The question came up over in the comments at Mark Smith’s blog post on this subject about whether people are arguing that rearing children is the ONLY reason for marriage. Here is one argument that, in fact, argues that position. Maggie Gallager wrote this article “What Marriage is For” for the Weekly Standard (August 4-11, 2003). An excerpt:

Again, what is marriage for? Marriage is a virtually universal human institution….Not all of these marriage systems look like our own, which is rooted in a fusion of Greek, Roman, Jewish and Christian Culture. Yet everywhere, in isolated mountain valleys, parched deserts, jungle thickets, and broad plains, people have come up with some version of this thing called marriage. Why?

Because sex between men and women makes babies, thats why…

The problem with endorsing gay marriage is not that it would allow a handful of people to choose alternative family forms, but that it would require society at large to gut marriage of its central presumptions about family in order to accommodate a few adults’ desires.

The debate over same-sex marriage, then, is not some sideline discussion. It is the marriage debate. Either we win–or we lose the central meaning of marriage. The great threat unisex marriage poses to marriage as a social institution is not some distant or nearby slippery slope, it is an abyss at our feet. If we cannot explain why unisex marriage is, in itself, a disaster, we have already lost the marriage ideal.

Same-sex marriage would enshrine in law a public judgment that the desire of adults for families of choice outweighs the need of children for mothers and fathers. It would give sanction and approval to the creation of motherless or fatherless family as a deliberately chosen “good.” It would mean the law was neutral as to whether children had mothers and fathers. Motherless and fatherless families would be deemed just fine.

Same-sex marriage advocates are startlingly clear on this point. Marriage law, they repeatedly claim, has nothing to do with babies or procreation or getting mothers and fathers for children. In forcing the state legislature to create civil unions for gay couples, the high court of Vermont explicitly ruled that marriage in the state of Vermont has nothing to do with procreation. Evan Wolfson made the same point in Marriage and Same Sex Unions: “[I]sn’t having the law pretend there is only one family model that works (let alone exists) a lie?” He goes on to say that in law, “marriage is not just about procreation–indeed it is not necessarily about procreation at all.”

Wolfson is right that in the course of the sexual revolution the Supreme Court struck down many legal features designed to reinforce the connection of marriage to babies. The animus of elites (including legal elites) against the marriage idea is not brand new. It stretches back at least thirty years. That is part of the problem we face, part of the reason 40 percent of our children are growing up without their fathers.

It is also true, as gay-marriage advocates note, that we impose no fertility tests for marriage: Infertile and older couples marry, and not every fertile couple chooses procreation. But every marriage between a man and a woman is capable of giving any child they create or adopt a mother and a father. Every marriage between a man and a woman discourages either from creating fatherless children outside the marriage vow. In this sense, neither older married couples nor childless husbands and wives publicly challenge or dilute the core meaning of marriage. Even when a man marries an older woman and they do not adopt, his marriage helps protect children. How? His marriage means, if he keeps his vows, that he will not produce out-of-wedlock children.

Does marriage discriminate against gays and Lesbians? Formally speaking, no. There is no sexual-orientation tests for marriage; many gays and lesbians do choose to marry members of the opposite sex, and some of these unions succeed. Our laws do not require a person to marry the individual to whom he or she is erotically attracted, so long as he or she is willing to promise sexual fidelity, mutual caretaking, and shared parenting of any children of their marriage.

But marriage is unsuited to the wants and desires of many gays and lesbians, precisely because it is designed to bridge the male-female divide and sustain the idea that children need mothers and fathers. To make a marriage, what you need is a husband and a wife. Redefining marriage so that it suits gays and lesbians would require fundamentally changing our legal, public, and social conception of what marriage is in ways that threaten its core public purposes. …

She really doesn’t explain how expanding marriage to gays and lesbians so threatens her understanding of “its core public purposes,” but here Gallagher argues that the reason we have marriage is parenting. The threat, it seems, is to either argue for some other singular purpose for marriage or to argue for multiple purposes of marriage. The concerns she raises above do the former, arguing that marriage is really about something else. And she argues that, when you do that, you say implicitly that raising kids can happen anywhere.

