Thoughts on Marriage and Gender

A friend of mine commented that the NJ law really wouldn't affect much, since the IRS now "explicitly states (since Massachusetts) that `married' on the tax return only applies if you are a man and a woman".

I wonder, did the IRS manage to define what they mean by man or woman?

I know two people who have had sex-change operations. They get a new birth certificate indicating their new gender. Actually, they apply for (and I understand receive) the legal paperwork prior to the actual surgery. So legal gender may not match "equipment".

I know of a married couple who both had sex change operations. Their marriage is "between one man and one woman" but which is which might be debatable. Neither is their birth gender. But it really seems to me to be their business and none of mine.

And I have no idea of what role sex has in all this. I once asked one of my transgendered friends whether she was planning to date guys or girls (I had no idea of his/her preference before the operation) and she said she didn't know (or for all I know, maybe didn't want to say); that gender preference really isn't about sex. It's more about who you feel yourself to be rather than to whom you are attracted.

So is a being a man/woman a matter of chromosomes or a matter of gender roles? What gender roles (if any) do the government have a stake in supporting? Can the government support specific gender roles without gender discrimination?

Some American Indian tribes once allowed people (men, anyway) to declare themselves female. They then adopted the social roles of women. I don't know if sex figured into it; it seems to have been a social role adoption more than a statement of homosexuality (the scene in Little Big Man notwithstanding).

In a similar fashion, I understand that Amish women can formally adopt a non-womanly role. I read the biography of an Amish midwife, who, when she decided on this career, made a declaration in church and adopted the dress style of a married woman, thereby taking herself out of the pool of potential wives. This is not the same as being legally regendered as a man, but it is an interesting example of a society with fairly rigid gender roles adapting to a need to flex those roles.

Gender roles in most societies fulfill a definite function, and if they are fixed, usually have a mechanism to handle exceptions (such as the ones above). Absent that function, they are merely remnants of an earlier social order that impede the functioning of individuals, and will eventually yield to change.

In the US, so-called "traditional" gender roles (man the outside wage-earner, woman the household manager) have already been disrupted, with the blessing of the government. Managing the household has been trivialized, as part of the shift from an agrarian lifestyle to company employee, and it is now assumed that both partners earn money outside the household. Legislation to redress the so-called "marriage penalty" really addressed the situation where a defacto partnership had been formed but was not being reported as such; two singletons living independently have no advantage such as was assumed by the rhetoric surrounding the debate. Yet any support for the 'family farm', or other situation which would require an equal but internally-employed partner, has disappeared from government policy. The fifties, lovingly touted as the epitome of 'family values', were a transition era, when the gender role of the household manager devolved into slavish adoration of the manly wage-earner. That role was obviously unsustainable, and fractured into the disparate interpretations of appropriate gender roles we see today.

Personally, I think that we should replace the religious concept of marriage with a secular legal concept of 'household' or domestic partnership. But this does not need to be a sexual relationship. Living in some sort of partnership or group is more advantageous, socially and economically, than living alone. There are a pair of elderly sisters in England who live together, and are suing the British courts into giving them the tax advantages conveyed on married couples, or now on domestic partners. They feel that the mere fact that they are not having sex with each other should not disqualify them from governmental benefits. I agree. I think that you should be allowed to designate at least one other person to be your legal representative, partner, beneficiary, whatever. It doesn't matter if that person is a spouse, a friend, a sibling, or even a child or parent. The point is, with you they form a functioning social and economic unit that can and should be recognized in law. It's not a matter of who is having sex with whom.

If a church believes that this partnership should only be between a man and a woman, fine. Let the churches demand that of their members. Churches already have all sorts of demands on their members; some say you can't drink, others say you have to go proselytize door-to-door, some specify how you spend your leisure time; heck, remember when the Moonies staged the mass wedding of thousands of followers? The church matched them up and specified who should marry whom. They specifically wanted interracial marriages. Other churches forbid interracial marriages. If people are willing to go along with the dictates of their church, fine -- but it really has very little to do with the government helping people to establish units of social stability and mutual support.

Once upon a time, it was unthinkable that society could function without a division into nobles and peasants. A growing middle class disrupted this order, but eventually the class system created a place for a middle class. It really took the colonization of a new continent to show that it was possible to create a society not instituted on class distinctions, and not ruled by a King anointed of God. (I'm not saying we don't have class distinctions, because we certainly do, and we really don't see too many trailer-park residents elected to Congress, but America demonstrated to Europe that such a thing was at least possible. It challenged the assumption that class stratification was the natural and necessary order of things.)

It could be that challenging the assumption of the validity of gender roles will require something just as drastic.

We have been (in my opinion) hung up on the sex part of sex roles. In picturing same-sex marriage, many people are disturbed by imagining how that 'works', in a way that never enters the picture when a paraplegic gets married. If a siamese twin gets married, it causes ribald jokes rather than repugnance. But does the social role of marriage involve sex at all? Many assume (probably erroneously) that May-December marriages are about caretaking and inheritance instead of sex. But the validity of those marriages are not challenged, even by those churches who state that marriage is all about begetting children.

We really have three separate issues. One is who may have sex with whom. I believe that to be totally outside of the purview of governmental legislation, as long as we are talking about consensual sex between competent adults. Many religions have something to say on this; fine. They are welcome to try to convert me, and if I convert, I will follow their strictures. But they do not have the right to impose their beliefs on others who believe differently.

The second issue is establishing units for mutual social and economic support. It is a recognized role of government to care for its people; philosophies differ as to how much and how. Some think the government should actively support the less-privileged, some think the government should just prevent exploitation. Others think the government should stay out of the way as much as possible. But governments inevitably tax their citizens, and establish laws regarding property and guardianship. These laws recognize family ties, and so the definition of those ties are important to the government. Marriage is the primary method by which previously unrelated people are made related, so marriage rightfully becomes of concern to the government -- specifically because so many other laws use the marriage bond as a factor in their application. That is the cause and the scope of governmental concern in this regard, and a definition of marriage that includes gays, or the establishment of a domestic partnership between two people not in a physical relationship, would not disturb the government's interest.

The third issue is defining gender roles. Like class roles, these are not easily controlled by legislation. In the middle ages, restricting short coats to nobility made sense; today, we see such sumptuary laws as an absurdity. Gender roles will adapt and change as society evolves, and the legislature really has little say in the matter, save to oppress those who are doing things legislators do not approve of. But their disapproval will not stay social change.

I think we need a government-recognized social unit, but I don't see that sex, race, gender, social class or anything of the sort is a necessary requirement of that unit. Churches are free to bless or not bless whatever unions they choose. My church feels that love is a reflection of God's love and thus of the spirit, while gender is a condition of the body. We will therefore allow gay marriages, feeling that the expression and recognition of loving unions is in accordance with the will of God. Other religions feel differently. The government should not force the issue one way or the other. Those who wish to only marry the opposite gender are quite free to do so. That is a religious decision. The government role is merely to allow people to establish a social unit which then enables the body of law to apply.