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Why Not Gender-Neutral Marriage?

Jill

I think it was Amp who I first heard the term “gender-neutral marriage” from, and it makes a lot of sense — particularly when put in the framework that Amanda presents in this fantastic post. After reading Dan Savage’s latest book about marriage equality, Amanda gets straight to the heart of the marriage issue, and presents what I think is the best feminist argument yet for gender-neutral marriage:

Basically, the reason that marriage is traditionally a male-female institution was that it was a property transaction and the property was the woman. Traditional marriage is institutionalized female slavery with a bit of slapdash romanticism to make it more palatable. Traditional marriage is legally dead; it died a long, long time ago. When marriage shifted from an ownership situation to a partnership, the “damage” was done and thank god for it. Without it being a legal method of enforcing male dominance over women, there’s no reason for the actual people inside the marriage to be a man and a woman.

The rest of the post is very good, so read the whole thing. I’ve written before that I’ve never heard a particularly compelling argument against gender-neutral marriage, and all the anti’s seem to come up with is “But traditional marriage…” So now that we’ve shown, as Amanda said, that “traditional marriage is dead” and this is a good thing for all involved (I think most conservatives would agree that the wife-as-chattel model isn’t the greatest), why agitate against gender-neutral marriage? What’s the argument for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples? Why do a man and a woman inherently do marriage better than a woman and a woman or a man and a man? I’m asking seriously here. I know a handful of social conservatives read this blog, and I’m really curious as to where you all weigh in. Go.

*And since I’m soliciting these opinions, I’d like to request that the left-leaning people on this blog (me, for example) take care not to attack the more conservative commentors. Debate away, please, but I’m the one asking for their views, so I’d like to make this a fairly open space for diverse opinions to be shared. You all are excellent at keeping discussions civil, but I know this topic can get heated — let’s keep it as calm as we can on both sides. Thanks!

57 thoughts on Why Not Gender-Neutral Marriage?

  1. I’ve never understood why the government has to be involved in marriage at all. Sure, there are tax implications. Get rid of them. There’s divorce and child custody law, but those can be handled in the courts as a contract dispute.

    There’s no real reason why the U.S. government has to sanction anyone’s marriage. Want a “traditional” marriage? Go talk to your priest, rabbi, minister, imam, or whatever. But why do two people need Uncle Sam’s permission to buy a ring, have a ceremony, move in together, and call themselves married?

  2. I used the gender-neutral marriage argument in a debate in ethics 101… yikes, almost 10 years ago. Nobody – NOBODY – was ready for a traditional marriage = sexist slavery argument back then except for my separatist feminist lesbian friends who didn’t think anyone should support the institution by getting married – least of all gay people. Funny how times change – no one predicted the massive visibility the culture war has granted queers. Ironically, the more opposition from freaks like Fred Phelps dish out, the more sympathy for queers they create, and the better life becomes for us. Thanks haters!

    To answer your question directly, there are no arguments against gender-neutral marriage that do not begin with the bigoted premise that queer=bad. (perhaps the bs slippery slope about polygamy is technically an argument) A bigot will spin all kinds of crazy arguments to justify their bigotry, but in the end it can be reduced to queer=bad. Cognitive dissonance keeps an individual from wanting to identify as a bigot, so said arguments are sincere, which is why they are silly to fight.

  3. There’s no real reason why the U.S. government has to sanction anyone’s marriage.

    Perhaps, but it does.

    But why do two people need Uncle Sam’s permission to buy a ring, have a ceremony, move in together, and call themselves married?

    Well, to get the protections of 1000+ privileges extended to currently married couples. Like this

  4. Conservatives may not openly support the literal woman-as-chattel model but when they talk about “traditional marriage” they are still talking about a dominant husband and a submissive wife. As recently as 1998 the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution saying women should “submit graciously” to their husbands. So their idea of marriage is very much based on two people who have specific roles because one is a man and one is a woman. Gender neutral marriage challenges not only conservative views of marriage, but of the differences between the sexes as well. For a long time I couldn’t figure out why same-sex marriage would be such a big deal, why people who it won’t effect at all were so up in arms. But it challenges the very idea of men and women having innate differences and different roles in society. There’s an essay called Marriage, Law and Gender: A Feminist Inquiry by Nan Hunter written in 1991 that makes this point really well. (Just as a disclaimr, the above interpretation is what I’ve gleaned from some social conservatives commentary on same-sex marriage and other poltical issues related to sex an gender, I’m not saying that’s how all social conservatives feel, but it is the best explanation, I’ve heard of why the issue of same-sex marriage is so explosive. I mean, besides plain old homophobia)

  5. The most common argument against gender-neutral marriage is that “marriage is intended to produce children.” It’s an extension of the idea that sex is not supposed to be inherently fun or life-affirming, and that the only reason you ought to have sex is to produce an heir. In a patriarchal culture, the only way to produce heirs is to severely limit the sexual rights of women – to sell them, to convince them that they want to be owned, and to enforce their monogamy with social conditioning, laws, and violence. It’s a really outdated system. As you pointed out, “traditional marriage” of the “my virgin daughter for your best goat” variety is long dead. But the myth of marriage still survives, and a lot of “traditional marriage” advocates buy into this network of assumptions without fully questioning them or even being fully aware of them. It’s an economic system backed by religious and social conditioning, but now that the economics are no longer relevant, only belief is left standing – and it’s really, really hard to argue belief, because many people have been taught that it’s sinful to examine their beliefs rationally.

