* This is now the sixth essay in my series on the nature and meaning of marriage. I know a lot of you have many questions. Be patient! After this essay, I will finish this series with two or three essays on how marriage and all other romantic unions should be recognized by the law in a free society. I think these future essays will address many of the questions that some of you have been wondering about.
**The audio recording of this essay is at the bottom and available to all subscribers.
It is often said of postmodern “marriage” that it does not affect the marriages of heterosexual couples. As The Boston Globe asked in an oft-cited editorial defending same-sex marriage, “How would gay civil marriage affect your lives, liberties, or opportunities, or your own marriages?” This is the million-dollar question that has left conservatives and Christians stammering for an answer. This simple and seemingly commonsense question is no doubt important, but it is also a disingenuous and trivial evasion of the nature and point of marriage.
On a superficial level, a same-sex “marriage” would not affect my marriage for the same reasons that none of the various forms of postmodern marriage (e.g., polygamous, polyamorous, bigamous, incestuous, pedophilic, or interspecies) would affect my marriage. If two men want to marry, if a man and five women want to marry, if ten men and women want to marry each other, or if a woman wants to marry a dolphin, none of these unions will have any effect on my marriage in the same way that no other heterosexual marriage affects mine. Why not? On one level, all these relationships are private matters that do not have any bearing on my marriage, which is also a private matter. The simple truth of the matter is that there are only two people in the entire world who could affect my marriage: I am one and the other is my wife.
On a deeper and more fundamental level, same-sex marriage will unquestionably affect my liberties and opportunities in innumerable ways; it will affect my marriage indirectly and in meaningful ways; and it will certainly affect the way future generations experience marriage. The postmodern view of “marriage” will impose a variety of “negative externalities” on society and therefore actually harm the institution of marriage—and my marriage with it.
By democratizing and disconnecting marriage from its metaphysical roots, the postmodern view of marriage will inject a major dose of subjectivism, egalitarianism, and moral relativism into America’s marriage culture. It is grounded in the subjectivist premise that marriage is simply about individual wants, feelings, and needs, on the egalitarian premise that marriage is about companionship and all companionships are equal, and on the relativist principle that we cannot rank, distinguish, or judge one form of romantic union from another. The postmodern view makes different things the same and it makes unequal things equal.
The subjectivism, egalitarianism, and relativism built into the postmodern view of marriage will cause Americans to adopt what Abraham Lincoln called a “Don’t Care” policy toward marriage and parenting. (Lincoln was referring to Stephen Douglas’s doctrine of “popular sovereignty” as it applied to the slavery issue.) This “Don’t Care” policy is the single greatest threat to marriage. It will lead to a society (i.e., the world of our relatives, friends, neighbors) that can’t muster the moral norms and supports necessary to sustain an inherently fragile institution over the longue durée.
Under the best circumstances, marriage is hard work, especially if it involves the rearing of children. The dedication that is required to make it work, day in and day out, over the course of forty or fifty years is not automatic. Marriage is also an inherently fragile institution that must be respected and supported with various moral and cultural norms if it is to prosper and last. The long and sometimes bumpy journey that is marriage is rendered more difficult if society and its accompanying moral norms do not recognize and uphold it as unique, important, and exalted in some important way. The “Don’t Care” philosophy applied to marriage cannot sustain an inherently delicate institution.
The subjectivism, egalitarianism, and relativism of postmodern marriage represent not just an expansion and dilution of marriage, but also a fundamental redefinition of its constituent parts, characteristics, and purposes. The parts of marriage—true marriage—consist of one man and one woman, who become a husband and a wife and potentially a mother and a father. The postmodern view, by contrast, redefines or eliminates the constituent parts of marriage and family. Not only can a man have a husband (or a wife who is a biological man) and a woman a wife (or a husband who is a biological woman), but they can have as many of each or as many of both as they wish. In other words, the number of constituent parts that define marriage can no longer be limited to the number two. It can be two, three, five, or ten. The number is now open-ended. Ultimately, the conceptual confusion encouraged by the postmodern view of marriage will lead to abolishing the concepts “husband” and “wife” altogether and replacing them with concepts such as “partner” or “spouse 1,” “2,” “3,” or “10.”
Postmodern marriage also includes a redefinition of its purpose, which is now defined under the new dispensation as companionship and sexual preference. According to E. J. Graff, a same-sex marriage advocate, the purpose of a same-sex union is fundamentally different from the purpose of a metaphysical marriage:
Marriage is an institution that towers on our social horizon, defining how we think about one another, formalizing contact with our families, neighborhoods, employers, insurers, hospitals, government. Allowing two people of the same sex to marry shifts that institution’s message. . . . If same-sex marriage becomes legal, that venerable institution will ever after stand for sexual choice, for cutting the link between sex and diapers.
