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 Monday, October 24, 2005
HOW MANY MARRIAGE CULTURES?--CULTURAL CONFIDENCE REDUX: Eve
Well okay, but why can't marriage fulfill all these needs at once? A few reasons for doubt: 1. Gay marriage is being promoted specifically because, according to its proponents, heterosexual and homosexual coupling have no differences that are important to marriage. I really hope I've made clear that I think that's just not true. Both might be well and dandy, but they have obvious, big honking differences. (For one thing, in a heterosexual coupling, the risks the two parties run are very different; the man has a very different set of possible risks and rewards from the set the woman faces.) Again, this is why even cultures that did think at least some forms of homosexual coupling were a-okay did not institute same-sex marriage. Changing a universal social institution based on a falsehood strikes me as a really bad idea; maybe it's just me. 2. Because of the differences in "sexual ecology" between heterosexual and homosexual couples, different sexual ethics develop. Some needs are just much, much more pressing for people who sleep with the opposite sex, and so it shouldn't be surprising that the gay community has not developed the same sexual ethics as (the healthier parts of) the community at large. (I'm sorry for this switching back and forth between "gay" and "homosexual" and "people who sleep with..." terminology, by the way. I'm trying to use "gay" when I mean the contemporary conception of gay identity, "homosexual" and "heterosexual" only as adjectives, and "people who sleep with..." to indicate biological and to some extent social facts that don't vary based on what your underlying sexual orientation might be.) I can't think of any actual gay person, off the top of my head, who advocates abstinence before gay marriage. (Assuming here not only legal marriage but e.g. religious commitment ceremonies.) I can only think of one actual gay person who says everybody should get married (Jonathan Rauch, of course). I mean, David Brooks might say all that stuff, and so if gay people want to do what David Brooks says then I'm sure his words will be quite effective. But there's a reason the gay community has even less "cultural confidence" in the hardest parts of a marriage culture than the broader community does. It's not because gay people are bad. It's because homosexual relationships don't interact with the hardest parts of a marriage culture the same way heterosexual relationships do. Some of the hardest parts, homosexual relationships don't need as desperately: for example, the part about not having sex with anybody out of wedlock. Other "hardest parts" bring with them corresponding rewards that are less available to gay couples: for example, if you stick by your children's mother through thick and thin, it might be really painful but she's the mother of your children, and the reward of contact with one's own children is pretty huge. (Obviously, yes, contact with children who aren't yours biologically, but whom you love dearly, is also deeply rewarding--that's the source of all those custody disputes following breakups of same-sex couples. All I'm saying is there's an especial power in the biological tie. This reward is open to gay couples, it's just not as deeply embedded in muscle and blood and DNA. ...Also, it's a lot easier to understand why you should keep your family together when the choices are: kids raised by their own mom and dad, or kids raised by their mom and her new partner. It's harder to understand the moral weight that would impel you to stay if the choices are: kids raised by their own mom and her current partner, or kids raised by their own mom and a new partner she loves better. Again, there are still reasons to stay--the kids have grown to know and love you, for example--but there's a special responsibility to the children you create, the children who are the physical fruit of your union. Anyway, digressing again. My main point is that this often very difficult aspect is less compelling for gay couples--not "not compelling at all," but less compelling.) A society's marriage culture should be judged on how well it gets people to do the hard things. What the hard things are will likely vary. Some cultures and subcultures will be wedding-obsessed, so getting people to the altar eventually is a lot easier than getting them to stick together once married; other cultures and subcultures will find it difficult even to get people to the nuptials. 