What Is Marriage For?

E.J. Graff

In 1999, E.J. Graff wrote what has become a must-have in the libraries of anyone who is concerned about the lack of equality in marriage rights. Ms. Graff takes an interesting look at the history of marriage from various perspectives: money, sex, babies, kin, order and heart. There is so much information packed into this book that I know I will read it again and again and still each time pick up one more piece of this enormous puzzle called the institution of marriage.

No longer will you hear someone defend the institution of marriage and wonder how to respond and furl your brow as to why the great defenders are so concerned. If anyone has been going through a phase, it would be the very institution of marriage which is less of an institution and more of a melting pot of culture and the growing insistence of equality for all.

The institution of marriage that opponents to same sex marriage are defending, the view of marriage idealized by Ward and June Cleaver, shows no evidence of ever existing prior to the 1940's. "What [historians] do agree on is that "the family" as we know it was invented in the middle of the nineteenth century—which is when cries about the "death of the family" began to rise in number and pitch." (p.92) Of course, we know that the state of marriage has been going downhill for many years. In 1522, Martin Luther in "On the Estate of Marriage" that "Marriage has universally fallen into awful disrepute." (p.88). And who is responsible for this decline? Surely not same sex couples.

So, Ms. Graff asks the question What is Marriage For? Her discoveries about the history of marriage will amaze you. Money, of course often changed handles as the origin of today's wedding receptions were the celebrations of the signing of the contract or agreement on the dowry. How romantic! "During most of the history of the West, the engagement feast was when the two families finished negotiations and finally signed, witnessed and notarized the marriage contract (and perhaps let the two start living together). The marriage ceremony itself was usually when money (or its stand-in, the ring) actually changed hands, a ceremony was—at least in classes where enough money changed hands for this to matter—for many years overseen by a notary, not a priest." (p.5) Ms. Graff also writes that for the Romans vows were "exchanged by—are you sitting down?—the groom and his father-in-law." (p.242)

As much as I would like to tell you everything I have learned from this book, it is just impossible. Ms. Graff's writing is thought-provoking and, at times, humorous and she has packed so much information that the reader is just bursting at the seams with each page read. I will let excerpts from her conclusions complete this review and encourage you to get a copy of you own to read, mark up, learn and enjoy.

"If the question of whether John is married to Mary has been fraught with so many tensions and beliefs, we can hardly expect the question of whether John is married to Martin, or whether Martin is married to Anne, to be less contentious. And yet today's arguments about what constitutes a moral life—and a moral marriage—are treated as if they are unusually shocking, at least in the United States calls the culture wars..."

"Naturally, conservatives are dragging out the rhetoric that has been hurled against every marriage change, as we've seen. Allowing same-sex marriage would be like allowing married women to own property, 'virtually destroying the moral and social efficacy of the marriage institution.' Or it would be like legalizing contraception, which ' is not what the God of nature and grace, in His Divine wisdom, ordained marriage to be; but the lustful indulgence of man and woman ...Religion shudders at the wild orgy of atheism and immortality the situation forebodes.' Or it would be like recognizing marriage between the races, a concept so 'revolting, disgraceful, and almost bestial' that it would lead directly to 'the father living with his daughter, the son with the mother, the brother with his sister, in lawful wedlock'—and bring forth children who would be 'sickly, effeminate, into a mere civil contract ...striking at the root of those divinely ordained principles upon which is built the superstructure of society.' Or, it would be like allowing divorce, 'tantamount to polygamy,' thereby throwing "the whole community...into a general prostitution,' making us all loathsome, abandoned wretches, and the offspring of Sodom and Gomorrah.'"

"Such warnings are usually based on the idea that changing a given rule changes the very definition of marriage. And of course, they're right: define marriage as a lifetime commitment and divorce flouts its very definition. Define marriage as a vehicle for legitimate procreation, and contraception violates that definition. Define marriage as a complete union of economic interests, and allowing women to own property divides the family into warring and immoral bits. Define marriage as a bond between one man and one woman, and same-sex marriage is absurd. But define marriage as a commitment to live up to the rigorous demands of love, to care for each other as best you humanly can, then all these possibilities—divorce, contraception, feminism, marriage between [different races or religions or] two women or two men—are necessary to respect the human spirit."

"That's the reason that same-sex marriage is being accepted or actively debated in almost every postindustrial country. The law follows rather than leads, trying to catch up with the contemporary social realities. Today's civil courts are already forced to adjudicate disputes about same-sex couples, over all the same questions that the adjudicate with different-sex pairs: custody and inheritance, pensions and divorce settlements."

"And yet same-sex marriage does make even more visible a difficult fact of contemporary life: that every commitment—to job, spouse, community, religion, and more—must be invented from the inside out, tested, and confirmed as we go. Making lesbians and gay men more legally visible will neither solve nor complicate anyone else's daily commitments. And yet it will insist on something that is quite unnerving to acknowledge: that we must each pay rigorous attention to—and believe in—each individual spirit."

Review respectfully submitted by Lisa Beelle with much gratitude to the work and writings of E.J. Graff.