Gay Marriage vs. American Marriage
Gay Marriage vs. American Marriage
   The gay advocates’ civil rights argument forgets what the Founders
   thought marriage is for.
   These days everyone has a strong opinion about marriage, but no one
   two eminent anthropologists writing recently in support of gay marriage
   approved forms of marriage," is the institution too varied to fit into
   marriage; some accept polygamy. In many cultures, the wife moves into
   allow divorce but not remarriage; some allow divorce if husbands fork
   This protean diversity is central to today's marriage debate. If
   marriage is, as these examples suggest, an eminently malleable social
   by letting gays marry each other?
   But beneath all the diversity, marriage has always had a fundamental,
   universal core that makes gay marriage a non sequitur: it has always
   culture has produced a specifically American ideal of marriage that is
   in our history, politics, economics, and culture. Advocates for gay
   marriage cite the historical evolution of that ideal—which we might
   call republican marriage—to bolster their case, arguing that gay unions
   the subject of marriage as any of Fox TV's bachelorettes. Given the
   of marriage the true origin of society must be traced," James Wilson, a
   what kind of marriage would best live up to the principles of the new
   The Founders did not sketch their ideas about marriage on a blank
   discussions. Given that marriage was originally a religious sacrament,
   addition, they understood that marriage is a contract, regulated by the
   those of their children. Therefore, marriage is intrinsically a
   marriage in a way congruent with emerging ideals of individual liberty
   and democratic equality. In the old world, marriage was originally a
   increasingly emphasizing marriage as a love-match between two
   Europe, where arranged marriages remained the norm.
   marriage would reflect American principles of liberty and
   Marriage and the Nation, the source for much of the history of marriage
   free from arranged marriages and the authoritarian fathers who
   marriage based on individual choice would promote trust and equality
   Most important, republican marriage provided the edifice in which
   of the new political order. If republican marriage celebrated
   debate over gay marriage, but advocates certainly invoke fragments of
   current predicament of gays with that of other minorities, particularly
   African Americans, in the days before they had full rights to marriage.
   History, they argue, shows us that marriage is a civil right that has
   expanded over time to include previously marginalized groups; gays now
   marriage has been in a state of change," a group of historians of
   marriage, family, and the law asserted in an amicus brief in the case
   that legalized gay marriage in the state. Gay marriage "represents the
   logical next step in this court's long tradition of reforming marriage
   "tradition of reforming marriage" from the multifaceted tradition of
   republican marriage not only starts history around 1968, but it also
   is in the marriage business at all.
   While gays often invoke the black/homosexual analogy to assert in a
   general way that anti-homosexual sentiments are as vicious and
   irrational as racism, gay-marriage advocates use the comparison much
   this: denying homosexuals the right to marry whom they wish is little
   finally ruled that state bans on such intermarriage were a violation of
   the Fourteenth Amendment's equal-protection clause. "Marriage is one of
   sophisticated architecture of republican marriage: that marriage is a
   logically inescapable, gay-marriage advocates conclude, that the same
   goes for homosexuals.
   life-and-death—interest in marriage as the environment in which the
   An earlier chapter in the history of African-American marriage
   against slaves entering into marriage contracts. These abolitionists
   created the Freedmen's Bureau, in part as a federal marriage
   of blacks to enter into contracts of all sorts, including marriage;
   they believed, above all, that American-style marriage would help
   analogy between black marriage and gay marriage that the advocates
   In fact, gay-marriage proponents generally treat children as a
   distraction from the state's interest in marriage rather than crucial
   has definitively separated child rearing and marriage, demonstrating
   conclusively that marriage is a changing and elastic institution that
   can easily accommodate homosexuals. "When a third of children are born
   Jonathan Rauch, the author of the recent Gay Marriage, has opined, "the
   debate is over about detaching marriage from parenthood—indeed was over
   that marriage has anything to do with children, he says, "fails
   haphazardly—Americans closed "the debate . . . about detaching marriage
   from parenthood." For most of American history, republican marriage
   the Revolutionary era, marriage theorists understood that a nation that
   This shift was a threat to republican marriage for reasons that went
   the American idea of marriage. As Americans crowded into the divorce
   Founders. Marriage was becoming a minimalist institution; people now
   between child rearing and marriage—both necessary precursors for gay
   marriage—led inexorably to a further development. If marriage was
   state's interest in protecting marriage as the institution in which
   safeguarding marriage wasn't their job any more. In case after case,
   judges decreed that marriage was an ordinary civil contract and that
   marriage and child rearing were legally unconnected. Never mind that
   that marriage laws centered largely on the relationship between
   tradition of reforming marriage" in America that includes giving wives
   about marriage and child rearing represented a hard turn away from the
   ideals of the self-governing family. Republican marriage had been a
   marriage to tie parents and their offspring together, but only the
   American form of marriage strove to allow individuals the greatest
   marriage was not part of the musty past; it was a bitter and lived
   informed their model of the perfect, traditional marriage."
   people tend to be more in favor of gay marriage than their parents and
   their sympathy for gays' hunger for ’til-death-do-us-part commitment;
   after all, that's what's they want, too. Odd as it sounds, gays and the
   touchingly of marriage as a solemn, even spiritual, union, a momentous
   earnest devotion to marriage and their interest in the civil rights
   you have a generation for which gay marriage seems merely
   are inclined to see the fight for gay marriage, is actually at war with
   their longing for a more stable domestic life. Gay marriage gives an
   in the first place: it reinforces the definition of marriage as a
   that has nothing to do with children. That's no way for marriage to get
   its gravitas back. It is marriage's dedication to child rearing, to a
   has the potential to discipline adult passion. "The gravity of marriage
   There is another reason to be skeptical about the idea that gay
   marriage is another step forward in an unbroken history of social
   progress. In fact, the fraying of the marriage–child rearing bond over
   career, and marriage than those who grew up in intact two-parent
   Founders' vision. The results are in: if we forget that marriage is
   Alongside the familiar anthropological truth that marriage comes in
   kinds of marriage—not to mention non-marriage—mold different kinds of
   citizens. The evolution of marriage over the past 40 years has
   undermined that vision. Gay marriage threatens to sabotage it even