An article in today’s NYTs reports that polyandry — a very rare form of marriage in which a woman can marry multiple men (usually brothers) — has all but vanished in those areas of India in which it was long practiced. According to most scholars, polyandry seems to be primarily an adaptation of the marriage institution to very harsh and unusual  geographic and economic conditions. And, once at least some of those conditions shift, as they have done in recent decades in those areas of India, the marriage institution tends to revert rather quickly to its customary form.Â
When I was doing research in the anthropology of marriage, I saw precisely this pattern with respect to the Nayars, also of India, who also, during one lengthy period of their history, had what can only be called highly unusual patterns of (sorta-kinda) marriage and family formation.
Such an explanation of why such things emerge, and then go away, doesn’t make the diversity of marriage forms any less … diverse, but it does help us to understand that, running through the center of all this amazing diversity is one, foundational marriage template that exists across time and across cultures, essentially oriented to establishing “who are the parents of this child.”
Categories: General
is one, foundational marriage template that exists across time and across cultures, essentially oriented to establishing “who are the parents of this child.”
Do you mean it establishes care-givers and inheritance rights, in a “presumption of paternity” sense, or do you mean it establishes that the biological parents will be known? Does marriage ever assign some other unrelated child to a couple?
I read your book and also Stephanie Coontz’s book on marriage, looking carefully for any cultures or societies where marriage did not approve of the couple reproducing offspring together. Would you agree there were no examples mentioned where a married couple was not allowed to have sex or was sterilized or otherwise prohibited from creating offspring? There were no examples of couples like siblings or unhealthy people or slave couples that were allowed to marry but also still prohibited from reproducing, right? Doesn’t marriage always express approval and consent to the couple having sex and reproducing offspring together?
John Howard: Yes, in my understanding, marriage across cultures is social approval of a sexual relationship, primarily in the interest of establishing filiation. You don’t HAVE to have children to marry; and marriage in many cultures does not have a monopoly on legitimate sexual activity; but marriage always and everywhere seeks to establish that every child born is born to a married couple.
Thanks David. So to be specific though: marriage always allows sex and approves of the conception of offspring of the couple, correct? There haven’t been any marriages in any culture where the couple was not allowed to procreate offspring with each other, but still had all the hospital visitation rights, etc, and went through the rituals of marriage, right?
J.H.: Yes, marriage always carries with it the expectation of sexual intercourse (“consumation”) and thus the possibility of new life. The point of the institution is, however, not simply to regulate or channel sex, and not simply to produce children per se (marriage is not needed for that!) but rather to establish that the two indivduals whose sexual union made the child are also the social and legal parents of the child. That’s the nub of it. This gets a bit complicated in cultures where it’s believed that the male’s semen is not an essential element in pregnancy (as opposed to, say, spirits which devolve on the woman), but the basic point still stands: every child born of woman should have a legal and social father, and the institution that makes that possible is marriage.
David,
Given the apparent lack of precedence for treating the one-sexed sexualized type of relationship as the equivalent of a husband-wife relationship, do you think it likely that the localized merger of same-sex union and marriage in modern times will be something that civlization will see “emerge, and then go away”?
For my part, I very much doubt that the merger can be sustained due to the lack of a societally significant core meaning for SSM. The SSM idea, when merged with the marriage idea, would mean gutting marriage of its core meaning — at least officially and probably, in short order, also in terms of the culture. So, if the SSM merger is also so will the special status now accorded the social institution of marriage and to which the SSM idea would be attached completely. It is like throwing a drowning man an anchor.
When marriage comes more and more like SSM, there is less and less meaning to the status; and thus less and less reason to support special status — and that means diminishment of the cultural understanding that marriage is the preferred sexual relationship between the sexes and the preferred relationship within which to procreate and raise the next generation of moms and dads.
