OutRight

by Dale Carpenter

MEND IT, DON’T END IT

Traditional marriage for all retains a place in our society

Opponents of gay marriage often warn that gays want to destroy marriage. This is preposterous and alarmist. However, in a recent Washington Blade column, openly gay law professor Nancy Polikoff indeed argues for “abolishing the legal status of marriage for everyone.” There are multiple problems with her radical proposal, which boil down to: It shouldn’t happen, it ain’t gonna happen, and it needlessly fuels the opposition to gay marriage.

Since the 1970s, there has been an undercurrent of opposition to marriage on the gay left. Lesbian feminists have criticized its sexist roots, including long-discarded laws subordinating wives to husbands. Gay male sexual liberationists have seen it as stultifying, directing people into dreary, traditional patterns of living.

When the idea of gay marriage caught on in the early 1990s, thanks in part to gay conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, these critics initially dismissed it as “assimilationist.” We’re not “just like straights,” they like to say, and we don’t want to be.

The argument for gay marriage depends, however, on the idea that gays are “just like straights” in every important respect. Gay couples are just as capable of love, commitment, mutual care taking, and raising children.

Polikoff acknowledges that marriage confers important advantages to married couples in everything from health benefits to taxation. Gay couples, she agrees, should get these benefits.

But, Polikoff argues, everyone else should get them, too. “A legal system that gives benefits to married couples but withholds those benefits from other types of relationships that help people flourish and fulfill critical social functions harms many people, both straight and gay,” she writes. A man caring for his sick mother should be able to have her covered on his health insurance, for example. A woman should not lose her home to pay estate taxes when her cohabiting sister dies.

The main problem, according to Polikoff and other critics, is that marriage privileges some relationships over others. If gay marriage is allowed, it will still favor married couples over unmarried couples and other relationships. Indeed, under Polikoff’s argument, it’s hard to see why legal recognition should be limited to couples. Why not recognize relationships of three, four, or more people?

There are good reasons to reject Polikoff’s idea. The institution of marriage represents an enormous social investment, both in the couple and in the children they often raise. Every single one of the more than 1,000 marital benefits granted at the state and federal level costs us money, whether it’s in the form of a Social Security death benefit or tax breaks on transfers of wealth between spouses.

There are many reasons we make that huge investment in marriage but not in other relationships. Marriage adds to social stability, including by curbing promiscuity. It furnishes caretakers to individuals who would otherwise rely on the state. Married people are healthier and wealthier than single people or unmarried cohabitants. Marriage affords a secure environment for children, who do better in married households. Even with today’s high divorce rates, marital relationships are also more enduring, which makes our investment in them all the wiser.

Why do they last longer? Partly because of the benefits they get. But mostly, I think, because of the tremendous social support they receive. This support comes out of our history and tradition, not mere laws. The powerful social expectation of marriage becomes equally powerful encouragement and assistance from family and friends for the couple to stay together.

Marriage is important for the social affirmation it offers gay relationships, not just for the legal benefits. Not even a landmark Supreme Court decision can offer that deep affirmation, contrary to what Polikoff suggests. No “civil union” or “domestic partnership” can offer it either.

By marrying, couples signal to society in a culturally and historically unique way the strength of their commitment. No other relationship can quite replicate that signal. Society understandably rewards the married couple’s public commitment, but cannot be as confident about the durability or depth of other arrangements.

There is nothing inherently wrong with extending some benefits to other caring relationships. Maybe a son should be able to secure health benefits for his ailing mother. But every extension of benefits entails financial costs. Each of these proposed benefits should be weighed on its own merits, applied to those relationships that seem more than transient.

Polikoff probably assumes that abolishing marriage means everyone would get its goodies. At last, health care for all! Don’t bet on it. The more likely outcome is that standard marital benefits would be eliminated to help pay for benefits accorded the newly recognized relationships. The social investment in former marriages would decrease, diminishing the return we all get from that bygone institution.

Marriage, with its culturally and historically rich meaning, and its critical role in children’s upbringing, deserves its privileged position. There’s just too much at stake to abolish it.

Because of its special place in our culture, and because of its reach far back into our history, marriage isn’t going anywhere any time soon. So proposals to end marriage are a nice parlor game for academics, but nothing more.

In this case, though, the game has political consequences. Already a leading opponent of gay marriage, Stanley Kurtz has cited Polikoff’s and others’ work as proof that gays are out to destroy marriage.

Polikoff and Kurtz are wrong. We aren’t fighting for the right to marry only to see our marriages abolished.

Writing from the conservative end of the political spectrum, Dale Carpenter began his column for OutSmart in 1994, when he lived in Houston. Now residing in Minneapolis, Carpenter is a University of Minnesota Law School professor.

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