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<\/a><\/div>\nMy support for covenant marriage led me to mix it up recently on facebook with several friends, including Stephen of The Last Delta-T<\/a>. \u00a0He\u2019s written a post laying out his opposition<\/a> to covenant marriage<\/a> and atheist or feminist-unfriendly aspects of marriage generally. \u00a0Stephen and I both want to redefine modern marriages, but we want to do it in very different directions, so I\u2019m going to start by laying out some of our basic points of disagreement, and then I\u2019ll explain the reasoning underlying my positions in later posts. Here\u2019s the first and simplest difference between our positions: I would strongly consider\/prefer seeking a covenant marriage<\/a> if I get married, while Stephen disapproves of that\u00a0institution.<\/strong>Stephen writes:<\/p>\n Marriage sans God, as far as I see it, does make marriage look a lot like a long-term co-habitation with a lot of pretty legal things (which are important, yes, but not in the roughly metaphysical sense we\u2019re talking about). The way we conceptualize marriage is what\u2019s different, and I think that conception is unhealthy \u2014 it posits that there\u2019s a fundamental change in essence in a relationship when a wedding vow is made, a bright-line distinction. I\u2019ve never been married (shocker!) but it doesn\u2019t seem to me that, in the minds of the people going through the vows, that the love signified by the wedding ceremony and to a broader extent the marriage is different in kind after the \u201cI do\u201ds than it was before. Different in degree certainly, but it doesn\u2019t seem like the love looks different.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As a fellow atheist, I also don\u2019t see any transcendental, metaphysical phase shift that happens when a couple says \u2018I do.\u2019 \u00a0If a meaningful change occurs, it comes earlier, around the point of engagement, when a couple decides they want something more than a long-term cohabitation. \u00a0This isn\u2019t a shift in \u2018love\u2019 necessarily so much as a shift in the level of responsibility each partner wants to take on for the other. \u00a0We love many people, all in different ways. \u00a0Marriage isn\u2019t a way of\u00a0recognizing\u00a0a love that has cleared some kind of benchmark for depth or profundity; it recognizes a commitment meant to be binding on both parties, and love may be one of the feelings driving couples to make that\u00a0commitment. The centrality of love to the definition of marriage, along with the substantial legal benefits of marriage in America have helped blur the distinction between marriage and cohabitation. \u00a0Many of the legal benefits (allowing a partner to visit you in the hospital, being able to take leave during a partner\u2019s illness, etc) are based in love and affection, not any institutional bond or affection. \u00a0A legal system that limits these benefits\u00a0only\u00a0to married couples creates pressure to marry and diminishes the cultural value placed non-marital relationships (especially\u00a0friendship<\/a>). I\u2019d like to see more of these benefits available to unmarried couples. \u00a0I\u2019d be happy if more people sought civil unions, if there were more legal respect for personal contracts, or, perhaps, even if there were \u2018temporary unions\u2019 that could award a couple these benefits for a certain period of time, with an expiry date. \u00a0But I only support these adaptations if they aren\u2019t all lumped under the heading of marriage, diluting the definition. After all, that\u2019s exactly what Stephen is up to:<\/p>\n To follow the reasoning, what we should be doing is playing with the word \u201cmarriage\u201d and applying the term to a whole bunch of different things to make \u201cmarriage\u201d the concept show itself for what it really is: not that much of a change at all (but still meaningful for the people involved!) This lets us change how the word works culturally, to strip away the problematic elements that come along with marriage as understood in a religious context and overthrow the religious framework that creates the way we conceptualize \u201catheist marriage\u201d in the first place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n