Marriage Debate

There is a fantastic discussion on http://volokh.com about the marriage debate. I find the argument presented by their guest blogger Maggie Gallagher (an author of many books on the subject) fascinating, intelligent, and unlightening, but ultimately unpersuasive.

She argues that marriage is primarily instituted as a means for child bearing and child rearing. Certainly these activities are most advisedly pursued within marriage. She also makes the critical point that while people have no need to reproduce, societies do. Consequently, societies must support child rearing and in the most ideal circumstances possible to ensure that healthy and productive populations persist.

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I don't think we can accurately predict the impact of a change of the rules of marriage to include same sex couples without taking a pragmatic view of why people marry, not why the government wants people to marry (if the there is a differnce between the two).

I believe that there is a difference. Fewer people wait to have children until marriage, more people are getting divorced, more people are preparing for the potential of divorce with prenuptial agreements, and more people have children without a partner at all, and more people are bringing children into subsequent relationships.

If marriage is not treated by the public as a means for raising children, then I do not believe that allowing couples who cannot or do not plan on raising children in marriage or that the further diminishment of the symbolic significance of the association between marriage and child rearing will actually alter or significanlty affect marriage as we now know it. We know marriage as it is applied, not the ideal purposes that it could serve.

Were marriage primarily used as a means for having children this argument would unquestionably be determinative. However, since I believe that the public does not use marriage for the purpose in which it may have originally been created and employed by the state then a change in the state's reasoning for continuing to support it would alter the perception more than the reality and application of the "institution."

Of course, a debate on the issue of child rearing certainly implicates the question that if a heterosexual couple were unable or chose not to have children, what argument would allow them to still marry that would not likewise allow a homosexual couple to marry (an equal protection argument). If the childrearing argument is the tip of the marriage sword, then marriage should not be promoted without likewise requiring that it in fact be used to support that purpsoe of child rearing and not be used unless that goal is pursued by the couple.