Another Marriage argument.

This started off as a comment to this post by Rob Tisinai at BTB, concerning a debate between Maggie Gallagher of NOM and Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry in the pages of The Economist.

Tisinai quotes Susan Meld Shell, as follows:

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.

I think Shell misses the point of Rauch's "definition." Since she doesn't link to her source for this, I can't be assured that she is quoting Rauch fully, although from what I know of his writings on the subject, he has his blind spots and she may be correct that he misses child-rearing as a primary reason for marriage.

Before I get into that, however, I want to point out that I have serious reservations with her essay, beginning with the first paragraph, in which she states

The issue of gay marriage brings to a head a central conflict between two fundamental moral positions that interact, like seismic plates, beneath the surface of contemporary political life.

The "traditional" definition of marriage as between one man and one woman (and I'll leave for the time being what a self-serving definition that is) claims its authority from "traditional morality," but I have to say that the idea of morality enshrined in that view strikes me as rudimentary at best, and I'm surprised that in a discussion of this weight Shell would merely accept it without examination, both because its underpinnings by any sort of authority are tenuous at best, but particularly since she devotes much of her essay to the responsibility of raising children, which seems to me to encompass a much wider moral stance. That limitation suffuses her argument, to its detriment, I think.

What everyone seems to have missed, except Tisinai's partner, is the one point about marriage that the the religious opponents of same-sex marriage (and some of the "secular" opponents, although if you examine their positions at all, they are, indeed, founded in religious doctrine) keep harping on: When you marry, you're no longer, in the eyes of the gods and your fellows, completely an individual. We've heard about this "mystical union" ad nauseam, usually with the implication, whether overt or subliminal, that it is normal for heterosexuals but impossible for same-sex partners. (And as one who has been intimately involved with other men,, both physically and emotionally, I can tell you that's bullshit.)

To put this in my own terms, marriage is the recognition by the community of a new entity composed of two individuals who have willingly chosen to give up at least a part of their status as individuals and embrace a new status as a couple.

And now let's loop back up to the quote from Shell's discussion above, about children and how raising them becomes one's primary responsibility.

Well, no.

Raising children becomes the primary responsibility of the couple who have chosen to undertake that commitment. (I'm leaving single parents out of this since they are, by definition, unmarried.) As Tisinai so aptly points out, his partner observed:

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.

It strikes me that Shell falls into the same mindset that she accuses Rauch of displaying, which is thinking in terms of individuals and not a couple.

So if I can restate the issue, for couples the responsibility for raising children is a shared responsibility that you can undertake because of the support and commitment you share with your partner, because in that area, at least, you are, indeed, one person.

And somehow all the experts missed that.