MARRIAGE AND PROCREATION: Maggie replies to Jonathan Rauch

Thanks Jon. I do think we are clarifying a few things.

Every answer raises more questions: Why is marriage a uniquely good place for childraising, in your view?

We share so much that identifying the difference takes some work. I don't think procreation is the "qualification" for marriage, I think it's the reason marriage exists as a universal human social institution. Procreation is the fact, marriage is the way every known society attempts to deal with the fact.

I think in particular, people whose sex makes babies are in desperate, particular need of a social institution that addresses these realities and that, yes, "privileges" them. Because when societies don't address the needs for sexual regulation of those who are attracted to the opposite sex, the result is a variety of social disasters inflicted on the whole society--the ultimate being non-existence, as societies can quietly nonprocreate themselves into non-existence. cf. Western Europe and the Roman empire.

Can marriage still be that social institution that addresses this urgent need if we do SSM?

I don't think so.

Your formulation is the most attractive, and the closest to yes, but it is also the least widely shared among SSM advocates. Andrew Sullivan, for example, translates your "kin-making" function of marriage into "non-procreative adult companionship" as the "civil norm."

This latter view of marriage IS the reason for our 50 percent divorce rate and our 33 percent unmarried birth rate. If it's the "civil norm" its the civil norm we need to change, not our marriage laws.

If marriage is "adult companionate relationships" then there is no reason not to divorce when you stop feeling companionable, to confine marriage to opposite-sex couples, or to couples, or to sexual unions at all.

Marriage, and the rationale for marriage, pretty much disappears. (You can see this in practical terms when you talk to white unwed mothers: They love marriage, they just don't see a baby as a good reason to get married, because marriage is about the crowning of themselves as a love object.)

The extent to which people are struggling with this problem by attempting to say we should leave marriage to churches and make civil unions the norm (see the discussion Eve pointed out on another website), is further evidence of the extreme weakness of our shared, public understanding of marriage, a point about which Andrew is absolutely correct. In my own view marriage isn't optional, its a necessary social institution that has to be in some general way publicly defined if its going to do what must be done.

I realize I've responded more to Andrew than to you. Let me get back to the main question buried in the middle there, later (i.e. Can marriage be the social institution which addresses the "problem" of procreation if we do SSM?).

If you agree that is the main question between us.

posted by Eve at 9:11 PM VOTE

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