ARE ALL COUPLES ALIKE? THE RESEARCH: Dan Cere

Thank you Dale for taking up this question. Your response underscores the current malaise in the academy. Advocates of same-sex marriage make much of the fact that "researchers" discover "no difference" between homosexual and heterosexual relationships when it comes to the basic dynamics of love, compatibility and intimacy. This argument for the similarity of all committed sexually-bonded relationships grounds recent Canadian court judgments: "marriage must be open to same-sex couples who live in long-term, committed, relationships--marriage-Like in everything but name--just as it is to heterosexual couples." (Ontario Court)

The scholarly authorities cited to support this thesis are typically proponents of "close relationship theory," a relatively new model of relationships that explicitly focuses on the "common" dynamics in all close sexually bonded relationships (see the authorities cited by Carpenter). The underlying thesis of close relationship theory is that all close dyadic relationships operate according to the same dynamics and values. Close relationship theory bleaches out the significance of embodied sexual difference and argues that all committed sexual bonds should be "subsumed under the broader construct of close or primary relationships." (John Scanzoni)

This slanted academic approach reflects broader cultural trends. According to Anthony Giddens, Britain's most renowned sociologist, popular culture is creating a new grammar of intimacy. In The Transformation of Intimacy and, more recently, in the prestigious Reith Lectures, Giddens argues that we are moving from a "marriage culture" to a culture which celebrates "pure relationship." A "pure relationship" is a relationship that has been stripped of any goal or end beyond the intrinsic emotional, psychological, or sexual satisfaction that the relationship brings to the adults involved. Marriage is subsumed and understood under the big tent of the "close relationship."

Not surprisingly this model is fine-tuned to discover exactly what it predicts: namely that same-sex couples reveal the same patterns of interpersonal intimacy evident in opposite-sex couples. But these core values turn out to be true for all relationships: sibling relationships, friendships, opposite-sex unions, parent-child attachments, same-sex unions, and so on. By inflating the notion of the "unitive" to this generic interpersonal intimacy, we bracket out the specificity of marriage as a form of life struggling with the unique challenges of bonding sexual difference.

Close relationship theory is not designed to generate any conceptual insight into fundamental facets of human life: the fact of sexual difference; the significance of sexual complementarity; the important place of male/female bonding in human life; the procreativity of heterosexual bonding; the unique social ecology of heterosexual parenting which bonds children to their biological parents; and the rich genealogical nature of heterosexual family ties.

A public discourse that screens out any meaningful recognition of the remarkable significance of human sexual dimorphism (male/female) and reproduction in human life must entail a fundamental change in the way marriage is viewed. The "close relationship" paradigm is relatively new, barely a generation old. To date it has not been subject to any sustained or critical evaluation within the academy. Critical review will come since the limitations of this approach are glaring. However, in the meantime close relationship theory already is beginning to seriously shape our thinking about marriage and family law. The pervasive influence of this approach can be seen in recent recommendations and reports by the Law Commission of Canada, Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Adult Relationships (2001) and the American Law Institute, Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (2002).

The inability of current academic theories to recognize significant differences between forms of homosexual and heterosexual bonding, differences that generate very disparate social ecologies, should raise serious questions about the conceptual blinders of these theories. Our courts and legislatures should resist pressure to build law on views and theories that may be new and fashionable, but still awaiting the tests of time and rigorous academic debate. This is particularly so when these new theories and perspectives seem so oddly out of step with core features of marriage pervasive throughout history and across cultures.







posted by maggie at 12:53 PM | Link |

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