The same-sex marriage debate tends to deconstruct marriage out of existence: Marriage turns out not to be anything in particular, just a word for two people in some kind of close relationship seeking something called "benefits" from government.
Certainly it can no longer be the one thing it has always been: society's special acknowledgment that channeling men and women's erotic yearnings for each other -- for intimacy, closeness, sexual desire, companionship, economic support and children -- is necessary, not only for the couple but for the whole society. To get to gay marriage, this is the idea that must go.
And indeed in the final chapter, Blankenhorn offers new evidence on how hard it is for the same society to endorse gay marriage and to retain a simple concept like "people who want children ought to be married." We cannot prove, he says, that gay marriage causes this decline; all we can show is that around the world, the two ideas stand or fall together.
The more you conceptualize marriage as about adults and our rights, the more sense same-sex marriage makes. The more you see marriage as a necessary social institution for bringing men and women together to make and raise the next generation, the less sense gay marriage makes.
The really big question, Blankenhorn points out, is not gay marriage per se, but whether we can and will reconstruct marriage as the crucial institution that connects Eros and generativity. Anyone interested in that question needs to read this book. |