Professional Documents
Culture Documents
before the Council of Trent in the 16th century, marriage began and was
consummated with a sometimes-secret betrothal, when a couple would pledge to
marry, said Michael Lawler, director of Creighton University's Center for
Marriage and Family. The public wedding would follow, often during the pregnancy
or after the birth of a child.
"Fertility was so important in marriage that there would very seldom be a
wedding without a child on the way," Lawler said.
When people call marriage the foundation of society, that is more than a
statement of values. In most cultures, the family has been "an economic
production unit," said Alan Booth, a Penn State University sociology professor.
When society was largely an agrarian one, couples "had lots of children
because they were workers and they needed them to work the land," Booth said.
Trades and crafts often were practiced in or near the home, with a wife aiding
her husband and children following their father into his trade. With the
Industrial Revolution, men left their homes to work, increasing the wife's
responsibility for the home and children.
Of the many customs that have been associated with marriage, two taboos that
frequently arise in the debate over same-sex marriage are polygamy and
interracial marriage.
Both sides like to bring up polygamy. Opponents of same-sex marriage note
that the U.S. Supreme Court in the 19th century upheld the states' right to
define marriage and outlaw polygamy.
Supporters of same-sex marriage cite polygamy to show that society's view of
marriage has always been changing. Some of the most vocal opponents of same-sex
marriage are evangelical Christians who believe in the literal interpretation of
the Bible and quote the Bible in condemning homosexuality. Lawler notes that
many important characters in the Bible were polygamists. David had at least
seven wives, and Solomon, revered for his wisdom, had 700 wives.
Lawler said Western culture did not view monogamy as essential to marriage
until Modestinus, a fourth-century non-Christian Roman lawyer, defined the
institution for the Roman Empire: "Marriage is a union of a man and a woman and
a communion of the whole of life, a participation in divine and human law."
Supporters of same-sex unions liken the ban on gay marriage to the longtime
bans on interracial marriage. In both cases, they argue, laws based on bigotry
prohibited marriage between people who loved each other and wanted to commit
their lives to each other.
Laws against interracial marriage continued a long tradition of prohibitions
against marrying outside one's own kind, except for gender. In the book of
Deuteronomy, Israelites were forbidden to marry the Hittites, Canaanites and
Girgashites. This was long interpreted as a ban on interracial or intercultural
marriages.
Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush drew strong criticism this
year after speaking at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., which still
forbids interracial dating by students.
Various Christian and Jewish groups and leaders maintain explicit rules or
implicit expectations of followers to marry within the faith.
The ban on interracial marriage was not limited to the segregationist South.
Most states had such laws, said Peter Wallenstein, a history professor at
Virginia Tech University. Iowa had a territorial law banning interracial
marriage, but researchers at the State Law Library could find no evidence of
such a law since statehood in 1846. Nebraska repealed its ban in 1963. Four
years later, in a case called Loving vs. Virginia, the U.S. Supreme Court threw
out Virginia's ban, and in effect all such laws, stating that marriage is a
"basic civil right."
In overturning the Virginia law, which made interracial marriage a felony,
the Supreme Court cited the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection.
Gay-marriage activists cite the same principle in their legal arguments.
Loving vs. Virginia came in the midst of a revolution in marriage and family
life.
In World War II, "Rosie the Riveter" became the symbol of women leaving
homes to work in factories while men fought the war. "Women entered the work
force and found they could do it and found they liked it and it was a hell of a
lot more interesting than being home with the kids," Lawler said.
While many returned home after the war to raise children, change was under
way and inevitable.
"In the'50s and'60s, you had the 'Leave it to Beaver' family," said Gary
Rosberg, co-host with his wife, Barbara, of "America's Family Coaches," a
syndicated radio show based in Des Moines. "They may have looked good, but on
the inside there was hurt, alcoholism, lack of communication, all the things
that trouble so many marriages today."
In the 1960s and'70s, women began pushing for equality in the home and the
workplace. Jobs "gave women their own economic security," Lawler said. "They
didn't have to stay in a marriage that was unsatisfactory."
