The Divorce Dilemma

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The biggest threat to marriage today is fear of its dissolution.

By Eve Tushnet | March 8, 2012

If America has endured a “divorce revolution” since California passed no-fault divorce in 1969, we’ve now entered the counterrevolutionary phase. Divorce rates have fallen from their peak in the early ’80s, the deep pain often felt by children of divorce is openly acknowledged, and young Americans typically express both fear and a moral horror at divorce. They are determined not to repeat the mistakes of previous generations; avoiding divorce is a constant anxiety, even obsession.

But as with most purely reactionary cultural movements, the revolt against divorce has been much better at targeting what it rejects than figuring out what it’s for. In a strange, sad twist, the divorce counterrevolution has only weakened our marriage culture more.

Here are three things we’ve ignored as we make divorce (and divorced people) the scapegoat for broader problems of family breakdown.

Presence of Marriage, Not Absence of Divorce
Kids, you tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never try.
—Homer Simpson

The divorce rate hasn’t fallen because Americans are better able to make and keep strong marriages. It’s fallen because many Americans, especially those in the middle class and lower, have given up on marriage entirely. The National Marriage Project’s 2010 “State of Our Unions” report found that while only 6 percent of highly educated mothers had their children out of wedlock, 44 percent of children of “moderately educated” women and 54 percent of children of the least educated women were born outside marriage. The “marriage gap” has made marriage a luxury good, the Ivy League of social institutions.

Fear of divorce is one major factor in the decline of marriage. A 2011 study by researchers at Cornell University surveyed 122 young cohabiting men and women and found that two-thirds cited worries about divorce as factors in their decision not to marry yet:

Most frequently mentioned was a desire to ‘do it right’ and marry only once, to the ideal partner, leading some to view cohabitation as a ‘test-drive’ before making ‘the ultimate commitment.’ The belief that marriage was difficult to exit was mentioned nearly as frequently, with examples of how divorce caused emotional pain, social embarrassment, child custody concerns, and legal and financial problems.

As this study suggests, terror at the thought of divorce has produced a strong cultural script for how to make a good marriage. Attempts to suggest that cohabitation or premarital sex are problems (rather than solutions), or that marrying when you’re in your early twenties lets you start your real life of love and family-making when you’re at the peak of your fertility, are met with cries of, “Oh, sure, do you want me to get divorced?”

The script requires a long waiting period before marriage. Twenty-seven is typical, as Rachel Jacoby wrote in a starkly judgmental December 29 piece at the Huffington Post; thirtysomething is better. Unsurprisingly, this long wait makes premarital chastity extraordinarily difficult. Perhaps less obviously, premarital chastity is actively discouraged. Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, And Think About Marrying, quote psychologist Jeffrey Arnett: “Those who do not experiment with different partners are warned that they will eventually wonder what they are missing, to the detriment of their marriage.”

Cohabitation is also strongly encouraged. How can you marry someone if you don’t know what it’s like to live with her? There’s a sense that cohabitation allows the relationship to be tested and to build slowly over time—as you learn to care for her when she’s sick, or resolve arguments rather than going to bed angry—that you learn the skills of marriage before you reach the altar.

There’s one other way in which fear of divorce makes marriage an endlessly receding goal: the cost of weddings. The average wedding costs between $26,000 and $27,000—and that’s after a recession-driven drop. It’s easy to judge people who, say, release 50 Persian cats to eat the imported doves who eat the organic birdseed they throw instead of rice. But even a “normal” wedding these days requires an enormous outlay of cash. Or consider the standard formula for determining a reasonable price for an engagement ring: anywhere from one to three months of salary. Expensive, splashy weddings are about a lot more than princess fantasies. They’re a way of signaling the seriousness of the couple’s commitment. They make the wedding—and therefore, one hopes, the marriage—a major investment.

In their excellent 2005 study “Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage,” Kathryn Edin and Maria Kefalas found that even desperately poor women wanted a wedding they considered “elaborate” and “big.” This might mean spending a few thousand dollars, rather than more than $20,000, but it’s still money they generally don’t have. Why? “Having the wherewithal to throw a ‘big’ wedding is a vivid display that the couple has achieved enough financial security to do more than live from paycheck to paycheck, a stressful situation that most believe leads almost inevitably to divorce. Hosting a ‘proper’ wedding is a sign that the couple only plans to do it once, given the obvious financial sacrifice.” An expensive wedding is evidence of the strength of the couple’s commitment—yet it’s obvious how raising the cost of weddings raises the barriers to marriage.

