Congratulations, Massachusetts!
Wed., May 19, 12:38 PM
Congratulations, Massachusetts!
I’ve written about this before – even had it published in the newspaper – but somehow the message doesn’t get through. When the paper’s weekly question was “How do you define marriage?” the answers ranged from naïve or ignorant to downright offensive. I’ve searched for a proper answer, through everything I learned reading history and sociology. (And then I compared the “facts” I’d been taught against the background of the time and culture in which they’d been taught.) I can’t accept “…that’s the way it’s always been” without asking why.
The best definition I can come up with is this:
Historically, the most obvious reason that marriage – a partnership between a man and a woman – benefited the community was that it produced and nurtured children. It was very important to increase the population as well as to replace people that died. Remember, up until the late 1800’s, disease and malnutrition killed many children, not to mention young men who were killed by working accidents (no workers’ compensation) or by war.
Sometimes you can gain some perspective by looking at a community very different from our own. Even if you’re not a Biblical scholar, you know something about the story of Jacob. Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel; he also fathered children by their servants. Just as having two wives was accepted by the society of the time, so was the custom of having concubines, because they needed more people. In order to care for his flocks and herds, Jacob needed sons and he got them – a dozen of them. In a tribal community like that, the patriarch made the rules; he also accepted full responsibility for all the people in the tribe. It worked for that time and place.
Increasing the population is no longer the best solution to the old requirements. The world has learned to protect people from dying at an early age; most of those who live into adulthood continue to produce offspring. How else would the world population have risen to over six billion? And technology has relieved us of the requirement for large numbers of people to produce the commodities that the rest of the population needs.
In any case, there has never been a law that a couple was required to have children. Family members might have urged the couple to produce grandchildren, but no one took them to court if they didn’t.
Let’s go back to the patriarch for a minute. He took responsibility for all the people in the tribe. He made sure they all had food and clothing and shelter. Occasionally he might cast out someone who didn’t fit into his community. As I said, it worked for that time and place.
But when the tribe becomes too large to be cohesive, when the order falls apart, other forms of community develop. There have been many of these forms, including polygamy and polyandry and communes. Nevertheless, one sociology professor told us, no matter what form of marriage was condoned by the community, the most common form of alliance was monogamy.
I stopped to think about that, because I heard it in the fifties, a time when that was what people wanted to hear. But I think that it wasn’t propaganda; people do tend to pair off. In fact, that was the problem with some “open” communes. Some couples became permanent couples, and the ones who were left out resented it. Since resentment toward one’s fellows is divisive, such communities eventually broke up.
Well, here we are in the twenty-first century. Are we capable of adapting to the needs of our community? Children are still important, they always will be; but they’re not the most important reason for the alliance. People pair off because it’s mutually beneficial – one will provide a salary, the other will keep house, for example – or for companionship. In essence, when people marry, they are assuming responsibility for each other. Oh, it’s inspiring to see them proclaim their love, but some people are not that emotional. Does that mean they can’t marry?
In Whisker of Evil by Rita Mae Brown, a character talks about having been adopted. “Yes, since gay people couldn’t get married, they had to find ways to protect one another.” (Or, as I would put it, to take responsibility for each other.) “By adopting me, Mary Pat made it very difficult for someone to contest her will. Also, if she’d been critically ill, I would have been able to visit her in the hospital as next of kin. Heterosexuals don’t realize how many barriers there are for gay people in situations like hospitalization. It’s better now in some places where domestic partnership is recognized by the state, but when we were together it was still the Dark Ages.”
That’s fiction, of course, but it may well have happened. The person in this case was wealthy enough to pay for an adoption, which is much more expensive but also forms a bond much harder for outsiders to break. Domestic partnerships make sense, except for the fact that special situations can be held up in court, until the patient dies while the insurance company decides whether to allow treatment… It’s just not strong enough. Compassionately, the state of Massachusetts is adapting to that fact.
Just keep in mind, the majority of people will still be monogamous. Two people – of whatever gender – declare themselves a couple. They are happy together. It is not your job to inquire how they spend their time together, whether it be mad passionate sex or playing Scrabble!
