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 Friday, October 03, 2003
THE UNBEATABLE INFERTILITY ARGUMENT: A Reader
It seems to me that Wally Kosterman is saying that the only reason infertile heterosexual couples aren't disqualified from marrying is because determining who is fertile and who isn't would be too costly and invasive. In other words, he would be glad to bar infertile couples from marrying if there was a practical way to root them out. I don't know for sure whether you agree with him or not, but you side with him. Are you saying that, as far as you're concerned, marriages by the infertile (and, additionally, all childless marriages) are basically shams? If you are, then I suppose I understand your viewpoint, but I doubt that there are very many people in the anti-SSM camp (most of whom are motivated by either religion or animus against homosexuals) who would agree with you. In fact, I'd think most people in the anti-SSM camp would be opposed to the insinuation that couples who don't intend on procreating should decline to marry. Thursday, October 02, 2003
WHY FIDELITY? Michael Triplett Responds
I'm glad my comments have spurred such interesting reactions. I actually don't disagree at all with the basic arguments that in opposite-sex relationships, sexual fidelity plays a complex role in bringing the couple together and focusing the marital energies on child raising. While I believe that a husband's reaction to his wife's infidelity is fueled by jealousy and possessiveness while the wife'' reaction is fueled by betrayal, there is no doubt that fidelity--in its ideal--plays a significant role in opposite-sex relationships. Sadly, heterosexuals (if you are to believe the literature) have failed miserably at reaching this ideal, all without the intrusion of same-sex marriages. As for same-sex relationships, I find it curious given the "female-centered" tone of much of the debate that no one ever talks about same-sex relationships between women. If we are to believe the literature, women/women relationships are more monogamous than women/men relationships and that monogamy plays a significant role in women/women relationships. If that is the case, then why the rejection of same-sex marriage when there exists a model that appears to have surpassed the heterosexual ideals of monogamy, fidelity, and child-rearing? Yes, it's easy to focus on male/male relationships because they are allegedly having all that "awful" non-monogamous sex which will destroy the institution of marriage. But what about female/female relationships where monogamy and fidelity are practiced successfully and at higher rates then heterosexuals? Under the "marriage is going to crumble because of all that sex" theory, lesbian relationships would actually strengthen marriage, provide a model for how heterosexuals should behave, and therefore should be endorsed. Or is it that they, too, will weaken marriage because . . .well . . . they don't have a man and a woman? Wednesday, October 01, 2003
NJ POLL ON SSM, CIVIL UNIONS: Maggie Gallagher
[A NJ reporter puts a determinedly optimistic look at poll results showing a majority in NJ oppose SSM. Two things of note for trend watchers--the emphasis on "social security benefits" and the reduction of marriage to a mere "rite," when separated from legal benefits. Actually many Christian conservatives agree with certain gay activists on this point: marriage is just a word or a rite, the real stuff of marriage is the set of legal benefits. Therefore offering civil unions is just the same as offering marriage. In my opinion, both these conceptions of marriage (as a right or as just a rite) are off-base. Subject for another day.] Excerpts below, full story HERE.] "Jerseyans support civil unions for gay couples:Poll shows liberal state attitude differs from national numbers."September 29, 2003 BY JUDY PEET New Jersey Star'Ledger Staff
WHY FIDELITY? Elizabeth Marquardt
Triplett's musings on fidelity as a "fem-thing" are sweet, if a little patronizing, but fidelity serves another purpose as well--focusing two parents on each other and their child while they are raising their child. Yes, same-sex sex doesn't produce children, but more and more same-sex couples are or would like to raise children. And I don't care if you're a woman, a man, transgender, or whatever else, if one member of a couple starts having sex with someone else then a likely by-product is jealousy. It's hard for a couple to be responsible, loving parents, staying together and working as a team to ensure the best for their child, when sexual jealousy has swept into the mix.