Possibly in response to divorce scripts like “We just fell out of love” or “It just happened,” which emphasize powerlessness, the contemporary delayed-marriage script attempts to crack the code, figure out the formula, and do it right. Anxiety is managed through attempts at control. The fact that marriage, like parenting, is mostly about acceptance, forgiveness, and flexibility in the face of change and trauma gets suppressed.

But that might not matter if the script itself worked most of the time. If premarital sex and cohabitation were really the most practical paths to lasting love, our culture would look very different. Instead, these actions—valorized by young people, and often by their parents because they’re thought to prevent divorce—are divorce risk factors. Cohabitation with one partner is no longer correlated with increased risk of divorce, as it used to be, but serial cohabitation still is. In other words, if the only romantic partner you move in with ends up marrying you, your statistical prognosis is rosy; otherwise, not so much. In other words, “test-driving” the relationship only works—or rather, remains statistically neutral in terms of later divorce risk—if the relationship is already strong enough for marriage.

The picture with delayed marriage is somewhat different, but even there, as Regnerus and Uecker write, “the most significant leap in avoiding divorce occurs by simply waiting to marry until you’re 21. … In a meta-analysis of five different surveys that explored marriage outcomes, researchers note that respondents who marry between ages 22 and 25 express greater marital satisfaction than do those who marry later than that.”

“Mommy and Daddy Love You Very Much, But…”
Don’t you know that when you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise—whether you do or not?
—“Vanilla Sky,” 2001

Delaying marriage has one other major cost: the pain of children who experience the breakup of their unmarried parents. While avoiding marriage may shelter adults from the stigma of being divorced and children from the legal wrangling of custody battles, children whose unmarried parents break up still experience deep loss. They typically lose their fathers over time, and they learn the same painful lessons as children of divorce about the fragility of love. They, too, have to grow up too soon, negotiate relationships with half-siblings or blended families, manage the emotions and pain of the adults in their lives, and experience the loss of the father’s extended family.

Most people today understand that while people are resilient and can overcome childhood pain and difficulties, being a “child of divorce” is rough. Movies like “The Squid and the Whale” focus on the experience; it comes up often in pop culture as a shorthand explanation for a character’s challenges with commitment or relationships. By contrast, being a “child of an unmarried breakup” isn’t even a thing, culturally. When someone talks about his experiences, people can recognize and acknowledge them, but the idea that marriage produces children who suffer when the marriage breaks up is much more deeply culturally embedded, more vivid and persistently available than the idea that cohabitation or unmarried relationships produce children who suffer when the relationship dissolves.

The New Judgmentalism
But with the inevitable forward march of progress come new ways of hiding things, and new things to hide.
—Chris Ware,
Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth

Finally, moral horror at divorce can easily slide into moral horror toward other people. If there’s a plan that can prevent divorce, then making the “wrong” choices allows everyone to I-told-you-so as they feel better about themselves and their own decisions. People have a deep-seated thirst for self-righteousness, and in a culture where most of the old expressions of moral distaste are themselves stigmatized, we find new outlets for our crueler needs for self-comfort.

This self-comfort is exercised partly at the expense of the divorced. A friend of mine recently spent a great deal of time talking online with a group of older women, most of whom are widowed or divorced, and the contrast between how those two groups are treated socially is hard to exaggerate. The generosity and gentleness we rightly extend to the bereaved are matched by a ferocious stigma applied to the divorced. It’s all too easy for the anti-divorce culture to become uncharitable, unforgiving, and ridden with unkind assumptions about who gets divorced and why.

We also comfort ourselves at the expense of people planning marriages that don’t fit the rules. Couples who refuse to cohabit or who marry young are scolded, warned that they’re setting themselves up for divorce, and held up as bad examples.

A culture of love can’t be built on a foundation of rejection. The path forward doesn’t include further stigmatizing divorce, or bringing back stigma against unmarried childbearing. Lack of charity in these areas will only lead to less marriage (in the case of stigma against divorce) and more abortions (in the case of stigma against unmarried childbearing). What young people need is hope: a sense that marriages can last, not because the spouses were smart enough on the front end but because they were gentle and flexible enough during the long years after the wedding. Cultural storytellers can focus on telling stories about how marriage happens and how it works. One of the best descriptions I’ve seen of the damage done to our marriage culture by fear of divorce ran on Cracked.com, the foul-mouthed humor website. “John Cheese’s” January 5 piece, “The 5 Reasons Marriage Scares Men (Aren’t What You Think),” drew on his experience of parental divorce, the breakup of his marriage, and the long road he took to propose to his fiancee. It’s possible to discuss even these most personal dreams and anxieties with bluntness, compassion, and indeed crude jokes.
Four decades after the divorce revolution, we know how to fear. What we need to learn is how to hope.

