That is what some Christians and secularists suggest. They think marriage should be a private institution handled by churches and others, while the government sits by as a neutral observer. That may salve over the current political and cultural debate over the definition of marriage, but is this a good idea? Jennifer Roback Morse thinks not, and wrote a three-part series explaining why (1, 2, 3). She argues that privatizing marriage is not only impossible in practice, but that it would result in more state power and would unnecessarily hurt children.
Privatizing marriage is impossible because “marriage is society’s primary institutional arrangement that defines parenthood. Marriage attaches mothers and fathers to their children and to one another.” As such, it is an intrinsically public institution. But what about the fact that not all married couples have children? Her reply is quite powerful:
[I]t is perfectly true: not every marriage has children. But every child has parents. This objection stands marriage on its head by looking at it purely from the adult’s perspective, instead of the child’s. The fact that this objection is so common shows how far we have strayed from understanding the public purpose of marriage, as opposed to the many private reasons that people have for getting married.
If no children were ever involved, adult sexual relationships simply wouldn’t be any of the state’s business. What we now call marriage would be nothing more than a government registry of friendships. If that’s all there were to marriage, privatizing it wouldn’t be a big deal. But if there were literally nothing more to marriage than a government registry of friendships, we would not observe an institution like marriage in every known society.[1]
There is simply no practical way of getting the state out of the marriage business. They would have to involve themselves in defining and regulating marriage since they would ultimately be responsible for resolving marital and parental disputes. To do so the state would have to determine what are valid marital and parental contracts and what are not. They either define marriage on the front end or on the back end, but either way they have to take a stand on what marriage is and who has one.
Privatizing marriage would also lead to less freedom and an expanded power of the state. Children need to be attached to mothers and fathers. Without marriage law and the presumption of paternity that goes along with it, that state will have to determine who the parents are in any parental dispute, and it won’t always be the biological parents. This will increase the government’s role and power in the life of the family rather than decrease it.
Privatizing marriage would also require “contract parenting” (parents are determined by private contract rather than biology). This places the needs and desires of adults above the needs and desires of children. Morse writes:
Children are entitled to a relationship with both of their parents. They are entitled to know who they are and where they came from. Therefore children have a legitimate interest in the stability of their parents’ union, since that is ordinarily how kids have relationships with both parents. … But children cannot defend their rights themselves. …Marriage is society’s institutional structure for protecting these legitimate rights and interests of children.[2]
If marriage is privatized, adults will be free to contract out parental rights to whomever they desire, depriving the child of their natural right to a relationship with their biological parents. Contract parenting also objectifies children, treating them as objects to be bargained over rather than subjects with their own interests (even if they cannot be expressed at the time).
Because of the intimate connection between marriage and children, the move to privatize marriage is in essence a move to privatize parenting. If we wish to preserve the rights of children and limit the state’s power over the family, then we should oppose the privatization of marriage. The government should be in the marriage business.
[1]Jennifer Roback Morse, “Privatizing Marriage is Impossible”; available from http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/04/5069; Internet; accessed 27 June 2012.
[2]Jennifer Roback Morse, “Privatizing Marriage is Unjust to Children”; available from http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/04/5069; Internet; accessed 27 June 2012.
Thinking to Believe 
June 28, 2012 at 1:40 pm
Wow, this is all off the wall rhetoric that is utterly meaningless. Marriage, parenting, and children are all three different things entirely. Marriage is about upholding rights for all citizens, without prejudice. With or without children makes no difference whatsoever. How does the difference in one gender change anything dramatically? If everyone was given the right to marry whoever they please, nothing would change, absolutely nothing. Except that all Americans, regardless of gender or sexual preference would have equal rights.
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June 29, 2012 at 5:27 pm
I agree with Jason. All we have to do is look at states and nations where marriage other than standard heterosexual marriages have existed for years, and in some cases hundreds of years. Has gay marriage caused any significant problems in places where it’s legal, like Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa and Sweden? What about Indian, Sudan, Taiwan, Ireland, etc. where people have even married animals or themselves (and have done so throughout history)? Are their institutions of marriage in trouble? Most are stronger than in the US.
So far all the predictions about the disaster that would befall society by allowing gay marriage have proven to be false.
