No, Marriage Doesn’t Have an “Ageless Meaning”
By Jesse Singal - Nov 13th, 2008 at 4:39 pmThe Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby on Prop 8:
If black voters overwhelmingly reject the claim that marriage amendments like Proposition 8 are nothing more than bigotry-fueled assaults on civil rights, perhaps it is because they know only too well what real bigotry looks like. Perhaps it is because they resent the assertion that adhering to the ageless meaning of marriage is tantamount to supporting the pervasive humiliation and cruelty of Jim Crow. Perhaps it is because they are not impressed by strident condemnations of “intolerance” and “hate” by people who traffic in rank anti-Mormon hatemongering. [emphasis mine]
Setting aside everything else that’s wrong with this paragraph, it really takes some gall for Jacoby to refer to the “ageless meaning of marriage.” This phrase is absolutely nonsensical. As a Psychology Today primer puts it, “Through most of Western civilization, marriage has been more a matter of money, power and survival than of delicate sentiments.” Everyone who has studied the subject knows that the focus on monogamous love is a recent development.
So, by Jacoby’s sort of reasoning, it would have been perfectly reasonable, a century or so ago, for traditionalists to denounce those who originally sought to change the focus of marriage to love. Marriage, after all, had an “ageless meaning”–it was an important means of maintaining and building certain power structures, and it had served that vital role well. Redefining such a vital institution and speaking of it in terms of “love”–an abstract, oftentimes troubled concept–ran the risk of completely undermining the traditional marriages of those who wed for monetary gain, security, or to forge alliances between different families.
And yet, somehow marriage survived. Must have just been a stroke of luck.
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