She really doesn’t take up the position that Marriage is, both historically and theoretically conceived, on the one hand, and in practice today, on the other, a more complex institution than merely one for procreation marriage. She’d get closer if she modified this statement in way that doesn’t define it with the genders involved:

“Marriage is our attempt to reconcile and harmonize the erotic, social, and financial needs of [an individual] with the needs of their partner and their children.…”

As I’ve posted elsewhere, Augustine included the rearing of children as a good of marriage, along side the reigning in of sexual passions and the flourishing of the deepest of intimate friendship. I’d argue two things: people get married to have help in raising children, if they intend to have children. But also, people get married to fulfill their deepest desires for communion with another, and to experience the fullness of life that dedicating oneself to a single other offers. That transcends gender. That is why people get married, and the state has an interest in supporting that too. (In other words, the data supports not only that children do better in stable families, a bit better in traditional nuclear families but pretty good in other stable, committed family structures as well, and at the same time the data shows marriage has tangible benefits for the married individuals themselves while it also supports that marriage is better for the individuals that are married to each other; and the state has an interest in supporting both).

Gallagher argues that we allow men and women who can’t or won’t have children to marry because, well, if they *do* have children they’ll care for them in the social institution suited for it, and it discourages them from having children outside of that social institution. In some sense, any male-female marriage supports the idea of marriage as the place to rear children, even if the particular case doesn’t apply. Her concern is “motherless” and “fatherless” children. Missing is an argument about how unisex (her term) marriages-that-don’t-have-children negatively impact that problem. How does the fact that Fred and John are married and don’t plan to raise children impact, theoretically or practically, regardless of your feeling about it, the argument that children should be raised in so-called “nuclear” families? It really doesn’t. And I’m sorry, but her arguments for why the current status quo isn’t discriminatory don’t wash with me: they continue a trope that orientation is chosen and that denying your sexual orientation is necessary for both societal and individual well being. That doesn’t work. Just look at Ted Haggard as an example (the bogus fact that he was declared “completely heterosexual” recently aside).

In short, Gallagher also is arguing for an ideal of marriage that permits exceptions. That’s fine, but the other exceptions we’re talking about don’t diminish that ideal. The problem is with straight folk and their families: blessing gay folk’s unions won’t weaken straight folk, and in fact might strengthen the institution of marriage.

As for unisex couples that do want children and plan to raise them, I’m not so sure that that’s a bad thing for the children or the family. Either any children they also create would so be supported within their marriage vow, or they wouldn’t have children. Its functionally equivalent to her argument. We are saying “marriage is the best place to raise children” straight or gay. Often, its far better than the foster system. Lots of data available out there, and that’s perhaps a subject for another day’s post.

Toby, the Classical Presbyterian, points his readers to this interesting piece of news coming out of Washington State:

OLYMPIA, Wash. – An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled.

Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.

All other marriages would be defined as “unrecognized” and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.

“For many years, social conservatives have claimed that marriage exists solely for the purpose of procreation … The time has come for these conservatives to be dosed with their own medicine,” said WA-DOMA organizer Gregory Gadowin a printed statement. “If same-sex couples should be barred from marriage because they can not have children together, it follows that all couples who cannot or will not have children together should equally be barred from marriage.”

Supporters must gather more than 224,000 valid signatures by July 6 to put the initiative on the November ballot.

Opponents say the measure is another attack on traditional marriage, but supporters say the move is needed to have a discussion on the high court ruling. (emphasis added)

Toby calls this an “adventure in missing the point” but it seems to me that there is a very good point here (even if this is both a fruitless and misguided application of that point): if the argument is that marriage is reserved for heterosexual couples per se because marriage itself is for the raising of children, and if you hold to the logic of that point, you’d restrict marriage to those who are or in fact do bear and raise children. It’d be a requirement. You’d not allow sterile people to get married, or anyone who wasn’t planning on it. This is just being consistent with their argument.

Or, speaking just to this narrow issue, you speak of this requirement as an ideal, and then you open other people to the institution: the sterile, those not planning to have children, and perhaps even (gasp) gays and lesbians.

