Stephanie Coontz, professor of history at Evergreen State College, is the author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage (Penguin, 2006). (Here's a link to the book.) Is there any theological reason for a Catholic to oppose what Professor Coontz suggests in this op-ed, which appeared in today's New York Times:
Taking Marriage Private
By STEPHANIE COONTZ
Olympia, Wash.
WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to
marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a
private contract between two families. The parents’ agreement to the
match, not the approval of church or state, was what confirmed its
validity.
For 16 centuries, Christianity also defined the validity of a
marriage on the basis of a couple’s wishes. If two people claimed they
had exchanged marital vows — even out alone by the haystack — the
Catholic Church accepted that they were validly married.
In 1215, the church decreed that a “licit” marriage must take place
in church. But people who married illictly had the same rights and
obligations as a couple married in church: their children were
legitimate; the wife had the same inheritance rights; the couple was
subject to the same prohibitions against divorce.
Not until the 16th century did European states begin to require that
marriages be performed under legal auspices. In part, this was an
attempt to prevent unions between young adults whose parents opposed
their match.
The American colonies officially required marriages to be
registered, but until the mid-19th century, state supreme courts
routinely ruled that public cohabitation was sufficient evidence of a
valid marriage. By the later part of that century, however, the United
States began to nullify common-law marriages and exert more control
over who was allowed to marry.
By the 1920s, 38 states prohibited whites from marrying blacks,
“mulattos,” Japanese, Chinese, Indians, “Mongolians,” “Malays” or
Filipinos. Twelve states would not issue a marriage license if one
partner was a drunk, an addict or a “mental defect.” Eighteen states
set barriers to remarriage after divorce.
In the mid-20th century, governments began to get out of the
business of deciding which couples were “fit” to marry. Courts
invalidated laws against interracial marriage, struck down other
barriers and even extended marriage rights to prisoners.
But governments began relying on marriage licenses for a new
purpose: as a way of distributing resources to dependents. The Social
Security Act provided survivors’ benefits with proof of marriage.
Employers used marital status to determine whether they would provide
health insurance or pension benefits to employees’ dependents. Courts
and hospitals required a marriage license before granting couples the
privilege of inheriting from each other or receiving medical
information.
In the 1950s, using the marriage license as a shorthand way to
distribute benefits and legal privileges made some sense because almost
all adults were married. Cohabitation and single parenthood by choice
were very rare.
Today, however, possession of a marriage license tells us little
about people’s interpersonal responsibilities. Half of all Americans
aged 25 to 29 are unmarried, and many of them already have incurred
obligations as partners, parents or both. Almost 40 percent of
America’s children are born to unmarried parents. Meanwhile, many
legally married people are in remarriages where their obligations are
spread among several households.
Using the existence of a marriage license to determine when the
state should protect interpersonal relationships is increasingly
impractical. Society has already recognized this when it comes to
children, who can no longer be denied inheritance rights, parental
support or legal standing because their parents are not married.
As Nancy Polikoff, an American University law professor, argues,
the marriage license no longer draws reasonable dividing lines
regarding which adult obligations and rights merit state protection. A
woman married to a man for just nine months gets Social Security
survivor’s benefits when he dies. But a woman living for 19 years with
a man to whom she isn’t married is left without government support,
even if her presence helped him hold down a full-time job and pay
Social Security taxes. A newly married wife or husband can take leave
from work to care for a spouse, or sue for a partner’s wrongful death.
But unmarried couples typically cannot, no matter how long they have
pooled their resources and how faithfully they have kept their
commitments.
Possession of a marriage license is no longer the chief determinant of which obligations a couple mustcan
keep — who gets hospital visitation rights, family leave, health care
and survivor’s benefits. This may serve the purpose of some moralists.
But it doesn’t serve the public interest of helping individuals meet
their care-giving commitments. keep, either to their children or to each other. But it still determines which obligations a couple
Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let
churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples —
gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and
obligations of a committed relationship.