  6. For a long time I couldn’t figure out why same-sex marriage would be such a big deal, why people who it won’t effect at all were so up in arms. But it challenges the very idea of men and women having innate differences and different roles in society.

    Blair: More than just threatening the idea that men and women have different roles in society, it also threatens the idea that the roles of men and women are mutually exclusive and not interchangable. There’s a striking issue in a marriage that isn’t a man and a woman: in a highly-symbolic (and thus, culturally pivotal) way, it shows that gender and sex do have a disconnect; that just because you are a man doesn’t mean you are masculine. That’s so threatening as to make some guys need to go out and jack up their Escalade and beat up faggots. Or something.

    Seriously, though, I think this plays a major role in why lots of things, including metrosexuality, drag queens, stay-at-home dads, feminism, and relationships between people who happen to be gay, are so threatening to intensely religious-conservative people. And if you people are out there — please don’t let me put words in your mouth (I hate it when it happens to me), so speak up and fill us in.

    PS — Jill, your posts of late have been awesome. No ass-kissing, just giving credit where it’s due. 🙂 Props!

  7. Gender matters when you’re connecting garden hoses or extension cords. The Christian view of marriage is similar: God made men and women different and complementary, together the image of God.

    Any good Baptist will have read their Bible enough to know that right after wives are called to submit to their husbands (in Ephesians), the husbands are called to love their wives as they love themselves. They are to follow Jesus’ example of love and sacrifice, and to desire the best for their wives.

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  9. Fine, but why do they have to drag the gays into their gender role panic? Is it really so scary that both my partner and I can use power tools and bake tarts?

  10. Aside from the property “issues” (more appropriately wealth and power management aspects of marriage) marriage is a social institution for the benefit of bride, groom their families and the community in which they will live. The marriage ceremony is a social device meant to impart on the bride and groom the solemnity and the seriousness of their commitment. You “marry” in front of witnesses to reinforce the promises (contract) that you are making. Stack on top that the morality of marriage applied by the clergy and it becomes clear that marriage is about persuading/coercing people to stay together. There are certainly good reasons for expecting people to stay together – well children being the primary and possibly only reason to do so. Human social history is replete with examples of why it is more often necessary or prudent that people not stay together. Children being the primary reason to do so as well.

    However, being married is not more moral than being in a unmarried monogamous and faithful relationship. You do not need a religious wedding to have a stable and long lived relationship. You do not need a religious wedding ceremony to “sanctify” a relationship, or to have children, or to raise children to be moral people. This in particular is hogwash considering the Judeo-Christian theological premise that God is all-knowing. If the creator is all knowing then a bride and groom can indulge every religious wedding tradition, their parents can spend huge amounts of money, they can invite hundreds of witnesses and stand in front of a member of the clergy and fool themselves or outright lie about their commitment. Likewise, two people can stand in the middle of the Sahara with no one else around, no fancy clothes, no witnesses and make promises to each other that are true. Clergy impart nothing on a married couple other than a stamp of approval from a man-made religious/social institution on another man-made social institution.

    Now, people should most assuredly be free to honor the traditions of their chosen religion. I do not expect churches to give up their traditions and marry people that fall outside them. I do not expect to people to abandon their faith or piety because of my beliefs and opinion. If their faith bolsters their resolve and gives them stability in their relationship that is great.

    OTOH I do not expect those who do believe to impose their man-made social restraints on others.

  12. “power tools” …perhaps that was an easy set up, but I’m still trying to double-entendre “bake tarts” into something sexual. Perhaps I’m not perverted enough.

  13. Is it really so scary that both my partner and I can use power tools and bake tarts?

    …and I can’t do either of these things.

  14. Is it really so scary that both my partner and I can use power tools and bake tarts?

    YES! See my earlier comment: Your being able to use power tools and not have to rely on someone else (namely, a woman) to bake you a tart is exactly what is pulling the fabric of our society apart.

  15. Traditional marriage is legally dead; it died a long, long time ago. When marriage shifted from an ownership situation to a partnership, the “damage” was done and thank god for it.

    Seriously?

    I mean, I’ve been following this debate on Alas and on Pandagon. And this seems to be a common sentiment. Does nobody else see a problem with this?

    I don’t want to hijack this thread, because I know Jill wants to hear some conservative voices on this. I just felt I couldn’t let this pass without finding out if anyone else saw this as problematic.

  16. And this seems to be a common sentiment. Does nobody else see a problem with this?

    Again, traditional marriage meaning women=chattel. I think Amanda’s statement is right on for a vast majority of Americans, even if some still hold onto the notion.

