"Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too."
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posted
I don't like the Us and Them tone and take on history - as if all heterosexuals were part of a club with newsletters and a collective agenda.
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posted
Ahem. I'm a little wary of the notion that all marriages throughout history were for economic reasons. I don't think we have nearly enough information on, say, the lower classes in seventh century Europe, to make such a call.
Someone prove me wrong?
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posted
I don't think that we can say that _all_ marriages throughout history were for economic reasons, but it does seem like the general trend in the past.
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What kind of proof would be involved to prove you are wrong? How on earth would someone prove that we have 'enough information on...the lower classes...', etc.?
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posted
Economic reasons have always been an important part of legal marriage. But at core, the biological impulse that is expressed in economic terms is far more basic and universal: i.e., what will best provide for the enhancement of my descendants' chances of reproduction?
What is new (and absurd) is the untying of marriage from concern for the benefit of the offspring - whether done by heterosexuals or homosexuals. If marriage isn't working for children, then it isn't working at all.
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posted
Do you have any support for that rather bizzare claim...either one actually?
edit: Now, I'm not claiming to be an expert, but from what I know of ancient marriages, there are plenty of examples where the welfare of the ofspring (especially when you're including all the offspring as opposed to the first born son) were far from being of primary importance.
Secondly, there are a great deal of benefits that come along with marriage that are not focused on the children. Marriage provides a socially recognized and supported bonding between two people. The two participants develop around each other with a depth and stability that benefits both themselves and society as a whole. This is true whether or not they have children.
edit 2: Honestly, I find the description of marriage as being either about children or meaningless a desacralization of a very important relationship. Supporting children is, to me, a very important reason why we also support the marriage relationship, but we also benefit from good marriages between people who do not and are not going to have children. Because I support marriage, I find that definition something to be opposed.
posted
>>it does seem like the general trend in the past.
That's just the thing. From the past, we have records of a very small subset of the population-- ie, the wealthy and the noble. The wealthy and the noble set no stock at all in the doings of the poor and the. . . um. . . ignoble. And thus, no record was made of the lives of the GENERAL populace.
So, how can we judge what the general trend was when no record exists to give evidence to our claims?
quote:What is new (and absurd) is the untying of marriage from concern for the benefit of the offspring-
Or rather, the tying-on of a different class of couples to that very same biologically-driven economic expression. I see no reason to assume that one marriage benefit (such as choice of partner) has any particular priority over another (such as concern for offspring).
The author of the article is trying to convince us that this tie-on would be in the spirit of other social trends undergone for the benefit of heterosexual--if not "heteronormative" or "heteroidyllic"--couples.
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posted
Scott, You're disputing that the description of marriage is not necessarily correct because we don't have reliable evidence as to the attitudes of subsets of the population. But, I'd suggest because it fits in with what we know of the period and wat we know of subsequent history, you're making the assumption that they did get married, which has little more evidence than their attiudes towards it. In the same way, the assumption that their attitudes were similar to the prevelant ones that we do know of that time and that are evidenced in the populations descended from the people in these gray area ones is the most reasonable, though by no means definitive one.
posted
In any case, here is some interesting reading on medeival peasantry and their families.
*I haven't taken a look at all of them-- really, I just read the first bit of the first-- but I thought the headings interesting enough to link them here.*
posted
>>you're making the assumption that they did get married, which has little more evidence than their attiudes towards it,
I think that there is an inertia of evidence that marriage was performed among 7th century peasantry that does not speak to the specifics, Squick.
We know what the attitudes of illegitimacy were; I've found a site (although I cringe-- it's a romance novelists site) that talks very briefly about medeival marriages, to include, presumably, among the lower classes.
Squick, can you provide further evidence to support the idea that marriage throughout history, for the majority of people on earth, has been MAINLY an economic affair?
posted
No, I can't. The best I think I'd be able to do is show that across a wide variety of cultures, what records we do have suggest that the economic reasoning was one of the primary drives for marriage customs and that this holds true for the cultures that our society descended from.
It's possible that the situation was different for people in the areas we don't know much about. So, what's the point? The argument that, in our culture, the economic aspect of marriage was traditionally of primary importance is the most tenable one. From what I can tell, that's what this article (which I didn't read) is based on.
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quote:By Carolingian times, the Catholic church had begun to make a significant impact on Frankish family life and marital and sexual attitudes. Marriages in Frankish society were arranged by fathers or uncles to meet the needs of the extended family. Although wives were expected to be faithful to their husbands, Frankish aristocrats often kept concubines, either slave girls or free women from their estates. Even the "most Christian king" Charlemagne kept a number of concubines.
