MARRIAGE AND PROCREATION: Jonathan Rauch replies to Maggie

Interesting...

We're getting somewhere here.

I believe the statement "marriage is about procreation" is true if and only if the statement means "marriage is about procreation among other things." If it means "marriage is about procreation and nothing else," then it is demonstrably false.

Actually, even that isn't quite right. My view is that marriage is about family formation (kin-creation). Family formation is important because we procreate, but it is also important for other reasons. In my book I argue that three are central, and I now think I should have included a fourth. Marriage provides:
1) a uniquely wholesome and stable context for child rearing;
2) essential caregiving;
3) homes and domesticity (especially important for young adults, but important for everybody);
4) a safe harbor for sex (this is the one I missed in the book).

All of those goods of marriage are very familiar to marriage advocates, and none of them depends upon fertility. This is why I believe, pace Maggie, that it is family structure, not fertility, we should be talking about in the SSM debate.

Men and women make babies. This is indeed the background reality of marriage (in all its forms) and of everything else. But I believe Maggie makes a logical error if she interprets this fact as a sine-qua-non qualification for marriage or family-formation. Babies come from procreation, but marriage doesn't come from babies.

posted by Eve at 9:08 PM VOTE

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