...My non-religious opposition to SSM comes from a Burkean point of view. That is, I do not believe that we should be so quick to revolutionize and to deconstruct the traditional family, which has endured for so long, and has been so key to the cohesion of our civilization. The “traditional family” (one man + one woman, bound exclusively) is not a natural fact; it is an achievement of civilization. As sociologist Carle Zimmerman shows in his historically-based “Family and Civilization,” the traditional family is a historical artifact that provides a unique basis for human flourishing — this, versus the “trustee family” (the clan, including polygamous ones), or the atomized family, which is the ultimate product of individualism. Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist, doesn’t make religious arguments — indeed, one gets the idea that he is not religious at all — but rather observes the connection between ways of seeing the family and the individual, and the decline of ancient Greece and Rome. The book is too complex to get into in detail here, but this is a passage from a column I wrote about it some years back:

Civilization depends on the health of the traditional family.

That sentiment has become a truism among social conservatives, who typically can’t explain what they mean by it. Which is why it sounds like right-wing boilerplate to many contemporary ears.

The late Harvard sociologist Carle C. Zimmerman believed it was true, but he also knew why. In 1947, he wrote a massive book to explain why latter-day Western civilization was now living through the same family crisis that presaged the fall of classical Greece and Rome. His classic “Family and Civilization,” which has just been republished in an edited version by ISI Press, is a chillingly prophetic volume that deserves a wide new audience.

In all civilizations, Zimmerman theorized, there are three basic family types. The “trustee” family is tribal and clannish, and predominates in agrarian societies. The “domestic” family model is a middle type centering on the nuclear family ensconced in fairly strong extended-family bonds; it’s found in civilizations undergoing rapid development. The final model is the “atomistic” family, which features weak bonds between and within nuclear families; it’s the type that emerges as normative in advanced civilizations.

When the Roman Empire fell in the fifth century, the strong trustee families of the barbarian tribes replaced the weak, atomistic Roman families as the foundation of society.

Churchmen believed a social structure that broke up the ever-feuding clans and gave the individual more freedom would be better for society’s stability and spent centuries reforming the European family toward domesticity. The natalist worldview advocated by churchmen knit tightly religious faith, family loyalty and child bearing. From the 10th century on, the domestic family model ruled Europe through its greatest cultural efflorescence. But then came the Reformation and the Enlightenment, shifting culture away from tradition and toward the individual. Thus, since the 18th century, the atomistic family has been the Western cultural norm.

Here’s the problem: Societies ruled by the atomistic family model, with its loosening of constraints on its individual members, quit having enough children to carry on. They become focused on the pleasures of the present. Eventually, these societies expire from lack of manpower, which itself is a manifestation of a lack of the will to live. ...

Why? Zimmerman was not religious, but he contended the core problem was a loss of faith. Religions that lack a strong pro-fertility component don’t survive over time, he observed; nor do cultures that don’t have a powerfully natalist religion.

Labels: Christianity, conservatism, culture, demographics, extended family, family structure, gay marriage, natalism, religion

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With the war in Afghanistan not yet over and the economy still reeling from the Great Recession, who would have predicted that 2012 would be the year of social issues? But so it is proving to be, between Rick Santorum’s surprisingly strong performance in the Republican primaries, the Obama administration’s mandate for employer-provided health insurance to cover contraception, and—in a series of battles in legislatures from New Jersey to Maryland—the ongoing struggle over same-sex marriage. Where the last is concerned, polls indicate that while more Americans still oppose gay marriage, the majority that does so is dwindling rapidly. ...

How has this happened? The gradual triumph of gay marriage is not merely due to a legal change that began 20 years ago or even to the sexual revolution of a half-century past; rather it is a consequence of a shift in the foundations of Western civilization that has been taking place over centuries—a shift from Christian to liberal foundations. So profound is this transformation that even the opponents of same-sex marriage are not exactly fighting to recover the old way of life.

To understand how marriage has changed, and not changed, over the course of Western history one can hardly do better than turn to Harvard sociologist Carle Zimmerman’s Family and Civilization as a primer. First published in 1947, it remains an invaluable, indeed prophetic, guide to the marriage debate and wider culture wars. While same-sex marriage may be an absolute novelty, there have been pitched battles over the definition of marriage before, as when the Catholic Church told the barbarians who had overtaken the Roman Empire that they could not continue their practices of cousin marriage—a tradition from time immemorial—if they wished to be Christians.

Indeed, as Zimmerman writes, “in the course of seven or eight centuries the family system of Europe had twice completely reversed its trend” thanks to the Church, which first reformed the socially atomistic conjugal practices of the late Romans before tackling the blood-bound “trustee” families of the invading tribes. “This struggle, one of the most interesting in the history of the Western family, is relatively unknown to us today,” though it was a matter of civilization-shaping importance at the beginning of European Christendom.

The balance between the social extremes of atomism and tribalism could only be maintained as long as the Church was the primary authority responsible for marriage—which it was for over a thousand years. “The barbarian family had to be broken away from clan influences and brought under that of the church,” writes Zimmerman, but “if temporal forces and strong states could take from the church its power, rule, and regulation of the family, then the atomistic type could reappear. Actually, this is what happened.”