To limit such sexual license, the church increasingly emphasized its role in marriage and attempted to Christianize it. Although marriage was a civil arrangement, priests tried to add their blessings and strengthen the concept of a special marriage ceremony. To stabilize marriages, the church also began to emphasize monogamy and permanence. A Frankish church council in 789 stipulated that marriage was "indissoluble" and condemned the practice of concubinage and easy divorce, and during the reign of Emperor Louis the Pious (814-840), the church formally prohibited divorce.
The acceptance and spread of the Catholic church's indissolubility of marriage encouraged the development of the nuclear family at the expense of the extended family. Although the kin was still an influential social and political force, the conjugal unit came to be seen as the basic unit of society. The new practice of young couples establishing their own households brought a dynamic element to European society.
From Western Civilization: A Brief History by Jackson Spielvogel Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, 2005
That's all the information I could find in the textbook on marriage in that era.
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posted
I'd like to point out that dividing people into "hetero-" and "homo-" is mostly a cultural thing. Besides the ancient Greeks, there are plenty of primitive societies where people have relations with both sexes. There are also primitive societies where what we would call "pedophilia" is absolutely the norm.
Human sexuality is entirely learned, in my view.
Marriage will have to change with the times, one way or another. It has before (arranged vs. love marriages, in China and India right now), and if we go on as a society, it will again.
To complicate the matter further, I personally know Guaymi Indians in Costa Rica who pair-bond for life, but never marry. They are all Christians, wear Western-style clothes, and were converted by the Catholic church hundreds of years ago.
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posted
I'm not exactly reading it by choice, I'm in Western Civ 102 right now. My major required a two-semester sequence in history, that is the only reason I'm reading. it.
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quote:I personally know Guaymi Indians in Costa Rica who pair-bond for life, but never marry.
My brother ran into that all the time in Ecuador. I don't know if it was because divorce was so severely frowned on but extramarital sex wasn't, but he was always running into couples that had been together for 30 years but had never gotten married. Many resisted - too big of a commitment.
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posted
Ah, I read it in an AP European History class back in high school. I may see it again when I finally get around to taking a European History course (among a few others) to finish off my bachelor's in history.
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posted
katharina, I'm talking about a reservation of 20,000 people where nobody has every gotten married. The choice does not exist for them, unless they leave the reservation. They do have Christian churches and services on the reservation, however. That is their religion. They're all Catholic, as far as I know.
The reservation is a 3-hour hike through steep hillsides of virgin rain forest from the nearest road. I never hiked all the way there, but I know plenty of people who did. There were two Guaymi families who lived on the farm where I stayed for a while. They made babies and weren't married. (The younger men also apparently played around on their "wives" [or "baby-mama"s, or whatever you want to call their live-in girlfriends], and sometimes got kicked out of the house for it.)
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quote:What is new (and absurd) is the untying of marriage from concern for the benefit of the offspring - whether done by heterosexuals or homosexuals. If marriage isn't working for children, then it isn't working at all.
Which brings to my mind two questions: what about heterosexual marriages that have no intention/possibility of producing or raising children? Are they then invalid? And what about homosexual marriages where the participants intend to raise children, whether from previous marriages or insemination or adoption? Are they justified?
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posted
What about when, in 25 years or so from now, someone perfects the technology that will allow a gay couple to have their own child with the same genetic sharing as a straight couple?
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posted
I think he was saying that the new and absurd problem is that people get married with no intention of having children or with no intention of making children a priority. We now see marriage as something just for the couple, not something to perpetuate our culture, society, and species.
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posted
There are plenty of benefits to society for a couple being married other than children.
And some people who get married with the notion that having children is what you do (or just aren't responsible enough to hold off on it until they're ready) certainly cause far more problems to society (and their children) by having children.
A logical conclusion of that interpretation is that anyone who does not wish to have children should never have sex (since OSC's view definitely includes sex outside of marriage being wrong). If the objection is attempted that people shouldn't have sex until they're ready to deal with the consequences (including children) anyways, consider the case of the married couple who doesn't want to have children yet; a desire not to have children is not equivalent to not being able to deal with the consequences of children.
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posted
Are we having a problem perpetuating our culture, society, and species? I'm far more concerned about people who think that having children is no big deal, which includes but is obviously not limited to people who think that because they are married, they're ready to have kids.
