Saving the Impossible Marriage, from Sam Kinneson's Soap Box

Recently XRLQ noted what I think is the real motivation behind many people who do not want to protect marriage as explicitly between a man and a woman.

The reason for my change is simple. In my heavy blogging days, when Mrs. Ex was Mrs. X and divorce was unthinkable, I naïvely assumed that our existing family law was brilliantly developed over the millennia to make the laws specific to traditional marriages as absolutely perfect as they possibly could be.

Well maybe not quite so absolutely, but in that direction. I did not oppose civil unions as an alternative to same-sex marriage, but did reason that the concept of a permanent same-sex union – something most gays themselves didn’t want as recently as a generation ago – was an experiment that should be conducted separately from traditional marriage for at least a generation, with each legislature considering changes to each law separately.

Maybe certain blood tests are needed for straight marriages, but not gay, or vice versa. Maybe some are needed for male-male unions but not female-female ones. Maybe no-fault marriage was a terrible idea for straights that should be rescinded someday, but for reasons having nothing to do with gays (and maybe in fact a reason gays didn’t want marriage at all in the bad old days).

Too many variables that needed to be experimented with separately for a generation or so. After that period, if our Legislature’s best ideas for male-male unions, female-female unions and male-female unions all just happened to be exactly the same, we could merge the legal concepts then. In the meantime, let’s not corrupt almost a thousand years of common law genius with a brand new experiment. Baby, bathwater, etc.

My new view, after having recently gone through a divorce, is that family law is FUBAR. If you are one of those fortunate ones whose marriages go swimmingly from the day you say “I do” until one of you is dead, good for you. Family law is technically just as bad for you as anyone else, but that won’t matter since none of those crappy laws will ever be applied in your case. But those of us who they do apply to know firsthand just how bassackwards and, in some cases, downright ugly, the laws can be. North Carolina in particular is a judicial hellhole in this regard. In an ideal world, are the best rules for gay unions the same as the best rules for lesbians, let alone straights? Who knows? But I do know that both should be written on a clean slate, and if adding gays to the mix is the political catalyst we need to get the debate going, so be it.

 The following is an abbreviated reply, but also serves to continue the theme I started in my previous post...


Thanks,
I think you’ve hit the real heart of the debate.
I’ve found the two camps fall roughly along the same lines you’ve described. There are those that believe in marriage, that something evolutionary has been built into our species that marriage provides a map to find, and only a map that says “man + woman” can find it.
And then there are those that have had that shattered by divorce, either their own or the divorce of their parents. And marriage doesn’t look very romantic or ideal anymore. In fact it looks like the map didn’t reveal any treasure at all, so it should be debunked and discarded.
This may look like the difference between the faithful mislead, and the pragmatic realists. But I happen to be in the former camp, and it isn’t because of any ignorant bliss.
I’ve always been hesitant to give marriage advice because I live daily with the realization that in the next few days, or even hours, something can trigger which will bring us to the door of divorce, and its a crap-shoot at that point whether the relationship survives or it doesn’t.
I feel like Sam Kinneson, who I watched live on television extol the wonders of being sober from drugs only a week before he OD’ed on cocaine. The best I can do is to fight to get to the point where my marriage has a fighting chance, and then hopefully fight some more to keep it there. But that fatal crash is always looming possibly around the corner. How can I give marriage advice, have it written in history at the moment of our slight and temporary successes, only to have the context later sealed with humiliation by the tragedy of my own failure?
But there has been two things which has brought my wife and I back from the brink of disaster. And if those two things were compatible with neutered or even fully de-institutionalized marriage, I’d give up too.

1. The two people best positioned to relay to a child a true and solid sense of their own self-esteem and identity are the two people who combined their identity to create that child.
2. The person most deserving of love, tolerance and respect and support is the person who you’ve incarnated your relationship with by having a child together.