  17. What I don’t get about this “marriage is for children” arguement is why conservatives assume that gay people don’t want children. My girlfriend and I have 2-3 kids in our long term goals, being married will make it easier to have them but we’ll have them just the same. In fact, of all my young (18-25ish) gay/queer friends, I would say the ratio of wanting kids to not wanting kids is 5 to 1.

    So gay people now-a-days want kids and plan to have them. But we can’t marry because marriage is about children? Even though we almost all plan to have them? Huh? Can someone explain to me the sense in that?

  18. AB-

    What Amanda was talking about (and what I was referencing) was that this form of traditional marriage is dead in a legal sense. Yes, there are certainly many people whose marriages play out as an owner-chattel relationship, but the state isn’t legally mandating that they be that way. There’s a good argument to be made that opposite-sex marriage, because of its history and current construction, is inherently flawed and unequal and not a true “partnership” at all (I’m not sure I buy that argument, but I recognize it exists). However, I think you’d be a bit more hard-pressed to demonstrate that marital law is still written around the concept that a husband owns his wife.

    Although if you think I’m wrong, by all means argue away!

  20. I’m referring to marriage in more a legal and political sense.

    Forgive me, because for the past couple of weeks in Virginia, I’ve been following the story of a woman who left her abusive husband, got a restraining order, and when she showed up in court to renew the order and complain that he was continuously violating it, all it took was her estranged husband’s word that he wanted marriage counseling to get the judge to drop the order entirely. Predictably, her estranged husband showed up at her work in a cell-phone store, dumped gasoline on her, and lit her on fire.

    Another judge, being interviewed in the Washington Post, derided the idea of restraining orders and claimed that they give a woman a false sense of security, because after all, if some husband is gunning for his wife, it’s not like we can expect the courts to prevent that.

    And I look at this, and I’m wondering, how would this be reported in the media if it happened in Iran or Saudi Arabia? (Not trying to start that debate again, but…) Most people would look at that, shake their heads, and say, “What a shame that the courts enforce wifely submission like that!” And here, we chalk it up to one individual judge.

    Every time it happens.

    It confuses me a bit when other feminists who have no problem ‘connecting the dots’ with this stuff say that because (some) of the discriminatory laws have been changed, everything is all better. I don’t agree with that at all. I don’t think ‘traditional marriage’ died a long time ago. Not even close.

  21. What’s the argument for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples?

    I only know of three arguments that are internally consistent and that have any kind of intellectual traction.

    The first argument is the Hayekian argument. Societies evolve; their institutions fulfill functions; we generally do not adequately understand these institutions well enough to tinker with them. It’s better to leave them alone, or to let them evolve slowly over time, than to make them over wholesale. In the case of gay marriage, the Hayekian argument would run along the lines that its only been about 30 years since society became a little bit open to the idea of homosexual relationships; we haven’t had nearly enough time to assess whether open homosexual relationships will be bad for society, overall, or not. We should give the toleration experiment a few more generations to see how it shakes out before moving on to the normalization experiment.

    The second argument is the moral/religious argument. Homosexuality is morally objectionable. As a society, we have decided not to actively persecute homosexuals – it doesn’t stop them from being homosexual, it just makes them be less honest – but that doesn’t mean we embrace homosexuality as a normative lifestyle. We certainly don’t want the state to take this sexual minority and legally equalize its practice to that of heterosexual couples.

    The third argument is the pragmatic argument. I do not believe that the state should have the power to regulate the sexual morality and conduct of its citizenry. However, my fellow citizens by and large disagree. Very well; the state shall regulate the sexual morality of its citizens, particularly as expressed through the matrimonial formalization of sexual unions. That being the case, I want the state to enforce my sexual morality, not someone else’s. A state that (for example) legalizes gay marriage, while still restricting adult incest and polyamory, is exercising pragmatic political power and enforcing the will of a set of its citizens; in this case, the tolerant heterosexual and presumably much of the homosexual, communities. So this argument boils down to “the state has the power to regulate these things, and [this side] or [that side] has more votes, so we win.”

    Not how I’d arrange things, but I’m not king, yet.

  22. I’ve read that some native american two-spirits (individuals living outside of binary gender roles who may or may not have had gay sex) had more status because they were able to perform tasks of both binary genders – sometimes better than the “proper” gender.

    Maybe all you straighty’s should be scared. Homo’s do make better bank than the media, you know…

  23. It confuses me a bit when other feminists who have no problem ‘connecting the dots’ with this stuff say that because (some) of the discriminatory laws have been changed, everything is all better. I don’t agree with that at all. I don’t think ‘traditional marriage’ died a long time ago. Not even close.

    But you’re arguing that just because some sexist mechanisms remain in the institution that nothing has changed?

  24. Sarah:

    Children learn gender roles and parenting skills from their parents. The opposite-sex-marriage-only folks are afraid that children raised by two people but not two sexes will be somehow confused about their own gender role and confused about how to parent their subsequent children.

    I can’t say I agree with it, but I haven’t looked into it very deeply other than this effort just to understand the argument.

