The Marriage of True Minds
Ross is kind enough to link to me in a discussion of his latest column on his blog. I’ll return the favor (not that my links are worth very much in the scheme of things) to make a few brief points.
First, I’ll quibble with his historical anthropology. Ross seems to think that monogamy is a Judeo-Christian invention. But it’s not. It’s a Greco-Roman invention, and what it’s “about” is the equality of male citizens. Ancient Rome did not have love marriage; there was too much money at stake for that. But it did have monogamy, because one woman to one man was an expression of a civic ideal. Whether that’s still relevant today is a good question – we’ve got “serial monogamy” and Lady Gaga but Rome, of course, had orgies and celebrity courtesans. But whether it’s relevant or not, it’s not obvious why same-sex marriage would be problematic from this civic perspective. Moreover, it’s worth pointing out that most of those who are seeking for historic justifications for same-sex marriage wind up looking back to Greece and Rome for precedents – the same societies that from which we derive the ideal of lifelong monogamy. And while the complementarity of men and women is central to the biblical account of creation, that view is emphatically compatible with polygamy. Mind you, I’m not suggesting that Ross has the story entirely backwards – nor that homosexuality was uncontroversial in the ancient world, which it clearly was. I’m just pointing out complications to his version of history.
Second, I would, in fact, dispute that we need an ideology of marriage. With a few beers in me, I’d try to dispute that we need an ideology of anything. We do, of course, need rules, and no doubt generalizations and ideals of one sort or another lurk behind those rules in various ways, but the ultimate test of the validity of rules is in their confrontation with reality. One of the realities of our world is that there are gay couples living in what are in-effect common-law marriages: sharing a household, rearing children, supporting each other financially and emotionally, etc. The question put before our society, like others, is whether the law will recognize that reality or not. The answer Ross gives amounts to “no, we must not, because while those relationships look like marriages to us, that’s only because we’ve forgotten – or, perhaps, never yet discovered – what marriage truly is.”
I’m taking a hard line against arguments like that. I have come to be very much against the practice of living inside an idea, rather than living inside of life, and that’s really what I was writing against in my piece of a few weeks ago. But I don’t think you need to take so hard a line as mine to argue against Ross’s position. All you need to say is: if your ideal is so far removed from actual practice, then the law is the wrong vehicle for the change you seek.
Third, one final point. The “divorce revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s – the revolution that ended my parents’ marriage and the marriages of so many of my peers’ parents – is, as Ross knows, over among the “upper half” of our society, educationally and/or economically. For those with a college degree and a middle-class income, lifelong companionate marriage is again the norm, along with a later age of childbirth. The revolution and counter-revolution, if that’s what we want to call them, were two parts of an adjustment to new facts: new economic opportunities for women, pharmaceutical birth control, and substantially longer lifespans. What Ross rightly worries about is that anything resembling stable family life continues to unravel for the other half, with rates of out-of-wedlock births and divorce at alarmingly high levels and continuing to rise. I worry about that problem as well. But it is not at all obvious to me what the question of same-sex marriage has to do with this problem. Hidden behind the argument is some kind of populist notion: same-sex marriage is an elite project and the elites don’t need any more projects, thank-you very much – it’s time to do something for those left behind. But if the argument is that we need the “elite” of society to set a better example for the plebes – well, in this part of life at least, they are, aren’t they? They’re deferring childbirth and staying married and all the rest of it. Listen to the way educated people talk about divorcing couples – particularly men who divorce their spouses. It’s not a high status move. Leave the celebrity aristocracy aside – if we’re talking about ordinary educated people, we’re far enough along in reestablishing the high status of lifelong monogamous marriage that there’s a new crop of rebels like Sandra Tsing Loh coming up, chafing against the restrictions on their libidos. So what’s the argument? Is it a version of Steve Sailer’s pure argument from prejudice – that young men will refuse to get married because it’s too gay?
Or, perhaps, the argument is a paternalist one masquerading as a populist one. That is to say: the problem isn’t that the elites aren’t behaving well; the problem is that the elites are behaving well but are doing so in ways that the plebes can’t imitate (because they aren’t smart or economically resourceful enough) or won’t imitate (because the elites appear culturally alien). So the elites need to adopt enough of the manners and prejudices of the plebes to be culturally credible, so that the plebes will actually try to imitate them. Forgive me, but I just find it very unlikely that a wide swathe of society, having developed adaptations to technological and economic change that works for them, will abandon those adaptations in favor of a return to a model that failed for them a generation earlier, simply out of a kind of noblesse oblige. Perhaps it might make sense to look at ameliorating the cognitive/educational and economic deficits instead.