Eve Tushnet blogs at eve-tushnet.blogspot.com.

Catholicism offers love lessons contraception fails to teach :

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/catholicism-offers-love-lessons-contraception-fails-to-teach/

March 18, 2012

New York City, N.Y., Mar 18, 2012 / 12:49 pm (CNA).- Proponents of the recent Health and Human Services contraceptive coverage mandate often criticize Catholic teachings. Yet how many have truly considered the reasons behind our opposition to artificial birth control?

Have they explored research linking contraceptive use to higher rates of divorce, unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion?

I’ve come to embrace Catholic sexual teachings not because I was taught them from childhood (I was not) but through my own reflection. As a Harvard undergrad and now a Princeton Ph.D. student, I’ve engaged with defenders of radical feminism and sexual liberalism, yet I find the Catholic position more convincing.

Any informed citizen — especially anyone inclined to dismiss Catholic sexual teachings as obsolete or anti-woman — ought to know some basics about the Catholic perspective.

First, the concern for women who need birth control pills as a hormone treatment is a nonissue. As Pope Paul VI’s encyclical "Humanae Vitae" states, medications necessary to treat hormonal imbalances are morally unproblematic, even if infertility is a side effect. Mandating insurance coverage for such treatments would be acceptable from a Catholic perspective. Catholicism is not against treating diseases; it is against treating fertility as if it were a disease.

"Humanae Vitae" is also noteworthy for predicting that liberal sexual ideology, and the “contraceptive mentality” it fosters, will lead to the treatment of women as sex objects. Indeed, our post sexual revolution culture is marked by the objectification of women.

The feminization of poverty (60 percent of those in poverty are single mothers) was an equally predictable result of the higher divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy rates that came in the wake of sexual “liberation.”

Contraceptive use increases unplanned pregnancies because when you make a risky behavior less risky, people engage in more of it. Two-thirds of unplanned pregnancies occur among women using birth control.

That also means more abortion — the ultimate backup “contraceptive.” Contraceptives fail at least 10 to 15 percent of the time, with 54 percent of women having abortions using contraception the month they became pregnant, according to the Guttmacher Institute. And, it is important to note, some “contraceptives” can themselves cause abortions — for example, “Ella,” which works similarly to the abortion drug RU-486.Catholicism teaches that sex is about committed love.

Relationships based on sensual attraction don’t offer what we’re really longing for — love that endures even when age or illness take their toll.

Sex is powerful body language that says, “I give myself to you completely and for the rest of my life.” To say that with your body when you haven’t said it with your heart and mind is like nodding “yes” while thinking “no.”

The prospect of pregnancy is a nagging reminder that sex inherently calls for total, life-long commitment. Contraception undermines that because it involves making a complete gift of your self while intentionally holding back the capacity to procreate, which is essential to that gift. 

Catholicism teaches that sexual union is profoundly good, within marriage and with openness to the gift of new life — the only context in which you actually mean what your bodies are saying.

This doesn’t imply having as many children as possible — in fact, natural family planning methods are 99 percent effective when used correctly — though it does imply a huge shift in our cultural understanding of sex.

The “quick fix” sexual culture has been tried and found sorely wanting. Catholicism reminds us that there is another option, and challenges us not to settle for anything less than genuine love.

Moschella is a doctoral candidate in political philosophy at Princeton University, specializing in parental rights in education.

How hedonism became America’s official religion

An edict from the Obama administration has ended the American experiment in religious liberty.

No, I’m not exaggerating. The American experiment in religious liberty is officially over. The First Amendment provided institutional structures that allow different religions to peacefully coexist. All groups agree to not try to capture governmental structures for the benefit of their own particular denomination. 

But the Obama administration has ended that truce.  The administration made a decision to require all employers to provide contraception, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization.  The administration offers no religious exemption for people who have the audacity to believe that pregnancy is not an illness that needs to be always and everywhere prevented.

In effect, we have a new state religion, a new Established Church of the United States of America, with Barack Obama as its head. It is the religion of Secular Hedonism, the worldview that sex is a sterile recreational activity, with babies thrown in as an afterthought, an optional extra, for people with quirky life-style preferences.  The contraceptive mandate uses the full might of the US government to scrub the public square clean of any competing religious voices that dissent from the new orthodoxy.

