EVE ON THE FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT: Replying to Mark Miller and Andrew Sullivan

OK, I should know better than to drop a quick two-line statement on a complex issue! Here are my reasons for supporting Chuck Colson's version of the Federal Marriage Amendment--and why Miller is (understandably, b/c I was unclear) misconstruing my position.

Colson's FMA does three important things about as well as the political realities allow. In order of importance:
1) protect marriage
2) expand freedom of contract
3) acknowledge the importance of close personal relationships that are non-sexual

1) is by far my biggest concern; 2) is something I'm also very big on; 3) is something I really want the culture to do, and getting the law to do it is "extra credit."

Colson's FMA does 1) by protecting the marriage ideal: one man, one woman. We're being ahistorical and rationalist (rather than literary-minded or attuned to the reasons of the heart) if we confuse marriage with a particular package of benefits and privileges extended by a particular society at some point in time. Marriage existed long before Social Security and it will exist when Social Security goes bust. Both supporters and opponents of SSM know in their hearts that the word is important, because the word signifies the ideal, the aspiration.

Colson's FMA does 2) and 3) by allowing states to delink certain benefits from marriage if they choose. One example that comes up often is hospital visitation.

I dig this. Why is hospital visitation a benefit we should extend only to sexual, romantic partners? I'm single; does that mean I should have no ability to choose who makes medical decisions when I'm incapacitated?

In other words, it's not about denying legitimacy to homosexual relationships. (See comments here and here on whether we really want to conceive of marriage as the Uncle Sam Seal of Approval on our romantic lives.) It's about enabling people--even people whose closest chosen relationships are not sexual--to gain various specific protections or benefits if their state chooses to allow that.

I agree with Sullivan that civil unions and domestic partnerships are bad ideas, for exactly the reasons he gives: CU's and DP's will be taken up by opposite-sex couples. I want states to allow people to link particular benefits to particular people one by one (extended freedom of contract), but I don't want there to be a named "package deal" that people would think of as "marriage lite." I would love to bar these things in the FMA.

However, I can't figure out how to do that. Previous attempts to phrase the amendment so that it barred CU's and DP's got wildly complicated and foggy. Trying to pass an amendment that barred CU's would be even more quixotic than trying to pass an amendment that doesn't. Given those realities, I'm okay with fighting the CU battle on a state-by-state level. I trust that if Colson's FMA passes and we do end up fighting over CU's on the state level, I can count on Sullivan to help me oppose them.
posted by Eve at 11:28 AM VOTE

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