The borders around marriage which define marriage in comparison with nonmarriage, arise from the nature of humankind (two-sexed) and the nature of human generativity (opposite-sexed) and the nature of human community (both-sexed), so I don’t think the basis for the social institution of marriage will disappear. But the significance of the marriage idea is what is really at stake — whether or not we as a society show it preference. When the core meaning of marriage is jettisoned for the sake of a vague SSM idea, the borders must be reassessed based on the arguments that would have made the merger happen. What I hear from SSMers is that the borders are arbitrary only insofar as one-sexed scenarios go — at least those identified as gay or lesbian and thus sexualized — but that sets up a double-standard that would easily be knocked down by the SSM argumentation that has been presented by advocates in courtrooms, legislators, and forums such as this one.
My question is really about the sustainability of the special place of the social institution should this merger occur. However difficult it has become to protect and strengthen the positive influence of the marriage idea on all of society, that effort would be greatly undermined, I think — I mean how to defend an idea that would be deemed barely tolerable, officially, and outright shameful, culturally? It seems to me that marriage would be demoted severely and that the SSM merger being attached to such damaged goods would rapidly sink with the drowning man.
Very sorry for the typo — especially in light of the limit on comments here:
“So, if the SSM merger is rendered unsustaninable by a lack of a very significant core meaning, so will the special status now accorded the social institution of marriage and to which the SSM idea would be attached completely. It is like throwing a drowning man an anchor.”
Chairm:
Thank you for your good comments. These are tough issues you are raising, and I don’t claim to know the answers — I don’t see how anyone could. I see the drive for ssm as one (probably not the main) of a number of currents in today’s culture which are aiming at the deinstitutionalization of marriage; and right now the trend toward deinstitutionalization seems very powerful indeed.
On the other hand, we are a pair-bonding species; we are sexually empbodied as male and female; we reproduce sexually; each child has a double origin … those facts aren’t really going to change, so it’s probably true, as I think you are suggesting, that the marriage idea is not really going to disappear, no matter how much we stomp all over it and throw it outside to die.
Same-sex marriage has nothing to do with “deinstitutionalizing” marriage. Would gay people fight so hard to be part of an institution that they did not respect or value? More scare-mongering.
in David’s book “The Future of Marriage” I think he makes a pretty good point showcasing how the most vocal advocates for same-sex marriage are also some of the most vocal folks against marriage in general.
He refers to it as “the Total Stacey” I believe, in reference to Judith Stacey, a professor at NYU interested in expanding the normalcy of family diversity, as in, more divorces, more step-parents/non-parents/pseudo-parents, more blend, more break-up.
If David believes that, he needs to demonstrate it, and not by referring to one outlier. None of the leading advocates for same-sex marriage that I know of (including the experts on marriage–those with real Ph.D.s in relevant fields, like Nancy Cott–who testified at the Perry trial, and others cited by Ampersand in a recent comment on another thread) are opposed to marriage in general. For someone who gets upset when he is put into the same box as Paul Cameron and George Reikers or his buds at the Family Research Council, David should be more scrupulous in generalizing from outliers.
But in any case, even conceding that lots of people do not find marriage attractive, there is no reason to think that same-sex marriage would in any way “deinstitiutionalize” marriage. A word like “deinstitutionalize” is itself slippery and another example of the kind of vague horrors anti-gay marriage activists are fond of evoking in the absence of a real argument.
Jay: You are now several comments in on this topic of deinstitutionalization, including now lecturing me on the dangers of generalizing from “outliers” and on what I need to “demonstrate” when I discuss the topic in the future, and yet your comments suggest to me — please correct me if I am wrong — that you have not read anything that I have written on this topic (I wrote a whole book on it), or for that matter, anything serious that anyone has ever written on the definition and processes of deinstitutionalization, and how that phenomenon may or may not pertain to the state of marriage as an institution today and to the push for gay marriage. Again, please correct me if I am wrong, but apparently you believe that you are already so knowledgable on the topic, and that the issues are so black and white, so easy to understand, that no actual reading, no actual substantive engagement, is necessary in order for you to comment on it, loudly and frequently.
