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.
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[This is a transcript of a segment that appeared on PBS's "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.]
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PERSPECTIVES:Hunger in AmericaNovember 23, 2007 Episode no. 1112DEBORAH
POTTER, guest anchor: Last week, the US government said more than 35 million
Americans went without food at some point during 2006. This week, the non-profit
group Bread for the World issued its own report recommending strategies for the
US to combat hunger. Bob Abernethy sat down with David Beckmann, Bread for the
World president and a Lutheran pastor, to discuss hunger in this country and
what can be done about it. BOB ABERNETHY: David, welcome.
Reverend DAVID BECKMANNN (President, Bread for the World): Thank
you. ABERNETHY: Put some flesh and blood, if you would on the
statistics: 35-and-a-half million people in this country who -- what happens?
Rev. BECKMANN: Well, in our country it's not hunger like
Ethiopia. The typical pattern of hunger in our country is that the family runs
out of food. They may have food assistance from the government, but food
assistance runs out by the end of the third week of the month. It's not enough.
So the moms go without food. The kids go without food maybe the last few days of
the month. So then the whole month they don't buy good-for-you food. They don't
have quite enough food. ABERNETHY: Is this all over? All kinds of
people? Rev. BECKMANN: It is all over the country. It's
especially children, especially little children. In our country, one in four
children under the age of six lives in a household that runs out of food, and
even moderate under-nutrition does real damage, because the nutrition goes to
the vital organs and the brain half shuts down. So kids aren't alert. They're
naughty. By the time they go to kindergarten they're acting up. Letting so many
kids go hungry does real damage to our whole nation. ABERNETHY:
You at Bread for the World, you've been fighting this, fighting hunger for a
long time. But your emphasis has shifted or is shifting from emergency measures
to trying to fight poverty itself?
Reverend David Beckmann
Rev. BECKMANN: Well, both. We're working
this year on farm bill reform, which is a good way to both deal with food
assistance for hungry families and helping some families get out of poverty.
Much of the money in the farm bill goes to affluent families; some very wealthy
landholders have money in the farm bill. So there's an opportunity this year to
shift some of those resources, first, to farm and rural families who really need
help to make a living; and then also to strengthen food assistance to hungry
families in our country. ABERNETHY: And how does what's going
here compare to what's going on around the world? Rev. BECKMANN:
Well, Bread for the World works on both hunger worldwide and in our country, and
the irony is that the world is making progress against hunger and poverty.
Countries as diverse as China and Uganda and Chile are making progress, while in
the USA, at least in this decade, we've been going the other way. We have more
hungry and poor people in the country than we did in the year 2000.
ABERNETHY: And working people are hungry? Rev. BECKMANN: Absolutely.
It's increasing numbers of working people. Nowadays, you know, if you go into a
McDonald's and there's a lady behind that cash register, if she's got kids at
home those kids aren't eating all the time. I'm a preacher, so I believe that if
you don't work you shouldn't eat. It's in the Bible. But the corollary is if you
do work you ought to be able to eat, and that's not true in our country anymore.
ABERNETHY: David Beckmann of Bread for the World, many thanks.
Rev. BECKMANN: Thank you. |
Sightings 11/26/07
Torture Then and Now
-- Martin E. Marty
Torture, including torture by
Americans: Who could have predicted that this would be a live
topic here in the twenty-first century? We know how to associate
torture with the accused and accusing other, with Inquisitors and witch hunters
five centuries ago, or with far-away twentieth century totalitarian regimes and
religious terrorists. But today the theological, humanistic, and
tactical themes connected with torture have appeared close to home, giving new
significance to those distant times, places, and events.
Accordingly, a very distinguished
historian, Princeton 's expert on the Renaissance, is
speaking up. Not known for ideology or pamphleteering, Anthony
Grafton takes pains not to oversell the relevance of his subjects.
He favors patient historical work and writes in a moderate mode.
Recently he looked up from his Renaissance research to see how
things are going today. Alert to contemporary controversies and
mildly allusive about events in America, he stops short of issuing
indictments. Grafton seems to be writing in the haze of "where
there's smoke there's fire," but clearly sees enough to issue cautionary words.
His article in the November 5th
New Republic, entitled "Say Anything," refers to what he has learned from
the transcripts of those Inquisitors and witch-hunters. He knows
enough to say enough about the practical ineffectiveness of torture.
Americans, we were always told, do not torture for a number of
reasons: Torture violates our moral codes, including those based
on religious notions that humans are made in the image of God; religious
leadership is almost unanimously against torture, and America is a religious
nation; for us to torture is to enter a dangerous game, since if we torture we
have no moral claim to demand that "the other," our enemies, should not torture
our people when they are captured; and we are a practical people and like to
work with things that work. Grafton concentrates on this last
piece, the ineffectiveness of torture.
He notes that four centuries ago, as
now, the tortured will "say anything" to get the pain to stop, which means
anything that the tortured thinks the torturer wants to hear. And
what the torturer hears is almost never right or useful. Grafton
reports on the work of younger historians who are finding that "torture—as
inflicted in the past—was anything but a sure way of arriving at the truth."
He tells how, in unimaginable pain, some tortured Jews were broken
and finally "filled in every detail that Christians wanted." Nowadays, he says, "no competent historian trusts confessions wrung by
torture that confirms the strange and fixed ideas of the torturer."
Grafton's conclusion: "Torture does not obtain
truth…it can make most ordinary people…say anything their examiners
want." Moral: "it is not an instrument that a decent society has
any business applying…Anyone who claims otherwise…stands with the torturers" of
long ago. And that, Grafton has made quite clear, is not a good
place to stand.
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