{"id":13659,"date":"2011-07-06T10:28:03","date_gmt":"2011-07-06T17:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=13659"},"modified":"2011-07-06T10:28:03","modified_gmt":"2011-07-06T17:28:03","slug":"reply-to-george-vii-is-marriage-about-the-children-not-for-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=13659","title":{"rendered":"Reply to George: VII. Is Marriage About the Children? Not for George."},"content":{"rendered":"

[This post is part of a series analyzing Robert George’s widely-read article, “What is Marriage<\/a>“, which appeared on pages 245-286 of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. You can view all posts in the series\u00a0here<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Pages 255-259: In which George pretends to talk about children but really just repeats his thoughts on sex organs.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the most frustrating part of George\u2019s article for me.\u00a0 Trying to rebut it is like trying to rip apart air: there\u2019s nothing to grab on to.<\/p>\n

Marriage and children<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In this section, George links children to marriage. This ought to be straight-forward, but…no. Once again, he starts badly:<\/p>\n

Most people accept that marriage is also deeply \u2014 indeed, in an important sense, uniquely \u2014oriented to having and rearing children. That is, it is the kind of relationship that by its nature is oriented to, and enriched by, the bearing and rearing of children. But how can this be true, and what does it tell us about the structure of marriage?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Problem:\u00a0 Why does George care about what \u201cmost people accept\u201d?\u00a0 He believes marriage is not simply whatever most people decide it is. That\u2019s a key point in his article. He\u2019s made it clear that if the day comes when \u201cmost people accept\u201d same-sex marriages as \u201creal\u201d marriages, that won\u2019t change his opinion one bit.<\/p>\n

Now, personally, I do think it\u2019s important to look at what most people think of marriage, because marriage is a human invention designed to meet a human need. To learn about that need, we have to look at real people.<\/p>\n

However, I don\u2019t put stock in referenda, opinion polls, and the public\u2019s mood at any one moment. I\u2019m not much interested in most people\u2019s view of the abstract institution. I want to know what they say about their own marriages. Why did you marry? Why do you stay in your marriage? If you left, why did you leave?<\/em> Investigate that for many people across cultures and time, and we\u2019ll discover more about the nature of marriage.<\/p>\n

But George doesn\u2019t accept this empirical approach, so I wish he would stop with his \u201cmany people acknowledge\u201d and \u201cmost people accept.\u201d Since he\u2019s declared these things don\u2019t matter, I have to wonder if he invokes them as a way of getting support for statements he hasn\u2019t proven.<\/p>\n

Also, we\u2019ve got another undefined term:\u00a0 What does he mean that marriage is deeply \u201coriented\u201d to bearing and raising children? Especially since his article admits that having and rearing children is not enough to make a marriage, and that childless marriages can still be \u201creal.\u201d Clearly, this \u201corientation\u201d is not a universal feature of marriage.<\/p>\n

Children and the revisionist\/common view<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s clearer and more useful to say marriage is well-suited<\/em> to bearing and rearing children \u2014 it creates a better environment for nurturing kids.<\/p>\n

Why? I\u2019ll base my answer on George\u2019s description of the revisionist\/common<\/a> view of marriage he so opposes:\u00a0 two people have committed to romantically loving and caring for each other, to sharing the burdens and benefits of domestic life, to uniting their hearts and minds.<\/p>\n

When two people come together like this, they improve the odds of creating the sort of stable, loving, attentive home in which (experience tells us) children thrive. Most people do want this loving union for its own sake. And it seems most people want children. This wonderful synchronicity means that any useful body of marital law will foster the development of children \u2014 even if some couples never procreate or take advantage of those provisions.<\/p>\n

So to explain this marriage-children connection, you needn’t resort to George’s preferred “conjugal” definition of marriage. It’ss perfectly natural from the revisionist\/common view that marriage is well-suited to raising kids. But remember this: Marriage is well-suited to child-rearing because of that bond, that commitment, between two adults. Take it away, and you lose the link between marriage and children. In other words:\u00a0 the adult commitment is essential to marriage; the orientation to children is not.<\/em><\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why George\u2019s conjugal\/procreative view of marriage is a subset of \u2014 not a competitor to<\/a> \u2014 the revisionist\/common view.<\/p>\n

