Follow this link to read Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Our Other Halves
Human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love. Aristophanes’ speech from Plato’s Symposium
Imagine there is a place to which you cannot go because of who you love, when it is the one place to which you want to go because of who you love. Everyone else may visit there: your children, parents, friends, colleagues, the citizens of the world. Now imagine that place is one for which most would live and die to protect, about which the greatest works of art have been created, the most beautiful poetry, the most breathtaking sacrifices.
Marriage is not the same thing as love, but if you were never to be married because of love, you would feel what it meant to be banished from that place. Let us not stand in the way of love, where it is met like for like. For that is the best of us.
Of the many meanings that marriage holds, the one we understand from our earliest years is that of the expression of romantic love between two people. From nursery rhymes and skipping games to fairy tales, poetry, music and Shakespeare we learn that the search for our “other half” is a life quest that ends with marriage. So deep is this message, that whether or not we personally reject its siren call, we will spend our official lives in the binary position of being “married” or “single”. Every other relationship status label is an extension of these categories; “divorced” (were married), “widowed” (were married), “separated” (still married), even “unmarried couple”. This is one of the reasons why the newly created “civil partnership” category was problematic in the 2010 census. A whole new category had to be created: “formally civilly partnered”, “surviving partner of a civil partnership”, “separated from civil partner”. The issues that the Civil Partnership Act 2004 was created to solve, did not include the need to express love as our culture has taught us. “Will you Civil Partner me?” is never going to inspire a sonnet.
The use of language is essential to our understanding of the cultural significance of relationships. In Britain, we have the vocabulary to describe detailed family ties through marriage – we have cousins-by-marriage, as well as in-laws. The Spanish vocabulary includes definitions for all in-laws, such as concuñado: the husband of one’s spouse’s sister. Without the language to describe the relationship, without the weight of the context supplied by the language, it could be said that the relationship itself does not formally exist.
When my children were at school, my partner and I would attend parents’ evenings together. We had always been open with the schools they attended, had approached the head teacher at their primary school before our relationship became public knowledge, and we wanted to make the conversation with the faculty as comfortable as possible. As an unmarried same sex couple with no legal, and little social, recognition it was difficult for the teachers to know how to place us. There was no familiar language to use. Rena was our boys’ “mother’s girlfriend”. They were unrelated to her in vocabulary and in the eyes of the law, yet she was of primary importance in their lives.
At one parent–teacher meeting, Rena and I sat in front of a teacher who clearly wished to be sympathetic to some of the issues our family might encounter. “I know it’s difficult,” she said, “I meet lots of single parents like yourself.”
Even though our legal status was unchanged after our wedding ceremony in 2000, we felt we had made a statement of our commitment to one another and to our family. The interests of our children were part of that decision. Rena and I had “married” and from then on Rena was known as the boys’ stepmother. Of course, her relationship with the boys was defined by her actions as a mother; we cared for the boys together and they loved her in her own right. But the dignity of her role in our family was undoubtedly enhanced by a signifier that is recognised the world over. The boys knew they had their own relationship with Rena; they were her stepchildren. And for all those who needed to be introduced to Rena, as the children’s guardian, as my partner, the language gave a context in which they could understand the importance of Rena’s role in our family.
Although our more defined roles were helpful, in 2000 the use of this language was still subversive. There was no legal framework in which the adopted vocabulary could operate. However, the wedding did make it easier for some people to describe my family in a way I did not anticipate. One of the boys’ teachers used a magazine that contained our wedding photographs to explain to a visiting teacher about the nature of our relationship. He was clearly uncomfortable with any of the existing vocabulary at his disposal. Fifteen years later, it is to be hoped that the legalisation of our marriage means that we can all discuss same sex unions without the use of visual aids.
Despite the lack of vocabulary, that teacher recognised the significance of the wedding ceremony in defining our relationship. Throughout our childhood, we are given the historical, mythical and contemporary accounts of love and marriage. We grow up expecting to make our own decisions about the rituals and traditions of our culture, and we understand that accepting those responsibilities is part of the passage into adulthood. To be denied certain personal and political rights is to be labeled a lesser citizen, one that has something in common either with those who are deemed not capable (children, compulsorily detained psychiatric patients) or those who have forfeited their rights (incarcerated criminals). Being forbidden to marry is to be labeled mad, bad or a perpetual child, dismissed to the nursery while the adults decide your democratic rights. There is no dignity in being told you may not aspire to that which your society places among the highest forms of human expression.
Clearly, many opposite sex couples love and live together without wanting to get married. They do so for many reasons, but they do so because they choose to do so. They do not necessarily love each other any more or less, but they are exercising their right to live together without being legally sanctioned. These decisions are part of the cultural and political life of an individual living in a democracy.
The right of opposite sex couples not to get married is considered so important by British lawmakers that the creation of common-law marriages has been consistently resisted. Baroness Ruth Deech expressed the reason for such resistance in no uncertain terms on the BBC Radio 4 show, Unreliable Evidence: “I do believe there is a civil liberty to be able to live your private life without state interference in that particular aspect … you should be free not to get married.”
