In a wide-ranging discussion that appeared earlier this month on Bloggingheads.tv, David Gushee, co-head with Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, made a novel defense of marriage that entailed an argument for the recognition of civil unions. By his lights, the protection of children should be the focus of state policy with respect to marriage. While he believes that the determination of the appropriate nature of marriage should be left to churches, the state should recognize the union of same-sex couples because of their potential to be legal guardians of children.
Gushee’s remarks came when he was asked by his interlocutor Peter Laarman, executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting, “What do you say to people who seem to feel that somehow if people of the same gender are married and enjoy civil protections provided by marriage that that contaminates the brand – that is to say, their heterosexual marriages are somehow diminished by the pledged love of others?” Gushee’s answer started with a short history lesson. “The way marriage is handled in our legal system is a kind of cultural vestige of what I and many others would call Christendom-era in the United States. Basically, Christian understandings – classic, traditional Christian understandings – of the meaning of marriage got written into the law way back to the founding of our country.”
Over the past few decades, this understanding has been eroded considerably. Gushee contends that “over the past 40 years, pretty much every, or most every, piece of that history – that historic understanding of marriage – has been dismantled in our culture…But the one thing that survives is that marriage is between a man and woman.” Even this last element is under attack, though. “It’s easy to poke fun at a culture in which 40-50% of heterosexuals who get married get divorced and then people get married 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 times and say that you’re somehow protecting marriage if you focus on the gay marriage issue.”
In the midst of these circumstances, Gushee’s focus is clear: “I’ve said for years that the main thing we should focus on is strengthening heterosexual marriages and caring for those marriages and the children who are totally dependent on those marriages for their well-being. That’s always been my agenda.” But what of the heterosexuality of marriage – the aspect that has always been central to the Christian and American understandings of marriage and is, by Gushee’s admission, “the one thing that survives” of the Christian view? Gushee’s response: “So we’re in a situation where there’s recognition that there are hundreds of thousands of non-heterosexual relationships that are essentially marital: they’re covenantal, they’re intended to be permanent, and families have been formed with children in many cases.” In this situation, churches are “the proper place for marriage to be consecrated.” “As for what churches do,” he said, “I think that’s up to the churches.”
For Gushee, the well-being of children should be the state’s primary concern when handling unions, whether heterosexual or homosexual. The well-being of children also forms much of the foundation of Gushee’s support for civil unions. “I have argued for a long time,” he said, “that some legal recognition of these relationships is needed – especially for the well-being of the children, both in those relationships and if those relationships fail.” Later in the discussion he reiterated this position. “[T]he state, I think, needs to offer robust civil recognition of these relationships as a practical matter and for the well-being of the children that are involved.”
Herein lies the novelty of Gushee’s argument. If state recognition of civil unions depends for its justification on the goal of protecting the children in those unions, then several things follow. Primarily, the recognition of civil unions would require a prior right for same-sex couples to adopt children. As a corollary, the right for same sex couples to adopt could be a pretext for the state’s recognition of, at minimum, civil unions and the bestowal of its attendant benefits. The novelty of Gushee’s argument only increases when one takes into account the limited number of same-sex couples that are legally able to adopt and the great minority of this group that actually does. Gushee’s argument for civil unions depends on a prior right which isn’t universally recognized and is neglected by the vast majority of those to which it applies.
It should be noted that this is not the standard argument for greater state recognition of homosexual relationships. Gushee’s reasoning may well be rejected by many homosexuals and their advocates. However, the goal and the effect is the same. In this way, Gushee’s attempt to accommodate existing realities and avoid directly engaging the question of the heterosexual nature of marriage serves to concede arguments which have yet to be addressed. The result is that the case for the expanded recognition of same-sex relationships, a contentious issue in religious and non-religious communities alike, is given a Christian seal of approval.
Throughout his conversation with Laarman, Gushee repeated his commitment to strengthening existing heterosexual marriages. From his comments it is clear that he hopes this course of action will accomplish two things. Primarily, it will protect the children in those marriages by making it more difficult to dissolve the marital bond. Second, the reduced number of divorces would make marriage easier to defend. Put another way, the charge of hypocrisy would be harder to make against defenders of traditional marriage when the rate of divorce isn’t one in two. In the end, though, Gushee’s argument sidesteps the core question of the marriage debate: Is marriage the union of man and woman, or is it something else? If Gushee isn’t ready to answer that question now, what evidence is there that he will be when marriage is easier for him to defend?
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