Marriage Without Gender
But the traditional concept of marriage is valuable in itself, not only because it seems to represent something basic to human experience, and not only because a great many people still find it relevant to their lives, but because it is so fundamental to our history, our heritage, and our ancient cultural foundations. There are no synonyms that truly convey the entirety of the meaning of “marriage”, and with the loss of that word to a more all-encompassing ideal we will no longer have the language to discuss and comprehend those facets of our human nature and of our cultural past.
Marriage, both the abstract concept and the word to name it, does not belong to the state, it belongs to the culture. Certainly the state has appropriated it for its own use because it has traditionally aligned well with a particular and narrow state function, that of designating the legal benefits and responsibilities of participants in a family unit – but it is, in that regard, merely borrowed, not owned. And because the state does not own marriage, it is not a state prerogative to redefine marriage to adhere to an updated consensus on that narrow legal function. It is not appropriate for the state to dictate any definition of “marriage” to the rest of society, whether it be by judicial fiat, by legislative initiative, or by constitutional amendment.
If a state chooses to live up to the more modern understanding of its obligation to fairness and equality under the law by creating a gender-neutral form of civil union, that is certainly just and arguably wise. If a same-sex couple, having been properly joined by such a state-sanctioned civil union, chooses to call themselves “married” some may contradict them but no one can or should stop them. If a church chooses to sanctify their union and call it “marriage” in the eyes of God, that is their right. If members of their community choose to honor the union with the same designation, then the communal sense of marriage will begin to evolve. If enough people in enough communities defer to the new usage then the traditional concept of marriage will begin to lose its name and, our ability to conceptualize it thereby undermined, will slowly fade from our cultural memory, just as gayness did decades ago. And we will be culturally poorer for that even as we are culturally more inclusive.
But that is a transformation that should be decided individual by individual in a cultural dialog over years or generations, in which some are free to preserve the old concepts and others to embrace the new until the weight of cultural consensus removes the last holdouts – or never does. It is not a transformation that should be enforced by political power.
© Copyright 2004, 2005, Augustus P. Lowell