But because this worldview is fundamentally irrational, it cannot stand on its own two feet. Some sexual activity does result in babies.  Not everyone wants their government acting as if the highest goal is that pleasure is to be sought.  Not everyone believes that the purpose of the government is to allow people to indulge themselves sexually, without a live baby ever resulting.

The Catholic Church for instance, famously opposes every precept of Secular Hedonism.  As a matter of fact, so did all of the Christian churches, right up until five minutes ago. The ancient Christian teaching is that marriage is the proper context for sexual activity and for child-bearing, for the good of children, women, and men alike, as well as society as a whole.

The government believes that this dissenting voice cannot be tolerated. It must be crushed. And, of course, from their point of view, they are perfectly correct. They have an established religion that says that every sexual act is intrinsically meaningless except for the meaning we might happen to assign it. They simply can’t allow someone to go around saying that each and every sexual act is sacred, and endowed by our Creator with inalienable significance.  From the point of view of Secular Hedonism, Catholicism must be crushed.

And of course, anyone else who dissents from the new orthodoxy must be crushed as well. That is why so many other faith traditions have joined in criticizing the Obama administration’s usurpation of power from civil society. The National Association of Evangelicals, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews have all criticized the administration’s attack on religious liberty. These religious bodies know that their religious liberties are at stake as well.

The religious truce is officially over. The Established Church of Secular Hedonism has declared war on the rest of us, enlisting the might of the United States government on their side. We will respond using nothing but peaceful means.

We used to refrain from making religious arguments in the public square. We thought it was our duty. We thought it was good strategy.  The Ruth Institute has specialized in defending the ancient Christian teachings, using non-religious arguments.  This no longer makes sense. The arguments are still good arguments.  But there is no longer any reason to hold back from proclaiming our faith. Our position deserves respect, not simply because it is our “deeply held religious belief”.  Our position deserves respect because it is grounded in reason and evidence, and in a far deeper understanding of the human person, and the human good.  The ancient Christian teachings on marriage, family and human sexuality are superior to the teachings of the Established Church of Secular Hedonism.

If we don’t respond firmly, the Obama Administration will assume they can get away with ending religious liberty. This website, StopHHS.org will become a clearing house of info about the insurance mandate. Go sign their petition.

Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, PhD, is the founder and president of the Ruth Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage.

Rescuing marriage from no-fault divorce

Two out of three unhappily married adults who stayed together were happily married five years later.

Over the past few decades, the institution of marriage has been undermined on almost every front, so much so that you might wonder why homosexuals would want a right to it. After all, one of the key attractions of the marriage contract has been its permanence – the commitment to life-long support which benefits not only the partners of the marriage but any children who come along. That this aspect of marriage has been in radical decline over recent decades is due at least in part to the spread of “no-fault divorce”.

In fact, the trend towards temporary marriages has been so profound that it has moved one government official – a city councillor from Mexico City – to formally propose “temporary marriage licenses”.

Among those who support the traditional concept of marriage there has been plenty of rhetoric in defence of the concept, but little has been done to come up with practical measures to shore up the institution. Now one organisation – the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada – is trying to change that with the report “Finding fault with no-fault divorce”. The report seeks not only to analyse the damage done by easy divorce, but to make concrete proposals to help rescue marriage.

On easy divorce, it says:

The shift from “fault” to “no-fault” divorce ultimately created a dynamic whereby one unhappy spouse who wanted out - for any reason or no reason at all - could unilaterally do so simply by moving out, be it two months or two years in. The end result is that we speak idealistic words (“till death do us part”) on our wedding days, knowing full well that when the going gets tough, we can - and do - get going.

In most countries that have adopted no-fault divorce, marriages have been failing at a disturbing rate. In Canada, for instance, it is estimated that around 40 percent of marriages that took place in the year 2008 will have ended in divorce by 2035. In Australia the rate is around one in three. But there is a glimmer of hope for the newly wed. The IMFC report highlights the fact that in most failing marriages, at least one of the partners will be in favour of trying to salvage the marriage. It also points out that around 85 to 90 per cent of divorces are in the category of “low-conflict divorce” and that among these, two out of three “unhappily married adults” who manage to avoid divorce or separation end up describing themselves as “happily married” five years later.

Given these facts, the report argues that taking steps to save marriages should be considered as “at least as viable an option” as proceeding with divorce. This view is supported by the Institute for American Values, which argues that “unhappy marriages are less common than unhappy spouses”. This is because its ownresearch indicates that three out of four “unhappily married adults” are married to someone who is happy with the marriage. The IMFC concludes: “If divorce is pushed by one unhappy spouse, whose partner is happy - which, in a low conflict marriage means they have just as great a chance of being happily married five years later – then unilateral divorce simply makes it easy for the one unhappy partner to leave without explanation or negotiation.”