Meanwhile, there’s nothing stopping the LDS Church or the Catholic Church or any other tax-exempt private enterprise from working to establish exactly the kinds of subcultures Ross favors. I no longer aspire to membership in one of those subcultures – but I will defend to the death their rights to exist, and to follow their own rules.
Nice post, Noah. My quibbles:
1) If I understand Ross correctly, he’s arguing that modern Western society developed including an ideal for marriage that Ross describes as permanent, heterosexual and based around the formation of a family rather than the convenience of the two parents.
My guess is that of those qualities, the one that Ross is least interested is “exclusively heterosexual” – if I understand him correctly, he would rather live in a world where gays and straights entered marriage with a stronger commitment to permanence, rather than what he’s got now, where gays can’t marry and straights (allegedly) see marriage solely as a reflection of their own current romantic feelings. To that, your argument that family-oriented marriage is re-emerging is good, but doesn’t quite meet Ross’s concerns, at least if he’s arguing that we should be proceeding cautiously rather than by court fiat.2) You won’t, of course, defend the right of the religious subcultures “to the death,” at least in its general meaning. My guess is that the religous subcultures generally fear that after gay marriage, the next step on the slippery slope is to mark members of those churches as Bob Jones-style bigots, unfit for public office or association. I’m still 100% in support of gay marriage, of course, but I can see why churches that don’t want to perform gay marriages are concerned.
— J Mann · Aug 10, 04:43 PM · #
the Romans practiced monogamy, yes, but “lifelong monogamy” absolutely not. many of the Roman nobility freely divorced and remarried, usually for reasons of alleged female infidelity or to establish marriage alliances. the most obvious example is just to read the family tree of the Julio-Claudians from Caesar to Nero. For instance, Tiberius was not a Julian by blood, rather his pregnant mother Livia divorced Tiberius Claudius Nero and remarried Octavian (Augustus).
this just some kind of royal decadence, but seems to have been the norm among the upper classes as you can see in this passage from Plutarch’s Life of Cato the Younger:
“Then Hortensius, turning the discourse, did not hesitate to speak openly and ask for Cato’s own wife, for she was young and fruitful, and he had already children enough. Neither can it be thought that Hortensius did this, as imagining Cato did not care for Marcia; for, it is said, she was then with child. Cato, perceiving his earnest desire, did not deny his request, but said that Philippus, the father of Marcia, ought also to be consulted. Philippus, therefore, being sent for, came; and finding they were well agreed, gave his daughter Marcia to Hortensius in the presence of Cato, who himself also assisted at the marriage.”
(I tried to make this a proper block quote, but I’m not amongst the two dozen people who use textile markup)
— gabriel · Aug 10, 04:55 PM · #
You can make a case that the marriage debate itself, no matter the outcome, will contribute to the continued unraveling of family life in the “lower half” of society. The adebate has been framed as a question of “rights”, subtly influencing all of us to reconceive marriage as just that, a collection of rights, rather than a rite of passage. I can imagine a time when getting married is seen as something like making out a will. It’s a thing you do if you’re a solid citizen who plans for the future, but don’t do if you’re an underemployed slob who lives from paycheck to paycheck.
— Andy · Aug 10, 05:08 PM · #
Noah-
I agree with you on gay marriage of course, but I think you may be missing a little bit of Ross’ point about marriage ideology. To Ross, we’re going to have a marriage ideology, whether we need one or not-individual behavior is inevitably shaped by cultural norms. It’s an illusion to just “live inside of life” and think that we’re not living inside of ideas. What you think a good marriage is will always be shaped by your ideas-about the roles of the genders, individual autonomy, etc. I think it was Keynes who said that practical men are usually slaves to the ideas of some long-defunct economist; so it is here with marriage.
Now, of course, everyone is shaped by their separate situations and spouses as well-and our ideas may change as we apply them to our individual situations-but the point still stands.
In that case, (according to Ross) we would want to shape our marriage ideology to be as much like one of lifelong hetero monogamy as possible.
Also, I’m just curious as to why you wouldn’t support private institutions in trying to create stronger marriage subcultures, since you seem to agree with Ross that that’s what the lower class needs.