Consummation, PIV, and marriage<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

George offers this strange paragraph:<\/p>\n

If there is some conceptual connection between children and marriage, therefore, we can expect a correlative connection between children and the way that marriages are sealed. That connection is obvious if the conjugal view of marriage is correct. Marriage is a comprehensive union of two sexually complementary persons who seal (consummate or complete) their relationship by the generative act \u2014 by the kind of activity that is by its nature fulfilled by the conception of a child. So marriage itself is oriented to and fulfilled by the bearing, rearing, and education of children. The procreative-type act<\/em> distinctively seals or completes a procreative?type union<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can be forgiven if this seems garbled to you. Apparently George is very hung up on the fact that traditionally marriage has been consummated by PIV<\/a> (penis-in-vagina sex). He wants us to read enormous significance into that. But the paragraph is strange because its purpose isn\u2019t clear. Is he trying to show that traditional rules of consummation mean procreation is an essential part of marriage? If so, he fails.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Let\u2019s start with a point for the logic geeks. Ultimately, in the section, George will act as though he’s proven that “real” marriage” requires an “essential” orientation to marriage. Now look at the first sentence of his paragraph. It\u2019s an if-then<\/em> statement. But it accomplishes nothing, because according to the rules of logic, the converse<\/a> of a true if-then<\/em> statement is not necessarily true. \u00a0Take a sentence like:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you are at the Louvre Museum, then you are in France.<\/em><\/p>\n

    To get the converse of that sentence, just switch around the if<\/em> and then<\/em> parts like this:<\/p>\n

    If you are in France, then you are at the Louvre Museum.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Clearly, the converse of a true sentence may not turn out to be true.\u00a0 Why is that significant?\u00a0 Because George\u2019s first sentence basically says:<\/p>\n

    If marriage requires an orientation to children, then consummation will \u00a0be focused on procreation,<\/em><\/p>\n

    But, it does not follow that the converse is true.\u00a0 In other words, logic doesn\u2019t permit him to turn it around and claim:<\/p>\n

    If consummation is focused on children, then marriage requires an orientation to children.<\/em><\/p>\n

    It\u2019s this last statement that George wants to establish. But that\u2019s the converse<\/em> of his first sentence, so even if you accept that first sentence, he still hasn\u2019t proven anything about the nature of marriage.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. I\u2019m confused by the vagueness of If there is some conceptual connection between children and marriage\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      \u201cSome conceptual connection\u201d? That could mean anything. After all, marriage has some conceptual connection to divorce, but that doesn\u2019t mean a marriage requires a divorce in order to be a \u201creal\u201d marriage. Still, if George wants merely wants to establish \u201csome conceptual connection\u201d between marriage and kids, I\u2019ll grant him that, though for the reasons I talked about above.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Even if PIV is the traditional way of sealing a marriage, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s a necessary condition. George has ruled out appeals to tradition in his approach. He wants to establish a tightly-reasoned argument for his narrow definition of marriage, and he\u2019s been clear that marriage is not just whatever most people say it is \u2014 which is that all tradition itself can establish.\n<\/li>\n<\/p>\n
      2. When George is talking about sealing a marriage through PIV, he\u2019s talking about what the law has traditionally required. But the whole purpose of this discussion is to determine whether we should change<\/em> marriage law. It\u2019s meaningless to argue we shouldn\u2019t change the law because then the law would be different.\n<\/li>\n<\/p>\n
      3. This sentence doesn\u2019t accomplish much:<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        \n

        That connection [between marriage and children] is obvious if the conjugal view of marriage is correct.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        He\u2019s just saying the conjugal view explains the connection between marriage and children. But that doesn\u2019t make the conjugal view true \u2014 not unless the conjugal view provides the only<\/em> explanation. We\u2019ve already seen, though, that the revisionist view easily explains \u201csome conceptual connection\u201d as well.<\/p>\n