  25. Shankar Gupta- I think it make a really convinient bundling of a bunch of rights that a lot of people want all at once. What a hassle to have to work out a contract for every set of people who wanted some legal protections and declarations that they were attached!

    It’s just so common to want to declare a new next-of kin, to protect shared property and children in the event of a split, especially when compromises are made that leave one spouse forgoing income for their partnership. It’s useful to legally declare that two people are in it together, for all sorts of reasons. It seems like an individualized contract would be out of reach of many citizens, to their detriment.

    I don’t love calling it “marriage;” I think “civil union” is a fine term, but I like the EZ-partnership contract in concept, and marriage fits the bill.

  26. Although if you think I’m wrong, by all means argue away!

    Okay, I will!

    The one that pops to mind the most easily is that fact that in many states, marital rape has a lighter punishment than if you’re found guilty of raping some woman who isn’t your wife.

    Though in a broader sense, what I’m talking about is the way in which our national policies take ‘traditional marriage’ as the de facto reality in this country. And when you craft policy around the idea that everyone gets married, one partner is the breadwinner and the other stays home and takes care of the children, no one gets divorced, and things like domestic violence don’t happen, you get some laws that seriously disadvantage women. (See: Social security laws. Federal tax law.)

    And I suppose there is a part of me that sees this moment in our country as a great opportunity to push back and say, hey! That’s not what families look like anymore! And you have to create laws, and policies, that deal with us, not with some weird 50s ideal. When all that energy and potential is channeled into allowing gays to into marriage–conforming to outdated legal structures rather than demanding that new ones be formed to deal with new realities–it makes me a bit sad. I’m not going to argue against it, because it is discriminatory to deny gays the right to marry. I just see it as a bit of a lost opportunity for all of us, that’s all.

  27. Other policies that strike me as based upon antiquated, gendered notions of marriage:

    Unemployment law. The structure of education (in particular, the times that public school begins and ends). Welfare. National childcare policy (as in, we don’t have one).

  28. AB, you identify specific areas of concrete sexism, but I don’t follow your connection to marriage. If marital rape has a different punishment, that has to do with rape law, no? How would you change marriage law to impact marital rape punishments? How would you change marriage law to impact welfare, education or unemployment?

    It seems to me that you are identifying areas where discrimination and oppression exist and assigning blame to marriage law. Perhaps you feel that gay rights/marriage is a trivial battle that should wait until these other fights are won? Please correct me if I’m wrong.

  29. Robert, in your own eloquent way, you’ve highlighted why there’s not much to talk about on this issue. It’s a scrum over preferences.

    Lots of people think that this society should be able to regulate sexual morality, and lots don’t, and the level of rights accorded to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders is the front in that war. Lots of people find homosexuality and bisexuality morally objectionable and others don’t, and again the rights of the GLBT community is the front in the fight.

    I may use various arguments to try to persuade people or refute the other side’s propoganda (the need for a parent of each sex excludes all single parents; the idea that marriage is for procreation is a purely religious one without foundation in modern family law that I’m aware of), but that’s just tactics. What I really want is full legal and social equality for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender folk. Not only do I want them to be able to move into your neighborhood; I want peer pressure to force you to walk up to the front door and welcome them to the neighborhood. I want an America where, if someone won’t welcome the same sex couple to the neighborhood, everyone will look at that person like a hood-wearing member of the Klan who refuses to greet the new non-white families. In short, I do in fact want to shove full equality down the throats of people who don’t like it. Whether that happens through the courts or the political branches of government or mass mobilization, I don’t care (and in practice it will be all of the above). And if we’re not there twenty years from now, I’ll be just as intransigent in my commitment as I am today.

    Even with the backlash against gender-neutral marriage, it is still making headway. The referrenda are, with some minor exceptions, ramparts against something that has not happened, rather than roll-backs of progress made. When the Vermont Supremes mandated CUs, that was a radical move forward — now, civil union is the position of moderate conventional wisdom. Five years from now, there will probably be more states with gender-neutral marriage, but there certainly will not be less.

    So there you have it. The arguments we use are just pieces on a chess board. This is a battle of absolutes, and my side is winning. Don’t stand in the way of the train.

  30. IMHO, the “marriage is for having children” argument is the worst and the easiest to deconstruct. I agree with Blair that the main reason people are opposed to gay marriage (or gender neutral marriage) is because husbands and wives are supposed to have specific, prescribed roles, and one of the accusations thrown at feminism is always “feminists think men and women are the same or should be”. Also, a lot of people think that homosexual relations are “unnatural” and that straight marriage is the dominant paradigm throughout history. Maybe I’m too unconventional, but I’ve never really bought the whole “marriage is sacred” thing. Probably because almost all the adults I know are separated/divorced.

  31. I just want to add that I support civil rights for gays, but the slippery-slope argument sometimes holds me back, because call me old fashioned, but personally I’m really opposed to polygamy or adult incest. Any thoughts?

  32. This is a battle of absolutes, and my side is winning. Don’t stand in the way of the train.

    Perhaps. You’ve won the easy fights. We’ll see how well you do on the hard ones.