David, you are correct that I have not read your book. I have, however, read books by others on the topic of same-sex marriage. In addition I have read your testimony in the Perry case. From this background, I think I know pretty much what you think and the grounds on which your opinions are fairly subject to challenge. Admittedly, I can only guess at your motivations, but your active participation in the anti-gay marriage movement speaks a great deal.
The question of the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage can be a legitimate area of inquiry, one subject to scholarly debate, but it is not legitimate when it is used as a bludgeon to deny equal rights to gay couples. It is especially illegitimate when it is used to give respectability to opponents of same-sex marriage whose real motivation is that they simply hate gay people.
Marriage rates and divorce rates may indicate that marriage is endangered to some degree in contemporary society, but those changes began long before ssm was legal in any jurisdictions (and may well continue after ssm is legal in many more jurisdictions than they are now). Various currents in society might pose a threat to traditional marriage but the only way ssm can be identified as one of them is by defaming gay people.
How is it that my marriage hurts your marriage? Please explain concretely how my husband and I are contributing to the deinstitutionalization of marriage.
At a time when many heterosexual couples choose not to marry–they, unlike gay couples, have the advantage in most states of receiving the protection of “common-law” status even if they don’t marry–the fact that many gay and lesbian couples want to marry–want to assume the responsibilities as well as the rights of marriage–should be seen as a positive sign.
But why don’t you address the question about making generalizations about proponents of same-sex marriage? Do you really think that many people in favor of same-sex marriage are opposed to marriage in general? Who are these people? Are they engaged in some kind of conspiracy to undermine traditional marriage by “infecting” it with gay people? Please be specific.
I know a lot of gay people who do not want to marry themselves, and some activists who think that the push for same-sex marriage should not be the gay movement’s top priority, but I know none who are opposed either to same-sex marriage or to marriage in general.
How is it that my marriage hurts your marriage? Please explain concretely how my husband and I are contributing to the deinstitutionalization of marriage.
Well, since you claim the right to attempt to conceive children by combining your genes with your husband, you aren’t stripping the right to create offspring from other people’s marriages, but you are putting that right in serious jeopardy because society hasn’t really considered the question of whether to allow same-sex couples to conceive together, and there is a very good chance that it will not allow it. Then if you are still married, it will mean that marriage no longer expresses the approval of society to create offspring together, and that will affect all marriages. As David notes below, all marriages have always had the right to conceive offspring together, and no couples that have been prohibited from conceiving offspring together have ever been allowed to marry.
And even if we don’t decide to prohibit same-sex conception down the road, then we will be saying that the right to procreate is satisfied by being forced to use donor gametes or modified gametes, since that is the only way same-sex couples can do it, and we will have declared their rights to be equal to married male-female couples.
Yes, marriage always carries with it the expectation of sexual intercourse (“consumation”) and thus the possibility of new life.
It approves creating offspring together, and sexual intercourse is understood to be the key activity that creates life. It’s not as if the “possibility of new life” was an unimportant “possible” side effect of sexual intercourse, and what is approved is using each other to have orgasms, the fact that it creates children is the whole reason that sexual intercourse is of any interest to society. If sexual intercourse wasn’t the way new life was created, but rather it was done through some other method like eating three kinds of fruit and doing somersaults, then marriage would be about approving eating those fruits and doing somersaults.
The point of the institution is, however, not simply to regulate or channel sex, and not simply to produce children per se (marriage is not needed for that!) but rather to establish that the two indivduals whose sexual union made the child are also the social and legal parents of the child. That’s the nub of it.
Well, I’m not saying it is “simply to regulate or channel sex”, I know it also is supposed to unite the spouses, and their agreeing to the obligations of marriage to each other is a prerequisite for being allowed to marry. But the fact is marriages are still valid even if it is known that the husband is going to go off to war and may never return, and marriage doesn’t force parents to be the social and legal parents of their children, does it? Can’t they put their children up for adoption even though they are married? And haven’t there been societies where children were raised more communally while the parents went about hunting or gathering and there is no great emphasis on who are the legal and social parents, but still the society regulates and channels sex of adults into approved pairs, and prohibits siblings from creating children for example.
the basic point still stands: every child born of woman should have a legal and social father, and the institution that makes that possible is marriage.
