An Imaginary Contradiction

Rob Tisinai

January 7th, 2011

The Economist, the world’s premiere news magazine, is having a debate on same-sex marriage between Maggie Gallagher (of NOM) and Evan Wolfson (of Freedom to Marry).

One of the key issues is the question “What is Marriage?” The Economist called in a “featured guest” to the debate, Susan Meld Shell, who wrote:

Jonathan Rauch, a highly regarded and eloquent supporter of gay marriage, defines marriage as, essentially, a legally enforced, long-term relationship of mutual aid and support between two sexual partners. Marriage, he says, “is putting one person ahead of all others”. “If marriage means anything at all,” according to Mr Rauch, it is knowing “that there is someone out there for whom you are always first in line.”

We can here leave aside how odd this definition will sound to any married couple with young children, partners whose first responsibility is not obviously spousal. The point to note is Mr Rauch’s telling claim that marriage, as he understands it, is primarily directed towards relieving adult anxiety about facing catastrophe alone—an “elemental fear of abandonment” (ie, that no one will be “there for me”) that may well express deeply felt human needs and longings, but has little or nothing to do with parenthood as such, the main conjugal concern of historically liberal thinkers like Locke.

This is a bit of a straw man — there’s nothing exclusively catastrophic in Jonathan Rauch’s view of marriage.  And I agree with Rauch, perhaps not in every word he uses, but in this general conception of marriage. Yet I also agree with Ms. Shell that when you have children, your life’s chief responsibility is to ensure their safety, health, and development.

I disagree with Ms. Shell in thinking this is a contradiction.  Follow me on this.  In its idealized form:

  • Marriage means that when your health fails, you have a partner who is devoted to your care.
  • Marriage means that when you are in dire emotional straits, you have a partner who will support and protect you.
  • Marriage means that when you celebrate an achievement, you have a partner who feels that joy as if it’s their own.

AND…

  • Marriage means that in your life’s chief responsibility, you have a partner who will work with you and give their all.

No. Contradiction. At. All.

There’s more.  Will (my partner) just came into the office, and he’s much more practical, much less theoretical, than I.  He pointed out that when parents neglect each other in favor of their children, the family breaks down and children lose the security of a stable home.

He was a lifeguard as a teen, and he recalled that you can’t count on being able to save lives without someone backing you up — that’s not a theoretical stretch, but a lesson learned through practice and experience.  It made me think of the instruction we get on planes: if the oxygen mask drops, put on your own before helping your kids.

So, yes, whether you examine it logically or practically, whether kids are in the picture or not, marriage at its best means you will always have that partner who will come to your aid and for whom you are not just willing but happy to save and celebrate when the occasion arises.

Lost Choi

January 7th, 2011

Why do both sides of this debate always seem to forget that a great many of gay couples today are raising kids?

I’ve seen stats over the last couple of years that put the percentage somewhere between 30% and 40% of gay couples today have children in the household. I can understand why the Maggie Gallaghers of this world don’t want to deal with these stats, but I don’t understand why Evan Wolfson wouldn’t include this in his argument?

These are kids who are forced to live in homes with parents unable to marry, unable to legally prove they are a complete family unit. These are kids that are thus forced to be second-class citizens.

Why doesn’t Wolfson push this include this powerful argument as part of his definition & purpose of marriage?

Zoe Brain

January 8th, 2011

“Between two sexual partners”

Not necessarily. It’s possible for two people to love each other without being sexually attracted in any way.