And what is the purpose of sexual choice? Obviously, it’s about sexual gratification. By this definition, then, marriage is about who one joins with for sexual gratification, the legal protection and regulation of which is the purpose of postmodern marriage. And of course, Graff’s conditional “if” is no longer conditional. Graff’s definition of marriage is now the law of the land. And, as Graff suggests, the legalization of postmodern marriage will have serious consequences for “our families, neighborhoods, employers, insurers, hospitals, [and] government.” This s because marriage is not simply a private institution concerned with what takes place in the bedroom. The ripple effects of a redefined marriage will reverberate throughout society. These effects will be mostly unseen until they’re not.
By contrast, metaphysical marriage is about much more than sexual choice and companionship. It is about creating, protecting, and loving a sum greater than the original two parts, namely, a family. My marriage treats my wife and me legally as one, and by extension my marriage treats my family morally as a complex compound. But if the law were to say that two women are a marriage equal to mine, then the nature and purpose of my marriage changes. The law would now say that the difference between my marriage and theirs or that the difference between my marriage and my friendships is one of degree and not one of kind. But my marriage is different from my friendships and from same-sex unions. In fact, it is different from my eight-year love affair with the woman who would one day become my wife because the purposes were and are different. The general purpose of postmodern marriage is no longer about providing a moral and legal context for the bearing and rearing of children, which means that it will have a “Don’t Care” attitude toward creating families.
Redefining the purpose and parts of marriage will also lead, invariably, to changing its principal characteristics, thereby affecting how people experience marriage. Metaphysical marriage requires monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence to make it work relative to its end; postmodern marriage and friendship require none of these things to achieve the end of sexual choice. Institutionalizing the postmodern view of marriage in law and culture will invariably erode those critical marital norms that don’t and can’t apply equally between heterosexual, homosexual, and other kinds of marital unions.
Consider one important example. As we’ve seen already, marriage arose historically to solve, among other things, a very real two-part problem: on the one hand, the need and preference of women for one romantic partner so as to ensure the security and protection of the women and their children, and, on the other hand, the need and preference of men to eliminate the psychological burden of sexual competition from other men and for paternity certainty. Evolutionary psychologists report that sexual fidelity and monogamy ensure that women can also maintain family resources by not having to share those resources with another family and that men won’t invest time and resources in other men’s offspring. Monogamy and sexual exclusivity are, therefore, key pillars of marriage. In heterosexual marriages, the cultural norms and legal rules that connect sex, monogamy, and marriage are mutually reinforcing. Monogamy and exclusivity are the triggers that make the permanence of marriage possible. They are the necessary and non-negotiable conditions for a flourishing marriage culture.
Such norms and rules, however, do not necessarily make sense or work in same-sex or polyamorous relationships. Polygamous and polyamorous marriages are obviously, by definition, non-monogamous. And sexual exclusivity is optional in the culture of postmodern marriage. According to Andrew Sullivan, “openness”—i.e., sexual infidelity—is one of the important virtues of same-sex unions from which heterosexual couples can learn:
Same-sex unions often incorporate the virtues of friendship more effectively than traditional marriages; and at times, among gay male relationships, the openness of the contract makes it more likely to survive than many heterosexual bonds. . . . [T]here is more likely to be greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman. . . . [S]omething of the gay relationship’s necessary honesty, its flexibility, and its equality could undoubtedly help strengthen and inform many heterosexual bonds.
According to Sullivan, same-sex unions are superior to opposite-sex unions, at least in certain important ways. Same-sex unions include greater “openness,” “honesty,” “flexibility,” and “equality,” particularly as they relate to the question of extramarital affairs, which is apparently what makes same-sex marriage superior to opposite-sex marriages.
There is a growing body of social-scientific evidence suggesting that the permanence of same-sex unions is actually enhanced by infidelity. According to a 2010 front-page article in the New York Times:
A study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many. Some gay men and lesbians argue that, as a result, they have stronger, longer-lasting and more honest relationships. And while that may sound counterintuitive, some experts say boundary-challenging gay relationships represent an evolution in marriage — one that might point the way for the survival of the institution.
New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.
That consent is key. “With straight people, it’s called affairs or cheating,” said Colleen Hoff, the study’s principal investigator, “but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations.”
