Imagine a discussion on gay marriage without morality, theology or tradition.
The topic has many tentacles, including this month’s
sexual orientation and gender identity vote by Springfield residents, making it really difficult not to lean on our own preconceived notions, preferences and worldviews. Think of your Facebook feed the last few weeks.
Thanks to YouTube, I recently found myself sitting in
a Stanford University lecture hall listening to such a discussion. This hour-long talk hooked me because it seemed to strip down the debate to public policy. Looking at the topic through the policy lens, we see this question in the distance: Why is government in the marriage business? It’s not a new question. Just ask your Libertarian friends. But it seems to be a question with weak answers, and it continues to be the bedrock issue of such public debate as these so-called religious freedom laws.
So why does the government care about the vows I said with my wife or the same-sex couple fighting for the same recognized union?
Government is not in the marriage business because it’s a sappy romantic. It’s not interested in love stories with happy endings. No, that’s Disney.
It’s about money. Not in the greedy, tax-heavy way you’re thinking, but the other side of that equation, the cost side. It’s only partly about money.
If this Stanford lecturer got something right, it’s that all public policy decisions have inherent costs and those costs weigh on society.
“If marriage is just about the love lives of consenting adults, why can’t we take the state out of the bedroom?” asks Ryan Anderson, Stanford’s guest speaker from the Washington, D.C.-based think tank The Heritage Foundation. “Yet, those who would redefine marriage want to put the government into more bedrooms. Why?”
To be clear, Anderson represents a think tank rooted in conservative policies based on free enterprise, limited government and individual freedom. He approaches the marriage topic from a philosophical standpoint and leaning on social sciences: knowledge, reality and existence.
Our cultural reality is
37 states now recognize same-sex marriages. However, the legal status remains in flux, as all states have some court case pending on the topic, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Philosophy causes us to wonder what this marriage commitment is oriented toward. So let’s follow Anderson down this thought experiment.
“In the same way that academic communities are engaged in academic actions that are ordered toward the pursuit of the truth and knowledge, in the marital relationship, spouses are engaged in a marital act that is intrinsically ordered toward both their unity and the procreation and the rearing and education of children,” Anderson says.
The government cares a little about fatherhood and motherhood. In the business of parenting, men and women deliver different and complementary gifts to their children. In this thought experiment, it’s not about me and it’s not about you.
Government cares about marriage because it cares about the overall health of our communities. And the government’s laws set a trajectory that’s best “on average and for the most part.”
That’s not to say a healthy family cannot exist apart from a male-female union. In setting these laws, the government is not setting out to criticize or discriminate against the rare circumstances where it works in unique families. But it does say, as Anderson puts it, the law maximizes the likelihood every child has the gift of being raised by a married mother and father. Continuing down our culture’s path, that likelihood could be fractured.
Here’s where the cost comes in. My concern, in particular, is the cost for the next generation. Today, we don’t know conclusively how redefining marriage will affect society.
What we do know is meeting children’s innate needs is good for society over the long haul.
Anderson quotes
President Barack Obama on Father’s Day in 2008: “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to grow up in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our communities are weaker because of it.”
Marriage, then, minimizes the state’s expenses in picking up those pieces.
These discussions have introduced a few new words to our vocabulary: “
throuples," “
monogamish” unions and “
wedleases.”
Anderson contends these are potential consequences to the equal rights movement in marriage.
Think about this: If the marriage institution is not contained to a male-female love, then the extension is that there’s nothing holding marriage to a twosome or a life commitment. A love
between three or more parties or contingent upon a five-year lease with options should be entitled to the same equal rights. Sound crazy? Think about the first time you heard the term same-sex marriage. It probably was within the last 30 years.
Law and culture often butt heads, and each produces beliefs, which compel people to action.
It’s just a thought experiment, not a gotcha game. Let’s keep thinking for society’s sake.
Springfield Business Journal Editorial Director Eric Olson can be reached at eolson@sbj.net.
