8.8.03

In the comments on my post about the origins of marriage, Amanda asked what impact I think the origins of marriage have, or should have, on the contemporary institution. I'd say "little or nothing."

I don't believe that institutions, or anything else, have a purpose inherent in them. There are just functions that they do or can serve at present. This means we're well within our rights to find new uses for things. I'd take as a model the process of evolution. Time and time again throughout the history of life, a feature that had been serving one purpose (say, a leg being used for walking) was appropriated for another purpose (made into a wing for flying). Humans, of course, have an even greater capacity than the natural evolutionary process for coming up with novel ways to use things that came into being for quite different reasons.

Unfortunately, the gay marriage debate is full of claims based on the "true" purpose of something (e.g. marriage, or sex). Such claims seem to me to be an attempt to give the claimant's idea of what purpose an institution should serve the stamp of a higher level of reality, a level of ideal forms without all the ambiguities of the real world. Framing "true purpose" in terms of "original purpose" serves to link the claim back into the real world and put an empirical coating on what would otherwise look like pure metaphysics.

I think the debate needs to be framed in this way: "History has bequeathed to us this institution of marriage. What functions can and ought it serve for us from here on out?" History can supply important information about what works and what doesn't, and offer suggestions as to the consequences of different arrangements, but it can't answer the value-question of which of the possible avenues we ought to pursue.
Stentor Danielson, 17:02,

7.8.03

The quote from JeffScott in the previous post reminded me of certain radical feminist theories about social relations in the supposed days of prehistoric matriarchy, which in turn prompted some thoughts about the study I linked to earlier (and the common assumption that it seems to confirm) about men's inherent promiscuity. One theory about matriarchal sexual relations holds that promiscuity was once deliberately practiced by women in order to foil attempts to determine a child's paternity. The idea of sexual fidelity was then invented by men as part of their consolidation of power once they got control.
Stentor Danielson, 19:03,

Ampersand has been taking on some arguments against gay marriage recently, and in this post he makes a point that I've thought about posting (though unfortunately I've tended to forget about it once I get in front of a computer:

... many of my heterosexual friends have questioned if they'll get married or not because they're not sure they want to be part of an exclusionary and homophobic institution.

At the moment I think the number of people who would see marriage as delegitimized by including gays is greater than the number of people who see it as delegtimized by the exclusion of gays (especially considering that the anti-gay contingent is more likely to be part of a culture that sees marriage as a necessary milestone in life, whereas the pro-gay camp is more likely to see marriage as optional regardless of whether it's open to gays). But the cultural trend is headed in the right direction, and legalization of gay marriage would contribute to that movement, by creating "facts on the ground" that would influence those -- like myself before I got involved with punditry -- who haven't thought much about the issue.

But what I really wanted to post about comes in a comment on Amp's refutation of the anti-gay-marriage argument du jour -- "the purpose of marriage is to have and raise kids." JeffScott replies:

Actually, the primary reason marriage evolved, as is clear from the anthropological and ethnographic records, was to codify and institutionalize monogamy. And the reason for doing that was to minimize competition amoung men for access to women. Legal marriage historically has been an agreement between less powerful men and more powerful men, not between men and women.

I can't vouch for Jeff's anthropology -- indeed, it seems difficult to see how such a conclusion could be reached given that so far as I know, no societies without some sort of marriage institution have been documented. And his logic seems like it would apply just as well to polygamy as to monogamy. A more generalized form of the theory -- seeing marriage as a sort of social contract for sex, much as social contract theories typically deal with agreements about recognizing others' rights to property -- strikes me as having a degree of truth, though I haven't read much of the anthropological literature on the subject.