        George does this a lot in his essay \u2014 he talks about the explanatory power of his view. But unless he shows that the revisionist\/common view can\u2019t explain what he sees, then he\u2019s just wasting his time.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. George makes an odd leap here:\u00a0 since marriage is sealed by a procreative act, then marriage is fulfilled by bearing, reading, and educating children. Does that hold up logically? If one\u2019s status as a driver is sealed by signing one\u2019s name to the license, does that mean that driving is \u201cfulfilled\u201d by an act of calligraphy?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Frankly, that last point\u2019s a bit shaky because I don\u2019t know what George means when he says something \u201cfulfills\u201d marriage. Usually we think of the people in a marriage as being fulfilled by marriage \u2014 what does it mean to say marriage itself is fulfilled by procreation? Actually, George gives an answer:<\/p>\n

          \n

          That is, made even richer as the kind of reality it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

          That\u2019s his idea of clarification. Unfortunately, it\u2019s quite circular:\u00a0 George is trying to establish the nature of marriage by using a preconceived notion of what kind of \u201creality\u201d marriage is. It amounts to:\u00a0 Marriage is oriented to children, because children make marriage richer, because marriage is oriented to children.<\/em><\/p>\n

          It\u2019s not really about the children for George.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

          After a few paragraphs on infertile couples, George offers this key sentence:<\/p>\n

          Same-sex partnerships, whatever their moral status, cannot be marriages because they lack any essential orientation to children: They cannot be sealed by the generative act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

          Um \u2014 what?\u00a0 George makes a sudden leap using two assumptions he hasn\u2019t justified.<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. A partnership must have an essential orientation to children to be a real marriage.\n<\/li>\n<\/p>\n
          2. Same-sex partnerships lack any essential orientation to children.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            Wow. We started with George\u2019s vague claim that most people accept that marriage has an orientation and a conceptual connection to children, and suddenly we find him claiming this \u201corientation\u201d is \u201cessential\u201d to a real marriage. How did we get there?<\/p>\n

            Actually, George\u2019s answer to that is disheartening and doesn’t even involve kids:\u00a0 He just invokes his prior flawed argument that a marriage requires comprehensive union, which includes organic bodily union<\/a>, which means PIV. <\/p>\n

            How about that second assumption:\u00a0 Why can\u2019t same-sex partnerships have any essential orientation to children?\u00a0 George says \u2014 again \u2014\u00a0 it\u2019s because we can\u2019t have PIV. But George seems to have forgotten he offered a different criteria for orientation to children<\/em>: the idea that the marriage is of the sort of relationship that is enriched by children.<\/p>\n

            Why isn\u2019t this true of same-sexers?\u00a0 Why, for instance, do children enrich an infertile couple who adopts but not a same-sex couple who does the same thing? The only difference George points out and cares about \u2014 the only difference he ever<\/em> seems to care about \u2014 is that infertile opposite-sexers can have PIV.\u00a0 Which he still calls a \u201cgenerative act\u201d even though for them it\u2019s, well, not<\/em>.<\/p>\n

            At this point, my reaction is:<\/p>\n

            Aaargh!\u00a0 This whole section is just a rehash of the stuff he wrote before on organic bodily union! All this talk of children enriching a marriage is just more code for PIV, even when PIV can\u2019t make kids.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

            Oh, that\u2019s so frustrating. \u00a0And this is all I can handle today.\u00a0 I\u2019ve skipped two topics: George\u2019s explanation of why infertile couples can still have real marriages, George\u2019s discussion of married, biological, opposite-sexers as the parenting ideal.\u00a0 He\u2019s comes back to this later in more depth, so I\u2019ll address these topics when they come back up.<\/p>\n

            And trust me, the stuff on infertile couples will be fun to break down.<\/p>\n

            Next:\u00a0 Marital norms, polygamy, and incest<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

            [This post is part of a series analyzing Robert George’s widely-read article, “What is Marriage“, which appeared on pages 245-286 of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. You can view all posts in the series\u00a0here.] Pages 255-259: In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-george-what-is-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13659"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13665,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13659\/revisions\/13665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}