There are people who are incapable of having kids. There are people who don't want kids and/or think that they would make terrible parents. Slash isn't around anymore, but he was a good example of this. I'm not prepared to say that it is absurd that these people should be allowed to marry or that we would be right to say that their marriages are meaningless and are not a good thing for society.
I think kids are amazing and I want to have a whole mess of my own, but I'm not going to try to trick people into having them or say something like "You shouldn't be allowed to marry if you aren't going to have kids." There are reasons why people can't or don't want kids, some of which are legitimate, and yet these people's marriages are of value. I think many of the cultural influences on this aren't particularly healthy and I am working to try to change the cultural perspective. But, as I said, I find the defintion of marriage as only meaningful if it is for kids very objectionable and an offense to the institution of marriage.
posted
When discussing SSM (or no fault divorce, or live-in boy/girlfirends etc.) the first question which needs to be asked is: What is the purpose of marriage? The Massachusetts supreme court defined marriage solely in terms of a romantic relationship. While this is clearly a component of marriage, is this really what marriage is all about?
From a societal standpoint marriage is about stability for the society. There are a host of assumptions made and benefits granted which are meant to enhance the stability that marriage offers to society. Here are a few mixed examples along with the areas they address: the presumption of paternity (social& economic), automatic inheritance by surviving spouse (economic), requirement to care for offspring (social and economic), presumption of fidelity (social), marriage as an indicator of maturity (social) etc.
Now, it seems that the article has brought up some good points. Some heterosexuals HAVE messed up marriage (insofar as marriage exists to provide societal stability). Some of these changes are legal and some are social, but clearly there has been a trend to make marriage less of a societal stabilizer. For example, the existence of no-fault divorce is a huge undermining influence on the stability of marriage. The high rate of infidelity in marriage also serves to undermine stability. Changes in the way that the economy works have also changed the inherent stability of the family, and hence the way that society treats marriage. For example, currently the individual is the basic economic unit of society whereas this role was played by the family for most of human history. This change makes children into a liability rather than an asset and greatly reduces the economic benefit of the division of labor between husband and wife. When applied to SSM, the argument is made that a family with two husbands or two wives is equivalent to one with a husband and a wife. While this may be true in purely economic terms, it seems to me that there are other considerations. For example, sexual dimorphism exists for a sound biological purpose. I think that there are real and important differences between men and women and that marriage exists precisely because mean and women are complementary to each other- emotionally, physically, biologically and so on.
From where I stand (and of course many Hatrackers will disagree), the answer to the downslide in stability due to the changes in marriage is to fix the problems with these changes, not to continuously redefine marriage.
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posted
And yet, the reputable studies that have come out looking at the children of gay parents show them to not have significant differences in terms of developmental or psychological health from children of straight parents. The children of single parents, on the other hand, are significantly worse off than either.
The "Golden Age" of American marriage never was. It exists only in the fantasies of a subset of the population. If there was a steep decline the quality of marriage, it happened way before the 50s.
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quote:And yet, the reputable studies that have come out looking at the children of gay parents show them to not have significant differences in terms of developmental or psychological health from children of straight parents.
That is an interesting categorical statement. By any chance are any of these reputable studies available online, and if so, can you link to them?
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posted
And here you go. Those are only the ones I could link quickly to that occured on Hatrack. There are others. edit: I haven't gone though it thoroughly, but here's a summary on this issue.
posted
Now that marriage is not necessary for economic reasons, now that women aren't forced into unwanted marriages by kidnapping, rape, societal pressure, or sheer penury, then perhaps we will all discover the TRUE reasons for being married. Maybe we'll find that marriage is far far better when it's a willing choice rather than a compulsion. This enormous increase in free agency and economic freedom is a fantastic thing for women and also for men too, and for society as a whole.
It fosters the formation of true partnerships, which are what real marriages are. In the past, far too many marriages were not true partnerships, but were one partner (the economically independent one) alone dominating, with the other partner relegated to the status of domestic servant or even domestic chattel. The fact that such marriages are less available in our society (despite the buy-a-wife-from-russia services that still exist to tap into economically dependent pools of potential spouses) means that people will be forced to learn the better way, (that some few have practiced all along), that people must find a change of heart, and that is very much for their betterment and the betterment of society.
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posted
Squick- well, I think that you only linked to one summary of a real, peer reviewed study. Not that you had time to find more, of course. I reckon that having a mother and father is a real advantage, but I suspect that such an advantage, when taken in conjunction with all of the many other factors a kid faces in growing up, might be difficult to tease out in any kind of study.
