What is Marriage For?

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), February 15, 2004, by the Reverend Christine Brownlie.

Reading

It used to be thought that marriage was part of the permanent structure of the universe, like the cycle of the seasons or the rising of the sun. Marriage is nothing of the kind. There is no such thing as a single pattern of normal marriage. Furthermore, marriage is not dependable, and, in spite of the story books, it is not like the nesting of birds.

Marriage is a very recent development — particularly monogamous marriage — a matter of an uneasy few thousand years at best against previous millions, and therefore extremely unstable. It does not work automatically at all. And it is not instinctive. Mating is instinctive, but marriage is not. And the difference is measured by the entire scope of civilization. It is not instinctive to be civilized — it has to be learned — and so it is difficult to be married.

Nothing matrimonial is absolutely certain. Different kinds of people make different sorts of marriages. For a good beginning, physical attraction and compatibility are about equally necessary. A marriage without physical attraction is almost hopeless from the beginning. A marriage with only physical attraction becomes hopeless after a short time. Only upon the dual basis of attractions and interests and temperaments that can be harmonized is a marriage gradually built up.

A marriage must be built exactly like anything else. Young people who know This, need not be afraid. A marriage will work if you mean it to work.

A. Powell Davies and Muriel Davies
Great Occasions (Carl Seaburg, ed.).

Sermon

The Chinese have a curse that says, “May you live in interesting times.” I guess the bad fortune implied in this curse is that “interesting times” are times of change, conflict, and uncertainty. We hope for the best and wonder what the unintended consequences will be as old ideas and ways dissolve and something new emerges and begins to take shape.

We are in the midst of a very “interesting time” as the institution of marriage is examined and challenged by gay men and women who want their love and their bonds of commitment to be recognized and honored by our society and our legal system. They want the same rights and respect for their lives and relationships that heterosexuals enjoy.

It shouldn’t surprise us that this request has been met with a heated and fearful response. Most people view marriage as the bedrock of human society, and in our western culture marriage carries the very weighty baggage of religion as well as the baggage of the state. Profound and important values are attached to the ideal of marriage; values that are rooted in thousands of years of human experiences, needs, and fears. The “one man, one woman” idea of marriage comes out of a sense of order that can be traced back to the time beyond time that we know only through myth and religious stories. So it’s no wonder that the debates we’re hearing today are both passionate and uncompromising.

I will begin by declaring my position on this question. I’m in favor of same gender marriage. I see this as a matter of civil rights and the separation of church and state. But this stance doesn’t blind me to pain and anxiety that I hear from those on the other side of the question. And I’ve seen first hand the pain of those denied the right to legal marriage. Hence I’d ask that we all try to drop our judgments and stereotypes as best we can. I want to focus on a simple question:

What is marriage for?

I think that by looking at several answers to this question, we can come to a place of understanding where the two sides might find some common ground.

Let’s begin with the most obvious answer: Marriage is about regulating sexual activity. A wedding ceremony — in some societies the public declaration of the intent to marry — is the moment of permission that makes sexual relations legal and respectable. Those who defend the idea of marriage as being between a man and a woman point to Jewish and Christian scriptures as the basis for this regulation.

But as I read these scriptures, I notice that many of the rules and examples about who one can have sex with don’t apply to the one man and one woman model. You’ve probably heard the argument that God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, but as we read the old stories in Genesis, we find that God gives a divine nod of approval to one man and more than one woman. You may remember the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar or Jacob and Leah and Rachael and Bilah and Zilpha! Deuteronomy 21:15 begins with these words: “If a man has two wives ...” In those days, marriage had to do with the strength and wealth of the family, or the tribe, and the honor and power of men. All through the ancient Jewish scriptures, we find models of marriage that would be regarded as appalling today. One of these is called “Levirate Marriage” (Deut. 25:5):

If a married man died without leaving a son as his heir, his brother was obliged to marry the widow and “perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her” so that she might bear a son.

Is this something we’d want to require today?

In ancient Israel, women had very limited access to divorce, and remarriage after divorce or the death of a husband who had produced a son was forbidden. Looking quickly at the Christian scriptures, we find that Jesus upheld the old laws regarding divorce and remarriage. (Mk 10:2-12 and Matt 19:3-12) Paul is the one who gives us the words that seem to refer specifically to one man and one woman, but Paul was not advocating marriage for everyone. Marriage was not an honorable estate in his eyes but a way of containing passion. “It’s much better to be celibate like me,” he said. (For Paul’s view on marriage, see I Corinthians, chapter 7)

I don’t hear the church or the state upholding celibacy over marriage today. I don’t see the church or the state punishing men and women for divorce, or living together outside of marriage or marrying a second or third time after divorce despite Biblical teachings that clearly oppose these actions. I believe that most Americans view societies that make divorce or remarriage very difficult as harsh and unrealistic. We say that people have a right to be happy. When a man was arrested in Virginia for adultery a few months ago, it struck some folks as quaint and old-fashioned. My point is that most Americans are pretty comfortable ignoring the Biblical injunctions when it comes to the needs and wishes of heterosexual couples. But they can’t make those same allowances for love and happiness for homosexuals. Instead they quote scripture and warn of hell. Frankly, I find this dual system of values confusing and hypocritical. How can I hold someone to a higher standard of behavior than I expect of myself or other heterosexuals?

