THE END OF MARRIAGE IN SCANDINAVIA? Sara Butler replies to Stanley Kurtz

...Gay marriage wouldn't even have occurred to us if our understanding of marriage hadn't already changed dramatically. The logical conclusion of this diagnosis, I had thought, is that merely preventing gay marriage really won't do all that much to fix what's already broken, although it might slow down the process of deterioration slightly. Unfortunately, that's not the conclusion that Mr. Kurtz draws:

"The death of marriage is not inevitable. In a given country, public policy decisions and cultural values could slow, and perhaps halt, the process of marital decline. Nor are we faced with an all-or-nothing choice between the marital system of, say, the 1950s and marriage's disappearance. Kiernan's model posits stopping points. So repealing no-fault divorce, or even eliminating premarital cohabitation, are not what's at issue. With no-fault divorce, Americans traded away some of the marital stability that protects children to gain more freedom for adults. Yet we can accept that trade-off, while still drawing a line against descent into a Nordic-style system. And cohabitation as a premarital testing phase is not the same as unmarried parenting. Potentially, a line between the two can hold."

Oh, sad, after such a great article, why does Mr. Kurtz have to go here? I think it seriously undermines everything he has written up to this point, making it appear that all he really cares about is excluding gays, not trying to do anything to fix marriage. Or, less cynically, that he's just seizing on gay marriage because it's a politically expedient "solution," which can utilize a lot of anti-gay sentiment that I'm afraid motivates the average voter's opposition to gay marriage. This is problematic first of all because it's not much of a long-term solution. Younger people are far more accepting of homosexuality than their elders, and so as they grow up, the anti-gay marriage sentiment that banning gay marriage relies on will disappear.

But even beyond that, it seems foolishly optimistic to me to think that if we allow our culture to continue as it is and just stop gay marriage from happening, somehow marriage and the family will survive the way we want it to. Look at our divorce rate already, Mr. Kurtz! Look at the number of children born out of wedlock! The status quo is not just fine, even if we could preserve it, which I seriously doubt. I really don't think we can ultimately afford to accept the "trade-off" of no-fault divorce. It has already contributed greatly to the delinking of child-raising and marriage. Premarital cohabition has also already had an enormous impact on the way we think about commitment and family. ...The Federal Marriage Amendment would not be a magic cure for our social problems; it's a band-aid for a gaping wound in our culture.

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posted by Eve at 5:46 PM VOTE

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