Steve Ribisi

January 8th, 2011

As a gay married man with two young children, let me say that both aspects of marriage ring true. I know that my husband is there for me no matter what, just as he knows that I am there for him. The kids’ needs come first and sometimes the rigors of parenthood curtail the time and energy that my husband and I have to devote to each other. Sometimes our needs (need I say more?) have to be met in order to maintain the intimacy that we both crave. We can’t always put each other first anymore, but we can’t always be second in line either. It is a delicate balancing act. One day in the future the kids will be off on their own and my husband and I will essentially be back to being just the two of us on a daily basis. When that day comes, what will we do if we destroyed our marriage in the process of raising our kids? It is best for us, our children, and thinking ahead, our grandchildren if we preserve our marriage AND raise our kids together, as a family. Plus, if you think about it, kids are themselves a form of “crisis” that is best managed by two (or more) adults. I think single parents must at times have their backs against the wall without a second parent to call upon for help in the middle of the night when a little one wakes from a nightmare, or is sick with a fever, or any of the million other day-to-day challenges that come with raising children. By the way – having kids was the best thing that could have happened to us (if not to our sex lives).

Emily K

January 8th, 2011

I wish more gay men and women would refer to their spouses as husband and wife, or even “spouse,” instead of “partner.” That word makes it sound like a business arrangement, or even as simple as “science project partner” a la elementary school.

If we want marriage equality, we need to start treating our marriages as equal in every form. Otherwise it looks like we’re accepting of the “separate class” we’re put in by the state.

Emily K

January 8th, 2011

Zoe Brain is right, asexual couples DO get married.

Don

January 8th, 2011

My partner of 24 years became seriously ill three years, resulting in a liver transplant. Altho they mean well, I’m still amazed at the number of people, including his family members who should know better, who compliment me for staying with him and caring for him. I doubt that they would say that to a straight married man caring for his sick wife. And I doubt that they realize that saying this tells me they don’t think of us as a partners; it’s what you would say to a best friend that helps out.

Frijondi

January 8th, 2011

Funny thing, I have often heard people name the fear of facing old age alone as their primary motivation for having children. I’ve also seen some try to use that fear to intimidate and shame anyone who doesn’t want to have kids — “Who will take care of you when you’re old and sick?” Of course, there’s no guarantee your kids will actually do that, as anyone who works in a hospital could tell you.

Shell’s trying to do a subtle version of the old “gays are only interested in their selfish, individual pursuit of happiness, and don’t want to do the heavy lifting of perpetuating the species” canard. She’s more transparent than she realizes.

Timothy Kincaid

January 8th, 2011

I respect much of what Rausch has to say, but he doesn’t speak for me. He is not the Official Gay Spokesman.

So it is but a diversionary tactic on Shell’s part to say, “rather than discuss marriage, I’ll discuss what Rauch says about marriage.” It’s a variation on the strawman falacy.

Bill Ware

January 8th, 2011

It’s all but as adage in family counseling: The best way for a mother or father to care for their children is to love their husband or wife.

John P

January 8th, 2011

Even advice columnist John Rosemond, as conservative a “family values” man as you’re likely to find anywhere, consistently preaches that the primary relationship in a family with children is between the husband and wife. I wonder what he’d think of Maggie Gallagher’s “definition” and “core purpose” of the marital relationship.

TampaZeke

January 8th, 2011

I think the person makes the mistake of equating marriage and having a family. They are two separate but not mutually exclusive things. People who marry are taking their relationship to another level. Some then choose to take their relationship to yet ANOTHER level when they choose to expand their relationship by having children and making the relationship a three, four, five, or more-way relationship. The fact that many people marry who don’t talk this NEXT step in their relationship AND that people who haven’t taken the step of marriage before having children proves that neither “step” in relationship building is DEPENDENT on the other.

I had a child with my partner long before we married, mainly because there was nowhere we COULD marry when we had our son.

Everett

January 8th, 2011

I think Shell’s message is just a classic example of a heterosexual not knowing what the hell she/he is talking about when it comes to an institution such as marriage. That’s rather ironic considering that heterosexuals dream of being married from such a young age, and yet heterosexuals illustrate their thoughtlessness about the institution they aspire to when they speak like Shell.

Jason D

January 9th, 2011

Tampa,
I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying but this has me puzzled:

“..expand their relationship by having children and making the relationship a three, four, five, or more-way relationship.”