I’m sure that most heterosexual couples approaching marriage still believe in fidelity to their partner. But the social reality is that the old prohibitions have shifted in the past three or four decades. The old idea that sex outside of marriage is always wrong no longer has the power to control behavior. So if marriage isn’t about regulating sex, what is marriage for?

For many people, the answer is children: Marriage is about conceiving and raising children. Couples who have been happily cohabiting for years will often decide to marry once they agree to have children or if the women become pregnant. And that’s a good choice for the child’s sake. Having married parents can provide very real economic and legal protections for children.

Most Americans believe that children do best if they grow up in a stable and loving home with a mother and a father. Many people use this belief as a reason for protecting the one-man-one-woman model of marriage. But there are credible experts who don’t agree that the traditional mom and dad model is all that important. These experts claim that having two affectionate, stable, and highly involved adults as parents, whether they are male and female or the same gender, is really the best option for children. It seems that it’s not the structure of the family that is most important, but the quality of the relationships that matters most. Having two attentive, affectionate, and stable dads or moms is likely to provide a much better home for a child than a mom and a dad who fight, drink, and/or ignore the kids.

We know that what hurts children the most are living conditions that are tainted by poverty, domestic violence, inadequate nutrition and housing, poor health care, and a high level of unemployment in the community. If we are truly concerned for the well-being of children and their families, then we need to find effective solutions to these devastating conditions that affect a growing number of children.

Most of these children live with single mothers, some of whom never married, but many more who are divorced. Almost a quarter of American children live with one parent. It seems from these numbers that if children were once the reason for marriage, then the bond of child rearing has weakened and no longer works to hold couples together. We should also notice that the number of people who marry with no intention of ever producing children is also growing thanks to effective contraception and a change in attitude toward childless couples. Our society no longer sees those who marry and agree not to have children as selfish or immature or, in the words of one noted churchman, adulterers and brothel dwellers.

So while having children might still be the deciding factor that leads some people to marry, it just isn’t a compelling reason for many couples to tie the knot.

Most of us don’t marry for wealth or property or for becoming a part of an important family. A hundred years ago, these were common reasons for couples to marry, but no more. This change is due to the movement to protect and extend a whole series of legal rights to women. It’s hard for us to imagine that for the first 150 years of our country’s history, women could not own property or other forms of wealth. If a woman filed for divorce, she often lost the rights of custody of her children. In a man’s world, marriage was a woman’s best hope for economic security and social respectability. Today women and men have more options for a fulfilling life and marriage is but one of those options.

So what is marriage for? I like the words of Thomas Cranmer who was the Archbishop of the Church of England in the mid 1500s.

“The purpose of marriage is mutual society, help and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and in adversity.”

Cranmer is making the claim that marriage is about human happiness; the joy of giving and receiving love. It’s about standing together, facing whatever life brings, and knowing that despite sorrow and disappointment, your willingness to support and encourage one another will help bring you through hard times. Marriage is about the work of self-discovery and coming to know your partner’s deepest hopes, fears, and pleasures. It is the life-long process of revealing your own needs and feelings to someone you trust, and of living with the changing needs and feelings of your partner. Marriage is an opportunity to create a space of emotional safety, trust, and connection that nourishes each partner’s heart and spirit. Or as one couple remarked,

“Marriage is having a friend who loves you as you are, who trusts you and helps you find the best in yourself through honesty and openness.”

And herein lies my reason for supporting the claims of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons. For if marriage is about a unique and honored relationship between two people, how could extending the recognition of such a relationship between two people of the same gender be harmful to our society? From my perspective it appears that our society would benefit from encouraging more committed and responsible relationships between caring adults. It seems to me that all children would benefit from experiencing many examples of mutual support and shared love. And how can I claim the right to happiness for myself simply by virtue of my humanity, and deny that same happiness to another who is equally human?

It’s true that extending the right to marry to same-sex couples would change this institution of marriage, but this is nothing new. The answer to the question “What is marriage for?” has changed over the centuries and these changes have redefined the meaning of this institution many times. Author E.J. Graff writes

Define marriage as a lifetime commitment, and divorce flouts its very definition. Define marriage as a vehicle for legitimate procreation and contraception violates that definition. Define marriage as a compete union of economic interests and allowing women to own property divides the family into warring and immoral bits. Define marriage as a bond between one man and one woman, and same-sex marriage is absurd. But define marriage as a commitment to live up to the rigorous demands of love, to care for each other as best you humanly can, then all these possibilities — divorce, contraception, feminism, marriage between two women or two men are necessary to respect the human spirit.

I believe that most Americans would accept this secular definition of marriage, even if they saw it as incomplete. And so I would offer a possible solution to the controversy: All couples would make their union legal through a civil ceremony that would include the signing of a civil union license. Those who wished to have a religious service to bless their marriage could do so. No religious body would be required to marry couples whose union fell outside of the beliefs and laws of that tradition. This two-tiered system would provide equal legal rights to all couples and disentangle the secular and legal aspects of marriage from the theological beliefs that are held by some couples but forced upon all of us. It’s time for the state to stop promoting and protecting the religious definition of marriage and to extend equal protection under the law to all citizens. It’s time to allow gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered men and women the right to form loving and legal unions.

May it be so.

Also on this topic, see Society needs to rethink its rules on marriage , a Letter to the Editor written by Reverend Christine Brownlie (Roanoke Times on 11 March 2004)

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