DIVORCE ANALOGIES: Gabriel Rosenberg replies to Eve replying to Gabriel...

[The first post in this sequence is here.]

Eve Tushnet responds with an additional difference and a dispute. Her difference is that divorce is not viewed as an ideal, whereas same-sex marriage is. I agree with this difference, but I see SSM as upholding marriage itself as an ideal. For it is allowing marriage over the alternative of cohabitation. I don't see it changing whom the ideal spouse is. For most Jewish mothers the ideal will still be a doctor.

She disputes the claim that divorce is a bigger change in definition, since many societies have had rules for divorce whereas viewing one's spouse without regards to gender is a late twentieth century innovation. I agree that the latter is more novel, but marriage has been progressing in that direction since the early nineteenth century. Which is a bigger change in definition depends on what specific change we are referring to. In general I'd say the exit requirements of marriage are more fundamental to its definition than the entrance requirements. As for the specifics I do see certain changes in divorce laws as greater alterations than the change from egalitarian marriage to allowing same-sex marriage. In regards to Jewish divorce, I would note that even that was rather a novel concept from my understanding. I don't believe other cultures at that time allowed a woman to remarry after divorce. (A man could of course remarry, but then a man could remarry even without a divorce). But much of this dispute I think comes down to what changes are "definitional" and what is a variation within that definition, a topic about which I hope to write soon.

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posted by Eve at 2:15 AM | link

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