There are many situations where kinship creates bonds and obligations not otherwise available to people. Commonly cited is the example of a person who has been in a serious accident and who needs someone to make major medical decisions for them — perhaps even the decision to take them off life support. Whom do the doctors wish to speak to? The next of kin. If married, the “next of kin” is always the spouse, and if that person is not available, the doctors move through children, parents, and siblings.
Gay activists often use a situation like this to point out the injustice done to gay couples who cannot marry, but I wanted to bring it up in order to ask you to take a fresh look at it. Why is the “next of kin” the spouse? After all, doesn’t a person have a stronger biological relationship with parents or children? Yes, but a stronger biological relationship isn’t the same as a stronger kinship relationship.
The relationship with a spouse is often treated as more important because it is a chosen relationship. You can’t choose your parents or children, but you can choose your spouse — the person you wish to spend your life with, share all levels of intimacy with, and establish a family with.
Heterosexual couples have the option to establish kinship with one another by marrying. Homosexual couples, whose love and intimacy cannot be judged as any less valuable or significant than those of straight people, do not have this option: they cannot form a kinship bond with one another. Because of this, their relationships are at a social disadvantage. There is, after all, much more to being “kin” than the legal benefits like what I describe above.
To begin with, there exist important moral obligations kin owe one another. These obligations may be enforced legally, as in some cases with marriage, but very often they are informal and unspoken yet nevertheless supported by one’s social milieu. Kin are expected to, wherever possible, financially and emotionally support one another when a crisis hits. A man who lets his mother become homeless will be ostracized by those around him, while siblings are expected to support one another when there is a death in the family.
The flip side of this are the obligations which the rest of the community owes to those who are tied together through kinship bonds. People who are kin are not supposed to be treated as if they were complete strangers to one another. If you invite a married man to a party, it is expected that the invitation is also extended to his wife — to deliberately exclude her would be a serious insult which would not exist if you invited one roommate but not the other. When a woman’s son achieves some success, you congratulate her as well — you wouldn’t act as though she had no significant connection to him.
To return to the points made by Chris Burgwald, but which are certainly made in various ways by many others who argue against gay marriage: is there any social and moral significance to the marriage certificate which goes above and beyond merely living together and which gay couples are justified in desiring for themselves? Absolutely — just like there is social and moral significance to marriage which straight couples are justified in desiring for themselves.
There should be no puzzlement over a gay couple, whose love and relationship may be every bit as deep and enduring as a those of a straight couple, would want to become recognized as kin, thus creating a new relationship and new ties not otherwise available. There is also no surprise that many gay couples have chosen to have one “adopt” the other, which is the only way such a bond is even remotely available to them outside of marriage.
Yes, gays are asking the body-politic to recognize their relationships as being kinship bonds — and there is no good reason why they shouldn’t be so recognized. There is nothing about the relationships of straight couples which makes them any more “worthy” of legal, social, and moral obligations we traditionally structure as “marriage.”
But what about Chris’ final question, “why am I being forced to acknowledge gay relationship as marriage?” As a private citizen, he would be under no such obligation — at least not legally. He would be under no more obligation to acknowledge the marriage to two men or two women then he would be to acknowledge any other marriage — the marriage of a Catholic and a Jew, the marriage of a white woman and a black man, the marriage of an 60-year-old and an 18-year-old, or my own marriage for that matter.
There will be social pressures to acknowledge gay unions as marriages, however, just as there are social pressures to acknowledge the other listed relationships as marriages. When a person acts as though a spouse is little more than a random stranger, that will normally be perceived as an insult — and with good reason. But if Chris Burgwald or anyone else chooses to act in such a fashion, they will be as free to do so with gay marriages as they are to do so with other marriages today.
In summary, what’s the point of gay marriage? The point of gay marriage is the point of all marriage. Marriage is different from other contractual relationships because it creates bonds of kinship. These bonds are in turn different and more important than other bonds: they create significant moral, social, and legal obligations both for those who are married and between those who are married and everyone else. Some individuals may not choose to acknowledge those obligations, but they exist and they constitute the basis of human society — a society which includes both heterosexual and homosexual human beings.
Go Alex! Legalize gay. :]
ReplyDelete