The study also found open gay couples just as happy in their relationships as pairs in sexually exclusive unions, Dr. Hoff said. A different study, published in 1985, concluded that open gay relationships actually lasted longer.
Marriage stability and satisfaction in homosexual unions appear to differ qualitatively from those of heterosexual unions. And why wouldn’t they be? They are different kinds of relationships with different kinds of people serving different needs and ends. Same-sex relationships appear to benefit from outside sexual relationships (or so its proponents claim), while opposite-sex relationships are almost always harmed by infidelities. Even in the face of HIV, long-term same-sex partnerships do not seem to value monogamy. One Dutch study of homosexuals found, for instance, that 86% of new HIV infections occurred “within steady partnerships.”
If marriage is treated as an elevated form of open companionship or friendship and if monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence become optional in marriage, fewer people will subject themselves to the trials and tribulations of traditional marriage and fewer will have the incentive to stay married. More and more people will adopt “flex” and rescindable private contracts that do not require monogamy or the promise of staying together “till death do us part.” Sooner or later, the non-gendered, non-monogamous, and non-exclusive contractual view of marriage will be replaced by the sexual handshake and then by the more informal sexual “high five” or “fist bump.” Marriage will become the semi-legal version of “friends with benefits.” And if the cultural and legal norms supporting monogamy and permanence are eroded and become relics of a time past, then it follows that more marriages will end in divorce and marriage as an institution will lose its appeal resulting in fewer people getting and staying married. Young men and women are less likely to marry if they know that their roles as husbands and wives are not valued and supported by their relatives, friends, and neighbors. They are also less likely to stay married if permanence is not valued as a critical component of marriage.
If the “Don’t Care” philosophy is applied to the definition of what marriage is, then we shouldn’t be surprised that many young people will have a “Don’t Care” attitude toward either getting or staying married.
Moreover, if “marriage equality” demands that opposite- and same-sex romantic unions be put in the same legal framework (which it must) and if these two forms of marriage are built on different norms and rules, then to put them under the same norms and rules will lead inevitably to confusion and conflict. But “marriage equality” can’t permit different standards. It is difficult if not impossible for a single law to regulate two different kinds of relationships that serve different purposes, structures, functions, and mores. To quote Lincoln, “A house divided cannot stand.” It must become “all one thing or all the other.” The same will also be true when polygamous and polyamorous relationships apply for marriage licenses under the principle of “marriage equality” as they surely will. The result is that either heterosexual monogamy will be dropped as a cultural norm and legal rule or the cultural norms and legal rules will turn against homosexual infidelity. But if marriage is no longer an institution to regulate heterosexual relationships that bear children, then equality dictates that the norms and rules of traditional or metaphysical marriage be dropped so as not to be discriminatory.
The odds clearly suggest that traditional marital norms and laws supporting monogamy and permanence will be treated at first as optional and then, as with most optional norms, they will go the way of the dodo bird. Not surprisingly, America’s cultural elite has started the Big Push to normalize and democratize what we might call the Gay Male Ethic within marriage. If monogamy and sexual exclusivity are no longer considered a core norm and rule of marriage, then they will surely fade away thereby doing incalculable harm to marriage—and hence to children, who may now share their father or mother with other families. Infidelity and impermanence cannot guarantee the security and sense of permanence that children desperately crave and need. Fidelity and monogamy are characteristics of marriage that require a great deal of social reinforcement to be fully realized.
Finally, one of the most invidious effects of same-sex marriage is that it would change the way we evaluate and judge parenting. Conjugal marriage laws were created to support the ideal and the reality of marriage as the most salutary environment in which to raise happy and healthy children. Redefining marriage to include same-sex marriage or polyamorous marriage would legally abolish the ideal that children are best raised by their biological parents who bring different and important virtues (and vices) to childrearing. This new view, tragically, has now become the law of the land. In California, Judge Vaughn Walker argued in the Proposition 8 case that children derive no special benefit from having a mom and a dad:
Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted, and having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted.
The proponents of “marriage equality” argue that any two (or more) adults who claim to love a child must be treated as equal to that child’s biological parents. But surely biological parents will love their children more than all others, and surely children develop a fuller perspective on life by being raised by a mother and a father.