[Ellen Wertheimer, professor of law at Villanova, sent me this message
--and gave me permission to post it:]
I have been following the debate on the increase in the cost of
oral
contraception with interest. I frankly do not understand the
position
that cheaper contraception is a bad idea. Surely the greatest
evil
under discussion here is abortion. I am at a loss to explain, much
less
justify, any position that creates a greater risk of more
unwanted
pregnancies and, a fortiori, more abortions, no matter what other
issues
may be lurking under the surface.
The one issue that seems to
have been neglected in the posts so far is
the disparate impact a price
increase has on poorer students. Students
with money will buy contraceptives
no matter what they cost.
(Incidentially, oral contraceptives are being used
therapeutically in
current medicine to combat anemia in young women.)
Students who do not
have enough money to buy the pill will therefore be at
greater risk of
unwanted pregnancy. (There is no evidence that teenagers
stop having
sex in the absence of affordable contraceptives. To the
contrary.)
Presumably, students who do not have enough money to afford the
pill and
become pregnant as a result will also be less able to afford a
safe
abortion or to survive the educational disruption that will result
if
they are unable or unwilling to terminate the
pregnancy.
Increasing the cost of contraception thus contributes to the
divide
between the rich and the poor in our society, surely not a goal
devoutly
to be wished. It seems to me that inexpensive, reliable
contraception
serves both the goal of reducing the number of abortions and
the goal of
equalizing those who have less money and those who have more. It
is
also perhaps worth pointing out that many of those who will suffer
by
reason of the price increase are not themselves Catholic.
If Sunday was the Feast of Christ the King, then Advent is just around the corner, prompting each of us to ask: What am I doing to help birth Christ into the world.
My friend John Freund over at famvin has been focusing attention on systemic change as a means to address poverty. As Advent approaches, he shares the thought that the "first Christmas set off the greatest systemic change ever when God became one with us - in a stable no less: What a scandal! God became one with us." He desribes in his post an international movement called the "Advent Conspiracy", a movement "dedicated to restoring the scandal of Christmas by worshipping Jesus through compassion, not consumption." Their website is here.
In response to RIck's question: I think that opposition to contraception subsidies for college students because of the message they send has to be based on the argument that they endorse or encourage nonmarital sex (or contraception itself if one argues that it's inherently undesirable). I don't think one can avoid joining that issue by interpreting subsidies as sending the message that "[i]t is an understandable, and even an appropriate, decision for college students facing unplanned pregnancies to have abortions."
More precisely, defending contraception subsidies as a means of reducing abortions probably sends a version of the first message: that abortion in the context of an unplanned pregnancy is "understandable" in the sense that one can sympathize with college students in that difficult situation and understand why they might feel pressure from circumstances to have an abortion. But I don't see how it sends the second message: that abortion in such situations is "appropriate." If that were the case, then no one could ever argue for a program, however morally neutral or admirable in itself, on the ground that it would reduce incentives for people to do immoral things. One could not defend after-school basketball programs on the ground that "they'll keep kids from hanging out on the streets and getting into crime and drugs," because that would assertedly send the message that it is "appropriate" for kids to get into crime and drugs if such programs don't exist. Nor could one defend programs of support for pregnant women (child care, crisis pregnancy centers) on the ground that they reduce abortions, because that would assertedly send the message that it's appropriate to have an abortion if such supports don't exist. In each case the inference of such a message is implausible. Programs that seek to avoid or change conditions that create incentives for immoral behavior reflect a recognition that we are embodied, world-occupying beings, not abstractly rational ones -- and that, contrary to a hyper-Kantian account in which incentives and empirical conditions must be entirely disregarded in assessing morality (i.e. that only the pure will to do right is morally admirable), empirical factors and incentives will have an affect on whether people will do what is objectively the right thing.
This is a modest point; I'm not arguing for contraception subsidies at colleges. I'm just saying that the debate over them has to be waged on the more familiar issues: whether contraception in this context is undesirable because it encourages nonmarital sex (or is inherently undesirable), to what extent contraception reduces abortions, and whether the government should respect the moral objections of a percentage of taxpayers by denying subsidies.
Tom
