Comments on: The Gay Divorcee

By: Kieran Healy’s Weblog » Blog Archive » Same-Sex Marriage

Kieran Healy’s Weblog » Blog Archive » Same-Sex Marriage — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 06:23:11 +0000

[...] Second, even granting that marriage-as-we-know-it fulfils the function Gallagher thinks it does, aren’t there many more pressing threats to it? As I’ve argued before, I think that anyone who argues that same-sex marriage threatens to destabilize society needs to explain why something like legal, no-fault divorce (or indeed any widespread form of legal divorce) shouldn’t be banned first. In terms of the numbers of people it affects, legal divorce should contribute much more to the deinstitutionalization of marriage than legal same-sex marriage. Now, if you think the world is going to hell in a handbasket then maybe you already believe this about divorce. But I’d want to know whether and why Gallagher in particular thinks divorce should be legal, if this is her view of the special, indeed universal, nature of the institution of marriage in successful societies. Or to put the point in reverse: aren’t there any number of policies a society might pursue to enhance the integrative/procreative function of marriage (e.g., child care and education policies, for one) before it began to worry about the same-sex issue. Again, I don’t know Gallagher’s views, but if she turns out to be against policies like this it won’t help any presumption of good faith. [...]

By: Crooked Timber » » Same-Sex Marriage

Crooked Timber » » Same-Sex Marriage — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 02:48:02 +0000

By: Maria

Maria — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:09:01 +0000

Way too close Ray. I remember sitting in the pub with a few friends the next day discussing the fact that it literally was a vote in every ballot box that made the difference. And bringing it up a few years later in a graduate seminar on how it’s irrational for any voter to think his or her vote is pivotal. Theoretically, there’s no such thing as a pivotal vote, but it certainly didn’t feel like it in 1995.

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 16:52:24 +0000

As someone who was involved in the Yes campaign back in 1995, I don’t think the No campaign was really that much like the anti-gay marriage campaign in the US. The argument about society falling apart was pretty much lost at that stage, especially given that Church authority had been given a good kicking in the previous couple of years and with it the idea of the golden age of morality just passed. Legal separation was pretty widespread, and it was relatively easy to make the argument that the only effect of removing the divorce ban would be to let people remarry. The No campaign mainly tried to pick holes in the divorce legislation that would be introduced, arguing that the financial costs would be high, that there were particular problems with X, Y, and Z, and that we should all just hang on a while until the Dail got some good legislation together… Of course, I live in Dublin, and the ‘moral decay’ argument would never work in this Sodom-on-the-Liffey. There may well have been different arguments used outside the chuch gates in Ballydehob, and on the doorsteps of pensioners’ houses. But from here it looks like the arguments being used against gay marriage are the ones the anti-divorce campaigners weren’t confident enough to use in public in 1995. (Still, only 6,000 votes. That was too fucking close.)

By: DJW

DJW — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 15:11:26 +0000

I don’t expect many people to see things my way, so I’ll try to make my point clearly one more time and then I’ll stop belaboring the point. When I attend wedding ceremonies, I here a bunch of vows. In each of these cases, those vows go well beyond simply promising a series of actions. The promises to love, honor, cherish, and etc. clearly are meant to embody action and intention. Behaving as though you love your spouse even though you’ve secretly grown to despise (or simply stop loving them) them suggests you’re not living up to your vows, no matter how you behave. I agree that the institution of marriage also contains a promise to make a serious effort to not let a state of affairs reach this point, through a variety of methods including honest, open communication and therapy and no doubt many others. But what if this growing apart is the natural consequence of the unforeseen consequence of the development of the personalities of the parties involved? I don’t subscribe to a conception of human development in which we’re able to successfully predict the consequences of our development on our future emotional states. The very concept of growth presupposes some uncertainty about where we’re going to end up. What I meant to critizise when I suggested there’s a misplaced sentimentalism to the opposition to no-fault divorce, I mean to criticize those who would essentially love as some sort of ethereal, mystical “timeless bond” between two people. I suppose this isn’t a necessary feature of the argument against no-fault divorce, but I suspect this ideal often lurks behind a fair amount of bad attitudes about divorce. It seems to me that a ban on no-fault divorce largely duplicates an already existing social shaming pattern which is pretty effective. When I look around at my friends and acquintences, I see far more people who stay together in troubled marriages (sometimes trying to improve them, but more often not) for a host of reasons, the social stigma of divorce being the strongest one than I see divorces, let alone divorces that seem premature or inappropriate. Perhaps that’s an idiosyncracy of my circles, but it’s worth noting that these are secular, cynical people for the most part. The institution itself seems to contain an extralegal and often powerful check on no fault divorces. I’ll close with a practical argument against banning no-fault divorce—in a country like the US, many people are going to get divorced anyway if they really want to. This will lead to fraudulent claims of emotional distress, etc. in order to obtain a divorce, which seems good for no one—it will both trivialize our legal system and facilitate the social stigma of divorce as a moral and personal failing. Of course a successful ban on no fault divorce cause people to stay married unhappily, which will in many cases likely lead to events that facilitate “fault divorce” (infidelity, etc.) thus making the whole process long and unnecessarily painful. I’m much more open in theory to measures to make marriage harder in the first place, but it’s hard for me to imagine examples of such a policy that are likely to be effective and not overly intrusive. I’m open to having my mind changed about that, as with everything.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 06:58:20 +0000