Not surprisingly, this view of parenting is supported by social science research. According to Rutgers sociologist, David Popenoe, “The burden of social science evidence supports the idea that gender-differentiated parenting is important for human development and that the contribution of fathers to childrearing is unique and irreplaceable.” Popenoe sums up his conclusion in these terms: [W]e should disavow the notion that ‘mommies can make good daddies,’ just as we should disavow the popular notion . . . that ‘daddies can make good mommies.’ . . . The two sexes are different to the core, and each is necessary—culturally and biologically—for the optimal development of a human being.”
The postmodern view of marriage says, by contrast, that it doesn’t matter if a child is raised by his biological parents or by a mother and a father. As with the idea of marriage itself, the postmodern view of parenting and family says that all forms of parenting are equal and that no one family form is superior to another. Conjugal marriage is no longer the preferred structure for raising children, but just one of many different but equal forms. Katherine Bartlett, a leading proponent of the postmodern view of marriage, places a great deal of value “on family diversity and on the freedom of individuals to choose from a variety of family forms. . . .” Again, the postmodern view of family is designed to satisfy the wishes of adults rather than to protect the needs of children.
The social signal sent by promoting the idea that it matters not whether children are reared by both their mother and father will diminish the social pressure and incentive that a husband should stay with his wife and children or that a woman should have children in marriage. It is also a well-established fact in the social science literature that children raised outside of functioning marriages have higher rates of infant mortality, poverty, physical illness, drug use, promiscuous sexual activity, juvenile delinquency, teen suicide, and adult criminality. We hurt children by denying them the love, security, and knowledge that come with having a married mother and father.
And now we come to the hard truth about the “Don’t Care” view of marriage: its ultimate meaning is to elevate the welfare of adults above children. By institutionalizing “marriage equality,” we are announcing to the world that the fundamental public purpose of marriage is no longer concerned with the welfare of children. Ultimately, the postmodern view of marriage disregards the needs of children. Indeed, it represents an adult-centric, narcissistic assault on children. It puts the emotional needs of adults before those of the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. The postmodern “Don’t Care” view of marriage relegates children to an afterthought. And if we don’t really care who raises and educates children, why should we be surprised if, at some point, the government decides it can do a better job raising and educating children.
Ultimately, when you add up the subjectivism, egalitarianism, and relativism of the “Don’t Care” view of marriage, the sum of these forces leads to one logical conclusion: that the postmodern view is self-consciously nihilist by design and intent. Its goal is not to preserve, protect, and spread the benefits of marriage by expanding its definition to include more people. No: the purpose of postmodern marriage is to destroy marriage by transforming it into something else. Its leading proponents do not support marriage because they think it is a good thing, the benefits of which they hope to extend to homosexuals. Victoria Brownworth, a leading same-sex marriage proponent, has argued that former President George W. Bush was right “when he states that allowing same-sex marriage couples to marry will weaken the institution of marriage. . . . It most certainly will do so, and that will make marriage a far better concept than it previously has been.” That’s the point; that’s the goal.
This is why the postmodernists view same-sex marriage as a moral and political Trojan Horse, the purpose of which is to forever alter and ultimately abolish metaphysical marriage. According to Professor Ellen Willis, by conferring the legitimacy of traditional marriage on homosexual unions, the postmodernists can “introduce an implicit revolt against the institution into its very heart.” Queer activist Michelangelo Signorile, revealed the strategy of the Queer Left when he encouraged his comrades to seek a temporary “middle ground” by fighting for “same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely,” with the ultimate goal of demanding “the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution.” The goal is to corrupt marriage from the inside. Queer liberationists should fight, he argues, “for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, because the most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake . . . is to transform the notion of ‘family’ entirely.”
It turns out that the movement for same-sex marriage is not about “marriage equality” after all. In fact, it is not really about marriage at all, or even equality for that matter. No serious person thinks that the movement for same-sex marriage is an end in itself. It is, of course, as its proponents have made clear time and again, a means to a much more ambitious end. The true end is the dissolution and ultimate extinction of civil marriage as a social institution and with it the abolition of private family life. This is why “Gay marriage is a lie,” according to LGBTTQQ+ activist Masha Gessen. “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we’re going to do with marriage when we get there,” she revealed. For Gessen and her allies, “It is a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist.”
And why should Gessen and her fellow travelers want to legalize same-sex marriage as the first step to abolishing marriage? The most radical proponents of postmodern marriage want to end traditional marriage so they can abolish the family, and they want to abolish the family so they can abolish private property, and they want to abolish private property so they can abolish man’s self-interested nature, and they want to abolish self-interest so they can collectivize the human soul and thereby usher in true communism.