Even Zimmerman could not have anticipated same-sex marriage, but he might not have been surprised by it. As Christianity has lost its power in public life, so too have the forms of marriage and family that it established given way to new configurations shaped by the institutions and ideologies that hold power today—specifically, liberalism and the modern state. But did liberalism, with its bedrock principle of legal equality for all individuals, have to lead to gay marriage?

Labels: Christianity, conservatism, culture, discrimination law, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, homosexuality, Lawrence v. Texas, liberalism, religious liberty

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Rick Santorum describes himself as universally pro-life. That includes his tax plan, which policy analysts contend gives couples economic incentives to get married and have larger families.

Santorum’s tax proposals would triple the personal deduction for each child and “eliminate marriage tax penalties throughout the federal tax code.” He would retain deductions for charitable giving, home mortgage interest, health care, and retirement - all undertakings that support faith and family formation.

Significantly, he would eliminate all corporate taxes on U.S. manufacturers, from its present 35 percent to zero. The candidate’s native Pennsylvania has lost 127,000 manufacturing jobs 2005-10, and median income has fallen faster than the national average. High-wage manufacturing jobs made it possible to support a family without a college degree. A 2003 study funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation found higher education and the desire for more economic security delayed the age of marriage and family formation later than ever. ...

The marriage penalty embedded in the tax code may discourage marriage by taxing married couples at higher rates than single people. Santorum’s plan would equalize the tax burden by doubling the size of tax brackets for married families and eliminating other penalties for those who tie the knot.

But Santorum’s policies have deepened a longstanding rift between conflicting visions of conservatism.

Labels: conservatism, family policy, family size, Marriage, tax policy

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Leave it to Andrew Sullivan to make Maggie Gallagher seem sensible.

The erstwhile conservative writer, one of the more provocative voices of the 1990s and now a peddler of conspiracy theories ranging from the influence of Jews over American foreign policy to the provenance of Trig Palin, recently faced off against the country’s most dogged opponent of gay marriage in a room full of right-of-center gays at the Cato Institute, the country’s premier libertarian think tank. They, along with Nick Herbert, a gay Conservative Party member of the British House of Commons, were gathered to debate the question, “Is there a place for gay people in conservatism and conservative politics?”

What could have been a provocative and much-needed discussion, however, quickly devolved into a shouting match, thanks to Sullivan’s needless aggression. For instance, he demanded the names of any gay people who oppose same-sex marriage, since Gallagher claimed to personally know such individuals. (I do too, and while I may disagree with them, the reason I, and Gallagher, don’t divulge their identity is because of the onslaught of viciousness they would receive from other gays, perfectly exemplified by Sullivan.) What any of this had to do with the topic at hand was lost amid the theatrics. And Gallagher, who is perhaps the most effective opponent of gay marriage because she doesn’t resort to biblical arguments condemning homosexuality, was left looking like the reasonable one.

Sullivan also refused to address one salient fact: According to a CNN poll, 27% of self-identified gay voters supported John McCain in the last presidential election, the highest such figure ever recorded for a GOP candidate. In actuality, the number is likely higher, given that there are presumably many gay people who do not divulge their sexuality to pollsters. Regardless of whether the conservative movement thinks there should be room within it for gays, there are plenty of them already there.

Labels: Andrew Sullivan, conservatism, culture, gay marriage, James Kirchick, Maggie Gallagher

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...We could have predicted these results. The US family system, which once differed little by class or region, has become a marker of race, culture, and religion. A new “blue” family paradigm has handsomely rewarded those who invest in women’s as well as men’s education and defer childbearing until the couple is better established. These families, concentrated in urban areas and the coasts, have seen their divorce rates fall back to the level of the 1960s, incomes rise, and nonmarital births remain rare. With later marriage has also come greater stability and less divorce. ...

These factors reflect class and cultural differences, but all of our research suggests that the great recession is likely to make things worse. The hallmark of what we have termed the blue family paradigm is training for autonomy.

With a more extended transition to adulthood, better educated youth also need greater flexibility – to navigate their developing sexuality; to switch jobs, cities, and specialties; and to renegotiate family and career responsibilities. In hard times, dual careers provide a cushion, and flexibility about gender and work roles makes it easier to trade off child care and employment.

Hard times, however, also increase calls for a return to more fixed and traditional values. The fact that traditional families are flailing often persuades them that a return to traditional values is that much more critical. In today’s world, however, almost all of the traditional nostrums have proved counterproductive.

Missing from this debate is recognition of the bankruptcy of traditionalist family values as policy for the postindustrial era. We are entirely sympathetic with those inclined to lock up their daughters from puberty until marriage, but we do recognize that the societies abroad most insistent on policing women’s virtue are locked into cycles of poverty. ...

The solution? As we outline in great detail in our book “Red Families v. Blue Families,” there are three critical steps we can take: (1) promote access to contraception – within marriage as well as outside it; (2) develop a greater ability to combine not only work and family, but family and education; and (3) make sure the next generation stays in school, learns the skills to be employed, and cultivates values that can adapt to the future.

Labels: abortion, abstinence, conservatism, contraception, culture, divorce, economics, liberalism, Marriage, poverty

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Featuring Nick Herbert, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Conservative Party, United Kingdom; Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish Blog, The Atlantic; and Maggie Gallagher, President, National Organization for Marriage.

Labels: Andrew Sullivan, conservatism, culture, gay marriage, Maggie Gallagher, United Kingdom

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