Readings: from What Is Marriage For? By E.J. Graff

One day in 1991, almost against my will, I knew Madeline and I were going to stand up in front of the people we loved and commit ourselves to each other. Of course, it's ridiculous to say that it was against my will. I decided. Madeline, being distinctly private, wanted just to exchange rings. But an insular suburban life had strangled my childhood and my parents' marriage, so I recoiled: something inside me insisted on a ritual moment in full community view. It took awhile to write a ceremony that meant enough, but not too much. In our dearest friends' living room, we would say a few Jewish prayers, recite four favorite poems, exchange rings, speak our declarations, and, of course, kiss.

All of which we did, semicircles of family's and friends' eyes on us like lamps.

How can I describe what came next? It was nearly a delirium: by accident we'd spilled into something sacred. In that backyard in (yes) June, we kissed madly, actually forgetting we were lesbians, forgetting that the neighbors might be shocked. Madeline forgot to eat or drink. I would have kissed the letter carrier had he walked through. My dryly sarcastic brother cried so hard while making his toast that he could barely complete his sentences. My stepfather, who once squirmed at hearing I was queer, announced his pride in me and my friends. My mother led the blessings, cut the challah, and charmed all my friends. To poke fun at the ceremony's earnestness, we brought out a cake topped with two brides--laughing so hard that we brought down the house. To our utter surprise, the ceremony did bring us closer, pulling an invisible cloak around us that has warmed us during difficult times. We'd thought ourselves as committed as any couple could be: how else could we have exposed ourselves to the world's ridicule? But now even the most subtle traces of doubt dissolve instantly, chased away by the memory of the day when we made our declarations so publicly, placing our love in the hands of God and everyone we knew.[1]

What is marriage? The answer to this question might seem simple. But a glance at the history of marriage and family reveals surprisingly evolving and fluid definitions of marriage. Marriage to a landholder in ancient Rome meant something very different from a land-less, tenant farmer in the middle ages, or even a land-less person in ancient Rome. Marriage to a nineteenth century American pioneer couple working the land together meant something very different from Ozzie and Harriet in the 1950s. And marriage means something yet again different to a couple today who both work outside the home. Indeed, marriage to this couple may more closely resemble the nineteenth century pioneer couple than Ozzie and Harriet.

Many people today who espouse traditional "family values" zero in on 1950s America (or more accurately, an idealized picture of 1950's America), holding up that view of marriage as normative for all times and all places. In doing so, they ignore the fluid history of marriage. Even more erroneous is to imagine that Ozzie's and Harriet's marriage and family looks anything like the normative family in the Bible. Polygamy is more the norm in the Hebrew Bible than Ozzie and Harriet, and there's hardly a stronger rejection of nuclear family ties anywhere than in some of Jesus' words in the New Testament.

There's no normative definition of marriage and family. Never has been; never will be. The human understanding of marriage is under constant revision, in every society and in every time. Our time and society is no exception. E. J. Graff suggests a powerful metaphor for marriage:

Marriage...turns out to be a kind of Jerusalem, an archaeological site on which the present is constantly building over the past, letting history's many layers twist and tilt into today's walls and floors. As with Jerusalem, many people believe theirs is the one true claim to this holy ground. But like Jerusalem, marriage has always been a battleground, owned and defined first by one group and then another. While marriage, like Jerusalem, may retain its ancient name, very little else in this city has remained the same--not its boundaries, boulevards, or daily habits--except the fact that it is inhabited by human beings.[2]

So what is marriage? Here's my understanding. For me, there are two inter-related aspects of marriage: one is personal, the other public. For the two people who come together in matrimony, marriage is a commitment to love and care for and help and comfort one another--through the good times and the challenging times, through prosperity and adversity, through sickness and health. Spiritually, marriage is the coming together of two spirits and two bodies. Paradoxically our spirits and bodies in marriage become one and remain two: a couple united in marriage become a unity and, at the very same time, remain two separate individuals. That is the great challenge of marriage. I like Graff's summation of marriage: marriage is the sharing of bodies and daily lives.[3]

The second aspect of marriage is public. When two people are wed, they announce to their community of family and friends, and to the broader community, that they are joining together their lives and fortunes. They announce that they intend to do so for as long as they both shall live. They promise to one another, and to the broader community, that they will share responsibility for one another and for their household. They announce that they are now a family. The broader community, represented by the family and friends present for the wedding, in turn pledges itself to support and nurture the marriage.

I am an unabashed supporter of marriage. While marriage is not for everyone, and some marriages are so destructive of the couple and the wider community that they should end, marriage is truly holy. The coming together of two persons and the sacred promises they make to one another and the community are as sacred and holy as anything we humans can do in our lifetimes. My work helping Fellowship members and friends prepare for and nurture their marriages is among the most important and rewarding I do. And my own marriage is the most important part of my life. I deeply believe in marriage.

