ALTERNATIVES TO MARRIAGE: Dale Carpenter

Maggie, I agree and I think Jon agrees that a "strong marriage culture" is a good thing for all of us, married or not. But whether the opposite-sex aspect of marriage is one of its "core assumptions" -- in the sense that it is an indispensable characteristic of marriage -- is the very question we are debating. I argue that the opposite-sex requirement is not an indispensable characteristic of marriage because the purposes the male-female union is said to serve -- procreating and raising children -- have never themselves been requisites of marriage. Besides that, gay couples right now are procreating and raising children, and doing a good job of it as far as we can tell, so they meet these purposes of marriage. Same-sex marriage is fast on its way to becoming a "cross-cultural" part of marriage too, though still a distinctly minority view.

Denying gay couples marriage hurts gay people in numerous very tangible ways, including by leaving their families exposed to multiple legal problems that would be at least eased by marriage. I am surprised you wrote the line, "And why should they [gays] have to be in a couple to get these problems solved?" I had thought that any conservative would prefer that gays be in stable, committed couples than that they be single, isolated and promiscuous.

I mean, Maggie, given that gays exist and are not going to be eliminated by any means acceptable to the American people, what is to be done about them? One approach is to bring gays into the mainstream of American life by including them in our most civilizing and normalizing institutions, including marriage. A second approach is to exclude them, marginalize, stigmatize, and ostracize them, pushing them toward more radical subversions of traditional values. I suppose a third approach is a sort of neglect, neither ostracize nor accept. But this third approach leaves all the problems of what to do about real, existing gay families that aren't going away and that are raising many real children.

This, I suppose is my meta-question: if not marriage, what is the conservative alternative to the full incorporation of gay people and gay families in American life? Is it converting gays to heterosexuality? Come on. Is it encouraging gays to form what will mostly be sexless and loveless marriages to opposite sex partners? Not gonna happen and a recipe for disaster if it did. Or is it giving these gay families at least some of the legal protections of marriage?

I offered my 8-question list seriously, not to get you to say finally and irrevocably what you would support short of marriage. (We can all change our minds.) But to get you to start thinking seriously about what the alternatives are for millions of gay Americans in loving relationships, raising children, and wanting to be a part of the country, not apart from the country.

So let's have your meta-answer and your 8 mini-answers, shall we?


posted by maggie at 12:52 PM | Link |

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