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July 2, 2012 at 2:51 pm
The fallout is the children. When you sanction same-sex marriage, you are making a statement about the nature and purpose of marriage, namely that it is about the desires of adults (love, romance, etc.) rather than children. And when children are no longer front and center in marriage, then fewer people get married. Sure, they still have children, but without marriage, the dissolution rates are much higher, and thus more and more children are raised in broken homes, and the psychological and social effects of this have been clear for a long time. That’s the effect that same-sex marriage will have on a society.
Jason
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July 2, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Jason, if humans were like amoebas and reproduced asexually, do you think that marriage would ever exist? Do you think that government would ever regulate any private relationships? No. It’s not as if the government is interested in who you love, or who is having sex with whom. The only reason governments have involved themselves in regulating and priveleging certain relationships is because of the way those relationships function in society, namely those relationships tend to produce children (which the government has an interest in because they are interested in perpetuating their society beyond their present generation) and because those relationships are best suited at rearing those children to be good citizens.
Jason
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July 3, 2012 at 9:28 am
Many people who get married today do so with no intention of having children. For them it IS all about their commitment to each other and not about kids. Should they not be allowed to marry? And if they ARE allowed to marry, how is that any different from straight couples marrying?
Furthermore, gay couples can and often do adopt, providing good homes for children who would otherwise end up in the foster care system or worse. That’s a REDUCTION in children being raised in broken homes.
Also, although it’s apparently true that gay men tend to stay together less time than straight couples, gay women tend to stay together longer. So…should straight people not be allowed to marry because they aren’t as committed as lesbians? And relevant to this board, agnostics and atheists have lower divorce rates than do theists (according to Barna)…so should theists not be allowed to marry either? As it stands right now, almost half of all straight marriages end in divorce. Can gay couples do any worse?
Finally, again, look at the states and countries that have gay marriage (or at least the equivalent social unions). All of them average LOWER divorce rates than those without gay marriage.
So I don’t think your claim justifies not allowing gay marriage.
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July 3, 2012 at 3:33 pm
This is a common objection, and I have dealt with it at length here: https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/same-sex-marriage-dealing-with-the-%e2%80%9cchildless-couples%e2%80%9d-objection/.
As for the length of lesbian relationships, from what I have read, you have it exactly backward. Female-female relationships actually last half the time male homosexual relationships do. “A 2004 study of divorce rates for same-sex registered partnerships in Sweden from 1995 to 2002 indicates that female homosexual couples were twice as likely to divorce as male homosexual couples (Gunnar Andersson, et al., ‘Divorce-Risk Patterns in Same-Sex ‘Marriages’ in Norway and Sweden,’ http://www.uni-koeln.de/wiso-fak/fisoz/conference/papers/p_andersson.pdf”; cf. also the discussion in the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, http://www.marriagedebate.com/pdf/SSdivorcerisk.pdf). According to Terry Stein in Kaplan and Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (eds. B. J. Sadock and V. A. Sadock; 7th ed.; Lippencott Williams & Wilkins, 2000): “From 8 to 14% of lesbian couples and from 18 to 25% of gay male couples report that they have lived together for more than 10 years” (p. 1624; Stein has served as a Director of the AIDS Education Project at Michigan State University, Chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues, Associate Editor of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy, and President of the Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists). In other words, lesbian couples fare only half as well as male homosexual couples, who fare poorly.” Also, see http://www.whatsupyukon.com/index.php/component/content/article/169-august-19-2010/2337-rainbow-why-do-lesbian-relationships-not-last.html for a lesbian self-confession on their relationship-staying-power problems.
From 1991, but worth quoting: “In a short longitudinal study, Blumstein and Schwartz (1983) followed a large sample of lesbian, gay male, cohabiting heterosexual, and married couples over an 18-month period. At the time of initial testing, lesbians, gay men, and heterosexuals were about equal in predicting that their current relationship would continue, although both lesbians and gay men speculated that gay men usually have less stable relationships than lesbians. At the 18-month follow-up, most couples were still together. Breakups were rare among couples who had already been together for more than ten years: 6% for lesbians, 4% for gay men, 4% for married couples. (None of the heterosexual cohabiting couples had been together for more than 10 years.) Among couples who had been together for 2 years or less, the breakup rate was also fairly low—less than one relationship in five ended during the 18 month period. Minor differences were found in rates of breakup among the different types of couples: 22% for lesbian couples, 16% for gay male couples, 17% for cohabiting couples, and 4% for married couples. Although these group differences are quite small, they do run counter to the suggestion that lesbians are more likely to have enduring partnerships.”—Letitia Anne Peplau, “Lesbian and Gay Relationships,” in John C. Gonsiorek and James D. Weinrich, eds., Homosexuality: Research Implications for Public Policy (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991), pp. 180-181, available from http://www.peplaulab.ucla.edu/Publications_files/Peplau%2091.pdf; Internet; accessed 03 July 2012.