Those who are “defenders of traditional marriage” like to use this argument for why marriage is a heterosexual institution but don’t follow their logic all the way through. This proposed legislation makes them do that…

…Mark Smith, someone who advances a position as a supporter of gay rights, is really concerned with this legislation. His take here…

I’ve been busy with life: family mainly. For instance, this post has been interrupted no fewer than five times (diapers, dropped pacifiers, etc). But fear not. I’m planning a return to blogdom in the near future, likely next week.

In the meantime, I note with approbation that the Very Left Reverend has been reading the Gruntled Center’s reflections on what Presbyterians should say about Homosexuals, marriage and same-sex unions, and VLR has been less than impressed. Go find out why. (More here and here) (Ed Note: VLR is no longer blogging at these links…)

VLR is concerned with a functional definition of family. I appreciate that tact, but even so, I find Gruntled’s arguments on their own weak. Particularly his latest effort to defend his statement that “Marriage is the complementary union of a man and a woman to make and raise children.” I’ve posted a bit on this “good” of marriage, and wonder why Beau isolates this “good” above the others in his “social ideal”. There doesn’t seem to be a good reason to do so, and his attempts to rationalize why we still let people who have no chance of having children marry anyway shows that this so called ideal is selectively applied. One could just as easily allow gays and lesbians to marry, like we might allow a sterile couple to marry, and still argue in some sense the positive social role of marriage for bearing and raising children. And in particular, I think this is both hyperbolic and wrong as a justification of keeping “marriage” for heterosexuals:

However, if all children were produced without marriage, society would disintegrate. And if no marriages produced children, society would end.

Please. Allowing gays and lesbians into the “social ideal” of marriage in itself does nothing to bring this apocalypse upon us…

Okay, back to my babies. More soon…

Let me just state that I’m concerned with sinfulness in human sexual relations. I’ve even spoken about it in, oh, three or four sermons I’ve had in the past year (keep in mind I’m an associate, and I don’t preach every Sunday). I believe that the biblical image of human sexuality is clear that it is best as part of monagamous, ritualized relationship (called marriage, though I’d expand marriage to same-sex couples) and is a deep expression of love and affection and commitment to one another.

A few other things: Sex is a wonderful gift from God. That image goes deeper than the NT record. Read the Song of Songs someday. But I’m not convinced that every sexual encounter outside of marriage is sinful, though. Nor, of course, is every sexual encounter within a marriage bond, ipso facto not sinful. Intent. Expression. Purpose. Execution. All are part of understanding that action. I wrote paper upon paper about this in seminary, with biblical argumentation, so even though I choose not to do so here, please do not assume that this position is not based on wrestling with, exegeting, and listening to scripture.

FWIW, these conversations by Jan Edmiston are a good read.

But here’s todays point and my question: why is all this hubbub about homosexuality? whither the angst, protests, threats to take the ball and go home over things like abortion, or the death penalty, or any of the other narrow issues of the day? Particularly aborton, which seems to me to have the strongest reaction by the pro-life community in a church that is supportive, on paper and in practice, of a nuanced pro-choice position?

Here is Will in a good article about the dilemma facing some of those thinking about leaving (excerpts):

Many traditional Presbyterians are also unconcerned with the personal histories of candidates for ordination. Many of us have no interest in installing cameras in bedrooms or in conducting inquiries. Again, we acknowledge that all elders – ruling and teaching, and all members, and all non-members sin. Most of us are not overly concerned at the prospect of being “in relationship” with sinful people. If that were our concern, we could not live in this world, and we could not live with ourselves. Are some traditional Presbyterians judgmental and wrongly motivated? You betcha. Are some progressive Presbyterians judgmental and wrongly motivated? You can take it to the bank. The existence of wrong motives certainly needs to be addressed, but for most traditional Presbyterians it is not “the imperfect holiness of the church” that is prompting talk of schism.