WHY FIDELITY? Maggie responds too
Gynocentric? Well, yes actually. I have a strong bias in favor of the belief that men are supposed to protect and defend women and children. Most good men I know operate on some deep level on this belief, and there would be more good men if women gave them the slightest encouragement to do so. But in this instance, I think in describing fidelity as a female thing, you are missing the mark widely. It is true that men can relate to women as friends-who-have-sex-together, what the kids call "fuck buddies." And it is true that women, in general, find this deeply distressing while men do not. But this kind of sexual relationship is not the basis of marriage, for men. Fidelity, female fidelity that is, is deeply important to men in marriage in ways that go way beyond conscious choice. Men may be faithful themselves as a concession to women, but the idea of another man being with their wife will drive most normal men beyond the bend. Male sexual jealousy is a deep force of nature, which as I pointed out earlier, does not seem to be tripped in the same way by male-male sexual relationships, if Triplett's commments are any indication. Tuesday, September 30, 2003
WHY FIDELITY? Elizabeth Marquardt repsonds to Triplett
[Elizabeth is an affiliate scholar at the Institute for American Values. You can read her blog at www.marriagemovement.org] Triplett argues: "Male couples who have been together for decades no longer define their relationship through sexual intimacy (nor do heterosexual relationships, for that matter). . .It's not about sex (just as heterosexual relationships often quit being "about sex"). " Yes, perhaps some or even many heterosexual couples, after many years together, no longer think of their relationship as being "about the sex," but if one person strays and starts having sex with someone else, it sure as hell becomes "about the sex."
WHY SEX? WHY FIDELITY?: Gabriel Rosenberg
I have said that marriage is not just about sex, but that does not at all mean I believe marriage has nothing to do with sex. Similarly, you have expressed the opinion that marriage is not just about love, but I doubt you think there is no connection between love and marriage. Marriage is about taking on a commitment to care for one another, in the fullest sense, for the rest of your life (for beter for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health.) This relationship is important because it makes us happier, healthier, more productive, more responsible, and more stable. We want people to turn to their spouse for help before turning elsewhere. Marriage is one of the best safety nets. The only other relationship that comes close to this, is parenthood which also consists of an obligation to care for another. Another time I will write in more detail about the similarities and key differences between these two relationships. Sex and love both help to create the desire to care for one another, and at the same time are part of the caring itself. As humans we have a natural desire to love and be loved. Although we cannot legislate love or mandate intercourse, we can do our best to help nurture it and prevent obstacles to it. We can require fidelity. We can provide community and government support to the marriage itself in many ways. The presence of a child makes it even more important for a couple to be married. Not only does the marriage help ensure both parents care for the child, but the care given to each other--financially and emotionally--makes it much easier to care for the child. Children also help to maintain the bonds of marriage. The child is yet another reason to care for the spouse. Like Jonathan I see marriage as defined by the vow. Love, sex, and babies are all connected to the needs and purposes of marriage, but none forms the essence of marriage or even an essential component without which marriage is impossible. Monday, September 29, 2003
WHY FIDELITY? Paul Nathanson
Triplett's comments on fidelity are interesting, especially his recognition of gynocentric biases. But I'm not sure that his purely emotional definition of fidelity is more useful than the emotional and sexual one preferred by women. Just as people can look outside of marriage for purely sexual needs, after all, they can do the same for purely emotional ones. Or is his definition purely emotional? He describes it as "sharing your most intimate and cherished moments." Well, that sounds like emotion to me (and could just as easily describe friendship as marriage). But frankly, I don't what he means by "loving only the person you have committed to." Historically and cross-culturally, what has bound people together in marriage has never been personal gratification as an end in itself (although that has usually been considered desirable) but communal needs (which have usually been backed up by theological claims). If marriage is to be entirely a matter of personal gratification, whether sexual or emotional, it will have no substance and will thus be ephemeral. That goes for both straight people, by the way, and gay people. This is what bothers me about the push for gay marriage. Legalizing it would institutionalize a notion of marriage that has already been impoverished almost beyond recognition.