According to a survey conducted by the author of Lesbian Passion, 69% of lesbians they surveyed had been in a relationship for less than three years, and only 7% had been in a relationship for at least nine years.—JoAnn Loulan, Lesbian Passion (Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 194.
As for gay adoption, see here: http://str.typepad.com/weblog/2012/05/should-homosexual-couples-be-allowed-to-adopt.html. And to my knowledge, it’s not as if we have a shortage of heterosexual couples wanting to adopt. The problem is the beurocracy. While I am not opposed to allowing same-sex couples to adopt, that should be a last resort, only after there are no opposite-sex couples left who are willing to adopt them. The rule of thumb here being that we try to put the kids in the best environment possible. Since a two parent home of the opposite sex is best, we try that first. If there are no more homes like that who are seeking to adopt children, we then look to single persons and same-sex couples who are looking to adopt, since both of those set-ups, while less than ideal, are better than a child being raised in an institution.
Yes, those countries may have lower divorce rates, but they also have lower marriage rates. When cohabitation is the norm, the number of dissolutions in cohabiting couples needs to be factored in too to get the whole picture.
Jason
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July 3, 2012 at 4:46 pm
The US divorce rate:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_div_rat-people-divorce-rate
The divorce rates for agnostics and atheists compared with theists:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm/
The level of commitment in homosexual relationships equaling that of heterosexuals:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/94695.php
On a personal note, the longest relationships I’ve known have been between lesbian couples.
But your comparisons aren’t fair, since the vast majority of gay couples cannot marry. So you have to compare non-married couples, which break up FAR more often than married couples.
But even IF we accepted your claim that gay couples are not as stable as straight couples…so what? Marriage means different things to different people. For some, sure, it’s about having kids. But for most, it’s first and foremost about a commitment between two people who want to share their lives together. And are gay couples any less deserving of that right than straight couples? What right do we have to exclude them from that same level of commitment? Allowing them to marry would only INCREASE their level of commitment, just as married couples of any type tend to stay together longer than those who don’t marry. Refusing to allow gays to marry is just…mean. Even if you can find valid statistics that show conclusively that gays don’t form quite as strong relationships as straights, that’s no excuse to treat them as second class citizens (and not allowing them to marry whom they love IS treating them as second class citizens). Poor people have a harder time making marriages work. So do military personnel. So do people with psychological or physical disabilities. Would it be just to not allow them to marry? Of course not. Life’s hard enough for gays in a world that mostly rejects them. Why abuse them even further by not allowing them to marry? It’s not like it hurts anyone to let them do so.
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July 9, 2012 at 5:03 am
I’m not convinced by your article. While it may be true in the case of fully privatising marriage, as far as I was aware, most would argue for the state to keep the “civil partnerships” which would define the legal state of relationships, and allow groups to have automatic redress to this if they have a right to. Eg, “married” couples from a church would be married, and have a civil partnership. co-habiting friends may sign up to a civil partnership for added legal benefits.
This way, the state does not define what anyone calls it, but can link the civil partnership with any religious ceremony.
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July 12, 2012 at 3:14 pm
Scott, it wasn’t my article, but Jennifer Roback Morse’s article. My blog post merely summarizes her argument. Of course, that’s not to say that I don’t agree with her. I do.
Even if it’s not the case that most want the government to get entirely out of the relationship-sanctioning business, Morse’s argument still applies to those who do.
But what about those who want the government to stay in the relationship-sanctioning business, but out of the marriage business? I say, what’s the difference? None. Civil parternships are marriages by another name since they both function in the same way and provide the same rights and responsibilities. This “fight” is not about who gets to own the word “marriage,” but about what kind of private relationships are entitled to government support and recognition.
