What is Marriage For?
UU Fellowship of Midland, MI
October 5, 2003
Jane Thickstun

Reading

The reading is from a book called What is Marriage For? by E. J. Graff.

            For many centuries, the “crime against nature” included any sex that attempted to prevent conception– coitus interruptus, sex conbouche, sex con mano.  According to one key theologian, if a married couple tried to prevent making babies while making love, the wife was no better than “a harlot and the husband an adulterer with his own wife”; if they used contraceptive techniques, “I do not see how we can call it a marriage.”  For many centuries the Church refused to bless remarrying widows and widowers, especially if the woman was too old to bear children.  When in the nineteenth century the Western world’s birth rate began to drop dramatically, pundits, priests, and politicians cried out against a world of “harlots and adulterers.”  But by the mid-twentieth century, that older rhetoric had faded away: the Western economy had come to favor individuals who ran their lives by their own consciences rather than couples who constantly churned out babies.  In 1965, the United States Supreme Court decided that married adults had a right to regulate their own sexual behavior.  The crime against nature had become a Constitutional right–except for one last nonreproductive group.”  (p. 53)

Sermon

            Picture a beautiful Saturday in mid-June.  A rented hall, decorated with flowers and lace.  A table off to the side has a seven-wick candle on it.  I’m standing at one end of the hall; chairs are arranged in rows stretching back with an aisle down the middle.  Music is playing, and a bride walks down the aisle in a beautiful white wedding gown.  There is a Unity Candle Ceremony, and then the seven children each light a wick on the seven-wick candle.  They are asked if they give their blessings to their parents as they make this sacred commitment,

and the family and friends who are gathered are asked if they give their blessing too.  They all say they do.  There is more music, and a reading, and tears and laughter.  There are vows and rings exchanged.

            Then I say to the couple: “having professed your love, exchanging vows and rings in my presence, you are now joined in holy union.”

            Was this a wedding?  Are they married now?  Did I mention that they are both women? 

            This couple has an advantage in that they and their children all share the same last name.  It just so happens that both women were married to the same man (at different times), and so the children have a common father as well.  Normally, gay and lesbian couples who want to share a last name and other ways of joining lives that marriage usually bestows have to go through lengthy and expensive legal processes that heterosexual couples get just from a marriage licence.  Things like shared health insurance benefits and the right to each other’s pensions, the right to adopt together, the right to inherit on the death of a spouse and to be able to make tough decisions if the spouse is rendered incapable, or even to visit that spouse in the hospital.

            There is lots going on these days around the topic of same-sex marriage.  It seems like you can’t pick up a magazine or a newspaper without seeing something about it.  Just this past Friday, the top headline on the Midland Daily News read: “Marriage amendment eyed: Proposal would block gay marriages.”  The article describes how a Michigan state senator called for a constitutional amendment that would recognize as valid only marriage between a man and a woman.  Michigan isn’t the only state to take such measures.  And members of our federal government are talking about a constitutional ban as well.

            But the efforts to push laws to ban same-sex marriage are really only backlash to the flood of changes and conversations recently that make marriage for same-sex couples, or something close to it, seem like a real possibility in the near future.

            Belgium and the Netherlands already recognize same-sex marriages, and our state of Vermont established a separate category called civil unions for gay and lesbian couples a few years ago.  The province of Quebec also allows civil unions.  Same-sex marriage is being taken seriously in legislatures and courts in places like Finland, France, and South Africa, in Hawaii and Alaska.

            On June 10 of this year, an appeals court in the Canadian province of Ontario ruled that Canada’s ban on homosexual marriage was unconstitutional.  They ruled that allowing only heterosexuals to marry violated the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, part of Canada’s constitution, like our Bill of Rights.  According to an article in Christian Century, “The court restated the common-law definition of marriage as ‘the voluntary union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.’  It replaced ‘one man and one woman’ with ‘two persons.’” (June 28, 2003, p. 11)

            The Canadian federal government decided not to appeal the decision.  On June 17 the Prime Minister said, “We’ll be proposing legislation that will protect the right of churches and religious organizations to sanctify marriage as they define it.” (July 12, 2003, p. 11) And so same-sex marriage remains legal in Ontario, and there’s a possibility it will soon be legal in all of Canada.

            Right after the Ontario ruling, on June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn a Texas law that banned homosexual sex acts, recognizing a right to sexual privacy under the Constitution.  The decision was seen as a significant victory for gay rights supporters. (July 12, 2003, p. 12)

            The Episcopal Church has been stirring things up as well.  In August the Episcopal convention affirmed the unprecedented election of an openly gay bishop and gave an affirmative nod to the blessing of same-sex unions in dioceses whose bishops were already permitting them.  It is causing such tension within the denomination that a split may occur over it.  A split is also very possible in the Presbyterian Church over similar issues.

