commentary
Some Thoughts on "Traditional Marriage"
by William J. Fleener
For several decades, I've been telling couples preparing for marriage that they are breaking new ground, given the fact that for 99+ percent of human history, marriages have been arranged by parents without any consideration of the consent of the marriage partners. Sheer numbers of people and centuries qualify that arrangement for the term "traditional marriage."
Until I heard an interview of a new book by
social historian Stephanie Coontz, Marriage: a History, from obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage, I had only a vague idea of how true my statement was, and what steps had occurred over the past couple of centuries, that have produced the thing we now, very mistakenly, call "traditional marriage."
Coontz' details about the patriarchal marriage
stage of development fit in well with another of my theories. There was a time when the relatively few people who ever thought about same-sex relationships made the assumption that one member of the pair took the "man's" role and the other took the "woman's" role. Such a relationship was no challenge to a patriarchal male's reign over "his" wife.
When we began more recently to look a same
sex relationships from the point of view of two persons, as different as any two people are in particular gifts, talents and interests, but building their relationship as equals, the patriarchal husbands started getting very nervous and began to proclaim that same-sex marriage would destroy heterosexual marriage.
I hope they are right--same-sex marriage will
mean the death of patriarchal marriage. Only then can those preparing for marriage have a decent chance of building a new set of expectations, including continuing to build their relationship as equals for the rest of their lives, leaving behind forever the idea of a "stable" marriage in favor of an "ever-deepening" marriage. The interview cited is from the Fresh Air from WHYY series on NPR and can be heard at http://www.npr.org. Click on "Archives" then scroll the calendar to June 2 and the Fresh Air listing "Marriage in Crisis--and the Role of Love."