THE UNBEATABLE INFERTILITY ARGUMENT: Wally Kosterman
[Wally is a Canadian engineer and father of four. He is responding to my earlier post on what is wrong with saying either a) because some married people do not have sex, marriage is not a sexual unions and/or b) because some infertile people marry, marriage has nothing to do with making babies.] Maggie I agree the arguments are absurd. These are among the fatuous arguments being presented up North (In Canada), seeming in an effort to decouple marriage from the capacity for procreation: because "infertile" couples are allowed to marry, they argue, the ability to procreate cannot be an important feature of marriage. I would suggest an alternate view. To begin with, the ability to produce children seems to me to be the sole and only justification for the state/ government to intervene into the institution of marriage. As a past Canadian Justice/ Prime Minister (PE Trudeau) once said "the nation has no business in the bedrooms of the nation." TRUE!. However it has EVERY business in the "nurseries of the nation." The production of new citizens through childbirth is of strategic importance to any state (in the same way that production of new citizens through immigration is also important). And if marriage is the preferred method for providing for children, then the state would be irresponsible not to be in the game. Conversely, If marriage is viewed as merely a committed, intimate personal relationship, the state should exit the business on the grounds that it is offensive to liberty for any state to regulate personal relationships as such, except as they affect the common good. I would suggest that if marriage is no more than a committed relationship, it does not warrant any particular status before the state. Therefore, its importance must necessarily come from its procreative dimension. Now, for practical reasons it would be unproductive and unncessarily cruel for marriage laws to focus on fertility directly. However, by focusing on marriage as a union between a man and a women, the procreative dimension is preserved at least by inference. The institution itself in law is more stable because gender is more permanent. The fact that it becomes "over inclusive" by including infertile couples is just a reasonable compromise --the cost of doing business.
MOTHERLOVE: Maggie Gallagher
On the subject of whether and why marriage requires us to "forsake all others," a reader wonders about my earlier post, "And motherhood is probably the most intense, sustained experience of erotic love most women know." Reader: "Hmmmm... you had best define "erotic". The word "erotic" almost universally refers to sexual desire and libido. "Agape" love, on the other hand, is a form of non-erotic, selfless love, of the sort shown by Jesus in his death on the cross. Calling motherhood an erotic experience may lead people to think that you enjoy sexual relations with your children." Dear Reader: The classical definition of eros is not sexual desire, per se (which can exist quite apart from love). An erotic love is that love which desires union with the beloved. In greek philosophy (imported into Catholic thought) eros is the love that desires or needs the other, agape is selfless love, or self-giving love. (Actually in the greek tradition agape probably originally meant something rather different: "fulfilled love" rather than "desiring love.") A student has eros for his teacher and a philosopher for wisdom itself. What I meant, in using this word to describe maternal love, is simply that women fall in love with their babies, and yearn for them in way for which the closest cognate is romantic love. A desire to touch, be close to and an identification with them, such that a baby's sufferiing is felt by the mother as her own suffering. Another person who is not an "other." Yet this intense emotional fusion with one's own baby does not imply exclusivity. Quite the opposite. Which only highlights Eve's question about why marriage in our culture is the one intimate relationship which does seem to ask us to forsake all others. As for maternal love, I can tell you about it from personal experience. I am insufficiently good Christian to speak from personal experience about the kind of love Jesus felt in dying on the cross, and whether Agape, rather than charity, is the right word to use. This would put us in a complex debate about love as a virtue versus love as a theological virtue, which we surely need not enter here. I would point out, in putting in a good word for eros, that when the Bible wants to describe the love of God for us human beings, it compares God's love to a) the love between parent and child and b) nuptial love.
WHY FIDELITY?: Michael Triplett
[Michael is a writer and lawyer in Washington D.C.] Interesting questions about how we define fidelity and whether the heterosexual definition of fidelity (which seems to be accepted as an ideal, but practiced much less frequently) should apply to same-sex relationships. What's interesting about your comments and the comments of Maggie Gallagher is the very "feminist" and "gynnocentric" way of looking at things. Every relationship is defined by how it effects women, every rule is defined by women's experiences, almost as though it impossible to imagine deep, intimate, relationships that don't involve women. Fidelity for men (and not just gay men) is often defined differently. Since sex can be separated from love and relationships, a deep committed relationship "forsaking all others" need not be sexually monogomous. Male couples who have been together for decades no longer define their relationship through sexual intimacy (nor do heterosexual relationships, for that matter). Instead, it's the day in, day out "forsaking all others, in sickness and in health" that keeps the relationship alive. It is "loving" only the person you have committed to, it is sharing your most intimate and cherished moments for that person, it is promising to be with that person until the end. It's not about sex (just as heterosexual relationships often quit being "about sex"). I concur that the female model of fidelity was created, in part, because of the concern about pregnancy and--from a legal standpoint--creating additional heirs who have a stake in property. But pregnancy is not an issue in same-sex relationships so that universal goal and rasion d'etre is gone. Why define all relationships through the female lens of fidelity when it is inapplicable to some relationships? |
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