  33. Other Ryan–

    I think I answered this better in the comments on your blog. (Yo! Everyone go check out his blog!) Let me try to distill this down to something better than the answers I’ve been tossing off quickly.

    As I was saying to Jill earlier, the major problem I have with marriage is the way in which it, and the remnants of ‘traditional’ assumptions about it, fundamentally shape public policy (even policy which we don’t necessarily associate with marriage). In particular, how the government is set up to interact with people as “households,” as opposed to individuals. (That is, many of our rights, or entitlements, arise out of our membership in particular households rather than our status as individual citizens.) I think the most classic example of this is taxes: we don’t tax married couples as individuals, we tax the household. And that means that the *entire* “second” income is taxed as a higher, marginal rate. So if a couple has a child, in many cases it doesn’t make economic sense for both parents to work: the high tax rate, in addition to the lack of affordable child care–and the fact that virtually all public schools end class at 2 or 3pm means that even school-aged children require some sort of stop-gap childcare–makes it more sensible for the partner making less money, or who has worse fringe benefits, to stop working. On its face, this is a gender neutral policy. Applied to actual living, breathing human beings, three guesses for which partner drops out of the labor force for five or ten years. (Hint: it’s the one making 76 cents on the dollar, on average, to her partner.) This absence from the labor force has major effects on her social security entitlement–she can either take hers (which has taken a hit from lower lifetime earnings) or half of her husbands. Which would be fine, if the divorce rate wasn’t so high. There’s a reason that more elderly women than elderly men live in poverty.

    Yes, I concede it would be possible to go through and completely re-write the tax code, the social security law, and education policy to remove disadvantages to women. But it seems to me that when the alternative is brought up for gay marriage–why don’t we go through and create a civil union that grants the same rights to gay couples as straight couples?–many gender-neutral marriage advocates shoot it down as more impractical than simply letting gays into the marriage party. Well, from where I’m standing, it’s a lot easier to create a purely civil alternative to marriage (you know, that allows people to name their own kin, but still requires the government to deal with people based upon individual citizenship status rather than household membership) than it is to re-write enormous portions of federal code.

  34. Oh, and to clarify–yes, some of what I’m doing is identifying areas where discrimination and oppression exist and assigning blame to marriage law. But I think a pretty strong argument could be made that looking at something like traditional school hours–where kids get out by 3pm–that policy was created with the implicit assumption that there is one caregiver who stays at home. I mean, I know very few living-wage jobs that could support a family that also allow you to leave by 2:30. My point is, if we created policy without the assumption that of course only hetero-married couples have children, and of course in a marriage with children one partner stays home, you’d see school schedules that more closely followed work hours (9-5).

  35. Jill, Lauren, and everyone else: in light of the subject matter we’re discussing on this thread, I thought you’d all be interested to know that Maggie Gallagher’s guest blogging on the Volokh Conspiracy this week, stating…what else…why SSM is wrong and why “traditional” marriage must be preserved. Just go to the URL I provide, and you’ll not only find her introduction, but also links to other blog posts of hers discussing marriage laws & SSM:

    http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129552825

    Hope this helps:)

  36. SarahS:

    What I don’t get about this “marriage is for children” arguement is why conservatives assume that gay people don’t want children. My girlfriend and I have 2-3 kids in our long term goals, being married will make it easier to have them but we’ll have them just the same. In fact, of all my young (18-25ish) gay/queer friends, I would say the ratio of wanting kids to not wanting kids is 5 to 1.

    So gay people now-a-days want kids and plan to have them. But we can’t marry because marriage is about children? Even though we almost all plan to have them? Huh? Can someone explain to me the sense in that?

    Same here. I know…three or four people who have not said anything about having children, most with good reason. Everyone else is very interested in having children someday. No one has specifically said they didn’t want kids.

    I think it’s more that conservatives don’t want you to have children. To them, it’s not merely about providing children with a safe, happy, stable place to grow into adulthood. It’s about providing them with a mother and a father.

  38. Though in a broader sense, what I’m talking about is the way in which our national policies take ‘traditional marriage’ as the de facto reality in this country. And when you craft policy around the idea that everyone gets married, one partner is the breadwinner and the other stays home and takes care of the children, no one gets divorced, and things like domestic violence don’t happen, you get some laws that seriously disadvantage women. (See: Social security laws. Federal tax law.)

    But why wouldn’t all of those things change when marriage ceased to be traditional? Having several hundred thousand “married” couples in this country who cannot be easily separated into breadwinner/homemaker, etc., would provide a great reason to not make laws that assume all marriages follow that model. And if a purely civil alternative to marriage were created along the lines you suggest, it seems as though the tax code would be the only institution unaffected. On every other level, changes would be forced that would be equal to those necessary to revamp marriage.

  39. Sarah S, Piny, et al, of course conservatives don’t want you to have children. That’s because conservatives care about protecting children and know you’re only adopting them for the purposes of molestation. (Yes, I am being sarcastic.)