            People who wish to preserve the status quo are saying same-sex marriage poses "a serious threat to the institution of marriage," and a whole lot of worse things.  Many are bringing in the Bible.  The opposition is wide-spread.  Recently an alliance of African American, Latino, Asian, Jewish, Catholic and Muslim religious leaders lent their support to a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

            With all this going on, it’s natural we would ask the question “what is marriage for?” as E. J. Graff does in her book by that title.  (By the way, this is a Beacon Press book that is extremely well-written and researched – easy and fun to read – I highly recommend it.) 

            In the book, Graff traces the history of the institution of marriage in western culture since Greek and Roman times.  She looks at the ways the institution has changed over time, adapting to  economic, political, and religious changes.  She finds that every time there is a change, there are conservatives wanting to “hold onto the incarnation of marriage that won the last century’s battle, anachronistically calling that version ‘traditional’ and ‘time-honored’; the progressives want to bring marriage into step with how people actually live today.”  She says, “We can get a better perspective on today’s marriage debates by remembering that although each apparently revolutionary proposal to change the marriage rules has shocked the conservatives of any given era, when such proposals surface in public debate the underlying economic and social changes have already happened.” (p. 250)

            What are some of those shocking revolutionary proposals to change the marriage rules?

            One was contraception.  “Human beings have been trying to snip the link between sex and babies through all of recorded history.”  Back in the 4th century, when Christianity was lifting up the virtue of celibacy, marriage was justified by procreation, making babies.  That made contraception a terrible sin.  “If you used anything to block conception,” the influential philosopher Augustine wrote, “‘I dare to say that either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer with his own wife.’ Or to put it more clearly, any attempt to prevent pregnancy ‘makes the bridal chamber a brothel.’” (p. 62)

            Fast-forward to the mid-nineteenth century, when capitalism and industrialization were changing the economy.  This took work out of the home, took people from rural farms to cities, and made having lots of children a burden rather than a blessing.  In addition, because of “improvements in public health and medical care, fewer children were dying– which meant that even if you gave birth to no more children than your grandmother did . . . you might nevertheless have twice as many to raise to adulthood.” (p. 73) At this point, contraception became widespread, but it was a long time before it became socially accepted.  According to Graff, “Charles Goodyear, who made his fortune when he vulcanized rubber in 1837 and ‘rubbers’ quickly replaced sheepskin condoms, found the source of his wealth ‘so notorious in reputation that the inventor never dared take any credit.’” (p. 74)

            Another totally shocking proposal was the idea of giving married women the right to own property, including their own bodies.  An earlier shift had stopped young people from being their parents’ property, but at around the same time “women noticed that when they married they became property.”  Before, work and home were integrally tied, and women were essential to the economic well-being of families.  But by the 1850's, they had become separated enough that a new occupational category was introduced in the British census: that of housewife. (p. 28-29)

            Property was no longer strictly real estate (land), and could be more easily squandered by an untrustworthy husband.  Graff asks, “What if you and your family trusted your husband and yet he still managed your money appallingly, or married your money and disappeared, or drank up all your factory wages, or gambled away your hat shop’s profits?  Tough.” (p. 30)

            So a series of Married Women’s Property Acts were put forward to help rectify this situation.  Graff says, “One 1844 New York legislative committee insisted that allowing married women to control their own property would lead ‘to infidelity in the marriage bed, a high rate of divorce, and increased female criminality,’ while turning marriage from ‘its high and holy purposes’ into something arranged for ‘convenience and sensuality.’” (p. 30-31) There were many objections.  “A New York legislator pleaded with his fellows to remember ‘the complexity and fragility of marriage as a social institution . . . If any single thing should remain untouched by the hand of the reformer, it was the sacred institution of marriage . . . [which] was about to be destroyed in one thoughtless blow that might produce change in all phases of domestic life.’  A British Parliamentarian announced that the proposed law was ‘contrary not only to the law of England, but to the law of God.’” (p. 31)

            These are just a few of the many examples of the ways marriage has changed and been redefined again and again over time, and the similar reactions these changes cause.  While there have been many changes to the institution of marriage over time, the biggest change occurred in the nineteenth century.  “With capitalism, marriage stopped being the main way that the rich exchanged their life’s property, and that the rest of us found our life’s main co-worker.  That change . . . was so dramatic that it set off changes in every other philosophy of marriage: what makes sex sacred or even acceptable; what children need to grow up well; how far in or out of their kinship circle . . . people are expected or allowed to marry; what marriage rules are required to keep social order; and how important it is to consult your own heart.” (p. xiii)

