October 2, 2006
Part 5
Q. "What public good does marriage provide?"
He begins with pointing out no society NEEDS same-sex marriage. I would like to point out no society NEEDS neckties either, but the presenter and most of the men in his all-white audience are wearing them. Not that I'm against neckties, I can think of several uses for them, some of which I'm sure would not be endorsed by Focus on the Family, just that they are not a necessity for survival of our species.
Mr. Stanton makes the assumption here that all marriages in all cultures at all times were always heterosexual. The problem with making that blanket statement, is that we weren't there. We interpret history through the lens of our own experiences and with our own biases. Where did marriage originate? We can safely assume that Eve did not have the traditional white wedding as we know it today. No, she and Adam just started doing "it", they probably didn't even call it marriage.
It may have been several centuries before marriage as a cultural phenomenon even existed. The caveman just found a girl he wanted, dragged her home and had sex with her and nobody had a problem with it. We don't know that some of those couplings weren't same-sex. Then, sometime in later history, we began regulating those couplings, until we have the institution we know today as marriage.
Basically, according to Mr. Stanton, there are four purposes for marriage, first is to socialize men. The role of women in a society is to get men to behave. I've provided a poll at the bottom of this section, I'd like to hear what women think of this idea. I am currently not married, dating or otherwise attached to a man, but should I be in the future I would prefer one who already knows how to behave himself.
The second purpose of marriage is to regulate sexuality. Apparenly Mr. Stanton was too busy preparing his presentation to notice that infidelity is at an all time high. 50-60% of married men and 40-50% of married women engaging in extramarital sex at sometime or another during their relationship does not sound like monogamy is being effectively enforced (Atwood & Shwartz, 2002 - Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy). In the words of a married, male, former co-worker of mine "You can have you one at work, and another 'un at home".
The third purpose of marriage is to protect women. "A society's most serious problem is the unattached male". (Wasn't the BTK serial killer married, as well as president of his church council?) Mr. Stanton seems so concerned about protecting us poor women from these "aggressive, selfish males" (another value judgement) he forgot to check his domestic violence statistics. Who was protecting Laci Peterson and Lori Hacking? A quick visit to www.endabuse.org provides these interesting statistics:
Nearly one-third of American women (31 percent) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives, according to a 1998 Commonwealth Fund surveyThirty percent of Americans say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year
On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in this country every day. In 2000, 1,247 women were killed by an intimate partner.
As many as 324,000 women each year experience intimate partner violence during their pregnancy
Annually in the United States, 503,485 women are stalked by an intimate partner
Domestic Violence against women is not just an American problem, again from www.endabuse.org (this page loads as a .pdf)
In 48 population-based surveys from around the world, 10-69 percent of women reported being physically assaulted by an intimate male partner at some point in their livesA large study of India found that 43.5 percent of women reported that they were psychologically abused by their partners, and 40.3 percent reported that they were physically abused. Fifty percent of women who were physically abused reported violence during pregnancy
Intimate partners commit 40-70 percent of homicides of women worldwide.
Around the world, 1 in 3 women have been beaten, coerced into sex, other otherwise abused in their lifetime. Most often, the abuser is a member of her own family.
Sounds like there are a whole bunch of women not doing their job of making men behave. These statistics do not break down what percentage of the abuse is perpetrated inside of marriage, but it is obvious unattached males are not the greatest threat facing women these days.
The fourth purpose for marriage is to insure children have a mother and a father to take care of them. I'm willing to give this point to Mr. Stanton, however, I would caution against assuming the quality of parenting in a typical male/female marriage is automatically superior to the quality of parenting in a same-sex marriage.
I would like to point out Mr. Stanton missed one very obvious purpose of marriage, to keep us from eating carmel dip straight out of the container, with our fingers in the middle of the night.
Posted by Anna at October 2, 2006 12:18 AM