Marriage in Terminal Decline?

I gather the French have been protesting in their tens of thousands against the law permitting gay marriage. We in Britain don’t have such a law yet, but I expect we will before too long. It seems that even the conservatives in government (although not the conservatives in the rest of the Conservative Party) feel the need to roll with the right-on liberal bandwagon on this issue at least. Maybe they feel it will counter their unashamed crushing of the poor and boost their credibility. How can I know, since I’m not a conservative, a Conservative, a liberal, or a Liberal Democrat?

Meanwhile, the main opposition to gay marriage is coming from the religious fundamentalists, for whom gay marriage is offensive in the sight of God and therefore just about as offensive as you can get, and the traditionalists who feel it essential to maintain tradition just because it’s traditional. I don’t fall into either of those categories, either. (Neither do I like using the same word so close together twice in one sentence, but I can’t be bothered to think of a better alternative. I’m not out of the pit yet; I just have the top half of my face above the rim temporarily.) My take on the issue is this:

The more I thought about it, the more apparent it became that the definition of marriage is being challenged to the point of possible destruction. It seems to me that if a culture is going to have the institution of marriage at all, it has to be about more than just a contract. It has to be about something special which is above and beyond the mere signing of an agreement between two parties. It surely has to be about the conjoining of two entities to form a third, homogenous state. It has to be about two becoming one, however traditional that might sound. It isn’t about tradition; it’s about rational justification, and I don’t see any other way of justifying the institution.

That being the case, the question has to be posed: joining two what? Two people? I don’t think so; two solicitors can sign a contract and become a firm of solicitors. It isn’t strong enough; it’s too mundane; it isn’t sufficient to afford the gravitas to support the institution. In my view, it has to be about the conjoining of two equal and complimentary polarities – masculine and feminine. If such a view is accepted, then two same-sex people can no more enter into marriage than a man can hope to get pregnant. Furthermore, it amounts to a reasonable argument that if same-same marriage is permitted by law, it will destroy at a stroke the very meaning of marriage.

So do I care whether the law is passed or not? No, not really. It means little to me since I’ve never been the marrying kind (not even when I was married.) If that’s what society wants, then that’s what society is welcome to have. I think the institution of marriage, with all the gravitas implied therein, has been fading for decades anyway, so what the hell?

There is another issue involved here, of course: the question of whether the nuclear family is the only proper basis on which to found our social structure. And then there’s the question of whether – all other things being equal – children grow up better balanced if they have both masculine and feminine influences as part of their daily experience.

Well, they’re connected questions, but also separate ones, and this post is long enough as it is.