The Bleeding Edge - I've

The Bleeding Edge - I've posted several times about Gay Marriage in the past year. On no issue do my postings get as many comments and emails - which would make sense if I were Andrew Sullivan, a key stakeholder in the issue! But I'm straight and single (again). Yes, I've come around, somewhat reluctantly, to Andrew Sullivan's side of the issue. To me, the whole thing seems like something that the free market will solve, no matter what the political argument decides.

My idea was, essentially, to privatize marriage - to make it private contractual matter between people and, if desired, their church. I admitted it was a pie-in-the-sky plan.

Or was it?

Not only is John O'Sullivan from NRO proposing the same basic thing - so is Michael Kinsley.

His notion should sound familiar to longtime readers of this blog:

That solution is to end the institution of marriage. Or rather (he hastens to clarify, dear) the solution is to end the institution of government-sanctioned marriage. Or, framed to appeal to conservatives: End the government monopoly on marriage. Wait, I've got it: Privatize marriage. These slogans all mean the same thing. Let churches and other religious institutions continue to offer marriage ceremonies. Let department stores and casinos get into the act if they want. Let each organization decide for itself what kinds of couples it wants to offer marriage to. Let couples celebrate their union in any way they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want. Let others be free to consider them not married, under rules these others may prefer. And, yes, if three people want to get married, or one person wants to marry herself, and someone else wants to conduct a ceremony and declare them married, let 'em. If you and your government aren't implicated, what do you care?

Yep, Kinsley's an ofay liberal whose rhetoric (in this piece) almost sounds as if he's mocking the cadences big-L Libertarians use when talking about this issue. But O'Sullivan brings it back to the point that I, personally, have always considered the strong point of this concept:

Strict religious marriage, I suspect, would thrive even more for a variety of reasons. As the comparative success of evangelical over "mainstream" Protestantism demonstrates, people actually prefer institutions that make stern demands upon them to those that assume failure and forgive it in advance. Religious marriage would benefit from that yearning. Young women too would demand it of their swains ("If you really loved me, you'd marry me for keeps — in church.") And those who did marry in church would be more likely to have children (and so perpetuate their kind) than those who were, however subconsciously, hedging their bets...Traditional marriage might well emerge strengthened from this evolutionary test.

Berg, Kinsley and O'Sullivan today. Tomorrow...?

Posted by Mitch at July 10, 2003 10:59 AM