    Seriously, though, before gender-neutral/gay marriage could succeed, fundamental misunderstandings regarding homosexuality must be addressed. When someone self-identifies as homosexual, many people interpret that as a complete definition; i.e., being homosexual is the single defining charactersitic of your identity. This is especially problematic when (some, not all) religion is mixed in that says homosexuality is immoral. Therefore, by combining those issues, homosexuals are immoral as a default character judgment.

    Once someone holds that belief as truth, stereotypes follow: Homosexuals lack the moral ability to be monogamous. Homosexuals desire to make the world in their image by trying to convert others, especially children. Hence, homosexuals are child molesters. Homosexuals lack the ability to control their sexual urges as students in the seminary. Etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad inifitum.

    For gay marriage to have any hope of survival, this problematic connection between self-identification as homosexual and perceived a priori immorality must be broken.

  40. Well, I consider tax law a pretty big one, particularly given the gendered effect it has on employment patterns and thus poverty rates.

    I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the French experience with civil unions. In 1998, France created what was called “concubinage,” which was basically a form of civil union, in order to allow gays and lesbians to kinda-marry. Imagine their surprise when enormous numbers of young straight couples began opting for concubinage instead of marriage.

    I know that simply creating a civil alternative to marriage wouldn’t erase all the sexist policies that are based upon what families, and in particular married women, are “supposed to” look and act like. But I can’t help thinking that if there were a viable alternative to marriage–one that allowed us to create families in the way that made sense to us, rather than what hundreds of years of tradition tell us we should look like–it creates an opening for more change to be demanded. By de-centering married couples as the “default” in policy discussions, I do believe it could force a new way of dealing with families. For example: if large numbers of young straight couples, in addition to gay couples, decided to do civil unions instead of marriage, don’t you think the pressure would build to provide health benefits tax-free to all partners in a civil union? (Or better yet, to find a way to deliver health insurance that wasn’t based upon who you are sleeping with?)

    In a lot of ways, I see this as analogous to the integration of Italian and other Southern European immigrants to America in the early 20th century. When they first immigrated, a lot of rhetoric aimed at them was remarkably similar to the rhetoric used towards slaves. (They were naturally inferior on both mental and moral grounds, and so forth.) Through various ways, Southern European immigrants managed to “become white”–that is, attain the same privilege that Northern Europeans had in a racist society. It’s hard to begrudge them that–who could argue that they should have instead suffered from the effects of racism?–nevertheless, one can read that history and feel regret that the fight wasn’t for an end to a racist system, rather than simply achieving the privileges of a dominant group. I feel the same way about same-sex marriage: I have a hard time begrudging gay and lesbian couples the same privileges that straight married couples have, but I think that the more moral position is to find ways to challenge the institution rather than allow more people to benefit from it.

  41. Piny is right that changing marriage laws to be gender neutral would nicely trickle down (sorry!) into addressing many of the issues/inequalities that effect both women in traditional marriage and would neatly allow SSM. I think that’s part of why conservatives hate the idea of SSM – it does throw the entire institution into discussion. Of course to my mind that’s a good thing – and I speak as someone who’s been married for 20 years in a very feminist partnership.

  42. Basically, the reason that marriage is traditionally a male-female institution was that it was a property transaction and the property was the woman… Without it being a legal method of enforcing male dominance over women, there’s no reason for the actual people inside the marriage to be a man and a woman.

    I’m not sure that this is the whole truth (though it’s at least part of what marriage used to be).

    Another part of marriage has always been about is assigning rights over children of the marriage. That’s a reason it’s been male-female. Fathers have substantially more rights (and obligations) to their children if they are married to the mother. The law on this issue is in a rapid state of flux because there are more births outside of marriage and DNA test make demonstrating who is and who isn’t the daddy much easier. The difference between legitimacy and illegitimacy is less substantial than it was, but it still exists – married fathers tend to have automatic rights (and more rights) whereas unmarried fathers tend to have to aquire them.

    The part of marriage about giving a man some legal rights and obligations if his wife has their child could certainly be done away with. But the consequence of moving in this direction means giving fathers from a one-night stand a great deal of influence over the lives of the women who had their children (I think there are credible complaints about the result of this starting to be made in Austrialia).

    Frankly – I think this aspect of marriage may be neccessary – but I’m deeply sceptical about all the rest of the perks of marriage, the tax breaks and so on. I can’t see why gay couples can’t get them, and I also suspect they’re discriminatory against the unmarried, which leads me to think that no-one should get them.

    I’ve never understood why the government has to be involved in marriage at all… There’s divorce and child custody law, but those can be handled in the courts as a contract dispute.

    I think the justification for government involvement is that you can’t leave rights over children to be decided by private contracts negotiated between adults. These agreements shouldn’t have power over children as they aren’t parties to the contract.

  43. I just want to add that I support civil rights for gays, but the slippery-slope argument sometimes holds me back, because call me old fashioned, but personally I’m really opposed to polygamy or adult incest. Any thoughts?

    This really gets to me. There are sound biological reasons adult incest should not be practiced. I’m down with that.

