First, my take on the history of this whole discussion. It starts with the anti-gay right wing mantra that we are trying to "redefine" marriage. The central problem with that is that the anti-gay groups have never come up with a "definition" of marriage, aside from its being something between a man and a woman. So now the more thoughtful commentators are trying to define marriage without ever considering the possibility that it can't be defined in any terms that are going to be conclusive. (Unless, of course, you want to write a multi-volume tome.) And it's interesting that on the right, these attempts are oriented toward denying the validity of same-sex marriages, while on the left, they head in the opposite direction. (Thus we have Robert P. George's laughable attempt to justify Catholic doctrine as a ruling paradigm, David Blankenhorn's repeated attempts to argue himself out of dead ends [I've analyzed one of Blankenhorn's attempts here, here, and here], John Corvino's thoughtful examinations of various aspects of the question -- and Corvino, to his credit, seems well aware that he's only dealing with parts -- and so on.) So now we come to Kuznicki, who seems to me, on reflection, to be dealing with parts and not realizing it -- or just not admitting it.
Kuznicki "defines" marriage as "about nurturing."
Marriage is about nurturing. That’s how we think of an ideal marriage. That’s how we, in our culture, judge marriages in the real world. A steady, profound, exclusive commitment to nurturing is what makes most people intuit the existence of a marriage, with or without state involvement, with or without children. With or without romance. Government may recognize either some, or all, or none of these nurturing relationships, but even unrecognized relationships may still be nurturing in this sense, and therefore be genuine marriages.
Again, we have a partial definition. It's very true that the nature of marriage as a relationship is, ideally, one of nurturing -- mutual care and concern, "in sickness and health," and so forth. But that really is only part of it, and it's a part that's not in dispute. Kuznicki chooses to ignore, at least for the time being, all those other aspects of marriage that are, after all, much more central to the current debate: the rights and responsibilities granted by the government, the social recognition of status granted by the community, the property rights granted by what is, in its most basic form, a contract.
He does acknowledge those aspects, then he slides back to the "nurturing" aspect, and frankly, I don't find it persuasive:
It cheapens the covenant to say that marriage is just about sex, or just about rights, or just about children. Marriage is about all of this — and more. Marriage is a complete, all-encompassing, nurturing relationship. It’s about care for the whole person, so much so that no one else in all the world is quite as important.
Eventually, he gets to the role of government:
I concede — happily — that the government has no interest whatsoever in regulating consenting adult sexual relationships. Government has every interest, however, in watching over individuals as they nurture one another. This is because while sex and nurturing are both natural rights that we all possess as human beings, it is far more difficult to safeguard the right to nurturing.
I think I object to the phrase "watching over." It's actually rather odd, coming from a self-confessed libertarian, and I don't like the implications. I also think it fuzzes the issue: government's role is not to "watch over" these relationships, but to provide the means and support for couples to engage in them successfully by delineating for our sometimes self-contradictory legal system just who has certain rights and responsibilities in relation to another person. That's actually something that Kuznicki states a bit earlier, but not quite so specifically.
He does go on to delineate ways in which government performs -- or should perform -- its role.
I think, after reading through this carefully, that in the basics I agree with most of what Kuznicki has written -- until we get to this part:
In closing, I imagine most people are expecting I’ll offer some inspiring words in favor of same-sex marriage. I won’t. One might even argue, consistent with this model, that homosexuals aren’t capable of the lifelong nurturing that marriage demands, or perhaps even that this nurturing has something intrinsically heterosexual about it: To care for a man requires a woman, and vice versa. Yet while this may be true for a great many people, it does not necessarily follow that it is true for all, nor does it follow that the exceptional cases somehow injure or degrade the ordinary ones.
This is a dodge, pure and simple. There is no reason to suppose that gays are not capable of the kind of relationship that Kuznicki describes, and it's worth noting that he casts this paragraph in terms of "some people say," which is a total cop-out.
I think my real objection is that Kuznicki, like so many others, is mis-identifying what is meant by "marriage." It's something that is central to the whole marriage/civil unions problem, and it's a matter of clarity. Let me try it myself, from my own anthropological/cultural background:
"Marriage" is the recognition by the community of a relationship and contract between two consenting adults for mutual support and nurturing that marks a new status for the couple in the community.
Most of the "definitions" I've seen fall into the "This is not a pipe" category: they attempt to define marriage as the relationship itself while leaving out the necessity for the community to recognize the relationship, which is, after all, what gives it its status. Sometimes they assume it, as Kuznicki seems to do, but unless that part is recognized, you don't really have a definition: the recognition is a necessity in any valid definition. That makes it a marriage, with all the social and emotional freight that word carries.
No comments:
Post a Comment