INEVITABLE TREND? Mark Barton replies to David Blankenhorn

David Blankenhorn writes: "More generally, since when do we--since when do William Safire and George Will--endorse a negative trend on the grounds that the trend is gaining momentum?"

Mark Barton: When it's a trend that it's clear one has no leverage to change. In the old days, society put immense legal and social sanctions in place against divorce. People weren't stupid--they knew going into marriage that there was a significant chance that it would end up being decades of misery. Yet they did it anyway in large part because they
were desperate to have sex, and society also put in place immense legal and social pressure against sex outside of marriage. At the time, this probably really was the least bad solution to a complex problem, and it was simple to maintain a consensus in favour of it.

Nowadays, however, there is reliable contraception. Since nobody but a few particularly doctrinaire Catholics (and Mormons) approve of banning contraception, and there are Supreme Court decisions ruling out banning it, there is no realistic prospect of having it banned. Unless it is banned, there is no realistic prospect of building a concensus that sex before marriage is wrong. Unless such a consensus is built there is no prospect of strongly discouraging divorce and still having people get married in the first place. Like it or not, (civil) marriage is not, and never again can be, more than a recognition and facilitation of the sort of commitment required to make it prudent to embark on bearing and raising children. And given that it's now a recognition of that level of commitment, there's no justification for making it opposite-sex only.
posted by Eve at 1:25 AM | link

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