What Is Marriage For? In Marriage We Trust?
The question: What is marriage for?
What is marriage for? To bind together a man and a woman (yes, really – I'll come back to this) for life; in the interests of children and social stability; for their good, and that of society; for the nurturing and propagation of the human species. And because it works.
As the child of serial divorcees – I shall dine later this week with my stepfather's widow – I'm surprised to find myself writing the last of those reasons. Like many casualties of this generation, I saw marriage as a seaside gambling den: a noisy, fractious place where everyone eventually loses. I wasn't sure I wanted it; and when I realised I did, I reckoned myself existentially incapable. But last year, I took vows in my parish church before God and friends. Amazingly, my fiancĂ©e turned up and did the same. It was a village wedding in central London. The parishioners decorated the hall; the choir morphed into a band. Since then, life's been amazingly peaceful. There's a thin stream of joy through it all.
Here's what I've learned. Marriage works because it's designed gently to destroy the ego. The object of life is to give yourself over to others. But most of us resist, because experience tells us it's dangerous to trust. Over time, marriage erodes that resistance. The sheer constant, inescapable thereness of the other teaches us that it's all right, after all, to let down the guard.
But that needs two things. The first is that marriage must be inescapable. I don't mean that wives should stay around while their husbands beat them. I mean that it cannot be a "let's-see-how-this-works-out" temporary contract based on subjective feeling. Love isn't feeling warm towards another human being (that's nice, but it comes and goes). Love is sacrifice. Love burns. It kills your pride. Sooner or later love forces you to face your demons and weaknesses – which is why the desire to escape will sometimes be overwhelming, and why that door must be firmly shut. The second thing you need is preparation: a good long period, preferably chaste, a sheltered place when you can nurture trust like a potted sapling. Oh, and you need to feel "called" to marry; not everyone who does, is.
It's hard, nowadays, to find the wisdom and support to hear that call and follow it. The experience of divorce has deprived us of the equipment: we rush into a dream of eternity but end it after the first smashed plate. I could never have married without the Catholic church: its theology of marriage, its pastoral experience, and the nudge at the right time from holy people who know how God's grace works.
And here's the point. Marriage is a natural institution, one embedded in sacred tradition. It is founded on, and rooted in, the union of different genders; the "otherness" of maleness and femaleness fused in the sexual bond to forge a strange new creature which learns self-giving. It doesn't belong to the state, or even the church; it antedates them, and is prior to both. Archbishop Peter Smith is right:
"It is a lifelong commitment of a man and a woman to each other, publicly [and freely] entered into, for their mutual well-being and for the procreation and upbringing of children. No authority – civil or religious – has the power to modify the fundamental nature of marriage."
There are many kinds of loving, committed relationships. And it's good that the state supports them. It would have been much better if the legal privileges of the Civil Partnership Act of 2004 were not restricted to same-sex couples, but were available – as in France and Italy – to maiden aunts, marriage-phobic men and women, the disabled and their lifelong carers. It is right that people who commit themselves – lovingly, sometimes even sexually – to each other, and express that in stability and commitment, to have inheritance and hospital-visiting rights, tax breaks and the like.
But civil partnerships are not marriage. The last government made that clear when it said they could not be religiously solemnised. Implicit in that restriction was a final vestige of recognition that marriage is a natural institution, beyond the state or churches to redefine. Now a Conservative government (committed, now there's the irony, to restoring the vigour of civil society) wishes to use the power of the state to refashion the primary cell of civil society. Allowing churches to solemnise gay marriages is one of the most statist acts ever attempted by a government, and an assault on religious freedom.
The fact that Quakers and Unitarians are happy to host this government's totalitarian fantasy is neither here nor there; they have no more right to redefine marriage than has the state. Many things have been called marriage – polygamous unions, dynastic unions, same-sex partnerships – and you'll always find a pastor to bless them. But its intrinsic nature remains inviolable.
In the same way, many human partnerships look after and bring up children in stable and loving environments; people can survive, and benefit from, all kinds of upbringings. And there are many kinds of committed, and long-lasting, relationships. But only marriage takes these and adds an essential third element: the fusion of opposite genders. That's why no amount of Unitarian-officiated gay weddings and government "equality" drives can ever create something called "gay marriage" – however it's dressed up.
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