However many years a heterosexual couple have co-habited, however many children they have had together, they will not be considered married in the eyes of British law or have the rights of a married couple. Though common-law marriage would protect children and partners, especially in the case of a relationship breakdown, the civil rights of heterosexual couples that have chosen not to be married take priority over such concerns. But this choice, so important that it is considered a civil liberty in itself, is denied to same sex couples who are forbidden to marry. This is not a question of semantics but of a human right to live as a full member of society with all the cultural inheritance that implies.
When the law explicitly forbids you from marrying, as it did in the Marriage Act of 1971, you are effectively disenfranchised. Love and the law are uniquely intertwined in the marriage contract. Leslie Green, a philosopher of law, has argued that since intimate relations are among the most valuable things in most people’s lives, marriage could be considered such an important thing in itself that it is the role of the law to support marriage for same sex couples. In an interview for Philosophy Bites, Green proposes that the contract protects, “… intimacy, continuity of relationships, if there are children, a stable environment to raise children, security of property, common social forums by which we interact. These are the things that make marriage valuable and they don’t vary by the sex of the people in the marriage.”
Marriage is sometimes seen as a form of policing our private relationships, the benefits to society worth protecting by providing financial and legal incentives to marry and disincentives to divorce. And, while marriage is not the only way we can support relationships and families, we place a value on marriage because the interests it protects are valuable, not just for the couple involved but for our mutual benefit as members of society. Those benefits include an understanding of the commitment a couple has made to each other and the stability that provides for a community and for the families involved.
Gay people exist in families as sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts. The hopes and expectations of all our families increase when our lives are considered of equal value. And when same sex couples become parents, their children deserve the same social contract as their peers. Their parents may or not be married, but the children will grow up with the same cultural context as everyone else and they have a right to expect the same recognition as a family. With equal marriage comes the understanding that regardless of whether or not a child’s parents have chosen to get married, the relationship is equally valid.
In 20011, 47% of children in the UK were born out of wedlock. But the Reverend Malcolm Brown, the director of mission and public affairs for Archibishops’ Council, Church of England, has stated that, “If it [Equal Marriage] comes into law, we will have to work very hard to make sure that families and children remain important and biological families will have to be shored up in other ways”. Brown implies that it would be important to support biological families separately from other sorts of families. However, since our families are intrinsic to our lives, however they are made up we should be looking at ways to support all families, legally and culturally. We start out from one sort of family and we then make another. As the editor and journalist, Amol Radjan explains, “Family. That’s it. That’s why I’m getting married. One word, three syllables, the story of my life – and of yours.”
There are now over 19,000 children in the UK with same sex parents and recent studies show that children in gay families are thriving.[1] With the arrival of equal marriage, these families will have legal protections available to them in the event of illness, separation or death. They will have pensions and spousal rights and recognition as a family. And when the children go to school they will be able to complain about whether or not their parents are married like all the other kids.
The inclusion of same sex couples into the unfolding story of marriage reflects the continuing role that marriage has to play in our society and the true value of its traditions. Over the years and across many countries, marriage has remained central to human social structure while marital law itself has been subject to many changes. Recent UK marriage laws have helped define incest (Marriage Act 1949), to make marital rape illegal (Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, England 1991), and to allow and facilitate divorce (Matrimonial causes act 1857 and the Family Law Act 1996). These changes are part of the law making that helps the marriage contract to stay relevant. However, changes to established cultural traditions and the laws reflecting these changes can be worrying to those who feel comfortable with the status quo, and there have been many voices and institutions of authority that have opposed the legislation for equal marriage. Edward Leigh, Conservative MP for Gainsborough, expressed this concern during the House of Commons debate on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in February 2013: “We should be in the business of protecting cherished institutions and our cultural heritage …”
The future may seem uncertain and the possible consequences daunting but tradition for its own sake is pointless and even potentially detrimental to a society that continues to respect outdated or harmful practices. In Uganda, for example, the “bride price” laws that have been accused of causing abusive marriages are under review, and in India, although anti-dowry laws have been in force since 1961, they are still flouted in some parts of the country. In the United States anti-miscegenation laws were not fully repealed until 2001, when Alabama finally amended the state’s constitution. Until 1985 marriage between consenting white and non-white adults was forbidden in South Africa.
Our societies can adapt and evolve as we learn, keeping what works and changing those customs that no longer serve their purpose. Education and improvements in social and economic conditions play their part in helping us to re-examine traditions. In the UK, the longstanding tradition of religious services for weddings was overturned in the Marriage Act of 1836 when other premises were licensed to allow those who did not want a religious ceremony to be legally married. The change was opposed by many including the Bishop of Exeter who wrote to The Times in October 1836 calling the bill “a disgrace to British legislation” but the new law meant that marriage was finally available to all those couples who did not want, or could not have, a religious service. Such disgrace has now become so popular that more marriages are performed outside churches than within them.