You seem to be suggesting that anyone could sign up for such a civil partnership, including friends, but why? Why should the government hand out benfefits to anyone who wants them? This gets back to the issue of why the government has ever involved itself in regulating personal relationships in the first place. They have limited themselves to regulating the relationships of opposite-sex couples because those relationships typically produce offspring and are the best kind of relationship for raising those offspring up to be healthy human beings and good citizens. Apart from the concern for children, there is no need for the government to regulate private relationships. What would there reason be for regulating the relationship of two room-mates, or two friends, or two adults of the same-sex who love one another and are in a sexual relationship? None? They do not provide any tangible benefit to the State, and thus it is not in the public’s interest to regulate those relationships. That’s not to say that those relationships are worthless, but merely that they do not serve the larger good of the public, and thus do not need the larger support of the public. The benefit is largely limited to the people iinvolved.
Jason
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July 12, 2012 at 5:07 pm
By your argument, infertile couples or couples who don’t intend to have children should not be allowed to marry. After all, if such marriages do not provide tangible benefits to the state, why allow them to marry? And what about poor people who have children that may require government assistance their whole lives? They can end up COSTING the state. Same deal with disabled people.
The list goes on and on, but nobody is considering limiting their right to marry, right? Why not? Because marriage is a fundamental right of deep importance to many people. They get married for a whole host of different reasons, and having children is only one of them. In modern society, marriage is more about the commitment between two people than it is about having children. And it’s THAT commitment that homosexuals want to share in as well. What right do we have to deny them that same level of commitment? Unless you’re going to argue that couples who don’t plan to have children or who can’t have children don’t have the right to marry, you can’t argue against gay marriage.
If marriage makes people happy, and happy people are more productive people, then the state benefits, regardless of whether there are kids involved.
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July 13, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Before I deal with your childless/infertile couples objection, let me address your comments about marriage being a fundamental right. Says who? Rights aren’t just plucked out of thin air. Either they are God-given (like the right to life), or they are conferred by humans by consent (the right to drive a car). What kind of right is the right to marriage? From whence does it derive?
And even if I agreed that it is a right, that doesn’t mean that anybody who wants it can have it. They have to meet the standards for it. If I wanted a hysterectomy could I have one? No, because I am not a woman. I am not being denied anything by not being given that right because that right does not apply to me as a man. Likewise, given the nature of what “marriage” is, it only applies to a man and a woman.
Given your reasoning, why can’t everyone and anyone get married? What about single people? What about two brothers who just want the legal benefits of marriage? What about a group of people? If they are going to commit to one another, why not?
And why think that committment requires marriage? Can you not be committed to someone apart from a piece of paper and legal recognition of your relationship? A marriage certificate should not add anything to your committment level if you truly love an individual, something that many heterosexuals and homosexuals can equally attest to. The bottom line is that allowing same-sex couples to participate in the institution of marriage will not give them any new rights and will not change their relationships at all. All it will do is grant homosexuals a new social status. And that is the real issue, and that is why homosexuals are pushing for marriage rights.
Jason
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July 13, 2012 at 5:04 pm
Now for the childless couples objection. This is a common one, but I don’t think it is decisive. The exceptions prove the rule, not vice-versa. While the government may issue marriage licenses to couples, they are not privileging the relationships of any particular individual(s); rather, they are privileging a particular kind of relationship; a relationship that they know from both experience and biology is capable of delivering on the State’s interest for regulating personal relationships in the first place: children. Will there be some couples within that group who cannot or choose not to produce children, and thus fail to fulfill the purpose for which the State regulates their relationship? Yes. Why, then, does the State issue marriage licenses to those couples?
The reasons are quite practical in nature. It would simply be too invasive, time-consuming, and infeasible on a practical level for the government to pre-screen every heterosexual couple applying for a marriage license to determine their ability/willingness to procreate. It would require medical testing, as well as a legal oath to procreate after being granted a marriage license. What would the State do is the medical test was inaccurate, or if a couple fails to produce a child within a certain period of time? Would they force them to divorce? It is much simpler to regulate a specific kind of relationship than it is to regulate each relationship in particular. Such an approach means a small percentage of marriages will not produce children, but the State knows that on par, privileging this particular kind of relationship will result in the production of an optimal number of socialized children.
In the case of opposite-sex couples, the State knows children are both a possible and likely result of the union. In the case of same-sex couples, however, they know for certain that no children will result from the union. If the purpose for regulating personal relationships is the creation and rearing of children, and yet no children can be produced by a specific kind of relationship, why should the State involve itself in regulating that kind of relationship?