I am also an unabashed supporter of monogamy. A good part of the holiness and sacredness of marriage comes from sharing with just your partner the most intimate parts of your body and your daily life. Being in a committed, faithful relationship with another human being over a long period of time opens you to some of the deepest spiritual possibilities. I believe that we glimpse God in experiences of connectedness--with other people and nature. A long and deep relationship with another human being, grounded on mutuality, faithfulness and commitment, is a great way to experience God. Promiscuity and open marriage, on the other hand, destroys relationship and obscures experiences of God. Promiscuity is bad for the individual, bad for his or her partners, bad for the community.

And I am an unabashed supporter of commitment. Marrying someone is a tremendous leap of faith, for we know on our wedding day that the person we're marrying will change; we know we will change. We know our relationship will change. We know the circumstances of our lives will change, posing at least on occasion unimaginable challenges. Yet at that moment, in spite of such knowledge, we commit ourselves to staying together through all of the change, through the times of joy and the times of sorrow, through sickness and health. There is no harder commitment a person can make. And there is no more rewarding commitment. I have been privileged from time to time to visit with couples late in life who have enjoyed a good, strong marriage for many, many years. They have grown as individuals and grown together, and they have persevered through tough times. Between them there is wisdom and a depth of love that awes me and sometimes takes my breath away. Between them is God.

I believe that healthy marriages, monogamy and commitment are good for individuals. There's mounting evidence that happily married people are usually happy people. E. J. Graff writes:

Although researchers seem baffled about why, the rest of us needn't be. Most of us know how we relax in the daily hum of someone else's physical and conversational company, the simple animal comfort of being heard or held when you're tired or scared, the exhausting arguments followed by that incredible gratitude of knowing that you've been seen at your worst and are still loved.[4]

You may have noticed: there is absolutely nothing in my definition of marriage or in my unabashed support of marriage, monogamy or commitment that limits marriage to heterosexuals. Everything I have said about marriage can be equally true for a man and a woman united together, or two women or two men. I believe in the very depth of my being that a life commitment between two women or between two men has just as much potential for spiritual depth and goodness as that between a man and a woman. I believe in marriage so much that I think it should be available to gay and lesbian couples, too. I believe in gay marriage--and not just domestic partner laws, but full and complete marriage, with the full blessing of religion and the state behind it. I believe recognizing and legalizing gay marriage should be and will be the next significant evolution in marriage.
Making gay marriage legal would mean an awful lot to gays and lesbians who wish to marry. Gone would be so many heavy, worrisome questions--like: Will I get to visit my partner in the hospital if she becomes seriously ill? Will I get to exercise control over my partner's medical decisions if he becomes incapacitated? Will I be able to give my partner my money and other assets upon my death without fear of my relatives contesting my will? Will I have the funeral I and my partner have decided on or will some relative who cares nothing about my wishes take over? If my partner and I split, will I have visitation rights with our child, even though she isn't biologically my child? Marriage, in E. J. Graff's words,

is a shared legal mailbox, a convenient way to tell all society's institutions that you two have chosen to mingle your fortunes both emotionally and financially--while allowing those institutions to hold you responsible for one another in return..."Married" is a shorthand taken seriously by banks, insurers, courts, employers, schools, hospitals, cemeteries, rental car companies, frequent flyer programs, and more--a word understood to mean that you two share not just your bedroom but the rest of your house as well...The General Accounting Office issued a January 31, 1997 report listing 1,049 "federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status." Each state also has several hundred of its own.[5]

Gay marriage is not just good for the gays and lesbians who are allowed to marry, but it is good for the wider community, too. Strong gay marriages make a community stronger--just as strong straight marriages make a community strong. All strong unions of two people, built on mutuality, love, faithfulness and commitment, are good for everyone they touch. Nowhere is this more evident than in the care of children. Children benefit from all of those laws in which benefits, rights and privileges are contingent on marital status. Children benefit when their parent's relationship is strong and supported and valued by the wider community. Today there ever more children who have gay and lesbian parents. These children need our community to recognize and affirm their parents' marriage.

The webs that embed us in community matter. I do not support gay marriage because I am a libertarian. Though I find some of its tenets attractive, I am not a libertarian. Personal freedom and the right of individual conscience are cornerstones of my theological and political beliefs. But I also affirm the role our democratic society has in setting some limits to preserve and protect the common good. Individual freedom completely unchecked by concern for the common good is not my idea of the perfect society. There must be some sort of balance between individual and community. I believe that balance is closer to the pole of individual freedom, but not completely on that end. For example, I am not in favor of legalizing polygamy (or, more correctly: polygyny). Polygamy, like promiscuity, is bad for individuals and bad for society. So is legalized rape within a marriage. These things should be against the law. Gay marriage, on the other hand, is good for individuals and good for the wider community. Put simply, gay marriage enhances the common good.

Marriage in recent centuries has evolved toward the idea that marrying the person you love is a fundamental human right. Gay marriage is the last frontier of this evolution. And though today highly controversial, I believe gay marriage will one day, like inter-racial marriage before it, become a legal and widely accepted practice. That will be a glorious day indeed! And I have faith that that day will come soon.

Copyright 2000 by Roger B. Bertschausen. All rights reserved.

[1]E.J. Graff, What is Marriage For? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999), pp. 246-247.
[2]Graff, p. xi-xii.
[3]Graff, p. 213.
[4]Graff, p. 47.
[5]Graff, p. 38-40.