At any rate, perhaps I am wrong and gay families are just as grand as traditional families, in all the ways we can measure. If that is so then it is certainly good news for the children in gay families.
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posted
Rather than arguing about the "Real Reasons" for marriage, we'd probably be better off discussing the "Real Benefits" of marriage.
After all, the initial reasoning behind the creation of an institution might have nothing to do with the reason that the same institution persists for generations.
Look at evolution as an example. Why do we have opposable thumbs? To a creationist, we have thumbs "to pick things up" or "because God wanted us to have thumbs". There is a conscious purpose there, and as humans, we usually assume that there is a conscious purpose behind just about everything we see.
But ask an evolutionist why we have opposable thumbs, and he'll say "because the populations that possessed that trait survived, while the populations that did not have it died out".
So when we ask ourselves about the value of marriage, the conscious initial purpose for creating it is irrelevant. We should be asking, why does every dominant society on earth possess marriage customs, and what survival value do they offer these societies? Then as we consider changing our customs, we should carefully examine what survival value we might LOSE (or gain) by making the change.
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posted
There are also really good reasons for people NOT to have children. It took me a long time to come to that conclusion, but I thhink it's true.
Both my parents had a genetic disease, one that eventually (indirectly) killed them both. Yet, they chose to have me and my sister togther, and my sister and I have both had children.
Probably, my parents shoulldn't have had biological children together. They didn't know they both had the disease, even though each one of the knew they had a parent with it. I cannot honestly wish my life away, however, I do see why people with genetic diseases might wish to adopt or not have children at all.
Our own Slash the Berzerker haas taken great steps to ensure that he and his wife will never have children. At first I thought that was one of the saddest things I'd ever heard, that these two wonderful people I admire would leave no part of themeselves behind, at least in flesh. I think the world might be the poorer for it. However, i have come to see the reasons for their choice, and I support it. I had to make a similar choice and chose differently, but I still think they are right.
Finally, we don't really need a lot more people. I mean, lets face it.
The truth is that marriage has been devalued quite nicely without any help from the recently vilified Homosexual Lobby (tm).
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quote: For example, currently the individual is the basic economic unit of society whereas this role was played by the family for most of human history.
I think this is kind of incorrect. Communities, large groups of people in an extended family, were the basic economic unit of a society for most of history. The ability of one family, one husband and wife, to raise and provide adequately for their children is very recent.
quote: For example, sexual dimorphism exists for a sound biological purpose. I think that there are real and important differences between men and women and that marriage exists precisely because mean and women are complementary to each other- emotionally, physically, biologically and so on.
Given that two parent families, families where the same two parents were solely responsible for an infant's welfare, that lasted for more than, say, ten years were questionable throughout history because of death and social realities, why would the human organism be such that it is most healthy when a social arrangement presents itself that has edit: rarely been present? That is, if children historically have been raised by many people rather than just the husband and wife, why would the human organism have developed where this arrangement results in the 'most health', so to speak, for the child?
posted
I'm not sure if I should be amused or insulted by the implication that I and others haven't considered the long term effect on society.
Hey, news flash. Many of the pro-gay marriage people have considered this. For example, as I have to keep bring up and then substantiate, there doesn't seem to be bad effects on children to having gay parents. We know this. We've studied it, just like we've extensively studied whether or not being gay constitutes a psychopathology (it doesn't). I wouldn't be for gay marriage if I thought that there was a good chance that it would destroy society. I care about marriage. I care about kids. I am also a person who takes integrity and rsponsiblity seriously. So are most if the people who make up the APA, the ASA, the AAP, and all the other organizations who know whath they are talking about and have offered clear statements in support of gay marriage.
To date, I've yet to see the opponents of gay marraige offer up a single good reason why we should think that allowing gay marriage would be a bad thing for society. It's like debating the scientific merits of creationism. There aren't any. But there are enough people who are not willing to let the fact that the central (and often only real) part of their argument is their own bigotry or "God says it's wrong." in any way deter them from pushing their agenda.
That's why we think the anti-gay people are ultimately foolish. They haven't yielded an actual credible argument, except for the might makes right of democracy. You want to look at people who aren't thinking beyond their very limited (and wrong) focus, look at them. Charging the pro-gay marriage people with not thinking about the wider ramifications of allowing this is an empty criticism, or would be if the actual state of things had much to do with the gay marriage debate.