3. At a time when the current crisis requires people who sleep with the opposite sex to undergo a serious attitude adjustment--at a time when they're the problem (i.e. most times, but especially now)--it seems to me that incorporating relationships that for understandable reasons have a different sexual ecology is a terrible idea. I believe the immediate result of gay marriage would be some conflicted combination of: a. a two-tiered marriage culture. People who sleep with the opposite sex will still be exhorted to do all the very difficult things they need to do to prevent chaos. People who sleep with the same sex will have marriage as an option--an option which may well bring familial and social praise, but which is not an imperative, and in which the greatest rewards are personal and existential. The two tiers will have sharply differing expectations surrounding children (should you have 'em? how do you get 'em?), premarital sexual activity, and probably sexual fidelity. This possibility does at least attempt to respond to the underlying facts of human nature; however, it's very, very hard to have two things called "marriage" that have such different pressures and do such different things. Part of the point of naming something is to distinguish it from other things. If something has the same name as another thing, we expect them to be similar in the most important respects. Thus the respects in which they differ are considered unimportant; leading us to option b). b. a genderless marriage culture, a.k.a. an untruth. Homosexual and heterosexual coupling will be treated as if they have the same sexual ecology, the same inherent risks and rewards. The importance of biological ties will be ignored, and people who insist that children need their own married moms and dads, not any set of "parents," will be stigmatized as bigots. c. a total rejection of the concept of "gay marriage." Lots and lots of Americans just won't believe it--they won't think it's a real marriage. That will, as I said here, affect how they view "marriage promotion" and affect public schools' willingness to teach about marriage. On a broader level, the public consensus about which people are married will decay, and the public meaning of marriage will be further damaged. Lots of Americans won't understand why they're being asked to honor relationships they believe to be deeply morally wrong. Some, generally those related to people in gay marriages, will retreat into the belief that whatever makes their wonderful son/niece/grandchild happy can't be bad. Of course, that perspective doesn't really help you when the marriage doesn't make the beloved relative happy any longer. Many others will retreat into a sharp separation of the legal and religious aspects of marriage. This has happened before (cf. St. Valentine), but it hasn't been good--there's a reason every culture big enough to build cities has made law a major thread in the tapestry of its marriage culture. Most people will end up in some muddled mixture of all three perspectives. |
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The importance of biological ties will be ignored, and people who insist that children need their own married moms and dads, not any set of "parents," will be stigmatized as bigots.
Oh, for heaven's sake, Eve. You ought to be better than this!
So adoption is fundamentally wrong? Children ought to be left with their own biological mother and father, no matter what?
So AID and other fertility treatments are fundamentally wrong? No woman ought to receive AID, because it means the child born won't be living with their biological mother and father?
Divorce ought to be banned, or if it happens a divorced woman with children (or a divorced man with children) ought not to be allowed to remarry?
Do you really believe all of the above? If not, for heaven's sake, correct what you said to what you meant, whatever it was.
I have to agree with J. that this is a bit of a lazy argument as well as being "tired" in the sense of beating the bigot drum.
I also can't help to wonder if you've "mystified" heterosexual marriage becuase it is the "other" for you; that cultural norm you've both rejected and yearn for. It is the relationship you know you should have, but don't want to have. Anytime something is so inaccessible, we tend to mystify it and endear it with overamplified meaning.
It's funny you talk about the "chaos" while also talking about Europe's fertility decline. Maybe sex doesn't create babies and create chaos, thus marriage takes on a different meaning. You seem stuck in a 1950s Catholic version of sexulity where women are at the complete mercy of their biology and couples are unable to really manage reproduction. Yes, that's the way it was "traditionally," but it's not the way it needs to be now.
Eve,
I know this is asking a lot, but I am curious how your own ambivilance about your sexuailty plays into this script. You describe yourself as a lesbian and you remain celibate to be faithful, yet you also believe lesbians and gays shouldn't be married. That's deeply evolved, deeply self-hating, or both.
If your sexual orientation were more integrated--and you viewed it with less spiritual ambivilance--I wonder if your views would be different? For gays and lesbians who are religious but don't believe it is necessary to be self-flaggelating to the point of being both celibate and opposed to marriage, isn't it possible that marriage can have the spiritual meaning you think only heterosexuals can have? Esepcially for gay men, who have seen the "chaos" and consequences of their sexuality due to AIDS, isn't it possible that marriage can serve a similar purpose?
Almost anything is possible. But that is the point, isn't it?
Anytime something is so inaccessible, we tend to mystify it and endear it with overamplified meaning.
That is a good description of the emotionalism that hovers like the Goodyear blimp over the SSM side of the stadium.