But let's consider for a moment the version Jeff gives, which specifies a contract among men to codify individuals' rights to sex. By that logic, it seems that those advocating fidelity to the orginal purpose of marriage would be forced to accept (indeed, even encourage) marriage of gay men, while banning lesbian marriage. When two men get married, they essentially take themselves out of the pool of potential competitors for women (not that they would be fighting very hard anyway, with the exception of bisexual men choosing a same-sex partner -- but even when purely homosexual men got married it would at least give some peace of mind to the remaining heteros so that they don't have to worry about those men deciding to enter the field). That makes the odds better for the remaining men. Lesbian marriage, on the other hand, would reduce the number of available women (if women even had the authority to make such a contract -- which seems dubious in the patriarchal situation Jeff indicates). The fact that these women may not have any interest in hetero marriage is moot given the reasonable assumption that in such a society a women could be forced to comply by her husband and father, or just by sheer economic necessity.
Stentor Danielson, 18:57,

5.8.03

Via Tacitus, I came across this set of Washington Post readers' answers to the question "Do Jews, Christians and Muslims all pray to the same God?" The answers are more or less what you'd expect -- some people saying "they're all the God of Abraham" and others objecting "Jews and Muslims don't believe in Jesus."

But it seems the line between gods is blurry. Certainly within a polytheistic religion one can draw lines between gods, but between different religions it's less clear. Imagine, for example, that you and I both wanted to write letters to the President of the United States. We both mail them to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. But you opened yours "Dear Mr. Bush," whereas I opened mine "Dear Mr. Gore." Have we both written to the same person? Alternately, consider that we both decide to write letters to George W. Bush, but while you open yours "Dear President Bush," I open mine "Dear Governor Bush." Are we writing to the same person?

Perhaps a more telling question would be "does the real God hear the prayers of Jews, Christians, and Muslims?" That is, how accurate does a person's conception of God have to be before God will recognize that person's prayers? In my letter-writing analogy, would George W. Bush respond to a letter that arrived in his office with the mistaken greeting of "Dear Mr. Gore" or the outdated greeting "Dear Governor Bush"? (And to stretch the metaphor even further, would the postal system even deliver a letter addressed to "Al Gore, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" or "Governor Bush, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue"?)

I'll leave it as an excercise for the astute reader to guess how I would answer the God-questions.
Stentor Danielson, 20:08,

4.8.03

In the car this morning, Jocelyn had a Christian radio station on. They did a news segment about a recent study claiming to show that men are genetically programmed to be more promiscuous than women. The segment consisted mostly of clips from conservative theologians denouncing the study and its implications, and ended with a general claim about how belief in evolution necessarily leads to a different (and by implication worse) worldview than creationism.

The theologians' basic point -- that saying something is genetic can encourage people to view it as acceptable -- has some validity, and is raised secularly in the article I linked. But what was interesting to me is the theologians' frequent references to the Fall (of Adam and Eve), which leads to some thoughts on the intersection of natural/unnatural and good/bad.

What the theologians fear is a simple equation of "natural" with "good" (though I wonder how many of them would use that same tactic to condemn homosexuality). They fear that people would be inclined to simply surrender to "nature." But within Christianity, nature comes in two varieties. There's pure nature, which was created by God and declared to be good during the first six days. But there's also corrupted nature, created by Adam and Eve, and bequeathed to all subsequent people, by their original sin. Corrupted nature is natural in the sense that it's programmed in to us, so to speak -- a stain of inclination to immorality (and by some accounts other afflictions like disease) that people have to struggle against as surely as the struggle against gravity. The theologians seem to fear that secular worldviews, lacking the concept of corrupted nature, would thus see all nature as pure nature (indeed, many conservative Christians would say that Adam was not genetically predisposed to want partners other than Eve, and that if later men are genetically promiscuous, the genes that cause that are the biochemical manifestation of Adam's sin).

It's important to point out, however, that the secular "natural/evolved=good" equation that the theologians fear secular people will make is a misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution seems a more tempting place to invoke this mistaken equation because of its association with the idea of progress. If we evolved the characteristic of male promiscuity somewhere along the line, then it must make us "fitter" than those genetically monogamous males who are no longer around. But there is no such thing as absolute fitness. Fitness is always contextual -- more or less fit for a particular environment. A craving for fats was a useful adaptation in hunter-gatherer times, but it doesn't work so well in a food-rich society. Since an organism's environment is made up, in a large part, by other evolving organisms, evolution is more a balancing act than an upward motion. Certainly there are some adaptations that are useful in almost any scenario. But there are no grounds for assuming that is the case with any particular adaptation.
Stentor Danielson, 18:42,