Jason Kuznicki writes on marriage here. He notes:
The thesis: Marriage is in many ways a defense against the state. Marriage is many different things, but in a whole set of ways, it is an approach toward a more limited and more tractable form of government. Marriage — “state-sanctioned” marriage — is a defense of the home against the bureaucracy.
Marriage does a lot of things. Here are just a few of them: It helps to decide child custody and presumed parental obligations. It resolves nearly all questions about inheritance. It does the same with property and financial decision making. It settles who gets to make medical decisions. It determines who may have standing to sue for wrongful death. Whether rightly or wrongly, it helps to determine — and who may not — receive retirement benefits, even if those benefits come from a private company.
In each of these cases, I think it’s preferable to have a “default” state: It’s just better to have an understanding about how, barring alternate arrangements, everything is going to play out: When one spouse dies, the other gets the house, the kids, the right to sue. No fuss, no questions asked. Not even any probate in a lot of jurisdictions, as I understand it. When one spouse is incapacitated, you look to the other one for the life-and-death medical decisions. And so forth. In a time of crisis, you do not want a bunch of lawyers trying to argue their way through your private life. You just want to get on with the business at hand.
He continues to point out that this default state leaves those who don’t follow the default in some difficulty, a point on which there can be no reasonable disagreement (that is one on which no reasonable people, I think, can disagree). There are two other facets to this discussion which are salient, after which I’ll attempt to wrap up to a conclusion. And, much of this was reasoned and conceived during the fever dreams of the last two days for which I apologize in advance.
Marriage has been, historically and socially perhaps even “humanly”, been regarded as more than a contractual matter. A sacramental, liturgical, and eternal significance has almost universally been attached to this event. The phrase, of “pledging our troth before man and God”, is common because it is …, well, common. Marriage (first marriages at least) makes sense as celebration and virtually all cultures that aspect is there in abundance. There is also universally a religious aspect. At the very least, shared liturgical praxis is a to touch the sacred. Charles Taylor in A Secular Age begins by looking at the word “secular”. “Secular” comes from the Latin, saeculum, meaning a period of time. A liturgical rite, in a primal fashion, is a denial of time. It is meant to forge a connection with all the other rites that are the same. The Eucharist for example is a forging of a connection with the first Eucharist during that passover night almost 2000 years ago and every other Eucharist performed everywhere else since then. Marriage ceremonies are the same, a denial of time. This connection between the lover’s bound in marriage and eternity is almost as universal.
Over the last 500 years a concerted almost continuous effort to “civilize” Western culture has been ongoing. This effort has had a great deal of success. It has however been a great effort. Persuasion and teaching on “right behavior” has been performed at a variety of levels and through many organs, from the state, schools, churches, university and so on all have tried to brow beat the common herd (and the rest) to acting in a civilized manner. When one looks, for example, at the behavior of nobility during the War of the Roses and compares it their counterpart in the Elizabethan era or today, one comes to realize how far we have come down the road of civility. One of the crucial elements in passing down the advances and instilling “right behavior” in the next generation is in the raising children in stable two-parent families. Marriage is not just of interest to individuals, it is a crucial linchpin in retaining civilization. In the absence of families teaching their children how to behave and how to live and being a good example, the project, begun 500 years ago, will fail. The state has an interest in marriage, it is not just that people have in interest in marriage to protect them from the state.
So marriage, as a institution which naturally stands abreast interests of state and the sacred, in a polis which is allergic to notions of mixing church and state will not unsurprisingly find itself in the mix when marriage is at question. Is is natural that the Church (or the organizations which represent that which is sacred) have an abiding interest in marriage. So too does the state, in maintaining the future. A state which has divided the sacred and secular and pretends to only devote itself to the latter is going to find it a tricksy thing to find the correct line at which to make that divide. Alas, one of the problems for the gay couples in our community is that, while the individuals find some measure of protection in marriage, the state itself has much less to gain from protecting them. The last two generations have seen a relaxing of the “project” of civilizing man and the loss of manners surrounding us bespeaks this, especially as demonstrated by so many of the young. The state enforcement of standards of behavior and putting its intrusive fingers in marriage is not merely an annoyance. It is likely a necessary evil.