This mode of reasoning has a long lineage. In his Republic, Plato creates an imaginary city where the men of the “guardian” class (i.e., those who defend the city from foreign invaders and who protect the city from internal corruption) hold all women and children in common, which means there are no monogamous and sexually-exclusive marriages, no private households, and no knowledge of one’s own parent or child. The purpose of this arrangement is to create a collective soul, where all men view all things as shared and in common.
A similar arrangement and goal are proposed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The Communist Manifesto. Whereas Plato abolishes the “guardian” family, Marx and Engels seek to abolish the traditional bourgeoisie family first, after which the proletarian family will wither away. That abolishing the bourgeois family is meant ultimately to abolish private property and self-interest is seen most clearly for Marx and Engels in the following passage from the Manifesto:
Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.
Marx and Engels set the terms. Their goal was clear: marriage must be abolished to achieve communism. The problem, of course, is that abolishing marriage through the coercive force of the State was a bridge too far even for other socialists never mind the general public and virtually impossible to achieve by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and all twentieth-century communists. Rather than simply abolishing marriage and the family outright, the New Left began their long march through the institutions in the 1960s and 1970s, which included most importantly the related institutions of marriage and the family.
The question for us is, how did radical factions such as the Queer Liberation Movement (a neo-Marxist front organization) morph into the same-sex marriage movement? According to the Gay Liberation Front Manifesto of 1971:
The oppression of gay people starts in the most basic unit of society, the family. . . . The very form of the family works against homosexuality. . . . Reform cannot change the deep-down attitude of straight people . . . because it is rooted in our society’s most basic institution—the Patriarchal Family.
Gay-liberation Marxists faced the same dilemma as Lenin and Stalin: how can the family be abolished without directly and openly using force, particularly if you’d never get elected on the “Let’s Abolish Marriage” platform. At a certain point, the Gay-Liberation Marxists adopted the colloquial philosophy, “if you can’t beat’ em, join’ em,” but we’ll beat’ em in the long run. In other words, the new strategy was to destroy the family by corrupting the institution of marriage from within.
Conclusion
In sum, the postmodern view of marriage undermines the nature, structure, and purpose of marriage, which is grounded in an objective, metaphysical reality—namely, the need to reconcile the sexual capacities and consequences of men and women. By severing marriage from the requirements of human life and by severing it from its core purpose and characteristics, we make marriage the product of nothing more than arbitrary human will and politics. And if marriage is not grounded in the facts of human nature and the realities of civil society, its inner meaning and logic will shrivel and die as some of the proponents of postmodern marriage hope for. Nay, more: if we stigmatize metaphysical marriage as the source and vehicle for bigotry and hatred, we are ultimately saying that marriage is a bigoted and hateful institution. That can’t be good for marriage, and it can’t be good for children. Institutions grounded in bigotry and hate do not typically last very long. But that, I suppose, is the point.
This audio recording is free to all subscribers.
Have a great week!!!
Once RNI finishes his series, I will read the essays 1st to last again ( and hopefully a book in the future as it is good intellectual candy).
Addressing marriage from a Human nature perspective and looking to the animal kingdom as well, male/female rearing are present observationally. There is a correlation. Yet, there are also instances of single and multi rearing.
The essence of RNI’s thinking is legality. While nature is bedrock foundation supporting the institution under law. Since laws should and ultimately be objectively then his arguments are non contradictory and defendable.
The essays do note monogamy as a key attribute of marriage, distinguishing it from poly relationships.
My question wasn’t about force vs choice. The thought was more around if monogamy IS a fundamental attribute of LEGAL marriage, then how are we legally and morally to address couples who choose to open marriages?
If it is choice, then this slope becomes icy and once again open the door to argument that choice supersedes the definition of marriage. Which it should not.
While we haven’t seen RNI’s additional essays on legal of kind and difference yet to address alt marriage situations, one would think that if a marriage legally were to then become open that would have to be a DIFFERENT type of legal arrangement?
Brad: I have followed you for a LONG time. This is excellent work, well thought out and thoroughly explained. However, experienced as I am in taking “metaphysical” marriages apart, I keep returning to the utter folly of it all. I have urged you to consider “human nature,” not so much what it IS, but what the term actually means. I know what you are trying to do , but, at 81, I know you are pissing in the wind. I have concluded, after many years in the trenches, that we - the human race - are in the later stages of entropic disintegration. People no longer respond to logical argument, no longer think like we do, no longer think much at all. It is frightening where we are headed, and the good thing is that I will not have to endure it as long as you will. Sorry about that. Keep on trying. I appreciate you.