Now that sounds an awful lot like you are saying marriage has traditionally allowed other men to impregnate the wife, and I don’t think that is the case. I think you are extrapolating backwards from the presumption of paternity and concluding that it makes adultery legal that it doesn’t matter who the father is. That’s kind of like saying that because we jail criminals and bring them to justice, it is OK to do whatever they did.
And certainly the state can take away children from married parents, but it can’t stop them from conceiving more.
But I’m glad in your first paragraph you agree it is indeed about approving the concept of children together from the couple’s own genes. Now the question is, should we approve of the concept of children from two people of the same sex?
David Blankenhorn, believes that same-sex marriage somehow encourages “irresponsible procreation” by heterosexuals. Preventing same-sex marriage apparently will somehow encourage “responsible procreation” though he is utterly unable to articulate why or how that is so.
He and his compatriots in the Perry case pretend to believe that the only purpose of marriage is procreation and would therefore bar gay people from marriage, notwithstanding the fact that lots of gay couples have children and lots of heterosexual couples do not.
In contrast, John Howard would bar same-sex marriage on the grounds that gay people might somehow learn how to procreate with each other.
(John Howard seems not to realize that marriage is not a requirement for procreation, and Blankenhorn et al. ignore the fact that procreation is not a requirement for marriage.)
The juxtaposition of these two “arguments” against same-sex marriage certainly indicates those who oppose same-sex marriage have to rely on illogical and incoherent and contradictory positions.
I know people can procreate without marriage, Jay, but I don’t think I have to affirm that there is a right to just because I accept that it happens. I would support enforcing fornication laws and prohibiting labs from joining unmarried gametes, and challenge you to find any right to unmarried procreation in our jurisprudence.
And I don’t want to bar same-sex marriage on the grounds that same-sex couples might find some way to procreate together, indeed, if we allow same-sex couples to procreate together, I FAVOR same-sex marriage. It would make no sense to prohibit a couple from marrying but allow them to procreate together. It’s only if we prohibit same-sex couples from procreating together that we must prohibit same-sex marriage, because marriage should continue to approve of the couple creating offspring together, so we can’t have married couples that are prohibited from procreating together.
Here are some remarks by President Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, following Argentina’s historic vote to permit same-sex marriage. (Thanks to Rex Wockner for the translation):
“It (legalizing same-sex marriage) has been a triumph of society. Which I think some of those who today are against (it) with the passage of time are going to realize, because these things take perspective with the passage of time.
If one thinks that 58 years ago I wasn’t able to vote and today I’m president, or that before there couldn’t be interracial marriages and people were distinguished by the color of their skin; there are people who before had clung to this and surely today if one thought this, they would be ashamed.
This is another milestone in the expansion of civil rights. The intention was to cover it up as a religious issue, but it is strictly social. It’s simply recognizing someone who has a sexuality that isn’t that of the majority of society (although today I would think with the number of people that have a same-sex partner, they will continue being a minority, but already they are not some ‘rare’ minority, it’s a very common thing). … I think we should take it very naturally, without dramatics, without fighting. It’s the right to choose an option that the person has about his personal life.
… There was debate; one sector tried to dramatize or stigmatize, which is much worse.
… The institution of marriage comes from Roman law, the great organizer of private property. Marriage, inheritance rights and property rights, it all had to do with private property, how to succeed legitimately, on the topic of legitimate and illegitimate children. And it came in a Pagan society which the Roman society was. So to give a religious connotation to the union between two people isn’t even historical truth.
… Without a doubt more countries will follow. In fact, I think Holland was the first and today already there are nine countries (besides Argentina with same-sex marriage). The other day the president of Iceland married her (female) partner. The president of Iceland!