Neither of those points mean every marriage is sustainable. Neither means that every marriage is going to succeed. But both those points are true, and because they are true there is an important need to prepare people and support people to succeed in marriage. And there is no better measure of success in marriage than along those two enumerated points.
Divorce happens, and often is the best two people can do. But the divorce lives on because the child who is the embodiment of their relationship lives on. And every divorce couple I know seems to learn very quickly that equality, fairness, and justice is impossible in divorce. That makes sense, only in marriage, only in true integration of both the man and woman, can true equality be achieved. Anything outside of that, well best of luck — your going to need it. And I say that sincerely, divorce is sometimes needed and it is hard. And some of it is even impossible, and so my empathy goes out to each and every one of them.
A third tenet has also been instrumental in keeping my wife and I together, in fact. And that is…

1. We’ll only fight more, and it will be more expensive and time consuming, if we separate and divorce.

That is just the converse of what was mentioned already, that the integration of marriage and its demand for love and tolerance is the only way that equality, justice, and fairness can be achieved. But to a poor couple like my wife and I, it is a sober reminder that divorce is not the path to justice we may think it is at the time.
So really, if we define marriage equality as the equal recognition of the rights and responsibilities of the man, woman, and child they potentially have together, we find the heart of what harm neutering marriage and re-defining marriage equality can do. It can lead many more couples astray of finding true marriage equality between them.
I’m firmly in the former camp because I have found that our marriage heals. Our relationship does right itself. There really is something to these principles that, if you rely on them, will help every marriage. Even when divorce happens, it will help explain why it is so rough, and hopefully help write the goals of a meaningful post-marriage relationship to help restore as much as can be done for the children. In fact, knowing what marriage is can even help people understand better when divorce is really the only option.
Marriage is real, it is a human condition that exists and when we recognize it for what it is, benefits us and society. So it is even my life experiences, and not ignorant bliss, that puts me there.
I know I am preaching from Sam Kinneson’s soap box. But isn’t the fact that he had risen to at least a small degree of joy from the freedom he did have from cocaine a credible endorsement of his attempt? Isn’t the fact that our marriage has succeeded and healed at least to having a fighting chance enough to warrant merit?
I hope so, because in spite of Sam or me, freedom from cocaine is better than the price it costs for the high. And marriage is a real human condition in spite of whether or not mine or yours succeeds.
And marriage, for all who fall short of the ideal, is built on the human condition of our relationship to the children we create between us. Marriage equality -- true marriage equality -- is defined by that relationship between the husband, and the spouse, and the child they potentially have together.

Probably there is very little that can be done in a bureaucratic process of obtaining a certificate that will influence whether or not the people involved find that human condition which is equal, tolerant, and fully supportive of the rights and responsibilities of the man, woman, and child they potentially have together. Probably nothing is really certified except that they have the most observable, least intrusive, and positively confirmed ingredients to obtain that condition. No certification can be provided that they will find that condition.

But one rule is a requirement, one rule is needed so that we can understand what marriage equality really is, and that one rule is that it needs equal representation of both genders.

One of the worst scenarios that presents itself is a heterosexual couple who believes their marriage is no different than a homosexual couple. The worst scenario is they see that their kinship is worthless, that their mutual tolerance and respect of the other gender is meaningless. If you believe those things, you believe that any two people can raise your children as well as you (when that is only true for the most abusive or negligent of parents), and you leave them to the Cinderella hope of finding richer care-givers, or the more desirous. It means head for the exit, and adopt the Homer Simpson plan of city sanitation -- let someone else take care of it.

A homosexual couple doesn't have that burden. And it is best that heterosexual couples understand that their relationship is unique in having that burden.

There are marginal cases, perhaps I'm one of them, where a firmly asserted understanding of the importance of marriage as the recognition of natural family formation and procreation responsibility is the only thing that motivates a couple to be better, and even obtain it. Education informs people of the true value and potential of things, and people need to see the true value and potential for harm or good of their heterosexual relationship, and marriage is meant to do that.

Granted, not all marriages are sustainable -- and understanding what marriage is supposed to be is the best way to identify if ones marriage is or not. And I fully support a second government recognized relationship status for people banding together to form families from where the initial kinship bonds of marriage have been broken.