Beyond same-sex marriage: All you need is love

Yet another column (BDN, Jan. 7) by Maggie Gallagher about the evils to come from legalization of same-sex marriage provokes me to express thoughts that have been on my mind during this whole long debate.

Gallagher again emphasizes the fertility reason for marriage, the importance to children of growing up in a family with a mom and a dad. No argument there, even though many children, including the young man, Matthew, with whom she holds a discussion on a plane, grow up, some of them successfully, in single-parent households. Marriage has been, since its inception, a rite of fertility supported by both religious and secular power. It was most likely instituted by men at the time in our evolution as humans when they decided ownership of their children, and therefore of their children’s mother, was important along with ownership of their land and their other tangible possessions. Women have always known which children were theirs, but for men that knowledge has sometimes been fraught with some doubt.

Marriage today is still not only a religious sacrament; the marriage instrument, whether a couple marries in a church or in a courthouse, is the license. Beyond sanctifying a commitment to each other, marriage entitles a couple to share health insurance benefits, file joint income tax returns, and perhaps most important, make decisions for each other when one of them is not able to make those decisions for him or her self.

Gallagher’s column brings to mind the question of why, since marriage has traditionally been a fertility rite, so many heterosexual couples, because of age or inclination, marry with no intent of having children. Some undoubtedly marry because of their long indoctrination that living together without benefit of clergy is living in sin. Others, like my husband and me who, at 53 and 49, may have felt as we did that our commitment to each other and to the land we had purchased jointly was sufficient. We needed no further bond. Some young couples agree that being parents is not in either partner’s life plan, yet marry anyway. Egil and I married to qualify for the legal benefits for which our personal commitment, sacred as it was to us, would not have been enough, and I suspect other heterosexual couples have done the same.

Homosexual couples have recently qualified in some states and in some health plans to share health insurance benefits. Some of these couples have found, however, that when one partner is injured in an accident, is in a coma, or dies, that person’s family can legally step in and override decisions about quality of life and/or burial that the two partners have made together. A recent well-publicized disagreement between the parents and husband of a young woman who had been many years in a coma comes to mind here.

Perhaps the real problem of those opposed to same-sex marriage, barely suggested in Gallagher’s column, is the issue of homosexual couples adopting children or having children with donated sperm. Legalization of same-sex marriage is not going to change the fact that homosexual couples can do this now; it would only give necessary legal strength to the bond between them as parents of those children. Research has shown that children benefit from a home in which the adults love them and each other. The distinction between having a mom and a dad or two moms or two dads may not be as essential as an environment full of affection, trust, and love.

Matthew, having been raised by his mother, told Gallagher that he didn’t think he’d matter to his kids. Her ironic conclusion that fathers are optional and children are resilient makes some sense when drawn from a background like his, but she draws no connection between this conclusion and her problem with same-sex marriage. Since human couples, heterosexual and homosexual, can and do become disillusioned with each other and split up, perhaps the issue is not so much legalization of same-sex marriage as recognition of the nature of commitment and the importance of love.

Ann R. Fogg, of Monroe, is a retired lecturer in humanities at University College in Bangor.