A defense of marriage

Marriage is a hot topic these days and not because tomorrow is Valentine's Day. President Bush wants to spend $1.5 billion to promote marriage in poor communities. Massachusetts' Supreme Court has said only access to marriage, not civil unions, will mean equality for gays and lesbians. Congress is considering a Constitutional amendment to "defend" marriage against the attacks raining down upon it. After all, what's more romantic than appropriations bills, judicial opinions and federal legislation?

The conception of marriage in this country has changed. In 1970, 68 percent of adults were married and 15 percent had never married. In 2000, those numbers were 56 percent and 23 percent respectively. 1970 was before feminism, before gay rights, and before family leave and stay at home dads. It was a different era, when one of the only jobs open to a woman was as a wife. Today, being single is, if not encouraged, at least acceptable. More and more people are waiting to get married: maturing, achieving financial independence, and finding the right partner. The divorce rate, for the first time in years, has stabilized.

Perhaps that is why I was rubbed the wrong way by President Bush's proposal to spend more than a billion dollars to urge poor people to embrace marriage. Marriage ought to be sacred, a decision reached by two consenting individuals in love, not two marginally certain individuals and their Health and Human Services counselor. The argument for the initiative is that married couples produce healthier, better educated children who are less likely to be poor. Children would also be healthier if they had access to medical care, better educated if schools weren't filled with uncertified teachers, and less likely to be poor if their parents could undertake training and find jobs. Assuming that marriage will automatically solve these problems, particularly in communities in which many men are unemployed or on probation is not romantic. It's naive.

While President Bush has been trying to create "Leave It to Beaver" families in the inner cities, the court in Massachusetts has declared that marriage is a valued institution, so valued that it can not be denied to a segment of the population. What is important, they have ruled, is not the gender of the parties to a marriage, but their commitment to one another and the love they share. What better way to promote marriage than to include couples engaged in relationships of mutual respect and affection? Legislators in Washington were so appalled by this idea that they've been actively promoting the Defense of Marriage Act, a constitutional amendment to limit marriage by definistion to men and women.

Marriage doesn't need to be defended from gays and lesbians. It needs to be defended from those who think that entering into marriage is the goal, rather than the creation of a lasting relationship. Perhaps accepting that a lifetime commitment should not be a knee jerk reaction but a choice made consciously only by those sure of their determination to see it through, will mean that there are fewer marriages. But there will also be fewer divorces, fewer morning-after annulments, fewer families broken in two. There will be more respect for marriage.

Like our parents before us, our generation will have to decide how we see marriage and family. We have the chance to include all loving couples in marriage, regardless of their sexuality, and to ensure that a marriage is an equal partnership between two spouses. We have the chance not to see marriage as a contract society obligates us to enter into but as both a tremendous gift and a tremendous commitment. When it comes to marriage, our society is at a crossroads this Valentine's Day. Gender roles, legal definitions and societal norms are all changing, so much so that it is hard not to believe that years from now we will look back on these times as a turning point. We ought to take this opportunity to take marriage seriously in how we apply it to others and in how we undertake it ourselves. In the end, that is not just romantic. It is the best defense we can offer. Katherine Reilly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills, N.J. Her column runs on alternate Fridays. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu.