I started learning more about the institution of marriage after I got into one myself and decided I would need more education and direction on the subject if I hoped to avoid ending up divorced like my parents, in-laws, and so many others around me. In the process, I stumbled into the gay marriage question, and was surprised to find myself changing my mind.
I attended my cousin's gay wedding before I got married, and even though it did feel funny, the thought of not supporting the marriage hadn't even crossed my mind. I was raised to believe that people should do whatever makes them happy. I've come to question that simplistic mindset as I've gotten older, especially when coming up against the challenges of making a happy marriage. The fact is that taking care of myself makes me happy, but being taken care of makes me happier, and taking care of others makes me happiest. So, it's complicated. An individualistic approach hasn't been very functional for me. But even though gay marriage is not my primary interest in the marriage debate, it is on the forefront of the debate nowadays. Therefore, over the last few years, I have been developing a set of opinions about it that I might as well lay out here, at least to get it out of the way. Of course, I'm always open to revising my own views if persuasive evidence or arguments are presented to me.
Perhaps my favorite resource in developing my thoughts on gay marriage has been The Opine Editorials, because as they put it, they are "defending marriage on the firm ground of reason and respect for human dignity." Even though the folks over there are religious, they don't argue against gay marriage on religious grounds. This is key for me. I'm one of those spiritual-but-not-religious types.
I've especially enjoyed their Defend Marriage Resources, which can be found in the upper right corner. My favorite read was this one here by Lee Harris, which Opine describes as follows: "A gay man discusses the fragility of social customs like marriage from a historical/philosophical perspective."
It's lengthy and academic, but I've read it several times over. It's absolutely the best explanation of the value of traditional marriage that I've ever read. But it's so much more than that. Lee Harris breaks down the concept of tradition, and the various defenses of it, to give the reader an understanding of what tradition really is. Traditions are complex and fascinating things. Ultimately, he compares a tradition to a recipe:
"Tradition, then, is the only possible mode for transmitting a community’s habits of the heart, and it does this by providing the recipe for making the kind of human beings who will viscerally feel and respond to the same habits of the heart as the community to which they belong.
"Yet these recipes, like those used for cooking, do not by any means demand to be rigidly or mechanically followed. To make pasta, for instance, you need the essential ingredients — Italian noodles and sauce — but otherwise you are free to experiment. You may vary the sauce as you wish, from tomato to cream, adding mushrooms or black olives or spinach, or you may mix the sauce with different types of noodles, like spaghetti or angel hair or vermicelli. But all in the end have the same essential nature and accomplish the same pragmatic purpose — a satisfying bowl of pasta.
"This allows us an interesting new way to appraise a tradition. We can look at it as if it were a recipe and say, 'This is what you must do, if you are to create a certain type of community — and these are the options you have, once you have done this.'
"To see institutions and traditions as recipes is to grasp at once how pointless it is to debate their truth or falsity. Is Julia Child’s recipe for Bouillabaisse true or false? The question sounds absurd because it is."
Later, he extends this idea of traditions as recipes onto the issue of marriage:
"Marriage was something that, until only quite recently, seemed to be securely in the hands of married people. It was what married people had engaged in, and certainly not a special privilege that had been extended to them to the exclusion of other human beings. Who, after all, could not get married? You didn’t have to be straight; you could be gay. So what? Marriage was the most liberal institution known to man. It opened its arms to the ugly and the homely as well as to the beautiful and the stunning. Was it defined as between a man and a woman? Well, yes, but only in the sense that a cheese omelet is defined as an egg and some cheese — without the least intention of insulting either orange juice or toast by their omission from this definition. Orange juice and toast are fine things in themselves — you just can’t make an omelet out of them."
I don't think I could explain it any better. It feels odd to even be discussing marriage as being "defined" as between a man and a woman. Marriage is something that married people engage in. Loving committed relationships between two people of the same sex may be beautiful things, but what they're engaging in is simply not marriage.
The core purpose of marriage is to channel procreative potential into responsible childbearing. Although I don't yet have children, as a wife, I know this all too well. So many times have I worriedly hovered over a pregnancy test thinking, please, not yet. No birth control method is 100% effective. I personally know of two couples who were told they were infertile only to be surprised to find themselves pregnant later on down the road. If I were to get pregnant at an inconvenient time, our marriage would be the bedrock for creating a happy family in less than ideal circumstances. Procreation, even just the possibility of it, is a huge responsibility. This is why marriage developed, even before civilization itself. To redefine marriage so that procreative potential no longer has a role seems reckless to me.
The core of marriage is simply the fact that the love between a man and woman, their act of passion, their physical intimacy, can produce a new life. This simple beautiful fact is the reason marriage exists in the first place. It's the reason that some species of birds mate for life. It's a natural thing. Now, of course I understand that homosexuality is a natural thing as well. But it's a different thing. It's a natural deviation from the norm. Deviations happen, and they are by and large good things. Healthy deviation is absolutely required for a vibrant culture and civilization. Too much conformity stifles and suffocates. I love the homosexuals in my life, and I believe they should not only be tolerated, but embraced and celebrated. But that still doesn't make their relationships marriages.
Many who advocate for gay marriage say that the main purpose of marriage is love. Of course, love is extremely important. Responsible procreation includes providing a stable and loving home to the offspring of the union. The problem with making love central to the definition of marriage is that love is none of the government's business. I can think of so many future scenarios where this new definition of marriage could be used to abuse the institution, and ultimately get government involved in the most intimate details of our lives.
For example, suppose the next generation, being very clever, decides to start marrying their college roommates to get certain legal or financial benefits, planning to divorce once they've found a true love and are ready for a "real" marriage. This would of course undermine the concept of marriage being about love. Then what happens if these loveless marriages are costing taxpayers more than they had intended to pay for these programs aimed at people in "real" marriages? Do the taxpayers demand that the government do romance or sexuality tests? Do we have to start enforcing love in marriages? Do you want to be required go to a government psychologist every year to prove that you're still in love with your spouse?
And what is our response when these kids say that they do love each other, just not sexually, and what does sex, or even love for that matter, really have to do with marriage anyway? After all, it's just an economic partnership of rights and responsibilities.
The whole line of reasoning reminds me of the view of sexuality I was taught growing up. I was taught that sex is a natural beautiful thing. I was not taught that it should be saved for marriage, or for a certain age or time in my life. I wasn't even explicitly taught that it should be with someone I loved. The love part was just assumed. Sex is something people who love each other just do naturally.
Of course, this view of sex was already discarding a number of previously assumed premises for sexual activity from past generations. Of course, lots of people had premarital sex in the past, but the belief that it was wrong set up an ideal that was generally respected, if not always achieved, and it guided sexual behavior into being relatively responsible. The view that I was taught had tossed out that ideal in order to make sure I would never feel ashamed or afraid of sex.
It was a well intentioned effort, and it worked, at first. I naturally started having sex, several years after puberty, with a person I loved. Then another person I loved. Then a person I didn't really love, but really liked. Then a person I just kinda liked. Then a person that I wanted to like me. Then a person I didn't really know. It went on like this for a couple years. I had no "shining example" that Lee Harris describes in the piece I linked above. Pretty soon, I was feeling ashamed and afraid of sex, and I didn't even know why. I was doing what made me happy in each given moment, but it was making me more and more unhappy in the long run.
I worry that the generation that grows up with the idea that marriage is just a thing that two people who love each other do naturally will end up with the same driftless and painful experience I had with sex. If it was so easy to detach love from sex, it will be just as easy to detach it from marriage. Sex without love can still be pleasurable. Marriage without love can still bring about plenty of economic benefits.
It all comes down to making babies. It's the reason the sex act exists in the first place. It's the reason marriage exists in the first place. What a wonderful blessing to be human and take joy in these things, joy that goes above and beyond their primary function. But it would be a dangerous social experiment to redefine marriage so that its primary purpose is no longer recognized. How could detaching an institution from its core function improve it in the slightest? I have yet to hear a persuasive response to this question.
No comments:
Post a Comment