— jamie · Aug 10, 05:18 PM · #
“In that case, (according to Ross) we would want to shape our marriage ideology to be as much like one of lifelong hetero monogamy as possible. “
If this is correct, I don’t understand where the exclusion of gay people comes in. If fact, I don’t understand Dreher’s point at all:
“But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate…. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.”
But what actually are the differnces? Gay people (and infertile people) can replicate Ross’ ideal marriage in every way except one: they can’t have children that share BOTH parents DNA. And that one small factor is what it takes to make Ross’ vision of marriage the most specialist of them all?
I am surprised people are actually taking this column seriously. It adds nothing, as far as I can see.
— cw · Aug 10, 05:39 PM · #
Some members of the working class are gay. Just a reminder.
— matt · Aug 10, 05:40 PM · #
@Noah You’ve made up for that “in hte lee of adolescnce” nonsense a post or two back. I look forward to Mr. Douchat’s take on all of this when he’d got another 15 years of marriage and a couple of kids backing it up.
@cw What is “local boy made good”, Alex?
My balleywick is how the images we see influence our sense of who we are, and against that, I’ve been thinking about the Hays Code and how distorting it might be to our idea of what life used to be like (Did married couples really sleep in twin beds?) My own family has more examples of life-long(ish) monogamy(ishness) in it than not, and by a fairly wide margin. None the less, the movie version wouldn’t pass the Hays Code without substantial omissions. Maybe a year ago cw said something about the real meaning of 50s rock and roll lyrics being lost in a haze of nostalgia..
— Tony Comstock · Aug 10, 05:52 PM · #
“I’ll quibble with his historical anthropology. Ross seems to think that monogamy is a Judeo-Christian invention. But it’s not. It’s a Greco-Roman invention”
I’m not sure where you’re getting this. Marriage is utterly integral to the Torah and Jewish tradition. You weren’t allowed to be on the Sanhedrin (ancient Jewish Supreme Court) if you weren’t married for example. If you’re thinking of polygamy in the Bible, it is viewed as a less than ideal situation in Jewish traditional views of Biblical times. Leah was supposed to marry Esau, not Jacob for example (except Esau failed and turned out to be a jerk, so Jacob had to do both of their jobs, part of which included marrying Leah, which he had to be fooled into doing). The point is the ideal situation in the Torah is monogamy.
— Yosh · Aug 10, 07:02 PM · #
“Marriage is utterly integral to the Torah and Jewish tradition.”
Aren’t marriage and fidelity fairly universal concepts across all cultures and religions? Weren’t Chinese folks and people in African tribes getting married in some form thousands of years ago? And even in polygamous societies, isn’t fidelity within a polygamous marriage a big deal?
Mike
— MBunge · Aug 10, 07:45 PM · #
“I’ll quibble with his historical anthropology. Ross seems to think that monogamy is a Judeo-Christian invention. But it’s not. It’s a Greco-Roman invention”
it was christians who spread the practice as obligate, not jews or muslims. and the christians seem to have adopted the obligacy from their greco-roman milieu, not from judaism. ashkenazi jews did not ban polygamy until late in the first millennium from what i know, and non-ashkenazi jews have not necessarily done so. i once knew a somewhat creepy yemeni jewish man who was trying to work polygamy by getting married in morocco, and then having the israeli state recognizing his marriages (not sure if this was viable, but he claimed it would be).
your point about the preference for monogamy of ideal may be correct, but i assume it’s biased by the norms of the present and near-present. muslims say the same thing today too; unless they’re totally outside of the influence of western culture.
great post as usual noah.
— razib · Aug 10, 07:47 PM · #
my last comment was in response to yosh.
— razib · Aug 10, 07:48 PM · #
Aren’t marriage and fidelity fairly universal concepts across all cultures and religions? Weren’t Chinese folks and people in African tribes getting married in some form thousands of years ago? And even in polygamous societies, isn’t fidelity within a polygamous marriage a big deal?
in the majority of societies male fidelity wasn’t a big deal. i assume you know that, but i figured i’d clarify :-) i do think that it gets a little weird that people act as if jesus christ introduced the concept of marriage to humankind 2,000 years ago.
— razib · Aug 10, 07:50 PM · #
“Is it a version of Steve Sailer’s pure argument from prejudice – that young men will refuse to get married because it’s too gay?”
Noah,
Why not respond directly to this argument? Why hand wave it away like its something that respectable intellectuals don’t have to think about it because it’s not respectable?