At the same time, the sexual revolution erased much of the stigma attached
to cohabitation or childbirth outside marriage. Divorce rates, already on the
rise, skyrocketed when states adopted no-fault divorce laws, as Nebraska did in
1972 and Iowa in 1970.
June Cleaver, the happy housewife who always wore an apron and pearls, gave
way to Mary Richards, too busy and happy with her career to marry; to Clair
Huxtable, sharing parental responsibilities in a two-career marriage; to Murphy
Brown, raising a child without marrying; and to Erin Brockovich, struggling with
children after divorce.
By the late 1990s, only 56 percent of adults were married, down from
three-quarters in the early 1970s, Tom Smith of the University of Chicago said
in a report last year.
"Marriage has declined as the central institution under which households are
organized and children are raised," Smith wrote. While marriage remains a "core
institution of the American family," he said, "it no longer occupies as
prominent a role in either people's adult lives or in childbearing and
childrearing."
The social transformation resulted in growing numbers of "blended families,"
with children from either or both parents' first marriage mixed with a child or
two from the current marriage and possibly more from a nonmarital relationship.
Attendance at family gatherings depends on custody and visitation schedules.
"I didn't grow up with any blended-family kids," said Norm Thiesen, chairman
of the counseling department at Grace University in Omaha. "I didn't know they
existed."
The rapidly changing status and view of marriage were illustrated in the
life of Ronald Reagan. He was the first divorced man to be elected president,
and his second wife was two months pregnant when they married. Either fact would
have been an enormous liability a generation earlier, but voters barely noticed
or cared as Reagan became a popular president and an ironic hero to many seeking
to preserve traditional ways.
Reagan was followed closely by Bill Clinton, who won election despite one
sex scandal, was impeached over another sex scandal, and yet endured in both his
presidency and his marriage. At this year's political conventions, George W.
Bush and Al Gore reflected the nation's desire for stronger marriages and
families as they competed to demonstrate how much they loved their wives.
This stress on loving marriages by the presidential candidates reflects what
Diane Sollee, organizer of an annual nationwide Smart Marriages conference,
calls a "renaissance" for marriage.
In the face of all the gloomy statistics, she said, surveys of young people
invariably show "that a happy, long-lasting marriage is their number one goal."
Much of the debate of gay marriage boils down to a question of whether
same-sex couples are a reflection of the renaissance or a threat to it. "What
gay and lesbian couples want is in a sense very traditional," said Linda Waite,
a University of Chicago sociology professor who co-wrote "A Case for Marriage"
with Gallagher. "Everyone else is running away from marriage. They're running
toward it."
Separate from the issue of same-sex unions, Americans of varying political
and social viewpoints are rallying to the defense of marriage. Beyond the
religious and moral issues, they see this as a defense of the nation's children.
"The divorce revolution has failed," said a 1999 statement by the Marriage
Movement, an alliance of more than 100 conservative and liberal scholars,
advocates and leaders of religious and secular family-oriented organizations.
"Even when parents remarry, their children do no better, on average, than
children raised by single parents, and both do worse on all measures than
children raised by their own two married parents."
Mike McManus, president of Marriage Savers and a signer of the statement,
said: "If you just look at teen-agers in America, only 42 percent are living
with their mother and father. Do you find that shocking? I do."
Marriage is good for adults as well as children. "In virtually every way
that social scientists can measure, married people do much better than the
unmarried or divorced: they live longer, healthier, happier, sexier and more
affluent lives," said Gallagher, who is director of the Marriage Program at the
Institute for American Values.
Religious congregations, communities and secular organizations are
developing programs to improve education about marriage, better prepare engaged
couples for marriage, strengthen existing marriages and help couples in crisis.
McManus organizes Community Marriage Policies in which clergy and sometimes
judges pledge to develop marriage preparation programs and to require couples to
participate before their weddings.
Fremont adopted such a policy in 1998 to change a mentality where "too much
is made of the wedding and not enough is made of the lifetime relationship,"
said Phil Ronzheimer, pastor of Fremont Alliance Church. Lexington is the only
other Nebraska city with a Community Marriage Policy.
Several cities with policies have seen dramatic decreases in divorce rates,