            Graff also says that “. . .many of the nineteenth century changes that led to today’s marriage battles are changes in the status of women: whether sex must lead instantly to babies, or whether contraception should be legal; whether married women should be free to own property, or to have custody of their children, or to hold jobs.  And once men and women are equal, choosing their jobs (both within and outside marriage) as earner, nurturer, cook, or household handyperson based on their desires and talents and circumstances rather than on sex, then what bars two men or two women from marrying?”  (p. xiii-xiv)

            We have married for many reasons over the centuries, including the distribution of property, finding a life’s work partner, a way of legitimizing offspring, a way of legitimizing sex, a way of making or reinforcing kinship ties.  One reason has remained constant: marriage as a  legal institution gives a way to apply justice based on social consensus to private disputes.

            But the reason for marrying in our western society today is love.  It is a private, personal, individual choice.  According to Graff, “Today’s marriage– from whatever angle you look– is justified by the happiness of the pair.  When combined with the West’s root commitment to officially treating the sexes as equal, that marriage philosophy makes it possible– no, necessary– to recognize the marriages of two people of one sex.” (p. 251)

            What benefits does marriage confer that same-sex couples desire and deserve to gain by being included in it?  Graff says, “Marriage laws and rules weave a much more delicate and invisible web than most of us know.  ‘Married’ is a shorthand taken seriously by banks, insurers, courts, employers, schools, hospitals, cemeteries, rental car companies, frequent flyer programs, and more– a word understood to mean that you two share not just your bedroom but the rest of your house as well.  In the United States, the General Accounting Office issued a ...1997 report listing 1,049 ‘federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status.’  Each state also has several hundred of its own.”  (p. 38)

            Domestic partner benefits don’t come close to providing all that.  As far as I can tell, Vermont’s civil unions do.  The web site states that: “Parties to a civil union shall have all the same benefits, protections and responsibilities under Vermont law, whether they derive from statute, policy, administrative or court rule, common law or any other source of civil law, as are granted to spouses in a marriage.”  They are only available to those of the same sex who are excluded from the marriage laws of the state.  It seems it was a way to get around the hot topic of redefining marriage by calling it something else.

            Same-sex marriage is an idea whose time has come.  I believe we can expect to see the issue heat up even more in the coming years, and that most of us will live to see marriage extended to all couples who love each other and wish to commit to share their lives together.

            I have a colleague and friend serving an old Universalist congregation near Leamington, Ontario– Chris Hillman, who preached here a year and a half ago.  The Friday after the Ontario ruling, Chris performed her first same-sex wedding that was considered legal by the secular authority.  There was a rush because the federal government had thirty days to appeal the ruling, and the couple was worried their window of opportunity for a legal wedding might not be very long.  The couple came from Indiana and were able to bring no friends or family with them.  Chris called the president of the congregation to let him know she was doing this controversial thing, and he said he wanted to stand up with them as a witness.  Another congregation member made bridal bouquets from her garden.  Altogether, seven members of the congregation attended, and the couple took them all out to lunch.  A member works for CBC radio, and from that connection, the event was covered on the national news. 

            Chris has done some twelve same-sex weddings since the June decision.  Of those, only two have been Canadians; the rest are from the States.  The marriage licence form they use still says “bride and groom” and the couple has to decide which of them will sign as which role.  One couple had a union ceremony at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Birmingham, Michigan, and then came for a legal ceremony in Ontario.  Another couple had their union ceremony in the Ann Arbor UU church, but decided in the end not to go for the Canadian legal wedding that wouldn’t be recognized in the U.S., but instead to spend the money on legal fees to make their marriage as legal as possible in the their own country. 

            Most of the couples she’s married since June have been together for ten to twenty years already.  Mostly they come in street clothes, maybe a few flowers, but very little in the way of a reception.  Most bring family members. 

            Chris told me that two moments in particular felt profound and moving.  When clergy, here or in Canada, perform a legal wedding, we get the proper signatures on the marriage licence and then mail it to the proper authorities.  Chris felt the significance of what was happening when she put the certificate from the first legal same-sex wedding in the mailbox.

            She also felt it when she said to the two women standing before her in the sanctuary, “By the power vested in me by the Province of Ontario, I now pronounce that you are married.”

The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Midland is recognized by the Unitarian Universalist Association as a Welcoming Congregation. We welcome, affirm, promote and celebrate the full participation of all persons in all of our activities without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, race or any other such category of exclusion.

Please feel free to contact us with any feedback, corrections or questions at jaham@delta.edu