As you say, the bottom half of society is where the problem is when it comes to marriage. Unmarried males from the bottom half of society cause a lot more trouble for everybody than married males from the bottom half of society. Males in the bottom half of society have strong views on masculinity. Thus, it’s hardly unlikely that the triumph of gay marriage will make them see marriage as more gay, and thus make males in the bottom half of society even more reluctant to marry.
Is this logic true? I don’t know. But I don’t think you know, either.
Jim Manzi is always banging his drum about the importance of experimentation. So, why not let the small northwest European countries experiment with gay marriage for a generation before betting the huge and globally dominant U.S. on this notion?
— Steve Sailer · Aug 10, 08:25 PM · #
“Some members of the working class are gay. Just a reminder.”
Yeah, right, like the lower class can be educated or cultured enough to be gay.
— Mike Farmer · Aug 10, 08:36 PM · #
“Your point about the preference for monogamy of ideal may be correct, but i assume it’s biased by the norms of the present and near-present.”
reply to razib:
That’s a bad assumption. It’s based on Jewish oral tradition (written down during the Roman Imperial period) and on the spiritual view of what male and femaleness is in Judaism (which predates Greece by a very long time). Basically, maleness is the cosmic idea of an initial creative spark and femaleness is the idea of taking that spark and developing it. There’s nothing modern about that idea. The ideal situation is two, monogamous partners.
— Yosh · Aug 10, 09:13 PM · #
“Thus, it’s hardly unlikely that the triumph of gay marriage will make them see marriage as more gay”
Wha? You do realize that “bro’s before ho’s” episode of The Boondocks wasn’t meant as a documentary?
Mike
— MBunge · Aug 10, 09:24 PM · #
“So, why not let the small northwest European countries experiment with gay marriage for a generation before betting the huge and globally dominant U.S. on this notion?”
Because this argument is about rights, not public policy. Some of these Northwest European countries also have state religions. Have they ipso facto proved state religion works?
— Derek Scruggs · Aug 11, 03:52 AM · #
“Because this argument is about rights, not public policy.”
In other words, I don’t want to think about anything that I don’t want to think about.
— Steve Sailer · Aug 11, 04:20 AM · #
“In other words, I don’t want to think about anything that I don’t want to think about.”
In other other words, we have a constitution and a commitment to rule of law.
— cw · Aug 11, 04:56 AM · #
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— supra skytop · Aug 11, 06:40 AM · #
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— juicy couture · Aug 11, 07:44 AM · #
cw — steve’s peculiar interests aside, don’t you think you’re being just a wee bit romantic?
— Tony Comstock · Aug 11, 01:57 PM · #
No. Despite all the foofaw, t’s always been about the law. A marriage certificate is a legal document that unhooks the velvet rope allowing access to a salad bar of legal rights. Hence the common phrase “legally married.” ANd the Fed constitution pretty specifically suggests that, unless there is a very good reason, rights granted to one group have to be granted to all. That’s why when the gays started asking to be allowed to marry, the anti-folks started amending their states constituitions. Because they realized that their current constitutions pretty much required marriage rights be extended to gay people. That’s why the prop 8 case decided in federal court was such a big deal.
Is this what you were talking about or did your comment go over my head?
— cw · Aug 11, 02:20 PM · #
“Males in the bottom half of society have strong views on masculinity. Thus, it’s hardly unlikely that the triumph of gay marriage will make them see marriage as more gay, and thus make males in the bottom half of society even more reluctant to marry.”
Here in Toronto, ground-zero of Canada’s gay marriage explosion, there hasn’t been any such effect. The only tiny effect that gay weddings have made on straight weddings that I’ve seen reported is actually a slight masculinization: it’s now become fashionable to have wedding cakes in colors other than white or pastels. Dark blue or green cakes, or chocolate cakes that are allowed to be chocolate brown, are very trendy right now, and the style mavens trace this change to male-male weddings.
— Alex · Aug 12, 04:07 PM · #
There’s only one “masculine” thought about a wedding cake, and that’s its cost.
— KVS · Aug 12, 04:49 PM · #
re: in the majority of societies male fidelity wasn’t a big deal.
For most of history male fidelity was honored mainly in the breach in Christendom too. This is why kings could openly acknowledged mistresses and still be celebrated as Defenders of the Faith.
— JonF · Aug 15, 08:46 PM · #