Secondly, marriage is designed to be a burden. The State burdens a couple with legal and social obligations in exchange for certain privileges such as tax breaks and social approval. Why do this? Because they have an interest in keeping a couple together. Why might they be interested in keeping a couple together? Is it because they believe in enduring love? No, it is for the sake of children! They are interested in the optimal socialization of children, and they have deemed that the best way for kids to be socialized is to be reared by the individuals who created them. Marriage obligations exist to help keep parents tied to their children (which is why up until recently, divorces were difficult to obtain). What would the purpose be, then, to regulate the relationships of same-sex couples? If they do not produce children, there is no reason for the State to shackle them with legal and social obligations, nor to provide them with special privileges. It makes no sense to provide benefits to a group of individuals to encourage them to do X, when we know in advance that they are incapable of doing X. In fact, to do so would be unfair. To say same-sex couples are entitled to benefits of marriage even though they cannot deliver on the purpose for which those benefits are provided is like saying a healthy person is entitled to disability benefits just because they happen to want them. While same-sex couples may want the benefits of marriage, that in itself does not mean they ought to be given those benefits. Benefits must be deserved. Same-sex couples do not deserve the benefits of marriage — not because homosexuals as individuals are inferior to heterosexuals as individuals — but because same-sex relationships cannot deliver on the purpose for which those benefits are provided.
Jason
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July 14, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Not true. There are numerous cultures where people are or have been able to marry members of the same sex (Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina), animals (India, Australia, Celtic Ireland, Sudan, Korea, even Native Americans), even gods (Catholic nuns are in a sense married to God). Again, marriage means different things to different people, and its definition has changed dramatically throughout history. Historically, married women have been considered property, only landed men could marry, blacks weren’t allowed to marry, mixed-race couples couldn’t marry, etc.
The most important thing that you need to remember is that ADDING to the list of people who may marry does not SUBTRACT from anyone’s existing rights to marry. Two gay people marrying does not in ANY WAY negatively impact your own marriage. Giving the right to marry only to heterosexual couples does nothing more than marginalize a segment of our society, telling them their feelings for each other are somehow worth less than the feelings between heterosexuals. That’s divisive, discriminatory, prejudicial, cruel and narrow-minded.
If two consenting gay adults want to marry each other as a sign of their commitment to each other, and to be integrated into society as are other married couples, and receive the same rights and benefits of married couples…so be it. Unless you can demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that gay marriage causes serious and lasting damage to society, your objections are churlish and simply not fair.
Put it this way…how would YOU feel if you were told that you weren’t allowed to marry the woman you love because she was the wrong color, religion, nationality, whatever? Well, that is exactly how homosexuals feel.
When you get right down to it, the only people who truly object to gay marriage are those who do so because of religious reasons. Well, if atheists are allowed to marry, if members of other religions are allowed to marry, then YOUR religious objections don’t apply to others who are NOT members of your religion.
Here’s a fair solution: If your religion objects to gay marriage, fine…do not permit members of your religion from marrying same-sex partners. And you don’t even have to conduct ceremonies for same-sex marriages. But don’t try to impose your church’s beliefs upon us, and we won’t try to impose our non-religious or other-religious beliefs on your church.
The following video just came out, and it does a very good job of explaining why even theists should embrace secularism:
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July 14, 2012 at 3:55 pm
This is absurd. Do you seriously think that the state would deny a marriage license to someone even if they stated right at the outset that they refused to have children? Marriage is NOT about children and the state does NOT require that there be ANY connection between marriage and children. If it were, then it would be illegal for unmarried couples to have kids, and marriage licenses would include a requirement to attempt to have kids. Just as the definition of marriage has changed so that women are no longer considered the property of a man, and marriage doesn’t apply ONLY to land-owning white men, so too are children NOT the center of marriage.
Again, the simple proof of this is that the state makes NO effort to prevent infertile or otherwise non-reproducing couples from marrying. Can you imagine the outcry that would erupt if it did? That’s because the state exists to serve the PEOPLE, not the other way around–at least in our society. Marriage exists as an institution because the PEOPLE want it to exist, NOT because the state wants it to.
Why be so churlish on this issue? You’re not being asked to give up ANYTHING. All that’s happening is that a right is being extended to citizens who are who they are through no fault of their own, and only want to be fully integrated into society as anyone else.
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