaning and importance of marriage is in flux today and thus it is important for us to think through, both as individuals and as members of a community, the various ways we can live our lives without too quickly condemning one possibility or another. Flexible legal arrangements for sharing our lives with other people--be they friends or lovers or family members--strikes me as useful in this period and beyond. And so is a tolerance for variety and an openess to unusual or so far unimagined possibilities.
But in the meantime, given what marriage means to us, denying gays and lesbians the right to marry is just wrong. And that was the main point of my essay.
two different issues
I think there are a couple different things going on here:
1. I have been arguing that marriage is not the only kind of healthy romantic companionate relationship one can have. So, being single is not the only alternative to being married. I think this is in line with the Nussbaum article cited at the beginning of this strand.
2. What is the appropriate role of government in supporting relationships. This gets at the question of whether it's appropriate for all the legal benefits associated with legal marriage to be attached to marriage in that way, or if there is a way for them to be more accessible to a wider range of family and living structures, such as the groups Ray offered as examples.
I agree that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is wrong. However, I am also critiquing the idea that marriage is the institution where we should house all those benefits.
Just wow!
this
and this
Suffer from a few problems.
First, there is the most obvious problem of cause and effect. Does marriage make people happier and more stable? Or, are happier and more stable people more likely to get married? Good luck figuring that one out.
But further, as I understand it, evidence suggests that being in a long-term stable relationship correlates with certain positive outcomes - not that marriage correlates with certain positive outcomes. And those positive outcomes that can be attributable to being in long-term, stable relationships are very much related to a reduction in financial stress. There are ways other than incentivizing marriage to help reduce the financial stress of single people and single parents - but as a society we choose not to implement them.
You are suggesting that we continue the same self-fulfilling system that we current have. We provide financial benefits to those who choose marriage, and then say that marriage "causes" positive outcomes. It's a closed loop, that effectively punishes anyone who chooses another lifestyle. If we took a more inclusive approach by providing different systems of financial benefits and implemented other systems that mitigated the relative benefits of being in a long-term, stable relationship (e.g., made health care more accessible), I would suggest that the relative benefits of marriage would disappear. Many of them are probably not some inherent benefit of marriage, or even of being in a long-term, stable relationship, but of the specifics of how being in a long-term, stable relationship affect life in contemporary society.
One problem with what you're saying, Marc, is that you are suggesting that we perpetuate a system that discriminates against people who choose a different lifestyle - right down to discriminating against people who choose to cohabitate but not marry. But the bigger problem is that what you're suggesting is illogical (from a "progressive," anti-elitist standpoint), as we can clearly see that more and more people are choosing a non-traditional lifestyle. By selectively increasing or maintaining a system of benefits to those who choose a more traditional way to live, you are promoting a system which only increases the benefits to a limited subset of our society - a subset that is shrinking over time.
I work with a lot of Koreans. Many of them, even those who are extremely "Westernized" choose to have arranged marriages. Low divorce rates. Very stable homesteads. Very supportive environments for raising children (which can be seen evidenced in how well they do academically). Maybe our government should be incentivizing arranged marriages, Marc? You're walking on a slippery slope.
Korean Marriages and other matters
1. I guarantee you that arranged marriages for Koreans won't last another generation or two any more than the arranged marriages of my great grandparents survived another generation. It hardly counts against my argument to look at people who have very different expectations and hopes from marriage than people who have grown up much more with the expectations of most westerners.
2. Yes some evidence is equivocal about cause and effect. Time series evidence need not be and there is some that suggests that marriage benefits us.
3. There is pretty substantial evidence that married couples stay together longer than unmarried couples. Again there is a question of cause and effect. But if you read the literature on marriage, especially the qualitative literature, it becomes pretty clear that the legal commitment does constrain and in some ways deepen the emotional commitment. And that's a main reason why people marry. The main benefit the state and church gives gives married people is not tax benefits but the very existence of the status of being married, the expectations it creates for people who marry as well as for their friends and family, and the slight hassle of undoing that status.
4. For the last time, it is no more discriminatory for the state to encourage marriage than it is to for the state to encourage recycling. Even Ray agrees with me about that. Can we please drop this now?
5. In America at least, there is very little evidence that marriage is going away. We are not yet Sweden and there is little evidence we are heading in the direction of Sweden. People are marrying at rates that are, if I remember correctly, a little higher than twenty years ago. Divorce rates have stabilized. And most people who divorce remarry within a few years.
6. And even if I'm wrong about whether the state should encourage marriage, nothing you have said suggests that the state should be neutral between monogamous and plural marriage. And that was the point I started with.
This has been fun, but I have to tell you that for the first time in a long time, I'm cognizant of being on a blog called YOUNG philly politics.
Marc, your perspective
Seems somewhat limited. Perhaps because of your own experience?
I would surmise that you haven't been single for much of your life. Nor divorced. If so, I would guess that you'd have a very different perspective on the "status" of being married," and, I would imagine on the "slight hassle" of undoing that status.
