A Stitch in Haste

Wendy McElroy of iFeminists, while addressing a completely different issue than same-sex marriage, provides an excellent example of how "traditional marriage" is an empty, meaningless term:

Western jurisprudence has a long tradition of absolving husbands from the possibility of rape. The first significant discussion in America of forced sex within marriage being categorized as rape, and of the need for a legal remedy, may well have been "The Markland Letter," which was published in 1887 in a Kansas newspaper.
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The Markland letter became nationally notorious largely because its graphic description of violence left little doubt that the husband was a rapist despite the law.

American law did not catch up with the Markland letter until 1976. Until then, rape laws throughout the states included a Marital Rape Exemption. In 1976, however, Nebraska became the first state to abolish that exemption.

Today, spousal rape is illegal in every state.

Say what you want about advocates of same-sex marriage and our reasoning, strategies and tactics. At least we're intellectually honest. We don't cloak our agenda with gobbledygook such as "traditional marriage" or "family values." We want same-sex marriage, we want equal rights, we want an end to discrimination. Simple and straightforward.

But what, exactly, is it the opponents want? "Traditional marriage"? What's that? Does that include a marital rape exemption? Does it include coverture? Does it include pre-arranged marriages? Does it include marriage to pre-teens?

Do they oppose the evolution of the definition of marriage as societal norms change? Is it always per se wrong in their opinion to change the marriage laws, to abandon "traditional marriage"?

Or do they define "traditional marriage" more narrowly, more precisely: "Traditional marriage is anything society may decide, today or in the future, so long as it excludes gays..."?

And, if that is indeed their definition of "traditional marriage," then why are they so afraid to admit it?

Related Posts:
On the Polygamy Non-Argument
Professor: NY Gay Marriage Ruling Consistent with Legislative Intent
Thoughts on the New York Gay Marriage Decision
Gay Marriage: Any Lessons from the Boy Scouts?
Damn Right They're Bigots

"One god? That I can understand. But one wife? That is not civilized!"
--Sheik Ilderim, Ben Hur

Be sure to review Stephanie Coontz' op-ed in today's New York Times on the history of heterosexual marriage. Money quote:

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.

Read the whole thing.

The anti-gay forces who invoke "traditional marriage" aren't looking back 5,000 years, but just 50 — to the fictive Ozzie and Harriet vision of middle-class suburban America. Which truly was paradise — assuming of course that you were white, Protestant, native-born, heterosexual, and physically, mentally and emotionally healthy. If not, then too bad, so sad — try Canada.

When they say it's about "defending" "traditional" marriage, they lie. It's about imposing their stale, monotonous and monochromatic view of society (that never really existed anyway) on "the others" in a patently un-American manner that legitimizes exclusion and bigotry in the name of their "right" to live in a false past.

Other thoughts at Eleventh Avenue South.

I meanwhile have earlier posts on "traditional marriage" here, here and here.

With so much litigation about equal protection for gays — and other groups such as immigrants and the handicapped — it is in a sense refreshing to note that good ol' gender-based discrimination is now so rare that stories such as this actually become noteworthy:

Diana Bijon asked her boyfriend if he would take her last name if they got married. ... Buday, unfazed, said yes.
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On the marriage license application, which now costs $70 to file in L.A. County, Bijon could simply fill in her last name or her soon-to-be husband's last name.

But if Buday wanted to become a Bijon, he would have to get an order of the court to do so — and not before he had filed a petition, paid $320, advertised public notice of his intention to change his name for four weeks in a local newspaper and then appeared before a judge.

Represented by the ACLU, they are now suing to have the discriminatory law struck down.

As a question of constitutional law, this isn't even close: gender-based discrimination is subject to "intermediate-level scrutiny," which means that the discrimination must be "substantially" related to an "important" government interest. See Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976), and progeny. Preventing identity fraud might be a legitimate government interest, but is it so "important" to warrant sex discrimination? And how, exactly, does treating one spouse differently than the other relate at all, let alone "substantially," to the interest of preventing fraud? Of course it doesn't relate at all.

The only reasons that brides historically were treated differently from grooms regarding name changes were: (1) tradition, and (2) bias. Since, in less enlightened times, a bride essentially became her husband's property after marriage and forfeited many of her rights, of course it would be she who would assume his name. The subjugation of women was par for the course under "traditional" marriage, so treating them differently during the wedding process was not only uncontroversial but also expected.

But again, those were less enlightened times. Today a gender-biased marriage law such as this is simply stupid — just as stupid as those who insist that the "traditional" marriage of the last 50 years is the same "traditional" marriage of the last 3,000 years.

Society evolves. Marriage evolves. Deal with it.

For Discussion: What is the read-through from this litigation to same-sex partnerships, especially those other than Massachusetts same-sex marriages? Will New Jersey "civil unionized" couples, for example, have to jump through hoops to remind county clerks and other petty government scriveners that they are just as entitled to name changes as married couples? Is "having to work harder for the same rights" the same as "having the same rights"? If not, then is the mandate from the New Jersey Supreme Court being satisfied?

(Via How Appealing.)