Similar concerns about no-fault divorce have been expressed by Professor Douglas W. Allen, Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, British Columbia. Professor Allen asserts that one of the strengths of traditional marriage is that it tends to “mitigate bad behaviour”, and that allowing individuals to unilaterally abandon their marital responsibilities has led to a lot of bad behaviour:

In the 1960s debate, no one thought the divorce rate would change, but it changed enormously and led to a divorce culture. No one thought there would be changes to labor force participation, hours worked, violence against spouses, suicide rates for children, and on and on. And yet, changes to these things are linked to no-fault divorce.The no-fault divorce experiment proves that marriage is an institution designed with a purpose, and therefore, further changes to accommodate same sex couples will also have consequences. As in the 1960s we're probably unable to predict what they all will be, but they will come nonetheless.

The IMFC agrees that the impact of easy divorce has been profound. It says the sorts of problems that normally lead to divorce nowadays are so common that if everyone who was married acted on them we would end up with a “100 per cent divorce rate”. The harms created by no-fault divorce, it says, now far outweigh the benefit that it offers in the “small minority of cases where one partner was being abused”. Among those harms are increased poverty, particularly for single mothers, the profound suffering experienced by the children of divorce, and the inestimable impact of divorce on society as a whole.

So what can be done? The report makes it clear that we cannot hope for a single solution to achieve “strong, permanent marriages”, but that many steps must be taken to support married couples, and that this should start well before marital problems begin, with the early education of children:

Surveys of kids in high schools show that the vast majority want to get married. So early education is a must. Children and teenagers need to be taught all the positive features of marriage, so they can realize that it involves both joy and hard work and, more importantly, remains the best way to raise children.

The report also calls for pre-marital counselling to be “strengthened and broadened beyond religious communities”, where most pre-marital counselling currently takes place, so that all couples can benefit. It suggests that counselling in religious settings could also be improved as few religious leaders at present have actual training in counselling. “Counselling,” it says, “should look toward restoration and reconciliation as a plausible first option -- again, in low-conflict marriages.”

It also supports marriage mentoring programs to help young married couples learn from those who have “weathered storms ahead of them”. It explains: “While divorce is very commonplace and problems in marriage are ubiquitous, we fail to address those problems. One of these is a lack of community - something marriage mentors might attempt to address.”

As for the temptation to try to re-introduce fault as a ground for divorce proceedings, the report warns this would be an “uphill road”. Instead, it advocates helping couples to rediscover the great “attractiveness” of permanent marriage as something worth dedicating your life to. It argues that given the true value of traditional marriage, this should not be too hard a task to carry out.

Finally, the report backs “non-legal solutions” first proposed by the Institute for American Values in a report titled “Second Chances: A Proposal to Reduce Unnecessary Divorce”. These solutions include the concept of “notification documents” which would allow one partner in a marriage to inform the other partner of serious problems in the marriage. This approach, it argues, could help avoid the “first treacherous step” into the legal system and, ultimately it might help avoid divorce: by making one or both partners aware of the possibility of reconciliation it could stop the rot from setting in and help them to reflect on the fact that divorce “does not bring greater happiness”.

Summing up, the Canadian report says the fact that marriage survives at all “after the vicious assault of the past decades on the institution” is testimony to the desires of individuals to be in true, lasting partnership with one another.

In spite of years of feminist rhetoric that women are better off without men, in spite of the movement of the culture away from community and toward individualism, marriage still stands. We need to remind people how to live it - through good times and bad, ‘till death do us part,’ just as the vows say, once again.”

No doubt children who have suffered the pain of their parents’ divorce would say Amen to that.

William West is a Sydney journalist and editor of Perspective magazine.

Intelligible Goods, Marriage, and Intellectual Conversion

by R.J. Snell

March 9, 2012

Unless we ask the “what” and “why” in ethical debate, we aren’t doing ethics. Debating ethics requires intellectual conversion and thus a commitment to intelligible reality.

In an important and widely read Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy article, Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson argue in favor of the conjugal view of marriage against revisionism. The article evoked considerable commentary, with arguments circling around the problem indicated in the title—“What Is Marriage?” In the end, the issue boils down to whether marriage is simply a social convention or an intelligible human good. As the authors claim, “the debate over civil marriage’s definition is ultimately about what marriage is. …”

The arguments on this go back and forth, of course, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Here I’d like to suggest that the mere asking of the question, “What?” reveals that there will be very little fruitful debate without intellectual conversion, that is, grasping that objectivity in ethical debate entails understanding intelligible goods rather than mere examination of social conventions.