Bride price, dowries, single faith, anti-miscegenation; these marriage traditions were once prized by their respective governments for upholding the sanctity of marriage. Rather than undermine the marriage act, an examination of existing law and the changes that result are the positive reaction to laws that no longer serve the purpose for which they were intended. Yet, the church continues to oppose the civil rights of gay men and women amid concerns that extending rights to others may undermine the rights themselves. The Church of England consultation paper on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill stated: “We believe that redefining marriage to include same-sex relationships will entail a dilution in the meaning of marriage for everyone by excluding the fundamental complementarity of men and women from the social and legal definition of marriage.”[2]
Voting rights, property ownership and education have all been subject to protection by ruling powers based on the same fears. Certainly, the extension of such rights has entailed legal and social complications. Such complications are part of the ongoing process of democratic change when we recognise the civil rights of any group. No one’s understanding of the right to vote, own property, or be educated has been diluted by extending such rights to other groups, and neither will our understanding of marriage.
Further objections demonstrate not just a fear of dilution but of the corruption of marriage, such as the argument that the change in marriage law benefits same sex couples to the exclusion of other same sex relationships, such as sisters or fathers and sons. Norman Tebbit highlighted the issue thus: “It’s like one of my colleagues said: we’ve got to make these same sex marriages available to all. It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I’d be allowed to marry my son.”
This type of reasoning is based on the conflation of two issues – that of fairness of the inheritance tax laws and that of the problem of corruption of marriage law whereby the law itself becomes subverted to sanctify illicit relationships. The progress of tax law is a separate argument to the status of equal marriage. It may be the case that the existence of equal marriage raises questions about inheritance tax laws, but the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act does not change any laws except those directly related to the prohibition of same sex couples marrying each other.
The additional fear that equal marriage might lead to further changes in law was expressed by MPs and Peers in the debates that preceded the vote on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in the houses of Parliament. Conservative MP Matthew Offord asked: “Why is the government saying there should be same sex marriages? Why should it not also be blood relatives? Why should it not also be polygamists?”[3]
As for the corruption of marriage, since marriage law is subject to change and always has been, there is certainly no guarantee against further change. However, it is a logical fallacy (known as the ‘continuum fallacy’) to attach fears about other issues to a “slippery slope” argument.
Concerns about potential changes to the role marriage plays in our society should be taken on the basis of each individual case, not attached to a reaction about equal marriage itself. There are laws in the UK against incest based on issues of genetic mutations from consanguinity as well as societal taboos. There are laws in the UK against polygamy on the grounds of bigamy. There is no reason to think that these laws should be changed because of equal marriage. Indeed, many of the countries where polygamous, forced and underage marriages are most likely to be legally sanctioned are those whose governments restrict civil rights.[4]
The debate that the equal marriage bill inspired in our parliament was illuminating. Those of us who knew the result of the vote could change our lives were forced to realise that our present standing was as precarious as any possible future. After dilution and corruption, equal marriage was charged with the perversion of marriage. Conservative councilor James Malliff went so far as to suggest on Twitter that, “We may as well legalise marriage with animals …”
And he was not alone. On television, on the radio and in the newspapers, my children could observe their elected representatives discuss in graphic detail the many reasons why their mothers should not be married and why, according to John Deighan of the Catholics Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, our marriage would be senseless, “We can’t have laws saying people can sell bracelets and call them watches if they don’t tell the time”.
The public debates often seemed little more than a forum through which prejudice could be widely disseminated. As writer and broadcaster Alice Arnold wrote in the Telegraph, “Each and every attack on Equal Marriage attacks me, my life, and my love. It does not come out of my television and dissipate into the ether. It hits me and it hurts.”
When same sex marriage is illegal, the fear and ignorance of homophobia is allowed a platform. Gay people can be seen as different because they have different laws. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act affords lesbian and gay couples the same rights and responsibilities as opposite sex couples. The new law does not banish prejudice and ignorance overnight but it does set a standard of dignity and inclusion that heterosexual couples may take for granted. Whether homosexual couples choose to marry or not, we can fully participate in the customs of our society. We can be part of the story.
If you would like to read the A Marriage Proposal in full now, you can purchase the ebook via the links on the Guardian Shorts website, prices from £1.99.
[1] See, for example, Laura Mellish, Sarah Jennings, Fiona Tasker, Michael Lamb and Susan Golombok, Gay, Lesbian and Heterosexual Adoptive Families, Cambridge University’s Centre for Family Research commissioned by the British Association of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF).
[2] Church of England official response to the consultation process of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, June 2013.
[3] Conservative MP for Hendon, Barnet and Whetstone Press, 11 December 2012.
[4] Ethnographic Atlas Codebook derived from George P. Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas recording the marital composition of 1,231 societies from 1960 to 1980.