The overamplified meaning of SSM is the oversimplified prototypical single-sexed relationship to which some few lesbians and gays aspire and the vast majority reject, mock, or consider to be merely one of a plethora of options, each as valid as the other, and altogether exhaulting the supreme moral superiority of diversity.
OK, let me try to answer stuff one thing at a time. Apologies in advance for length.
Jesurgislac, I'm not sure quite what question you're asking about adoption. I think you're asking two things: 1. If adoption is okay, doesn't that mean kids don't need their own mom and dad?, and 2. If married parents benefit adopted kids, wouldn't same-sex marriage benefit children adopted by gay couples more than, e.g., second-parent adoption would?
Let me take those one at a time.
1. I honestly don't get this argument at all. To me, it's as if you said, "Well, widows raise children well all the time. Doesn't that mean kids don't need their fathers, and so single motherhood is jim dandy for kids?"
Adoption is a _response to a breakdown_ in the ordinary/normative/basic family structure, not an _alternative_ to that structure. Divorces, when the marriage is abusive or high-conflict, are the same thing.
I guess I didn't think I needed to say that there are awful situations in which staying with their married mom and dad would be _harmful_ to children. Obviously those situations exist. I don't think those situations in any way suggest that intentionally creating situations in which children will not know or live with their mom and dad is a good idea. Cf. above re widows vs. single mothers.
2. I don't know the answer to this question. I would not be surprised if, at least in the short term, same-sex marriage provided some benefit to children adopted by gay couples, above and beyond what a second-parent adoption would provide. I would expect this effect to be marginal, and also would not be surprised if _no_ such effect could be discerned.
Adoption works, I think, because a) everyone knows it's a response to the needs of a child who's already in a terrible situation.
b) adoptive parents are screened. I expect this screening is vigorous precisely because we recognize that biological ties strengthen parents' commitment to their children and their children's other parent, and so adoption attempts to make up for the lack of that biological link by screening potential parents.
c) adoption models itself very closely on the existing sexual ecology and on existing models of marriage and family life. It's not held up as an alternative ecology.
My argument throughout this series of posts has been that reshaping the sexual ecology of marriage to accommodate gay couples will (further) damage our marriage culture, (further) reduce the extent to which we can get men and women to do the "hardest parts" of restraining their sexuality outside of marriage and being fruitful within marriage, and (further) reduce the public meaning of marriage and the societal honor given to marriage. Adoption _relies_ on a strong underlying marriage culture, on which it models itself. When the underlying marriage culture decays, marriage will do much less for adoptive couples (same-sex or opposite-sex). It will also do much less for _all_ couples and for society at large.
Thus, even if same-sex marriage did provide some benefit to adoptive children of gay couples over and above what is provided by second-parent adoption (which I don't think is at all obvious), I would not expect this benefit to last past the first generation. That's the point of the "atheist cathedral" thing.
Other stuff in a moment.
Eve
More replying to Jesurgislac:
1. Yes, third-party reproduction (sperm/egg donation and surrogate motherhood) is wrong. I wrote a National Catholic Register column on this, so I don't think my views should come as much of a surprise.
http://www.ncregister.com/articulo.php?artkod=ODg=
2. As I said above, some divorces are good for children (when the marriage is abusive or high-conflict). Remarriage has at _best_ marginal benefits for children of the first marriage (some studies find remarriage is _worse_ than single parenting, some find it's slightly better than single parenting, some find it's about the same...), but, as far as I know, does benefit children born within the remarriage. (I could be wrong about the latter point--haven't seen enough of the literature.)
OK, on to other people.
Eve
>Adoption _relies_ on a strong
>underlying marriage culture, on which
>it models itself.
Well said, Eve.
Reply to anonymous #1: I find it odd that you see the impending demographic crisis in Europe as a point _against_ my contention that unmanaged heterosexuality causes chaos. I brought it up precisely to point out one kind of heterosexual chaos: the kind where people don't have enough babies to sustain their society. Like I said, the American and European heterosexual problems differ, but both are _big problems_.
Also, uh, if we've managed to make it so sex only makes babies when you want it to, nobody told the millions of women who experience unintended pregnancies every year.