In the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle notes that all questions take one of four forms; we seek “the fact, the reason why, if it is, what it is.” These are fairly commonsense distinctions, basically outlining the difference between asking if something is and what/why it is. Questions about existence have a kind of priority, for we ask questions of why and what only if we think there is something to be asked about, and we tend to answer questions of existence by appeals to data, by looking around to see if unicorns or centaurs exist. Questions of what and why, on the other hand, go beyond data, looking for intelligibility or explanation.

The difference between data and intelligibility is an important distinction, for while having more and better data certainly helps in grasping causes, data alone are not sufficient for understanding. One has to grasp the pattern, understand the relation, or get the structure:  understanding occurs in intelligence rather than sensation. The evidence for this is quite simple; just examine the charts or graphs from a trade or discipline with which you are unfamiliar. You can see the graph, but with little comprehension. And comprehension will not occur by staring at the chart: you have to dosomething, you have to think. In grasping intelligibility, data are the sources from which we begin, but are not what we seek. We go beyond data, seeking intelligibility—what and why.

While the distinction between seeing and understanding is not particularly complicated, maintaining the distinction in moral arguments is surprisingly difficult, especially keeping straight the standards of objectivity proper to each type of question.

Very often we collapse the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible, and instead conflate the objectivity of data with the objectivity of explanation, falling prey to what Bernard Lonergan calls the “cognitional myth” and its three errors: (1) thinking that knowing is somehow like taking a look, (2) thinking that objectivity is something like seeing what is there, and (3) thinking that the real is what is there to be looked at. Since the vast majority of our conscious life concerns the world of extroversion—where we parked the car, finding a sandwich, playing with the kids, reading the book—we very easily slip into the mode of extroversion and its data even when dealing with issues of understanding and intelligence. Lonergan suggests the need for intellectual conversion, whereby we overcome the cognitional myth and understand that knowing includes more than staring at data, and thus that objectively knowing the real includes grasping intelligibility.

In Fundamentals of Ethics, John Finnis suggests something very similar, arguing that everything in ethics “depends on the distinction between the good as experienced and the good as intelligible,” and that grasping the distinction “is as important as that ‘intellectual conversion’ by which we overcome empiricism in general philosophy.” Grasping intelligibility, moreover, is “not like opening one’s eyes or activating one’s other senses,” but is instead an insight into the data of one’s own “wanting, deciding and acting.” That is, an insight into the good—the for the sake of which—sought in intelligible action.

If one understands the objectivity proper to intelligible (rather than empirical) questioning, one can grasp, again as Finnis states it, that “in doing ethics, one does seek truth,” and does so in a way that the “judgment … can be objectively right (or wrong) and true (or false).” Naïve extroversion tends to think that because value has no directly observable data, that value judgments therefore express mere preference and prejudice. Value judgments are not considered objective. The data reveal only that different people think different things in different times and places. Reasonable debate is rendered all but impotent.

But this just simply is not what objectivity is in ethics. Value is not known by looking around in the world for value, or by examining our own satisfactions, or the satisfactions and preferences of all, or the majority, or an elite. Instead, objectivity is a reflection on the objectives of human acts, the reasons for which we act. We do not reflect, Finnis reminds us, with an “attempt to peer inside” ourselves, but by asking why we do what we do. This is a process of intelligence—“Why do we seek x? What is the purpose of wanting y? What would z provide that is lacking from fulfillment?” And when the question “What for?” is pushed until it no longer makes sense to ask any more, then one grasps the reason for action—the intelligible good—and can judge whether that reason makes sense, fits into a whole life, and so on.

The debate about marriage concerns the nature of marriage—“What is marriage?”—a question for intelligence, not empirical study, and answering the question requires asking “What is marriage for?” To ask that question anticipates that marriage is intelligible, knowable, and real. On the other hand, claiming that marriage is mere convention asks nothing about marriage, merely examining how people mate. Consequently, only those who ask about the nature of marriage intend intelligibility with their question, which Finnis explains is the condition of ethics. Those who do not ask about intelligibility thereby exclude themselves from a debate about ethics, choosing instead to debate the empirical. They lack intellectual conversion and so are not really doing ethics.