You seem rather casual in how you dismiss the potential costs of those constraints: people who remain in bad relationships to the point past where they'd be better off divorced, because of the stigma and financial costs attached.
I disagree that it is no more discriminatory for the state to encourage marriage than it is for the state to encourage recycling. I know that Ray is the master of the blog (well, along with Dan), but I do reserve the right to disagree with him on occasion - I'll try to pick up on that later.
I'm not saying that marriage is going away. But I am saying that we have more people who are choosing other lifestyles, and in particular, raising children outside of marriage.
I would need to think more about the issue of neutrality between monogamous and plural marriage - although I will say that among the children who thrive the best are those raised in Kibbutzim in Israel. Of course, that doesn't relate specifically to plural marriage, but it does relate to the notion that some forms of communal living have distinct advantages.
BTW, I think I'm exactly the same age as you. Proof that chronological age is no accurate measure of wisdom or maturity?
About my sex life
I’ve been in a very happy marriage for 22 years—well for almost all of those 22 years as like all other married couples we have some difficult days. Maybe that disqualifies me from talking about marriage, although by Tolstoy’s principle I should know a lot about all the happy ones. I was single for the first 40 percent of my adult life, however, and I’m sooo tempted to respond to you by writing about what life was like for young single people in the seventies and eighties.
But I think this post would be a lot more useful if I just point out that personal experience can be as misleading as it is revealing. It sounds like you have had or have seen some bad divorces and are concerned about the constraints of marriage keeping people in bad relationships. But, come on, by any historical standard, marriage is much easier to leave than it has ever been before. That doesn’t make it easy and I suspect that this is a good thing. Shouldn’t people should think two or three or forty five times before getting divorced, especially if they have children. There isn’t an ideal set of marriage constraints for everyone but I’m inclined to think that the “degree of difficulty of divorce” is probably about where it should be.
(Of course, breaking up is always hard to do even without marriage. I can’t resist repeating a college joke about the typical Wesleyan relationship: You get together for three weeks of sex and fun and then spend six month having painful conversations about whether and when to break up.)
Again, I don’t know that we actually have more people living together and children outside of marriage. In the US, there has been a slight reversal of that trend.
As for kibbutzim, two points. First, they are hardly equivalent to plural marriages. And, second, I read a book many years ago about how the children of kibbutznicks actually had some serious problems forming deep personal relationships because they never had a close relationship with their own parents. I’m sure their other views, and I’m sure some folks would say that the capacity for deep relationship is overrated. So let’s just say your point is far from certain.
By the way, child abusers are rarely parents but are often step-parents. (All those fairy tails about wicked step mothers point to an important truth.) That is certainly is one reason to be concerned about the consequences of plural marriage for children.
Ok, that's enough about your sex life
Maybe I'm missing something Marc, but out of wedlock births have been going up for quite a while (5.3% in 1960 to 36% in 2005), largely because more people are marrying at later ages; out of wedlock births have gone up even as teen births have declined more recently. From 1972 to 1977, 80 percent of working and middle-class adults were married. From 1994 to 1998, 78 percent of middle-class adults were married, as opposed to 62 percent of working-class adults.
So, despite the incentives, and what you describe as the associated "status" of marriage, particularly among the working class, fewer people are choosing marriage.
We can agree that life is hard for single parents. We can also agree that the difficulties of single parenthood often negatively impact the lives of children - particularly for people of limited financial means.
You might think that the answer to that is to further incentivize people to marry. But increasingly, such incentives are not achieving the goal you are after. It seems to me that the answer is to make life easier for people who choose to remain single so that they can have an easier time raising their children; increase access to financial rewards which are now contingent on marriage, and increase access to day care which is obviously easier in a two-parent family either because of two incomes or because one person can work and the other can stay home.
Given the trends, it seems that if we keep with a system that doesn't deal with the difficulties of single-parenthood, and instead rely on an approach that incentivizes marriage, we will likely increase the gaps between the experiences of children born into differing economic circumstances.
As for the Kibbutzim. I once read a very interesting critique of the effects of culture on education (I think it was Education and Community: A Radical Critique of Innovative Schooling by Donald W. Oliver). One of the groups examined was children who lived on Kibbutzim, where kids lived in large groups and where parents were largely free from responsibilities of day care. The time parents spent with their children was concentrated "quality time." It was not an exhaustive study, and I overstated the conclusion I made above: I agree that my point is far from certain, but it certainly is an interesting model.
Those trends
have been leveling off and in some part reversing. See Frank Fukuyama's book, the Great Disruption.
I don't believe in quality time. Parenting to me hanging around waiting for those key moments when something important happens and you kid needs to hear from you or more often, says something imporant. You never know when that moment is going to come but if you are not around a lot, you are going to miss it.
That's why parents need a lot of help from one another if there are two of them and from day care centers on or near the job if not.
I've only been reading this peripherally ...
... but isn't it time to go home when someone namechecks Fukuyama in a _progressive_ political discussion. Wow.