Eve
Reply to anonymous #2: Hey, if trying to figure out my motivations gets in the way of seeing the points I'm trying to make, please feel free to imagine that a straight chick wrote all my posts! ...In other words, I don't think my views are sufficiently unique that they can only be explained via some combination of my religious beliefs and sexual orientation.
I also think it's kind of depressing that I've been analyzed as "self-hating" for advocating a worldview that requires major sacrifices on my part. (Yeah, I know, you said I could be "evolved" too, though I'm not really sure what that means!) I think acting right is really hard for most people. So anybody who advocates for acting right will be calling for serious sacrifices _on his own part_, not just for other people. (Although I should note that chastity is NOT the hardest thing my church asks of me!)
OK, done with this set of comments. Sorry I waited all day to reply--having one of those days.
Eve
If Eve is "self-hating," then most married "heterosexuals" are self-hating too, since we enter a covenant to bridle and confine the natural expression of our sexual desires.
Funny thing is, that we live longer and more satisfied lives, too.
Eve, thanks for clarifying.
Do you then join Maggie in believing that it's not necessary for adoptive parents to marry?
I brought it up precisely to point out one kind of heterosexual chaos: the kind where people don't have enough babies to sustain their society.
...which you do know isn't actually happening, anywhere in Europe?
Except that heterosexuals can get married and therefore express their love and sexuality with another person. Under Eve's approach, she doesn't beleive gays and lesbians are worthy of the marriage relationship and therefore God believes they should not be able to share their love and sexuality with another person.
She then takes it one step further and advocates that not only should she make that sacrifice to her faith and belief, but also she would deny that to people who don't share her faith and for people who don't believe that level of sacrifice is (a) expected by God or (b) necessary to be faithful.
>>I brought it up precisely to point out
>>one kind of heterosexual chaos: the
>>kind where people don't have enough
>>babies to sustain their society.
>..which you do know isn't actually
>happening, anywhere in Europe?
Eh? Everybody's lying, then?
(BTW, how the heck do you follow multiple threads on this crazy blog?)
holmegm said: Eh? Everybody's lying, then?
Well, I take it as read that the CIA Factbook isn't lying.
But the people who claim that European birth rate is so low it's creating a "demographic crisis" are wrong (I'd hate to presume "lying": maybe they read a lie and never bothered to check the facts behind it): in any European country I've checked (and I've checked quite a few of them) more babies are being born each year than people are dying, and you can look the figures up for yourself.
>Well, I take it as read that the CIA
>Factbook isn't lying.
Refreshing, for someone of your political bent ;)
Well, the CIA server is mighty slow ... the few European countries I've been able to check so far are basically even in birth/death rates.
What's the rate of change, I wonder? There must be *some* reason for the warnings. Has the growth rate been plunging? Is there a reason to expect it to stop at zero?
The first section of this post has some European fertility numbers:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129747279
Eve
>The first section of this post has some
>European fertility numbers:
>http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_10_16-2005_10_22.shtml#1129747279
So it looks like "replacement" rate is not obvious to the non-specialist (like me) would would think it would be 1. Thanks for the link :)
There already is a two-tiered marriage culture. If you don't have kids divorce just isn't that big of a problem as it would be if you did have kids. This flows naturally from the harm divorce does to kids. SSM won't change this.
Divorce harms more than the kids in that marriage. Divorce harms every marriage and stops people from marrying to begin with.
There must be *some* reason for the warnings.
Birth rates were declining in Europe over the past fifty years. But standards of health care have shot up - all European countries have considerably better health care systems than the US - and people just don't see the need to have children in large numbers unless they really want to. Some women do - I have a friend in England who has a neighbor with ten children - most women don't.
Also, no one feels that you have to have large numbers of children to support you in old age: good welfare systems mean that's no longer an issue.
And of course, ready access to contraception means that people see having children as a choice, not a requirement.
Is there a reason to expect it to stop at zero?
There seems no good reason to assume that the birth rate - which has levelled out in most EU countries - will not stay level.
Also, no one feels that you have to have large numbers of children to support you in old age: good welfare systems mean that's no longer an issue.
If that is what they feel, they got it laughably wrong and should think.
For example, the falsely feel-good assurance that the birth rate per 1000 population will level-out and stay static.......
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