Take Kenji Yoshino for example, who responded to the conjugal view of marriage by claiming that marriage is unintelligible and unknowable in itself because empirically there are a variety of opinions on marriage:

But those who have propounded trans-historical, much less eternal, definitions of marriage have often been time’s fools. Fifty years from now, I expect new challenges will be made to the definition of marriage. … I do not purport to know where future challenges will arise, or how those challenges might require us to reassess the purposes of marriage. I refuse to answer the question ‘What is marriage?’ by saying ‘Marriage is one thing, always and everywhere, for all people.’ I regard that refusal as a strength, rather than as a weakness, of my position, as I do not think we stand at the end of history today.

This is a very odd account of objectivity, one that renders debate impossible. If definitions cannot reasonably be offered simply because there are those who object—even if in some distant future—then definitions are meaningless per se, and that is the end of the discussion. Marriage becomes unintelligible, unknowable, and unreal in itself, because of empirical disagreement. But just asking the question “What is marriage?” or “What is marriage for?” takes us beyond Yoshino’s inertia, putting us squarely back in the domain of the intelligible, where we reflect on purpose and cause, and so there is something to inquire and debate about; that is, asking these questions puts us back into a debate about ethics.

Note that I am not claiming that the defenders of the conjugal view necessarily win the debate; just that they are in it, while Yoshino and others with similar positions are not. They claim to be, of course, but unless they ask the “what” and “why,” they aren’t doing ethics, which requires intellectual conversion. Asking the what and why of marriage is to commit oneself to its intelligible reality, which is what Girgis, George, and Anderson have done.

R. J. Snell is associate professor of philosophy at Eastern University and a research director of the Agora Institute for Civic Virtue and the Common Good.


Copyright 2012 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

The Rhetoric of Equality by James P. McGlone

Those seeking to redefine marriage to include same-sex unions often make their case by calling for “equality” in our marriage laws.  Claiming that traditional marriage laws are unjust and discriminatory, they seek to right these wrongs and achieve “marriage equality.”  However, equality is not a principle that can settle the issue, nor even one that separates the two sides of the marriage debate. Neither advocates of traditional marriage nor revisionists seeking legal recognition for same sex unions are opposed to equality in our marriage laws.  The real difference of opinion actually centers on the nature of marriage itself.

Equality under the law does not mean treating everything the same.  Rather, it means treating things the same if they actually are the same in relevant and meaningful ways.  For example, all individuals deserve equal respect for their human rights.  People are all the same with respect to being human, and so they all deserve equal protection of basic human rights like the right to life, free speech, and religious freedom.

Equality certainly does not require that all relationships be recognized as marriages. Many proponents of same-sex marriage would no doubt oppose the recognition of polyamorous relationships (that is, relationships among more than two people), but this does not mean that such people oppose full marriage equality.  No one claims that ordinary friendships should be treated as marriages; there is simply no reason they should be.  People who form friendships or polyamorous relationships are not somehow given unequal treatment because they cannot legally marry.  Current laws simply recognize these relationships for what they truly are: decidedly non-marital.

Despite the rallying cries of some revisionists, laws enshrining traditional marriage do not discriminate in the way that Jim Crow laws against mixed-race marriages did.  Those laws had nothing to do with the definition of marriage and instead placed prohibitions on who was eligible for marriage that had no intelligible connection to the actual nature of the union.  Proponents of such laws did not believe that members of different races could not physically be wed, but that it was an undesirable threat to a society based on segregation.  These laws set up barriers to equality among persons, whereas traditional marriage laws, if their definition of marriage is correct, do not.

Thus the central question of the debate is not “Whom should we allow to marry?” but “What is marriage?”  The answer to the latter question can tell us what our marriage laws should be and which relationships ought to be recognized as marriages.  It should inform people as to whether marriage ought to be between one man and one woman only, between any two people only, or perhaps even between two or more people.
Defenders of traditional marriage believe that the institution is, and can only be, between one man and one woman.  We believe that marriage is by nature comprehensive, uniting spouses in every aspect of the person, including the bodily aspect.  Spouses seal their marriage by becoming a single biological principle: that is, by together forming the basic unit that carries out some organic function.  This can only be achieved by an act of sexual intercourse that is reproductive in kind (though not necessarily in result).  In such acts, spouses quite literally become “one flesh,” like two organs acting in concert for the biological good of the whole.  For this reason, marriage must be consummated through intercourse, and only spouses that can possibly perform such acts can truly be married.

It is less clear what most revisionists think about the definition of marriage.  Of course, most (though by no means all) want marriage to be a union of any two people, but they generally leave ambiguous the specific characteristics of marriage that lead to this definition.  What features of marriage, so conceived, distinguish it from other kinds of relationships?  What can consummate it?  Why are people only able to enter into it in pairs?  These questions are rarely answered in discussions of “marriage equality.”