    But why is everyone so afraid of polygamy? I see no more reason to object to a group of consenting adults entering into plural marriages than I do to object to two consenting same-sex adults entering into a monogamous marriage.

    Please note that I said “polygamy” and not “forcibly marrying underage girls.”

  44. The most common argument against gender-neutral marriage is that “marriage is intended to produce children.”

    Yes. And this pisses me off to no end. I’m straight and married, and when we tell people we are choosing not to have kids, they look at us funny and say, “Why did you get married?”

  45. My objection to polygamy and to all kinds of unions that many object to (such as the straw man examples of unions with animals or inanimate objects) is based on consent.

    Two individuals can consent to enter into a relationship as co-equals. More then two cannot. To put it another way of I marry you and then I want to marry someone else as well doesn’t that mean that you have to marry that person as well? If I die who gets what % of survivor’s benefits? If I marry a person and then ten years later I marry someone else as well and then tragically die the next day will the newer spouse get the same % of the estate? The only way you could start to have a conversation on polygamy is if it is understood that all parties must agree to marry all other parties concerned (making divorce court a real hoot). Polygamy as practiced in the Old Testament assumed that the women were closer to “property” then “partner” so in that context Polygamy was at least more practical from a legal standpoint.

    On the same score my dog may act as if she loves me (all that face licking and the welcome home happy dance), but can my dog ever really “consent” to be in a relationship with me? After all how would we know if the dog really loves me unless she is able to “date” other people? 🙂 And I don’t really need to marry my dog because the dog is my property under current law, I am a dog owner, the dog is not my roommate.

  46. Animal consent is a little OT, but do people who are not animal rights activists really take non-human consent seriously as a concept, or is it a flag-of-convenience argument? I eat meat, I wear leather. I recognize no animal rights. If I can kill it and skin it without its consent, then any restrictions on what I can do to it have to travel through reasoning other than consent.

    Also, Rick, while your argument takes care of some traditional polygamous cultures, it’s not an objection to an egalitarian polyamorous relationship now. Suppose two well-educated, affluent people living as a couple both want to take a third as a permanent partner. They both have a relationship with the new person, and both intend to be a spouse to the new partner. Where’s the problem of consent? An argument against this situation is going to have to depend on something other than consent.

  47. Two individuals can consent to enter into a relationship as co-equals. More then two cannot. To put it another way of I marry you and then I want to marry someone else as well doesn’t that mean that you have to marry that person as well?

    I don’t understand why you think more than two people can’t consent to marriage. Why is it impossible for two people to mutually love a third?

  48. Thomas and Moe,

    To address the notion of consent where animals are concerned, the whole idea of marriage, and please correct me if I am wrong, is a public declaration of a mutual partnership where each pledge to love, honor, blah, blah, blah, till death do us part. Animals can’t do that. Even in a purely civil context the idea is a public declaration of mutual care and coequal division of household assets. Which is why many states have prohibitions against drunk people getting married. Also, as I mentioned, you can do something with animals that makes marriage sort of irrelevant, you can own them which is even better then being married to them.

    As to the question of egalitarian polyamorous relationships sure, on one level your correct that more then two people can mutually agree on bringing a third to the party. And if all we were talking about was some religious or cultural ceremony of mutual love and affection then your right, consent doesn’t enter the equation.

    But marriage as far as the state is concerned is about property, benefits, and inheritance period. In a binary relationship the decisions are pretty cut and dried, there are no politics in a binary relationship, there is no majority to gang up on the minority. In fact I would submit that a binary relationship is the only kind completely devoid of politics, but I digress.

    Once a third party is enters the picture then there are issues of coercion to consider. These issues would probably not come up initially because our cozy threesome (or four or moresome) are all bathing in the glow of new found love. It’s when things get rocky that things could unravel, what if one partner wants a divorce but the other doesn’t? Who gets to decide? What if a schism happens in the relationship and one of the parties claims to have been coerced initially? Does the newly minted group marriage have to elect a marriage captain to make those decisions or are they left up to the participants to settle or to the courts if they can’t?

    I can imagine all kinds of things that would crop up. In any case the whole notion of a third persona in the relationship has to come up as an idea in one partner or the other. They would then introduce the prospective new partner to the existing one. At that very instance a coercive element is introduced to the relationship. What would, could the courts do? How would we ever know that all parties are acting in accordance with their own free will since the decision to sign off on the new relationship has implications on the existing one (subtle, yes but important)? I understand that we have some of these issues now, but they are mitigated to a great degree in a binary situation.

    Also implicit in this is an abandonment of the notion of exclusivity in the relationship. I mean if people want an “open” marriage or union, I don’t care really, but it makes the act of looking for a new partner irrelevant in a divorce case so there are volumes of new law that would have to be created to deal with this new class of relationship.

    Most importantly there is no such thing as coequals in anything other then a pure binary relationship. And once a marriage or civil union goes beyond two, the “co” equal becomes “no” equal, because now all decisions are a result of committee. Then you have the issues of benefits, property, and survivors rights which would complicate things to a fair-thee-well and while I acknowledge that this is not an issue of consent it is a good reason to limit the states interest in creating binary only relationships between unrelated people.