There are many leaders in Europe, mayors of important cities like Paris and Berlin, who in addition are activists in the cause of equal marriage or the gay cause. This does not prevent them from exercising their political vocation, their professional vocation, their life and to make a family. The cornerstone in the family is love. You can have two heterosexual people and they can be horrible, becoming a bad example for the children…
To agree or disagree about something is normal, but to hear about “God’s war” or “the devil’s project” — no. …
…In a few years this debate is going to be anachronistic. …”
Jay:
First, your coments confirm to me that you have not read anything about the topic of deinstitutitionalization. Consequently I can’t think of anything, regarding that topic, that we could profitably discuss or debate.
Second, I respectfully request that you stop, in your comments, telling other people what I do or don’t believe, even going so far as falsely to put “quotes” around words and phrases that in fact are not mine, but are simply made up by you, to characterize (and caricaturize) my thoughts. You have no right to do that — please stop it.
And finally, I now realize that these exchanges with you are highly unlikely to lead to anything positive, so this concludes my participation.
Wherever marriage has been affirmed as the union of man and woman, the sky has not fallen.
Indeed, the two-sexed nature of humankind has not been repealed; nor has the opposite-sexed nature of human generativity nor the both-sexed nature of human community.
The marriage issue today comes down to the big question: will we as a society show preference for the basis of the conjugal type of relationship?
SSM argumentation demands that we reject that basis; but the SSM campaign provides no alternative that can justify the special status of marriage. The campaign goes further and insists that all of society consider the basis for the special status of marriage to be bigoted.
This means that the social institution would be demoted from its preferential status to a barely tolerative status. SSMers argue about protections — or a protective status — which has no basis for discriminating between marriage and non-marriage. But the argumentation they use has the veneer of advocating special status on the basis of gay identity politics.
In other words, the SSM merger is a replacement of marriage and so the basis of SSM would be shown preference instead. Just as society may legitimately discriminate between marriage and non-marriage, SSMers imagine that society would also legitimately discriminate between SSM and non-marriage. But the basis for the latter is not a societal concern about responsible procration and sex integration, for that priority would be tossed aside for the sake of the merger; rather the basis for SSM is the promotion of gay identity politics above marriage and above the Law.
That promotion would come at the direct expense of demoting the basis for the special status of the social institution of marriage; indeed, it would come at the cost of discarding the core meaning of the institution. The societal cost would not be limited to marriage, however, as the elevation of identity politics (of whatever variety) takes a large toll on liberty and self-government. Discriminating on the basis of gay identity politics is closely analogous with discriminating on the basis of racialist identity politics.
David, I agree that what makes marriage special will still loom over civilization no matter how our society treats the social institution. That is an accurate way of summing up what I had said previously.
Society has a choice on how we respond to the core of marriage. We can treat it as nothing special — perhaps arbitrarily continuing with a protective status that would fit most of the types of relationships and kinds of arrangements that are in the non-marriage category — or we can treat it as something to discard, to disparage, to “overcome” as per SSM argumentation. Or, as I hope, we can respond positively to the core meaning of marriage and renew and strengthen its special place in how we, as a society, honor our most basic human needs.
I also agree, David, that the SSM campaign is one manifestation of the relatively modern project of deinstitutionalizing marriage. The SSM campaign would lock-in the various setbacks that the institution has suffered; it would use the Government’s big hairy hand to preclude the defense of marriage as explicity akin to the defense of racialism.
To be called a bigot is just the tip of the iceberg. The first axiom of SSM argumentation is that to disagree with the SSM merger is itself an act of bigotry. To defend against that merger is all the provocation that needed by those whose tolerance of dissent is palpably superficial.
To see society treat the core meaning of marriage as something to despise is to see what lurks menancingly beneath the surface. This goes far deeper than marriage (as if that was not deep enough already).
David: Have you read the transcripts of the Perry trial? Are you denying that you said what you are quoted as having said there under oath?