It also bears observation that to seemingly set at variance love and a desire for the church not to actively endorse and encourage sin, does not, in any way, provide a workable solution for traditional Presbyterians. I cannot imagine one advancing such a suggestion unless one did not believe in the existence of sin, did not believe sin to be a big deal (perhaps invoking God’s abounding grace), or did not believe that the specific actions traditional Presbyterians believe to be sin were, in fact, sin. What I mean is this: if one saw a person one dearly loved embrace what one believed to be truly evil and harmful, one would not, for the sake
of that love, remain silent. In fact, if one found oneself in that cruel situation, one would, because of love, all the more strongly oppose the embrace of evil and harm. Imagine the despair you would feel if suddenly your church came out endorsing what you believe to be evil and harmful – speaking in your name and literally encouraging people you loved to be harmed. You would not consider it in any way acceptable to be told that Jesus’s command to love one another meant that you must tolerate this.

…For most traditional Presbyterians this is not about being in relationship with fellow believers; it is about participating in things we believe to be wrong. We cannot violate our consciences and our deepest convictions about the nature of God, what God expects of us, and the testimony of the Gospel.

Will argues that the problem is that many they see their church actively supporting evil, sinfullness, thus distorting the gospel and making it impossible to commune with them. Fine, I get that (even though I’m struck with the assumptions that makes about my motives and the absolute nature involved in their assessment: no doubt whatsoever that homosexuality is a sin). But what is it about this that causes the internal struggle now? Why not abortion? If that is to many of these churches an evil, a sin, but yet their denomination in its discernment of God’s will articulates a pro-choice position, why not run at that? Twenty years ago?

I’ll have to dig into that some more, but an interesting question for the week…

To my “traditional” brothers and sisters in Christ: We disagree as to what exactly the sin is here. I’m not willing to concede without a lengthy discussion and much prayer that my position isn’t biblical (as I know others wont), nor that your position is the only clear biblical view (and certainly you don’t think mine is). So where does that leave us? We either work together and try together to listen for God’s will and learn from each other, or one of us (in this case, the NWI it seems) goes elsewhere. I think God wants us to be together, but if for your conscience you must leave, I will mourn your decision and wish you God’s grace for your journey…

Today the highest court in New York (called not the Supreme Court of New York, but the Court of Appeals) ruled that the NY Constitution does not grant same-sex couples the right to be married.

Here’s part of the NYTimes reporting on the ruling:

In a 4-2 decision, the Court of Appeals found that the state’s definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman, enacted more than a century ago, could have a rational basis, and that it was up to the State Legislature, not the courts, to decide whether it should be changed.

The majority decision, written by Judge Robert S. Smith, who was appointed by Gov. George Pataki, found that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples could be based on rational social goals, primarily the protection and welfare of children.

“Plaintiffs have not persuaded us that this long-accepted restriction is a wholly irrational one, based solely on ignorance and prejudice against homosexuals,” Judge Smith wrote in his 22-page opinion. For example, he wrote, it could be argued that children benefit from being raised by two natural parents, a mother and a father, rather than by gay or lesbian couples. (emphasis added)

Just to be clear, the court says this to stress that it is the legislature’s role to decide the matter in NY. They said that if the legislature wanted to decide, through its function of debate and legislating, that this rational argument was trumped by others, then it could, but that the equality rights in NY’s constituion were not such as to override the legislature’s role here.

Here’s what I want to raise: There is much discussion about this so-called offspring benefit to marriage, and there is some good social scientific evidence that, in fact, children seem to do better with a mother and a father figure (I’m not sure about the evidence on whether they have to be natural or not). I’d site Browning’s work that points to others as a helpful summary of that social scientifc work, but I don’t have it before me (and I disagree with the emphasis he puts on some of it). Much of that evidence says, if I read it right, that they do better, not that single parents or gay/lesbian couples do poorly, which is an important distinction. (Scoring 95% on a test is better than 90%, but both are worthy of an A).

But we should also note that marriage in our culture is not understood as just or even principally a means to rear children. If it were, we’d bar marriage to heterosexual couples who could not procreate, such as impotent or elderly couples. Or we’d prohibit divorce in some circumstances where there are children involved. But we don’t do any of that, do we?

In truth, we see marriage as something broader than that, though certainly there are benefits in married life to raising stable and healthy children (and one wonders if the evidence about gay and lesbian parents is hindered by a lack of study about how those in committed long-term relationships fare over time…). Marriage is a form of living that, through ritualized and vowed committment to another, provides for stability, mutual support, economic benefit, etc. It signifies lasting commitment to the beloved and in an ideal world provides a framework of trust and communion that makes both partners bigger together than they are separately.