    Now having said all that, I am not against polygamy on moral grounds; I just think that the state should not be involved. I don’t even think that state should be involved in Marriage per se, except to sanction the union of unmarried people for the sake of establishing property, benefits, and inheritance which I also think would be a legal cluster f—k if extended to more then two people.

    So I guess you are both right in the sense that coercion is not the right way to talk about why I would be against the state sanctioning of polyamorous relationships, but I was trying not to write a post this long. 🙂

    But thanks for asking…

  49. Looking at marriage as a business partnership, which is essentially what it has become even on the hetero side, I don’t see the issue. Yeah, it gets more complicated the more people there are involved, but more complicated doesn’t mean impossible. All you are doing is making an extended family by choice rather than chance, basically.

    Try to find a copy of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Heinlein has an interesting take on polygamy in that book.

  51. Also, as I mentioned, you can do something with animals that makes marriage sort of irrelevant

    So that’s an argument against marrying animals, but not against bestiality?

    But marriage as far as the state is concerned is about property, benefits, and inheritance period

    If you mean this, the rest of what you say can be disregarded, because this one line fatally undermines everything that follows. Most of the purely economic relationships we enter into are not binary. People form various business combinations — general partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, limited liability partnerships, S-corps and C-corps, trusts, not-for-profit corporations … Each of these is an arrangement with a certain set of default rules, that allows the participants to contract for a bewilderingly complex array of rights and responsibilities regarding how to make decisions and dispose of assets. If three or four people can form an LLC to split an LP tranche in an undersea salvage venture that incorporates a management agreement under which another entity will front expenses for still another entity, under contract, to try to retrieve gold from a wreck from the 1860s …

    If a rich family can hold beneficial interests in a family trust that controls assets in an asset protection trust, some of the value of which is in an offshore asset-protection vehicle from which the trustee will remove the beneficial owners’ control in the event of a U.S. money judgment, and the assets of which are an operating business controlled by voting shares held by the beneficial owners themselves, which are subject to shareholder agreements …

    Then surely three people can cut a legally cognizable agreement that covers marital decision-making and lays out the survivorship rights.

    I’m suggesting here that you are simply unfamiliar with the state of the art in modern estate planning (nor an I — that’s not my practice area).

  52. Yeah, but then there’s always the whole “Who gets power of attorney?” question. If a woman’s married to two men, if she falls ill, who holds the power of attorney? You can’t split life-and-death decisions like you can split liability and inheritance.

  53. Maureen, I think Heinlein solved that one with his “line” marriage (well, not HIS line marriage ). Senior wife or senior husband has control by default, unless there’s some specific contractual arrangement. And then the chain of authority goes down the line by time served in the marriage.

    Line marriage has always struck me as being the one polygamous form that was viable in the real world, not just in cool SF novels about lunar rebellions.)

  54. And Heinlein also had the discussion of how incest wasn’t really bad if you had a genetic analysis to prove your children wouldn’t be freaks (which book it was I am forgetting, as I read them all about 15 years ago and haven’t touched them since).

  55. What can I say, Heinlein’s a good sexual Libertarian.

    Even though I’m a straight virgin-by-patience who likes the idea of monogamous pair-bonding, I have to say I agree with the guy. My sexual habits and preferences should in no way limit other people’s as long as it’s based on consent. Period.

    Maureen: Who gets power of attourney? Consult the living will. Failing a living will, rock scissors paper. Let me put in this way. I family/mariage/divorce/whatever law, there are all kind of messy situations now. I’ve never seen an argument that convinced me that polygamy (against, based on consent) would have any special problems that should trump its legality.

  56. Binky (et al):

    “Time Enough for Love” is the book title you are searching for. (Yup – big Heinlein fan right here. 🙂 He also touched on familial incest as being not necessarily a bad thing in “To Sail Beyond the Sunset”. Can’t say I agree with his views on that, but he did put forth an interesting premise….

    “Friday” also has some depictions of group marriage, and honestly, given appropriate mindsets in the individuals involved, it sounds very workable. *Especially* where children are concerned, as even after a death or divorcement, they still have a large, loving, and financially stable family to care for them. Granted, the initial paperwork would be a headache, and would require some creativity on the part of the lawyer, but so does any new shape of human interaction. I am quite certain that contract law was MUCH more simple back in the 18th or 19th centuries. But I could be wrong…. *shrug* For those who haven’t read these books, the addition of a new spouse was a group decision, and required consensus, I believe. Thus alleviating the jealousy factor. Interesting stuff that honestly sounds very reasonable, IF you can think past the one man/one woman model. Culturally, I don’t think we are there yet.

    Nice to see a civil discussion on why SSM may not be a great idea. While I am all for SSM — I see absolutely no way in which it will disrupt or diminish my own “traditional” marriage — it’s been nice to read actual thought out arguments that don’t boil down to “But God thinks it’s wrong!” Thanks, folks. Really.

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