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quote:I think this is kind of incorrect. Communities, large groups of people in an extended family, were the basic economic unit of a society for most of history. The ability of one family, one husband and wife, to raise and provide adequately for their children is very recent.
I guess it depends on your view of history. Certain tribal hunter gatherers are a big part of history, but of course there was a huge economic revolution with the development of agriculture, and I think it accurate to say that in agricultural economies the family is the basic societal unit, more so than tribal groups.
quote: Given that two parent families, families where the same two parents were solely responsible for an infant's welfare, that lasted for more than, say, ten years were questionable throughout history because of death and social realities, why would the human organism be such that it is most healthy when a social arrangement presents itself that has never been present? That is, if children historically have been raised by many people rather than just the husband and wife, why would the human organism have developed where this arrangement results in the 'most health', so to speak, for the child?
I don't believe I said what you are implying that I said. My point is that women and men have clearly distinct biological attributes which result in distinct behavioral attributes. For example, it is not coincidence that men generally have much more muscle mass while women have more body fat. I would be surprised if in addition to differences in the amount and location of body tissues there are not also neurological and behavioral differences that are also present. This is true whether there is one man and ten women or three men and six women or whatever ratio you would like to apply.
posted
Jacare, does that imply that every man in a marriage contributes an identical element (not the entire experience, but at least one necessary and positive element) to parenthood because of something inherent to the male gender?
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quote:That's why we think the anti-gay people are ultimately foolish. They haven't yielded an actual credible argument, except for the might makes right of democracy. You want to look at people who aren't thinking beyond their very limited (and wrong) focus, look at them. Charging the pro-gay marriage people with not thinking about the wider ramifications of allowing this is an empty criticism, or would be if the actual state of things had much to do with the gay marriage debate.
I think that you attribute to your position much more rational weight than it, in fact, posseses. We can debate the benefits to children, to society in general and so on, but ultimately the social institutions of any society have no more basis than the set of shared beliefs of those who are members of the society. If you prefer to have a society where gays may marry each other, well and good. But do not pretend that you have a scientific or rational reason for this preference while your opponents do not. This is simply not the case.
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posted
Dabbler, I think it SHOULD be possible to recognize general trends without being forced to prove them in every individual case.
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quote: Jacare, does that imply that every man in a marriage contributes an identical element (not the entire experience, but at least one necessary and positive element) to parenthood because of something inherent to the male gender?
Of course not. What it implies is that as a generalization men have certain qualities which women lack and vice versa.
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quote: I guess it depends on your view of history. Certain tribal hunter gatherers are a big part of history, but of course there was a huge economic revolution with the development of agriculture, and I think it accurate to say that in agricultural economies the family is the basic societal unit, more so that tribal groups.
I don't believe it's 'the family' so much as 'families'. Everyone worked together to bring in crops. Even in mercantile families, there were large extended kinships that tied large groups of people together. Because of the constant threat of war, people would band together for security as much as possible. So, children wouldn't have been raised by one family, even during the very brief period of time when children were children.
quote: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Given that two parent families, families where the same two parents were solely responsible for an infant's welfare, that lasted for more than, say, ten years were questionable throughout history because of death and social realities, why would the human organism be such that it is most healthy when a social arrangement presents itself that has never been present? That is, if children historically have been raised by many people rather than just the husband and wife, why would the human organism have developed where this arrangement results in the 'most health', so to speak, for the child? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't believe I said what you are implying that I said. My point is that women and men have clearly distinct biological attributes which result in distinct behavioral attributes. For example, it is not coincidence that men generally have much more muscle mass while women have more body fat. I would be surprised if in addition to differences in the amount and location of body tissues there are not also neurological and behavioral differences that are also present. This is true whether there is one man and ten women or three men and six women or whatever ratio you would like to apply. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, it doesn't matter if the same man and woman stay together as long as there is a man and woman around to 'raise' the child?
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quote:What it implies is that as a generalization men have certain qualities which women lack and vice versa.
This may be true. However, I sincerely believe that expectations and inculcation of gender roles has more to do with this than biology. It's like learning a language; most people speak the language of the country they grew up in, but that doesn't mean that they were biologically predispositioned to. Women can and often do take on supposedly "male" attributes when they are needed, and vice versa. I think adult men and women are often very different, but that is a great deal in part because we have chosen to expect different things from them.
In other words, I believe that an intelligent, responsible human being can figure out or be taught how to do just about anything when they are called upon to do so, even if it isn't in their traditional gender role description.
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posted
I don't disagree that men and women are biologically different in many ways, by the way. I hope that's clear.
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