Stumble it!A secular argument against same sex marriage?
posted in Society by themaiden |I always browse, at least once, the blogs of those who comment here. Doing so leads me to some interesting things. I found, for example, at Section405, an attempt to make a secular case against same sex marriage.
The argument turns on the idea that “civil marriage is primarily for the protection of women and children”.
The problem with same sex marriage, then, is that there are no parties in need of protection. In what way does a man need to be protected from being abandoned by another man? It’s a little silly, isn’t it?
Yes, there is something silly going on here, several things in fact. Lets begin with the most obvious.
I what way does a woman need protection from being abandoned by a man? Yes, yes, get that manly macho belly-laugh out of your system.
“Huh-hu… man gets dumped by his boyfriend… huh-hu… women… tee-hee… can’t take care of themselves… chuckle… menfolks don’t need nobody… huh-hu…”
Get that out of your system, and think about it. And yes…
“The male-female relationship is, by historical presumption, imbalanced and calls for the female to be protected from abandonment — the same sex union is not. The straight union is, shall we say, “pregnant” with the possibility of children — the gay union is not”
… get that out of your system too. In what ways do women need protection from abandonment? Answer: They need protection when they’ve given up their careers for years on end in order to take care of home and family while their husband works outside the home to fund the enterprise. Under those conditions, divorce results in a serious hardship for the woman. Her ‘protection’ under the law isn’t so much protection as it is due, though deferred, payment for services rendered plus punitive damages against the husband for breaking his promise to feed and house his wife if she sacrifices her ability to feed and house herself– that is, if she gives up her career. Granted, this situation doesn’t apply terribly often anymore, but it is the circumstance under which a woman would need ‘protection’ from abandonment by her big strong man. Despite the chuckles and tee-hees, any man in similar circumstances would need the same legal protection, so we can strike the idea that there would be “no parties in need of protection” where the subject of same-sex marriage is concerned. There clearly could, in fact, be such parties. One need only apply the same conditions that apply when women might need protection. What this means is that even if we assume the premise that “civil marriage is primarily for the protection of women and children”, the argument that same sex marriage ought not be sanctioned because “they do not fulfill the purpose of the government sanctioning marriages in the first place” just doesn’t work. But I want to step back a bit now and take the wind out of that premise.
Marriage, in the west, has rarely, if ever, been about protecting women and children, unless, of course, ‘protecting’ means ‘controlling’. More importantly, governments, the US government included, sanctioned marriage long before divorce was common enough for anyone to consider protecting women in case a marriage collapsed. In other words, protecting women and children via alimony and child support can’t possibly be the reason that government sanctions marriage, as governments were sanctioning marriage at a time when divorce simply wasn’t a major consideration. And that really does bring us around to the “first question we’ve got to answer… why is the government involved in any way in the first place”?
Governments sanction marriage for a number of different reasons, most of them quite obviously religious, some of them civil or legal, all of them filtered through to us via convoluted channels of common law, church decree, and tradition. And damned near all of them are archaic, a point I don’t intend to argue right now. I will argue though that government’s role in this matter ought to be limited, and that those limits are defined by the legal and civil considerations, and that the whole enterprise should be driven by a concern for individual liberties. I hasten to add that those considerations are considerable more complicated than the naive idea that civil marriage protects women. I’ll quote from comments I made in another thread.
There a couple of approaches to defining marriage. One approach is a primarily religious one– marriage is a sacrament, two become one flesh, that sort of thing. People, as individuals, may believe as they will on such matters. But marriage also has a set of, essentially, legal contracts that go along with it. Spouses have power of attorney in many circumstances. Spouses can share insurance. Spouses can get loans together with a bit less trouble than non-spouses. I’m sure you can think of more examples. Marriage, in effect, rolls thousands of dollars worth of fees, fines, and paperwork into one relatively cheap package.
It is within this legal arena, and only within it, that government has any business. Consequently, the only definition of marriage I am willing to offer and that definition would be a list of more or less standardized legal obligations between the parties– power of attorney in case of injury, etc.
Why can’t we just settle for ‘domestic partnership’ then? Frankly, I’d like to see all marriages become domestic partnerships legally. That would keep government out of religion and religion out of government, and it doesn’t limit anyone’s right to make of marriage whatever significance he or she desires, religious or not.
Given that so many people on all sides of the issue have terribly romantic views of marriage, it is, practically speaking, probably going to be easier the expand the legal definition of ‘marriage’ than it would be to demote legal marriage. Ultimately, though, it really makes little difference as long as either ‘domestic partnership’ or ‘marriage’ encompasses all the forms that free people might be inclined to choose.
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