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| COLD OPEN |
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So what is marriage, really? That's the question asked by Sherif
Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George in their new
book titled (shockingly!) What Is Marriage? It’s a smart book on an
important subject.
The Supreme Court has decided to hear two cases on
same-sex marriage, meaning that we are finally headed toward what might be a
clarifying moment on the subject, legally speaking. But what Girgis, Anderson,
and George do in What Is Marriage? is provide some philosophical
clarity.
The most powerful argument in favor of same-sex marriage has
always been based on equality. Viewed from this position, marriage is a public
institution—like the school system or buses—from which same-sex couples are
unfairly excluded. Creating a right of same-sex marriage, this argument
contends, does nothing to alter the institution itself. It merely provides equal
access to a class of people previously excluded from it.
This is a
reasonably powerful argument. Powerful enough that when the gay-rights lobby
pivoted toward it recently they finally started scoring some electoral
victories after years and years of failure at the ballot box.
But
What Is Marriage? digs a little deeper into the equality argument and
shows that it’s inherently superficial. Here are the authors in a recent essay
in the Wall
Street Journal:
We can't move one inch toward
an answer simply by appealing to equality. Every marriage policy draws lines,
leaving out some types of relationships. Equality forbids arbitrary
line-drawing. But we cannot know which lines are arbitrary without answering two
questions: What is marriage, and why does it matter for policy?
The
stance Girgis, Anderson, and George begin with is that drawing any lines around
marriage is a moral choice. There is no default setting:
The conjugal and revisionist
views are two rival answers; neither is morally neutral. Each is supported by
some religious and secular worldviews but rejected by others. Nothing in the
Constitution bans or favors either. The Supreme Court therefore has no basis to
impose either view of marriage. So voters must decide: Which view is
right?
And so they proceed, at length, to make the moral and
philosophical case for marriage. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the nub
of it lies in natural law:
These insights require no
particular theology. Ancient thinkers untouched by Judaism or Christianity —
including Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Musonius Rufus, Xenophanes and Plutarch —
also distinguished conjugal unions from all others. Nor did animus against any
group produce this conclusion, which arose everywhere quite apart from debates
about same-sex unions. The conjugal view best fits our social practices and
judgments about what marriage is.
After all, if two men can marry, or two
women, then what sets marriage apart from other bonds must be emotional
intensity or priority. But nothing about emotional union requires it to be
permanent. Or limited to two. Or sexual, much less sexually exclusive. Or
inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands. Yet as most people
see, bonds that lack these features aren't marriages.
Far from being
"slippery slope" predictions, these points show that the revisionist view gets
marriage wrong: It conflates marriage and companionship, an obviously broader
category. That conflation has consequences. Marriage law shapes behavior by
promoting a vision of what marriage is and requires. Redefinition will deepen
the social distortion of marriage—and consequent harms—begun by policies such as
"no-fault" divorce. As marital norms make less sense, adherence to them
erodes.
It's bracing to see the philosophical case for marriage made in
such unapologetic tones. |
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| LOOKING BACK |
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"'David Gergen doesn't like this? David thinks it's
inappropriate? Gee, that'll put me cold in my tracks. I think I'm going to
stop.' James Carville seems angry and amused at the same time. Yelling into the
phone, his already garbled Louisiana speech rendered nearly unintelligible by
sarcasm, Carville describes how his plan to discredit Whitewater independent
counsel Kenneth Starr has been attacked by many in official Washington as
irresponsible, even offensive. 'The chattering class in Washington is all in an
uproar about this,' he says, 'and that tickles me to no end.'
"Carville
is right about one thing: The chattering class is in an uproar over his
behavior, almost unanimous in the belief that he has finally spun out of
control. In the days since Carville announced his intention to mount a
public-relations campaign against Starr — a man he calls a 'right-wing partisan
Republican' on an ideological crusade to destroy the president — the sometime
Clinton adviser has been assailed from all sides."
—Tucker Carlson,
"James Carville’s Crusade," from our December 16, 1996, issue.
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| THE READING LIST |
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Robert
Cade, the inventor of Gatorade, interviewed by Sports Illustrated.
* * *
George
Howell, the high priest of coffee and the man who founded the original Coffee
Connection, gets back into the business.
* * *
The
King of the Nerds, Ken Jennings, returns to Reddit for an epic question and
answer session. |
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| INSTANT CLASSIC |
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"I have yet to encounter someone who disagrees with you who you
don't think is a knave, or corrupt, or a corrupt knave."
—George Will, speaking
to Paul Krugman on ABC’s This Week, December 9, 2012 |
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| LOOKING AHEAD |
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| We'll have articles on taxes, Congress, and military leadership
in upcoming issues of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. |
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| THE LAST WORD |
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We're not done with marriage yet.
What Is
Marriage? doesn't stop with making the strongest possible affirmative
defense of the traditional definition of marriage. It also delves into what the
consequences of accepting the "equality" argument are likely to be.
If
you look past the mainstream journalism world of the New York Times and
NPR to the universes of activism and academic research, you see more than a few
champions of same-sex marriage who openly admit—with pleasure—that enacting
same-sex marriage will indeed change the institution of marriage. From Victoria
Brownworth to Chai Feldblum, the activists and academics on whom mainstream
liberal journalists rely are much more open than the journalists themselves
about what the societal consequences of same-sex marriage will be. And many of
these academics believe that same-sex marriage isn't the final frontier in
manipulating the ancient tradition of marriage. It's just the
start.
Which brings us to the big question: Why should we care? And the
answer is, because for centuries traditional marriage has been the bedrock of
Western civilization—and even today it provides enormous advantages both to
society and to individuals who partake in it. As Ross Douthat pointed
out over the weekend, marriage is—more than ever—the great facilitator of
social mobility in modern America.
Not all marriages last, not every
marriage is great. But on average, people who are married do better in every key
metric—health, income, happiness—than people who do not. Family formation
engenders stability, gives both spouses an economic and social safety net, and
creates incentives for saving. And just as important, it removes the individual
from the center of his or her worldview. Marriage is the first step toward
recognizing that there is a world out there beyond the self and that this world
not only encompasses others in the here and now, but people and ideas that
stretch out both before us into the future and behind us into the past. Marriage
is the beginning of understanding our duties—to the past, present, and
future.
And what happens when we change marriage? No one
knows.
I'm happy to grant, as a theoretical matter, that it's possible
that a deconstructed, revisionist version of marriage could turn out to be
benign. Maybe even beneficial. Anything is possible. But even if you were
inclined to think the best about it, it's truly gobsmacking that after barely 20
years of discussion we stand on the cusp of irrevocably altering millennia of
precedent—from which we know with certainty the enormous benefits. And
we stand ready to do this with very little idea of what will follow. At best,
this is naïveté on a civilizational scale. At worst it's perfidy.
Either
way, What Is Marriage? is an essential
piece of the argument for why traditional marriage should be supported.
As always, keep calm and carry on. And remember, you can always follow
me on Twitter @JVLast
and email me with tips, thoughts, etc., at editor@weeklystandard.com.
Best,
Jonathan
V. Last |
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