Chairm:
Does your argument, with which I largely agree, implicitly include a point of view on civil unions, gay adoption, and general social acceptance of homosexual love? In other words, is your argument compatible with a postion of “for gay rights and against gay marriage”? — or is that not the road you would go down?
Can one be, in a love-the-sinner sense, pro-gay rights but also pro-heterosexuality and anti-gay? I mean, for tolerance and loving acceptance and full protections for gay people and gay couples, but not for absolutely equal rights, not for gay marriage, and against teaching that it’s OK to be gay, and for encouraging and rewarding straightness – not merely heterosexual behavior, but straight moral behavior including abstinence, marriage and sobriety?
Ah, the hate-the-sin, love-the-sinner gambit. And how priceless, being in favor of “straight moral behavior including abstinence, marriage and sobriety?” As though straight people were moral, abstinent, sober, . . .
The “deinstitutionalization” of marriage is the sole handiwork of straight couples, David Blankenhorn to the contrary.
David, why don’t you explain to Chairm all the good things that will come from same-sex marriage? You were quite eloquent about them, though David Boies did have to get the good news out of you like he was pulling teeth. I especially liked that you said we would all be more American once same-sex marriage was permitted everywhere in the country and that the lives of the children of gay and lesbian couples would be improved. Something like twelve or fourteen other good things as well, wasn’t it?
David, why don’t you explain to Chairm all the good things that will come from same-sex marriage?
Jay, we can all talk about the good things that we believe will come, or the bad things that we believe will come from same-sex marriage or any other social change that is unprecedented or still essentially in the experimental stage. But ultimately that’s all it is, what we believe. Nature, and culture, in their complexity leave way too much room for what may seem to our simple minds like paradox. Still, there is nothing wrong with anyone asking and speculating on the possible good or bad effects of a cultural change (or any other change), particularly when we have no history on which to base it.
I can’t say for certain that same-sex marriage will be good, in the long run, even for gays. I can see scenarios where it may not (and on this perhaps David and I are in disagreement). The world is full of paradox.
R.K., thanks for your solicitude when you say that you “can’t say for certain that same-sex marriage will be good, in the long run, even for gays. I can see scenarios where it may not (and on this perhaps David and I are in disagreement).” I suppose this related to your solicitude that the expectation of monogamy might be bad for gay couples.
In any case, it is well to remember that no one is in favor of making same-sex marriage mandatory.
In any case, it is well to remember that no one is in favor of making same-sex marriage mandatory.
And I am not ever referring here to whether it (SSM) is good individually, but whether it is good institutionally. Institutionally, your point is far less relevant to the issue than it is individually, but I know you seem to maintain that there is no difference between the two. That’s the basic problem with most of your arguments here; you can’t (or refuse to) distinguish institutional arguments from attacks on the individual.
David,
No, my argument does not implicitly provide positions on most of that other stuff. One could agree with my pro-marriage argument while being pro, con, or agnostic on the other things.
On the other hand, adoption is a different but directly related social institution. While adoption does not bestow marital status, society may legitimately prioritize prospective adoptors based on marital status. There is no adultcentric right to adopt, and marital status is not a trump card, but married candidates are preferred because of the core meaning of marriage.
My argument touches adoption because sex integration and responsible procreation are combined to form a coherent whole that gives special meaning to the social institution of marriage.
That meaning provides the societal model for adoption — for trying to restore to the child what was lost or taken. The closer that a prospective adoptor scenario fits the marital model, the higher the priority on recruitment from that group.
The one-sexed scenario is distant from this model. That includes lone individuals who are not open to marriage; and it also includes twosomes or moresomes of persons of the same sex. It is distant for reaons other than sexual orientation or identity group.
By the way, I’ve read David’s testimony. And I’ve read the list of pros and cons he included in his book, The Future of Marriage.
SSMers do themselves and their cause a disservice when they misrepresent all of that for the sake of some cheap shots.
Correction, in my post below, “And I am not ever referring here….” should read “And I am not even referring here…”