ABOLITION OF MARRIAGE: Eve to David Blankenhorn

Recently David Blankenhorn, of the Institute for American Values and the Family Scholars weblog, has been wrestling with the possibility that "disestablishment"--leaving the definition of marriage to the private sector, and offering only "civil union" contracts--is the best of a lot of really lousy options in the battle over same-sex marriage. He writes, "All of the five possible legal solutions to the issue of same-sex couples -- redefinition of marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships, federal marriage amendment, and what I am calling disestablishment -- strike me as seriously flawed and likely to be harmful to children. I'm just wondering whether disestablishment might be, in the long run, the least harmful."

Later, he adds, "...[T]he proliferation of domestic partnership and civil union schemes is likely to blur the legal differences between marriage and cohabitation to a much greater degree than we currently expect. One advantage to disestablishment is that, instead of this emerging legal mush in which meaningful distinctions would largely evaporate, there would be a clear division between what the law does -- i.e., establish civil unions, which may be where the law is headed anyway, whether people on either side of the SSM debate want it or not -- and what the civil society says marriage is."

I've been really surprised that no one seems to have discussed the colossal problems "disestablishment" would pose for many of the other projects of the marriage movement in general, and David in particular. A few of the many examples that leap to mind: marital preferences in adoption law; the Healthy Marriage Initiative; public-school curricula that offer marriage education rather than "relationships" education. All of these projects require that the government take some stand as to what is or is not a marriage.

I understand that David is trying to find some way out of the rather hellacious cultural moment we find ourselves in. But I really do not see how disestablishment would make any of his larger cultural projects easier, or even less-awfully-hard.

Your thoughts?
posted by Eve at 3:12 PM | Link |

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