I don’t agree. I’m not in a group marriage with my parents and brother. I’m not part of their relationship: I’m the PRODUCT of it. I’m nothing close to an equal partner in my parent’s marriage.

Children are the result of their parents relationship, not a partner in it.

Throbert McGee

January 9th, 2011

If we want marriage equality, we need to start treating our marriages as equal in every form. Otherwise it looks like we’re accepting of the “separate class” we’re put in by the state.

Okay, please explain to the BTB newbie: What exactly is wrong with being in a “separate class”? How exactly would it set us back, if the state were to reserve Marriage for opposite-sex couples, while establishing the institution of Quarriageâ„¢ for same same-sex couples?

Priya Lynn

January 10th, 2011

Throbert said “Okay, please explain to the BTB newbie: What exactly is wrong with being in a “separate class”? How exactly would it set us back, if the state were to reserve Marriage for opposite-sex couples, while establishing the institution of Quarriageâ„¢ for same same-sex couples?”.

In states that gave gay couples “everything but the name” companies and individuals still didn’t recognize the two as equal and denied “civil unioned” couples the benefits they offered to married couples. They couldn’t get family discounts, insurance companies wouldn’t allow them to put their partners on their insurance the same way married couples were allowed to, hospitals didn’t recognize the civil union as a marriage and denied those couples visition and spousal directives for treatment and so forth.

If you set up a seperate institution to mimic marriage its extremely doubtful that its going to do so. There are thousands of rights, benefits and obligations attached to marriage and to retroactively go back and mirror all the laws that would achieve equality is too large a task to ever be done thoroughly. For example, I severely doubt a “everthing but the name” couple
would have the right not to testify against each other in court.

Further, once the allegedly “everything but the name” unions are legally defined because they are two different institutions there is nothing insuring they will continue to be legislated equally in the future – a change to the marriage laws won’t automatically apply to the civil union laws and vice versa.

Finally the idea that a seperate but equal arrangement will be truly equal is proven false by the fact that if such arrangements were truly equal people would have no problem calling them the same thing. That bigots insist on calling them something different is proof that they ARE something different.

Ben in Oakland

January 10th, 2011

Throbert:

If the two are exactly the same, why do we need two names?

your suggestion actually would have merit, but as someone pointed out, there is no guarantee that they would stay the same.

One institution would seem to be adequate, as long as we are agreed that institutio­n, whatever it is called, has the same name for gay and straight, the same rights, the same responsibi­lities, the same benefits, the same respect.

The argument from me has always been that straight people get one thing, gay people get something else, and it usually isn’t as good.

The problem you will get from the rabid right is that you are trying to downgrade, define, or otherwise negatively affect everyone’s (read: every heterosexu­al’s) marriage, because they don’t want what they are occasional­ly willing to dole out to gay people.

Timothy Kincaid

January 10th, 2011

Throbert:

Separate institutions are different, in name if nothing else. That seems obvious, but stop and consider it for a moment.

And almost without exception, when we categorize things in our minds, we give a ranking: strawberry cheesecake tastes better than regular cheesecake, Armani suits fit better than K-Mart suits, white schools in the South are more deserving of funding that black schools. And most of the ranking that goes on in our minds goes unsaid and often subconscious.

Now in the case of suits, that has merit. Armani truly does fit better than K-Mart. But sometimes such distinctions serve no purpose other than reinforcing prejudices and doling out privilege; black children are not inherently less worthy than white children.

But those of us who believe in marriage equality do not believe that there is an inherent ranking between heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage; we don’t believe that heterosexuals are superior (or inferior) to homosexuals.

If you carefully (or even casually) look at the arguments from those who oppose marriage equality, you will see that their sole (yes, sole) motivation in having differing names is to allow for ranking. They wish for heterosexual relationships to be considered better. They are better “for the children”. They are better “because they are complimentary”. They are better “because they are sacred”. And it goes on.

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