Thursday, December 2, 2010
Family law, social norms, and tipping points
This morning I'm preparing for a Family Law class in which we discuss, by way of review of the various topics covered in the course, how the law has been emptying itself of moral content. (Think no-fault divorce, the rise of prenuptial contracts, the narrowing of permissible rationales for child custody decisions, the demise of alimony, the elimination of fault as grounds for property division, and the decriminalization of adultery, fornication, etc.) I don't consider all of this to be a bad thing (though some of it is), in part because the state is not always the most effective means by which to maintain and/or implement moral norms in society. This assumes, however, that society has other means for maintaining those norms. An open question, I admit, especially when I come across stories like this one from Russia. I do wonder what it takes for a society to reach a tipping point on social practices related to the family that we currently take for granted, and whether there is a role for the law in supporting those practices long before the tipping point is reached. (I will note that the formidable threat to the family in Russia appears to have little or nothing to do with same-sex marriage, as that conversation, in my understanding, hasn't even gotten rolling there yet.)
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/12/family-law-social-norms-and-tipping-points.html
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The only good thing about Julia Ioffe's piece that you provide is that it shows that the lack of basic understanding of historical contexts, and even simple facts, is a phenomenon not only of of journalists specializing in this country. A current research project of mine involves detailed issues of Russian history, and it seems clear by the best scholarship that her summation of issues of sexuality in Russia or the former Soviet Union are simply fanciful. On her view of the Soviet Union being "sexless", that amounts to a real howler, and conflicts with the philosophical foundations of a certain brutal skepticism that the Soviet regime undertook towards all received values. One can't quite limn what the point she wants to make is. If it is to lay the current randyness of Moscow males at the doorstep of a incompetent Orthodox Church, well, that just seems a very wayward deduction. What she seems to be avoiding saying is that today's current regime is a gangster state, and that explains the matter. Of course gangsters and their followers are very interested in sex. A lot simpler.
Therefore, I wouldn't draw any insights from this very faulty piece. Though I like the idea that same- sex marriage has nothing to do with these "threats to marriage" .