THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG: Some interesting stuff at MarriageDebate. We’re talking about love; I’m quoting “Dark Harbor” and the court of the Countess of Champagne. Other things of note include a remote area of China with “no husbands, no fathers“; campus conservatives who see same-sex marriage as a rejection of the sexual revolution; a fantastic piece by a Unitarian who asks what Unitarians can do besides supporting the right to marry and the right to divorce; Andrew Sullivan and marriage and “outsiderdom“; and our question of the week, which is this:

WHAT ABOUT THE RISKS OF BARRING SSM?

In most current discussions of same-sex marriage, supporters of gay marriage focus on the present–couples denied benefits or social support–while opponents focus on the future–the risks and harms of fundamental changes in our understanding of marriage and family life.

But as some SSM proponents, most notably Jonathan Rauch, have pointed out, nothing stands still. Even if Massachusetts’s court ruling is overruled by amendment, even if no state so much as flirts with gay marriage in the future, our understanding of marriage is not going to get stuck in 2005 (thank God), nor will it return to 1950 or 1880 (thank God). Rauch and others argue that failing to enact same-sex marriage will teach children that cohabitation (by gay couples) is a-okay, and that sex and marriage can rightfully be separated. They predict that some, maybe even many, heterosexual couples will shun marriage as a discriminatory club. (Some people already do this.) And they predict that without same-sex marriage we won’t just have marriage and not-marriage; we’ll have a bewildering array of quasi- and pseudo- and kinda-sorta-not-really-marriages, like domestic partnerships and civil unions and “well, we had a commitment ceremony at our synagogue, but obviously we’re not married” and individualized contractual arrangements.

Are these predictions right? For opponents of same-sex marriage, would preserving marriage turn into a pyrrhic victory? What do these predictions imply about human nature, American values, and political trade-offs?

As always, email me at [email protected] with any comments.