May 14, 2005
Marriage Wars, Part 5: What’s Love got to do with it?
by Jeff Langstraat
Most of the debate over civil marriage seems to focus on two things: love and the stuff you get for being married (benefits and rights). It is appropriate that those should be central foci, for they are important. The role of love in marriage is central to our cultural understanding of it (even if love’s central role in the organization of marriage is relatively new in human history). Similarly, we often associate being married with such things as medical benefits, bereavement leave, survivor’s benefits, or the right to not be forced to testify against one’s spouse. In this installment, I want to focus on another side of this: Marriage as obligation.
In their landmark decision, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court wrote:
Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations.... The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens. In reaching our conclusion we have given full deference to the arguments made by the Commonwealth. But it has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.
Well there’s some fine print for you
That was Shreck’s response to Fiona when she said he had agreed to be part of her family upon marrying her. At a very basic level, marriage takes to unrelated people and makes them into a family. A new social unit is formed, and new links are created between the existing families of the new spouses. Another way to say this is: marriage increases the density of social connections.
In social terms, the higher the density of connections within a social group, the more stable that group will be. Think of it this way. You have a group of five people, Jim, Mary, Gustav, Emilio, and Phung. If the five of them only know each other from sitting in a class together, and each exists as part of different social networks, there will be very little stability within the group. Let’s say, though, that Mary and Jim are siblings, Mary is married to Gustav and owns a business with Phung. Jim and Emilio are lovers. Because the group is linked together more tightly in the second scenario, it is more stable than the first. If you increase the density of the network, you will have an even more stable group.
That’s how marriage helps contribute to social stability. Marriage increases the number of relationships and density of social networks. It should be kept in mind, however, that marriage is not the only contributor to social stability, nor is it the only family form that can serve this purpose. However, the legal relationships accompanying civil marriage add another layer.
This stability flows from a number of sources, but a primary one is that these connections carry mandatory obligations to each other. Marriage is more than love and benefits, it is also obligation, the formalization of which tends to make such relationships more socially stable.
To take it a step further, kids tend to do best in stable environments, so allowing their parents to marry (yes, folks, kids to have gay parents) actually serves these children as well. It stabilizes and formalizes both parents’ relationship to the child…and their obligations to it. (See the Goodridge decision for a bit more discussion on that. I’m not going to write much more on that particular topic in this series.)
In sickness and in health
Anyone who’s been in a relationship knows there are strings attached. You have obligations and duties within a relationship, ranging from honestly telling your mate if their ass looks big in that dress to taking the day off from work to care for them while they’re sick to “making nice” when their parents come to dinner to sharing your income when they get laid off to paying for them to “sustain the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed” after the asshole leaves you. Civil marriage formalizes certain obligations.
That, I think, is one thing that is often lost in these debates. The Right (and others) will accuse queers of being selfish, of only trying to get our grimy little hands on the material benefits. They neglect, and we allow them to, the fact that marriage is also the formalization of obligation to each other. A new addition to the discourse might go something like this: We’re trying to get married so we can take care of each other!
The conversations we have tend to focus on the benefits aspect of marriage. Of course, those benefits are important. Another reason we tend to over-focus on benefits might be because that’s been the historic package queers have been forced to pursue. When it became evident, after several legal attempts in the 1970s, that marriage, and any kind of state-level recognition, was off the table, queer activists tended to move their family-protection efforts to lower level bodies. Municipalities and corporations became the targets, and domestic partnership became the goal. One of the differences between domestic partnership packages and civil marriage is that DPs rarely carry the obligations that lie in marriage. Domestic partnerships are generally benefits packages. Municipalities and corporations rarely offer the same bundles of resources as the state, and ones they do offer lack the same kinds of legal obligations that the state can enforce. The obligatory functions of marriage could not be via these routes. Some of the discourse remains because, in part, it was effective in winning those benefits at lower levels. Marriage is, in some ways, a more extensive benefits package. It is more, though, and that was the point of today’s installment.
For those who want me to skip to the main points: A RECAP
Within marriage, the partners become responsible for each other—under the law. Those legal obligations strengthen the social bonds between people. New social units are created and existing ones linked in ways that increase the density of social networks. These strengthened social bonds and more dense social networks are part of what provides social stability.
Marriage Wars: The Series
In our previous episodes:
Part 1: Marriage vs. Civil Unions. A discussion of the marriage vs. civil unions debate, with an underlying emphasis that the contemporary political scene, particularly the anti-Gay industry’s dominance within Republican leadership, makes avoiding marriage equality controversies a non-starter.
Part 2: Finessing the Fags. Starting from the point that marriage equality politics are here to stay, I try to lay out an approach for Democrats that allows them to start shaping the debate in ways that don’t fuck over gays and might eventually fuck over Republicans.
Part 3: What’s so Civil about it? Looks at marriage equality’s legal status as a civil right. Includes a discussion of the place of this movement within civil rights movements historically and the propriety of comparisons.
Part 4: Get me to the Church on time! A discussion of the social history of marriage, particularly the relationship between religious and civil control. Also includes a brief attempt to deal with the “God in the Public Sphere” problem.
Tune in tomorrow for: So, which one is the bride?……or……You are NOT wearing white!
Posted by in Civil Rights, Culture War, Domesticity, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, Kids, Marriage, Politics, Queer, Sexual Politics
Permalink |
Comments (0)
| TrackBack (1) | Technorati Cosmos
Trackbacks
Trackback for this post:http://www.culturekitchen.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/2951
The following blogs make reference to this post :
» Yes, I'm Talking about These Articles Again. from Mizzkyttie's Mind
Jeff Langstraat continues with his exellent series of posts on marriage equality at Culturekitchen. [More...]
Found inMay 14, 2005 02:02 PM
