{"id":943,"date":"2013-07-17T22:02:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T22:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/07\/the-obligatory-post-on-gay-marriage.html"},"modified":"2013-07-17T22:02:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T22:02:00","slug":"the-obligatory-post-on-gay-marriage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/07\/the-obligatory-post-on-gay-marriage.html","title":{"rendered":"The obligatory post on gay marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So here goes:<\/p>\n

This will probably be a multi-post \u201cseries\u201d and I try to work this out.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the basic starting point:\u00a0 marriage is fundamentally about children.\u00a0 Always has been.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s true that the nobility in the middle ages used the pre-existing instution of marriage to force dynastic alliances.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t mean that the purpose of marriage was forming dynastic alliances.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And when I mean \u201cabout children\u201d\u00a0I really mean that marriage was the means to tie men to their children.\u00a0 That\u2019s why children born in a marriage are legally assumed to be fathered by the husband of the mother.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Now, for the past generation, the notion that children should be born to married parents and married couples should have children as been abandoned by a large segment of the population.\u00a0 There\u2019s some author out there who essentially says that American society is splitting into two,\u00a0one\u00a0half (middle class and religious\/traditional families) continuing to marry, and the other half (the poor and working class, especially but not exclusively Hispanics and blacks) either not marrying at all, or doing so out-of-sequence and not necessarily to the mother\/father of their children.\u00a0 And this change has happened so thoroughly that they\u2019re befuddled by the concept that a woman should be married before contemplating having children.\u00a0 (\u201cPromises I Can Keep\u201d<\/a>, about poor women who see having children as entirely separate from being married, is very eye-opening in this respect.)\u00a0 <\/p>\n

At the same time, without having done any research, I suspect that the mainstream acceptance of the idea of being married, but never having any intention of having children is relatively new, in the grand scheme of things.\u00a0 Periodically, there are even advice-column letters along the lines of \u201cmy husband and I agreed never to have children, but now I\u2019m unintentionally pregnant, and I\u2019m afraid he\u2019ll flip out.\u00a0 Should I just get the abortion now and not even tell him?\u201d<\/p>\n

And all of this is not even addressing the increase in divorce since no-fault divorce became the law of the land, and the conventional wisdom changed from \u201cstay together for the sake of the kids\u201d to \u201cchildren are happier if their parents are happier, so get your divorce, pursue your dreams, and they\u2019ll be just fine.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

All of which leads gay marriage advocates to say, \u201cmarriage has ceased to be about children a long time ago.\u00a0 Like it or not, marriage is now about public recognition of\u00a0a loving relationship, and a set of legal rights and benefits.\u00a0 The horse is out of the barn.\u00a0 You can\u2019t turn back the clock.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And if\u00a0 marriage is indeed about nothing more than provision of a set of legal\u00a0rights and benefits to any two individuals as request it, then indeed there is no reason to limit those benefits to a man and a woman requesting them.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In that case, then, the only questions left are (a) has marriage truly been redefined, or are we talking about something else, some new status which ought to have a new name so that\u00a0\u201cmarriage\u201d\u00a0remains a legal recognition of the relationship of a mother and father committed to raising children together, and \u201cromantic committed partnership\u201d is what its name implies?\u00a0 And (b) if marriage is the term that the law uses for \u201ccommitted romantic partnership\u201d then do the benefits and rights typically provided to married couples make sense in this new era \u2014 most notably, Social Security spouse\u2019s and survivor\u2019s benefits which were initially based on the assumption that the wife is dependent on her husband for support?<\/p>\n

BUT that just begs the question (\u201cbeg the question\u201d is so misused that I\u2019m not entirely sure I\u2019m using it correctly):\u00a0 can we really not turn back the clock?\u00a0 Is it really too late to undo this transformation of marriage and childbearing?\u00a0 Is there nothing we can do to return to a situation in which men and women wait until they\u2019re married to procreate? \u2014 especially if a large segment of the population doesn\u2019t even see that as a problem.\u00a0 I\u2019ll try to figure that out in a later post.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So here goes: This will probably be a multi-post \u201cseries\u201d and I try to work this out.\u00a0 Here\u2019s the basic starting point:\u00a0 marriage is fundamentally about children.\u00a0 Always has been.\u00a0 Yes, it\u2019s true that the nobility in the middle ages used the pre-existing instution of marriage to force dynastic alliances.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t mean that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe obligatory post on gay marriage<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So here goes:This will probably be a multi-post "series" and I try to work this out.  Here's the basic starting point:  marriage is\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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