Over at the Corner, Matthew Franck finds much wisdom in the following teleological view of marriage: “The essential purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another. Absent this purpose, we would not need marriage as a distinct social institution.”
I responded to him by email, and hope he will respond to me, but in the meantime, I thought I would share my thoughts on this.
If the purpose of marriage is to “attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another,” I have to wonder, why are elderly people allowed to marry? What about sterile people? What about people who don’t want kids? It seems to me that our society presently defines marriage not in terms of child-rearing at all, but merely in terms of two people becoming formally attached to one another. And surely gay people can achieve the same level of attachment and commitment as straight people.
It seems to me that, for Franck’s position to be tenable, he needs to do one of three things:
1. Claim that marriage, as conceived by modern American society, is still defined with reference to child-bearing. (This seems implausible, given the exceptions noted above).
2. Argue that, for the sake of a “proper” definition of marriage, we ought to deny marriage licenses to the elderly, the sterile, and those who simply don’t want to have kids. (This seems antithetical to liberty, in my book.)
3. Deny that gay people are capable of the “same kind” of relationships as straight people. (This just seems factually inaccurate to me, at least if the relevant characteristics are committment and attachment, rather than, say, what kind of sex one likes to have.)
So, my question for Franck was, which of the three options do you choose, or do you see some other possibility that I’m missing?
The Purposes of Marriage
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