Rachel’s Musings

When challenging the preferential status of marriage, I am often countered with “but marriage is natural!” No, it is not. Reading about the history of marriage in general and in the US in particular, it is clear that marriage is an institution created with specific civic purposes, which changed over time but were always there. In the US, it is steeped in the Christian tradition of monogamy, which the founding fathers imposed on the new nation.

Of course, this is avoiding the real question: Is coupling natural?      Continue reading this post » » »

An interesting commentary at AlterNet made me realize how destructive the influence of the Religious Right really is (hereafter I call them the Wrong - they might be on the right-side of the political spectrum but they are dead wrong in their positions). The topics where their influence plays a role are ever expanding in my awareness. Here are some of them:

• Evolution: This is the most obvious one. Their attempts to derail science and teaching nonsense range from creationism, via creation “science,” to intelligent design.
• Global climate change: Here they try to cast doubt on the fact that we humans are influencing the weather patterns for the worse and are the major culprits behind climate change.
• Marriage: Not only are they opposing gay marriage but by imposing their standards of the heterosexual marriage as the only healthy family, they are attacking family diversity.
• Child rearing: Through ignoring research, they were able to perpetuate the myth that marriage is necessary for healthy child development.

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As the mother of a teenage boy, I was eager to read the article Lost Boys in the June 2008 edition of the Monitor. I was rather disappointed. The article ignores that despite the supposed educational gap, men still earn more than women. The last sentence even implies that the opposite is the case. The reasons given for losing boys are based on anecdotal evidence and do not reflect any changes in schools. Teachers have long been predominantly female, for example, so this cannot explain this trend. One of the suggested solutions sounds like the good-old-boys network resurrected, which is contrary to Dr. Kleinfeld’s claim that “we can design schooling where both boys and girls do well.” Nothing in the article presents even a hint of such designs.

The most disturbing comments came in the last two paragraphs, though. Starting with “helping boys succeed helps girls,” I excitedly expected to finally find out how schools can be designed to serve both boys and girls. But this is far from what Dr. Kleinfeld and the author of the article had in mind. No, these programs for boys help women find better partners! What a sexist and singlist statement! As if the only thing women are interested in is finding a partner, and a male one to boot. How about helping both girls and boys succeed in education without assuming that girls just get an education so that they can marry well or that boys should be better educated to make better partners?

(This is a copy of the letter to the Editor I sent to the Monitor on Psychology.)

True Majority asks activists to sign a letter to the governors that calls for marriage equality. The call is framed as marriage equality being bigger than all other issues: “Marriage equality comes down to human rights.” I took issue with that and wrote them the following:

Thank you for your actions regarding marriage equality. As a single by choice, I take issue, though, with your framing marriage equality as a human rights issue: what human rights are we exactly defending by asking for marriage equality? The right to discriminate against other forms of relationships? Marriage is an institution; not a human right. People have human rights simply by being human, not by their relationship status. By expanding who can marry, we are perpetuating the inherent discriminatory policies that are endowed on people because they “tie the knot.” As a single by choice, I find it frustrating that people ignore that many of the 1,100+ benefits have nothing to do with human rights or protecting anybody. They simply privilege those who are in a state-sanctioned relationship, aka marriage. This discriminates against all of us who are in relationships other than marriages.

While I think that everybody who wants to marry should have the right to do so, I do not appreciate that this private commitment comes with a huge package of rights and benefits that are not available outside of marriage. I would love to see True Majority fight against singlism (the discrimination of singles) and marital status discrimination in all forms. We should fight for human rights for all people, regardless of their marital status, relationship style, sexual orientation, race, or gender.

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Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting my pet dragons. It was a mixed pleasure, of course. Realizing what thoughts perpetuate my internalized singlism was somewhat frustrating (I thought I was over these!) but it was also good to see them clearly. After all, unidentified dragons are difficult to tame. “Dragons” are self-defeating thoughts that come up over and over again as repeating themes, sometimes with variations but usually easily identifiable on close inspection. Calling these thoughts dragons helps create enough distance to analyze them more carefully (although as Timothy Wilson points out that might be an uphill battle).

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Although I am excited about the California Supreme Court’s decision to override a ban on same-sex marriage, I continue to be leery about the preferential treatment bestowed upon people simply because they “tie the knot.” According to a compilation of the General Accounting Office, in the U.S. married couples get at least 1,400 rights and benefits that non-married people do not get (an updated version is available as a PDF). While some of these rights clearly intend to protect children (although my own experience with the divorce law make me sometimes doubt that and there is also other evidence of that failure), many of those rights are simply discriminatory. As a single person, my social security benefits are not paid beyond my death. If I were married, my surviving spouse gets those benefits. I could add a spouse to my health insurance but not a very close friend who has lost hers with her job (or never got any health insurance). Although it certainly simplifies things, it does not make sense to me why these rights are not easily available outside of marriage. Easily is the key here because at least some of these rights could probably recreated through complex contracts. So, why not create a simple legal vehicle that would be available to people in any relationship, be it as a couple or siblings or friends? Something like a union contract that two (or more) people could sign that conveys similar rights and benefits no matter who those people are would be much less discriminatory. A marriage could simply be the expression of a commitment between two people - no special rights and benefits are attached to it, except through the union contract that every married couple had to sign. This would uphold the rights and benefits for married people but would end the matrimonial discrimination of other relationships. It is time that we come up with alternatives to marriage rather than perpetuating a discriminating vehicle.

There is an excellent editorial on courant.com, which brings up several good points along the lines I have argued here. Froma Harrop argues that “there is a marriage debate we ought to have — or to put it more accurately, a non-marriage debate.” She continues:

The troubling aspect of the push for gay marriage is the part that perpetuates the notion of marriage as a goody bag for sundry government and corporate benefits. A gay advocate asks, “Why can’t I leave my $4 million estate to my partner tax-free, as Jane and Joe Jones next door can do?” Valid question — but then one asks: “What about Widow Smith and her sister, who have lived together for decades? Shouldn’t tax law favor their estates, as well?” [...] Given the growing percentage of unmarried adult Americans, the whole obsession with same-sex marriage has become rather dated.

Keep marriage as a romantic and religious ideal for those who choose to partake. Public policy, on the other hand, should be marriage-neutral.

This is the marriage issue that the leading candidates should be addressing. You just know that they won’t touch it.

Excellent!