Thomas: I very much agree with your response to djw. The "I'll do what I feel like when I feel like it" ethos is pretty orthogonal to "commitment". What is not being discussed these days is something I find quite interesting, and sort of sad. It's illustrated by Andrew Sullivan's progression rightward these last fifteen years(1). Today, gay marriage is the cause celebre, but it wasn't too long ago that Sullivan couldn't get anyone on the left to take it seriously. "Marriage? Why should we worry about gays being allowed to participate in a regressive insitution like marriage?" and "What's the point of a piece of paper?" What's sad is that the activists and the intellectuals apparently didn't actually ask many gays and lesbians what they wanted or what was important to them, because, it appears, marriage is on the list. Why is it? Because the "piece of paper" is the embodiment of what is essentially a social act, a creation of identity exactly at the boundary between self and society. By restricting gays and lesbians from marriage, our laws are excluding gays and lesbians from an ancient and powerful participation in shared community. This is why it matters to many or most gays and lesbians and this is also why some so strongly oppose it. (1) I think Sullivan felt badly betrayed by those he naturally supposed were his allies. It's happening to him again; which just proves that Sullivan is very naive.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 05:40:30 +0000

djw, I think you misunderstand the marriage commitment. It’s not a commitment to feel certain things, but to do certain things. I can’t make much sense of the thing you describe—what’s the point of making a non-binding commitment to feel a particular thing, with the understanding that when one no longer feels it, the commitment ceases? I’ll love you til I don’t, honey! If someone offered that as commitment, I’d say we have a different understanding of the word. harry, why would you suppose that making marriage easier to get out of would make people more likely to get married? Doesn’t it make marriage both less dangerous to those entering and less valuable to those entering? I mean, someone receiving djw’s commitment can’t feel that he or she’s won some prize. What’s the point in building a life together if there’s not a good likelihood that there’s going to be a life together? BTW, don’t we have the answer on the empiric question? Aren’t marriage rates down? I think you’re right to suggest that marriage laws that bind can be seen as paternalistic in some instances: there are some couples who split under no fault divorce who would be better off if they didn’t split. Is that the sort of thing that can be quantified? Should it be weighed in the balance in determining what kind of laws we should have?

By: DJW

DJW — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 03:58:18 +0000

But the public commitment part isn’t legal marriage*, it’s the social/religious side of the institution. You can get married, legally, without it. And as I suggested, once you’re no longer in love, the vows of most of those social and religious ceremonies I’ve ever attended have been de facto violated. I should be clear about what I’m critical of. First, the notion that it makes sense to hold people to commitments that demand and promise emotional attachment that they made so long ago that they hardly could have been predicted how they might feel now. Second, the notion that marriage is only and necessary appropriate if it succeeds until the death of one party, no matter how long. To disallow no-fault divorce suggests that such a divorce necessarily implies error, of a either a moral and practical sort. Divorcees are already branded with this social stereotype, but that’s hardly a reason to extend the insult into the realm of law. What’s so crazy about the notion that people sometimes grow and develop their identities in ways that render them incompatible that we ought to legally hassle them when these developments lead to the end of a relationship? *yes, I know legal marriages require a witness in most states, but this formality/technicality can be dispensed with by calling the judges secretary into the office, so forgive me for taking it with a grain of salt.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 02:50:25 +0000

Marriage is misunderstood as a contract between two people. It’s a public commitment made to a community. Marriage shouldn’t be hard to get into and hard to get out of because of some silver-screen romanticism—quite the reverse, I think.

By: DJW

DJW — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 02:39:44 +0000

Wow, the divorce issue really sets off my oft-dormant inner libertarian. Am I the only one who thinks a fairly high divorce rate might be a good thing? That is, an indication that people are not allowing contracts whose content has substantively already been voided (if you don’t love anymore, you’re more likely than not breaking your vows, no matter how hard you try to live a lie to deny it) to actually go ahead and formalize it? Instead of attacking no-fault divorce, let’s get rid of this toxic expectation that people in their 20’s can reasonably be expected to predict how the people that will occupy their bodies several decades later will feel, and stop treating it like some sort of moral failure when people grow apart. I appreciate sentimentalism at the cinema, but let’s not legislate it.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 20:59:11 +0000

If women are more likely than men to “abandon marriage,” doesn’t that suggest that marriages which have already failed are more beneficial to husbands than wives (since neither spouse would abandon a marriage that was working like they’re s’posed to)? And if so, doesn’t this suggest an argument for “easy divorce”?

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 20:26:50 +0000

Count me in the group that supports gay marriage and opposes easy divorce. I think it should be much more difficult in the US than it is currently to both get married and get divorced. Additionally, I support group marriages and other marriages that are currently prohibited. I guess this means that pretty much everyone disagress with me.

By: harry

harry — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 19:45:16 +0000

On the other hand, a truly equitable split would make lots of guys better off than they are under the current regime. Depends what you mean by ‘truly equitable split’. I mean something that leaves all parties (ex-husands and wives, and children issuing from the marriage) equally far below the previous joint standard of living until the children reach the age of majority. If that’s what ‘truly equitable’ means, then sure, lots of men might be better off, but the vast majority of divorced men would be worse off, and the vast majority of divorced women and children of divorces would be better off than today. Financially, that is. bq. Since women abandon marriages more often than men do today, you’ll probably end up with a further increase in the incidence of divorce. Like drape I’ve heard this a lot, but never seen it documented. Anyway the conclusion doesn’t follow— whether we’d see more or less divorce depends on the reasons why people who currently think about divorcing but don’t do it don’t do it, which we probably don’t know that much about. Though people are forever surprising me on this site. DO we know?

By: drapetomaniac

drapetomaniac — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 18:57:55 +0000

Since women abandon marriages more often than men do today, I’ve heard this but can anyone cite research to this effect?

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 18:22:33 +0000

“-snip – irish family planning act – . This was the famous Irish solution to an Irish problem.” I thought the “Irish solution to an Irish problem” was clingfilm on the operating organ, at least if the “Sunday World” stories at the time were true.