Millennials and Same-Sex Marriage

Eighteen years ago last Sunday, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was signed into law with substantial bipartisan Congressional support. Since then, same-sex unions have slowly gone from that which politicians were embarrassed to admit they supported to that which politicians are embarrassed to admit they ever opposed.

This reversal of sentiments among politicians tracks very closely with millennials’ coming of age: Indeed, the general support among Americans under thirty for redefining marriage may be part of what has made these politicians so ready to reverse their public positions. Marriage redefinition is the civil rights issue du jour because the next generation of voters is overwhelmingly in favor of it, but it is worth considering why these opinions developed in the first place.

If you asked my peers, they might attribute this generational shift to basic human decency. They are not influenced by the same prejudices that affected previous generations. My peers would not be wrong to say this: The desire to see gay people fully accepted and integrated into society is a result of embracing basic human decency. It’s fairly obvious that variations in sexual orientation are not variations in levels of human dignity. This recognition is only facilitated by the fact that millennials can easily put a human face on the issue: Nearly everyone has or has had a gay mentor, friend, or sibling (or, failing those, any number of figures in popular culture). It is an easy argument to make, and it’s one that we’ve all been hearing for years. It’s no wonder, then, that it has sunk in.

That gay people should be accepted as full members of society is fairly obvious. That their relationships—or any set of romantic relationships—should be recognized as marriages is not as obvious as many take it to be. The institution of marriage itself is taken for granted with no explanation for why the state should be involved in the first place. We can see further evidence for this phenomenon in the fact that the suggested libertarian solution of getting government out of the marriage business has gained traction outside of those circles normally sympathetic to libertarian arguments.

Unlike the argument for the acceptance of gay people, the argument for the existence of marriage is not basic. It is not immediately obvious. It is a more complex argument, and it’s an argument that many young people haven’t actually heard. This observation—which I am far from the first to make—shouldn’t be surprising. As evidenced by the bipartisan support for DOMA, it was once possible to take for granted that nearly everyone would have at least a basic understanding of and appreciation for the importance of marriage and family not only for individuals, but for society as a whole. There was a time when people would have implicitly understood that it would be impossible to refer to any same-sex couple as married without a substantial redefinition of foundational cultural institutions, not simply a small change in the availability of legal benefits, and they could therefore accept DOMA despite its having been written by thrice-married Bob Barr, supported by Newt Gingrich (then on his second, and now third, marriage), and signed by that great paragon of marital fidelity, Bill Clinton.

This is not and cannot be the case with a generation for whom single parenthood and divorce are normal and for whom a successful marriage seems more like a product of luck than of mutual effort and dedication. We cannot accept arguments about the importance of marital norms from people whose devotion to and exemplification of those ideals is questionable at best. If we have been liberated of certain prejudices of our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, we have also lost whatever sense they may have had that marriage is a unique and integral part of the foundation and fabric of society. We are personally unbiased, but also socially uprooted.

Unlike the social acceptance of LGBT people, the social importance of marriage is not an issue with a face that every young person has seen every day at school or through the media—or, rather, it is not a face that we have been taught to readily recognize as such. The face of conjugal marriage is not the face that we see daily; it’s the one that we don’t see at all. It is the face of the parent who isn’t there—the face of the father or mother who, because of divorce, abandonment, or artificial reproductive methods like surrogacy or egg or sperm donation, is not present to take up the joyful obligations and wondrous burdens of parenthood. Once we learn to notice this absence, we will again be able to see the argument for the civil institution of marriage in the face of every child who has been denied the chance to experience the love of their own mother or father.

And yet giving a face to those affected by the redefinition of marriage will not be sufficient to convince millennials or society at large of the unique social importance of the institution. Putting a face on the issue will only open the door to a discussion about the fact that there has been a (not entirely intentional) redefinition of marriage over the last century, and that this cultural and legal redefinition has not been for the better. A healthy marriage culture is something for which neither a welfare state nor the legal recognition of every kind of relationship we can imagine from polyamory to bromance can compensate.

This is not an argument that most members of my generation have heard, but it’s one that we need to hear if we are to finally reverse the harm done by no-fault divorce and the redefinitions of marriage that both preceded it and followed in its wake. I know that I do not only speak for myself when I say that those of us who have stepped forward to articulate these points, even at the risk of being misunderstood, have often been surprised at how receptive our peers can be. Marriage is not an outdated institution in need of redefinition, but a foundational social practice in need of conscientious, compassionate, and determined defenders.