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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...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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