» Thursday, 12 June A.D. 2008
state control of marriage
In thinking about gay unions, my inclination has been to take a somewhat laissez-faire approach: if the state wants to proclaim that Jim and John are “married” with all the attendant legal surroundings, what's wrong with that? The church, as an alternative world to the state, can continue to proclaim that “marriage” applies solely to heterosexual unions and simply direct gay couples to the nearest justice of the peace, politely but firmly indicating that their desired lifestyle is incompatible with the church. We shall then see whose viewpoint comes out the worse for the wear. Obviously, this is a somewhat idealized picture of things. (See also Peter Leithart's parable about Stanley in Against Christianity as to why this is somewhat unrealistic.)
However, a recent blog post suggests things might not be that simple:
Shouldn't we allow for what John Stuart Mill called “experiments in living”? Isn't an accommodation of differences in belief and behavior the essence of the American experiment: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? If Jim wants to pledge himself to John--or to Jane, Jill, and Jennifer--then why should we stand in the way?
There are many ways to answer these questions, but Douglas Farrow's provocatively titled book Nation of Bastards: Essays on the End of Marriage provides an important insight that we do well to ponder. He sets aside the moral arguments against homosexual acts and concentrates on the lasting implications of gay marriage for our political culture.
A Canadian active in the recent failed efforts to block gay marriage there, Farrow looks at the legislation and its enabling amendments that made gay marriage possible in Canada in 2005. He finds an important shift. Where old laws spoke of husbands, wives, and children as “blood relations,” the new laws speak of “persons,” “legal parents,” and “legal parent-child relationships.”
In other words, in the old system, the state presumed the existence of a substantive, natural reality that required legal adumbration: the union of a man and a woman, and the children resulting from their sexual relations. Now the Canadian government sees that it must intervene and redefine marriage and parenthood in order to give fixed legal standing to otherwise fluid and uncertain social relations. When the gay friend donates his sperm to the surrogate mother hired by a lesbian couple, the resulting “family” is a purely legal construct, one that requires the power of state to enforce contracts and attach children to adoptive parents.
The result is the opposite of the libertarian dream of freedom. As Farrow observes, with gay marriage we are giving over the family to the state to define according to the needs of the moment. The upshot, he worries, will be a dangerous increase in the power of the state to define our lives in other realms once thought sacrosanct. “Remove religiously motivated restrictions on marriage,” he writes, “and it is much easier to remove religiously motivated restrictions on human behavior in general, and on the state's power to order human society as it sees fit.” The libertarian dream turns into the totalitarian nightmare. Who can or cannot be a spouse? That's for the state to decide. To whom do children belong? It's up to the state to assign parents as its social workers and judges think best.
Great.
posted by Nate @ 9:19AM