It seems to me that the court could have said that there a rational argument could be made that married couples are healthier (and they are, for various reasons) and thus we should expand marriage to a broader subset. But they didn’t say that, choosing instead to focus on just one benefit of marriage that is naturally (but not intrinsically) barred to same-sex couples.

Augustine, who wrote on the Goods of marriage, saw at least three: the gift of children, a means of fidelity to spouse, and a sacrament, a community blessed by the Grace of God. Many heterosexual marriages only are blessed with two of those; I don’t see any reasonable reason, on this specific line of reasoning, why same-sex couples can’t be blessed with those two as well.

How is allowing same-sex marriage going to affect how a heterosexual-married-couple-with-kids raises their children in any way that is noticably different from how my up-to-now childless marriage affects them? It wont.

Adam and Sarah are to be wed this weekend. May God grace your marriage with laughter, understanding, and an ever deepening love….

To throw another wrinkle in my recent posts about same-sex relationships (those were in the context of the rise of Polygamy in cultural awareness), there’s a good post by Beau on whether the notion of the genetic origin of sexual orientation (or “gay essentialism”) will withstand the present anti-foundationalism and deconstructionism in liberal thought. He takes his cue from Don Browning and  Elizabeth Marquardt’s The Meaning of Marriage:

In the discussion of sex, it is normal now for liberals to automatically translate that term into “gender.” The prevailing liberal theory is that no feature of masculinity or femininity is rooted in the biology of men and women. Everything is a social construction.

Everything, that is, except sexual orientation. When it comes to sexual orientation, liberals become essentialists again. Advocates of homosexuality are increasingly drawn to the idea that sexual orientation is a biological fact, not a social construction (and certainly not a choice). Therefore, society must accommodate to all sexual orientations and “get used to it.”

Browning and Marquardt point out that the logic of modernization is dissolving all claims of fixed relations and innate or essential qualities. Even the deepest and most ancient of essential differences, those between fathers and mothers in marriage, are subject to the acids of social
constructivism. It may be premature to fix the flag of same-sex marriage to homosexual essentialism today; the same modernizing theory that all identities are just social constructions may sweep it away tomorrow.

I remarked in his comment section that while there is a trend towards a radical denuding of all constructs from biological or other non-subjective roots, there are also liberal (and conservative) attempts to resist that. I myself hold a form of ‘hermeneutical realism,’ and see that while our treatment of gender is a social construct there are some non-subjective roots upon which they are built. It is part of what has me pause and not buy completely into the current postmodern movement.

Anyway, another interesting angle. Sullivan might argue that homosexuality is somehow innate where polygamy is not, but here’s another version of the attempt to challange that view.

Sullivan articulates a crucial distinction that I think gets lost in the shuffle:

Gay people are not asking for the right to marry anybody. We’re asking for the right to marry somebody. Right now, heterosexual polygamists have an option: marry someone. And gay people are told: you can marry no one at all. That cannot be just. It cannot be fair. And it cannot be conservative to refuse to give 9 million people an incentive to settle down and take care of one another.

His premise is that sexual orientation isn’t a choice, but polygamy is. That’ll be an interesting debate, but I think he’s correct. Among the goods of marriage (Augustine scholars, review your notes) are the reigning in of sexual appetites within a healthy sphere (that is, with a consentual spouse) in a way that deepens and strengthens the bonds of the union. One of the evils of breaking the marriage covenant (through adultery, say) is the weakening of those bonds. One can choose adultery, or fidelity. One can choose to give oneself entirely to a life-long partner, or not. And in a similar way, one can choose, I gather, to try to do that with muliple partners (the previous problems of polygamy to be noted). The point that conscious choice is involved. One isn’t choosing the orientation to a particular sex (though certainly how one acts that out is chosen), nor the fundamental desire to be united with someone (for all the goods of a marriage or other committed relationship). Those are more or less innate.

So a good case could be made for that distinction. Good argument. Go read it….