MARRIAGE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE: Eve Tushnet

A few contributors here have said that it seems cavalier for opponents of same-sex marriage to simply decry one form of same-sex relationship without saying what we would prefer. I've tried to work out my thoughts on this question, and have blogged here about friendship as a possible model and here about civil unions. But to be honest, I feel much more tentative about these posts than about the rest of what I've said so far about same-sex marriage.

And I'm not convinced that the political discussion of legalizing same-sex marriage has all that much to do with the search for alternative structures for homosexual relationships, anyway. Marriage is a political (legal) issue, not solely a cultural issue, precisely because when a man and a woman have sex they often produce a child, and that child needs to be protected. The political structure of civil marriage arose around that fact and in response to that fact. Marriage is not a political issue because the state has a compelling interest in making sure that its citizens have fulfilling relationships, or feel that their romantic choices are honored--how is that the state's business? It's a political issue because of all the, you know, kids.

In my volunteer job at a crisis pregnancy center, I see a world without fathers. I speak with pregnant women who literally know no-one who is married with whom they could discuss marriage and dating. I see the despair, the poverty, the crushing of hopeful teens' best aspirations.

And it isn't "just" the poor who suffer from fatherlessness and the weakening of marriage. I've talked with a lot of friends of mine whose (non-poor) parents divorced or never married. There too you can see the transfer of suffering from parents to children. I've seen how hard, and how honorably, my friends have striven to make good marriages, to trust, to date well, to have faith--in spite of family backgrounds that made those acts harder.

To my mind, opposing same-sex marriage is one component of a larger social-justice struggle, the renewal of marriage and fatherhood
posted by maggie at 9:06 AM VOTE

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