If revisionists think marriage should be redefined, they must develop an alternative definition for it.  They must determine what they think marriage truly is and what its core characteristics are, then present their definition alongside the traditional conception of marriage and argue that theirs is superior.  However, mere appeals to equality are insufficient.   Equality demands adherence to the true definition of marriage, not unprincipled inclusivity.  If there is a case to be made for same-sex marriage, it has little to do with a short slogan.

Exposing the Myths and Fallacies of the Vagina Monologues

Exposing the Myths and Fallacies of the Vagina Monologues

What do actresses Rachel McAdams, Calista Flockhart, and Roseanne Barr have in common? They have all performed in Eve Ensler’s infamous play The Vagina Monologues. Every year, throughout the months of February and March, college papers across the country publish articles condemning or promoting the play. Whether you are a supporter or not, the feeling of exasperation at the thought of another piece trying to sway you one way or another can often be mutually shared; however, when the content of such a play is misrepresented, dispelling the fallacies becomes crucial.

It is imperative that college students investigate the facts and the myths that surround every cause that calls out for support. Upon hearing your friends talk, it’s easy to conclude that the play promotes the liberation and empowerment of women. If, however, you pick up a copy for yourself, reality proves quite the contrary. In the over-sexualized culture in which we live, Ensler has taken it upon herself to degrade a woman’s self-image to being solely defined by her body and sexual organs. What is empowerment? It is the focus on the dignity of the woman: her intellect, integrity, strength, and spirit. There is no liberation in chanting the word “vagina” ad infinitum as described in the chapter entitled “Reclaiming Cunt.”

Thousands of college students are lured into supporting the play each year, due to the misbelief that Ensler’s primary concern is to raise awareness regarding violence against women. Think again. She has been quoted saying, “If you had an understanding of the play, the vagina becomes the least significant thing.” Throughout the play, however, Ensler states that Monologues was penned in an attempt to rediscover her own vagina, because she frets over how, “we don’t think about them.” Instead, she should be worrying about how punishments are not severe enough for sex offenders or that self-defense techniques are not sufficiently funded.

The claim is often heard that those who oppose the play are anti-feminist. On the contrary, I propose that opponents of the play couldn’t be greater proponents of true feminism. Those who fought for our liberties and equal treatment under the law (the original feminists) were against reducing women to mere body parts, which is the very message Ensler conveys.

While we’re at it, let’s tackle another myth: Violence against women will end due to funds raised by the V-Day campaign. Although some funds are going to organizations that help victims, the play does not effectively call attention to the real issues, nor does it offer solutions. In treating women as objects, the play promotes the very attitude that often leads to sexual violence.

As an author, maintaining the credibility of your work is critical and Ensler herself says the play is based on true stories gathered from interviews of over 200 women, only to then state in her book that, “Some of the monologues are close to verbatim interviews, some are composite interviews, and with some I just began with the seed of an interview and had a good time.” There is no real evidence that these interviews were ever conducted even when you check her V-Day Web site.

Prior to cracking open the cover, I would never have guessed that within the pages I would read about a spiritually redeeming experience. The audacity of describing the rape of a young girl by an older woman in this way is repulsive. The experience is described as being “a surprising, unexpected, politically incorrect salvation.” The young girl is said to claim that this encounter raised her vagina to “a kind of heaven.” As you read through the chapter, the picture is painted of a 24-year-old woman handing the girl vodka and proceeding to violate her. What they don’t tell you is that in the original monologue the scene concluded with the lines, “If it was rape, it was good rape.”

For a play committed to combating violence against women, its logic isn’t very tight. You want to know what violence is? It’s finding that more women die of cervical cancer (caused by HPV, the human papillomavirus) every year than of AIDS-related complications every year. according to the medical journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. Condoms don’t offer protection against HPV, but Ensler wouldn’t be caught promoting premarital abstinence, even if it does safeguard against cervical cancer.

Instead of falling into our culture’s libertine approach to finding fulfillment through sex, reclaim what Valentine’s Day is truly about—love and romance. Don’t allow Ensler to define your role as a woman; you deserve much more. Instead, take a stand for your principles, voice your opinions, and empower women by celebrating their strength, intellect, and integrity. Promote human dignity and respect, not degradation and debasement.

Dawn Eden, author of The Thrill of the Chaste and long time New York Post columnist, lays it out perfectly when she says, “there is no dignity in a society that encourages touching another person’s body but not allowing that person to touch your heart.”