It’s funny, I see gay marriage and gay acceptance as being one link in the long chain of civilizing ourselves — following shortly after the end of acceptable racism and acceptable sexism. The conservative has found himself saying at every step (sorry for the mixed metaphor) “only that lest step, and no more.” It’s okay to abolish slavery, but segregation has to stay. Okay, women can vote, but by gosh employers should still be allowed to discriminate against them. Okay, fine, we’ll treat the women fairly, but I should be able to fire you for being gay! Okay fine, we won’t fire you, but we’re still not going to let you get adopt…
JA,
the problem is you’ve decide “bad=conservative” and “good=liberal/progressive” no matter how it actually turned out historically. Prohibition and Victorian mores were progressive ideas.
And on your women example, realize that might be a major reason behind the birth rate approaching unity in the Europe and the coastal America. We’ll see how the idea that nobody really needs to be raising kids farms out in the long run.
Prohibition and Victorian mores were progressive ideas.
I can see Prohibition — and I’m surely more libertarian than progressive on such issues — but what’s progressive about Victorian mores?
And on your women example, realize that might be a major reason behind the birth rate approaching unity in the Europe and the coastal America.
If only we could get the rest of the world on board (i.e. educated and wealthy) we’d really have that global warming problem licked.
We’ll see how the idea that nobody really needs to be raising kids farms out in the long run.
Straw man much?
I mean, you know how in the Bible, God tells Adam to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the world? Well, the world’s full. We can stop now.
JA,
Sraw-man? I think they’re connected (the they being notions of woman’s role in society and catastrophic demographic failure rates). And you need a certain rate to maintain your civilization especially if a big population out there which is doing its maintenance is Islamic.
Yes we don’t need to have 27 kids per couple. But 2.1 would be just fine.
And there’s nothing “progressive” in the modern sense about Victorian mores. It’s just back then, they were radical new and the “exciting” change being pressed onto society by the good progressives of Ladies Home Journal and the like. Those morals were pushed by the same crowd that brought Prohibition.
Progressives need to be honest. Yes y’all push for change, and sometimes change is good. But, more often than not, it isn’t, e.g., no-fault divorce and the complete destruction of the inner city nuclear family life. If you want to be proud of the one, own up to the other.
Great post. The great project does appear to be at risk of falling apart. No-fault divorce, secularism, evolution, abortion, feminism — all have their role in the matter. And I can’t at all understand JA’s idea that gay marriage would be a step toward a more civilized humanity. It’s a white-washed tomb. You can’t take something inherently wrong and perverse, dress it up in righteous clothes, and call it progress.
Sraw-man? I think they’re connected (the they being notions of woman’s role in society and catastrophic demographic failure rates).
I was referring to the claim that “nobody really needs to be raising kids.” I’ve never heard anybody, right or left, say that, and can’t imagine anybody who would.
And you need a certain rate to maintain your civilization especially if a big population out there which is doing its maintenance is Islamic.
But civilization is passed not just vertically, but laterally. And there’s always immigration. The U.S. population growth has been approximately linear for over a century. Anyway, if I were concerned about population growth, I’d be more worried about Asia or Africa than about Muslims.
It is unfortunate that humanity breeds for religiosity, lack of education, and poverty, I agree, but I don’t think the answer is to turn into fanatics — if we do, then what’s the point?
And there’s nothing “progressive” in the modern sense about Victorian mores. It’s just back then, they were radical new and the “exciting” change being pressed onto society by the good progressives of Ladies Home Journal and the like. Those morals were pushed by the same crowd that brought Prohibition.
Can you be more specific? Which mores?
Progressives need to be honest. Yes y’all push for change, and sometimes change is good. But, more often than not, it isn’t, e.g., no-fault divorce and the complete destruction of the inner city nuclear family life. If you want to be proud of the one, own up to the other.
Nobody has ever claimed that all change is good, or even that all past liberal changes have been good. For example, I’m glad welfare was reformed, as you well know. As far as “no-fault divorce” goes, did you know who signed the first such bill?
Yeah, that’d be Goldwater’s acolyte, Governor Ronald Reagan. Super liberal.
Jennifer:
And I can’t at all understand JA’s idea that gay marriage would be a step toward a more civilized humanity. It’s a white-washed tomb. You can’t take something inherently wrong and perverse, dress it up in righteous clothes, and call it progress.
Don’t you think people said those same things about allowing interracial marriage?