Same Sex Marriage - A Historical Perspective

            A vote to restore the special recognition of one man/one woman marriage could occur in the New Hampshire House of Representatives as early as January 2012.  I’ve been thinking it over, and the truth is I’m finding it difficult to form an opinion regarding the same-sex marriage issue.  On most issues I tend to lean toward the right of the individual to choose what’s best rather than depend on the coercive dictates of government.  I generally have a “live and let live” attitude toward laws.  I try to make a clear distinction between statutes and morality.  The fact that I may think something is wrong doesn’t necessarily mean everyone else must think the same thing.

          Generally, I find the first step in forming an opinion about a proposed law is to look for a victim.  If what we do hurts someone else, I usually believe the government has an inherent prerogative to limit a citizen’s actions.  I seldom consider the issue of fairness, since neither individuals nor governments seem to have much success determining what’s fair.  It often is determined on a sliding scale, creating more victims than fairness.

         For the most part, the things supporters of same-sex marriage want to accomplish don’t seem to create victims.  Actually when government fails to provide a mechanism for the equal distribution of legal options to individuals who choose to commit to another person of the same gender, the victims appear to be the committed couple.

         Despite this analysis, as a historian-in-training I have that nagging little voice in my head that counsels an examination of similar circumstances in history.  Fortunately, we have such a historical similarity right here in New Hampshire.  Shaker communities were founded in Canterbury in 1792 and Enfield in 1793.  The Shakers provide some insight because of the philosophies that governed their communities.

         Shakers believed in equal rights for women, a concept that was well ahead of its time.  Ann Lee assumed leadership of the sect in 1758, and it was led by many women from then on.  All members were required to remain celibate because the group held a dim view of marriage and sexual intercourse.  The denomination was popular, and over the first century more than 20,000 converts joined over 20 Shaker settlements.  Marital procreation was unavailable as a means of enlarging their communities, so they used conversion, indenturing of children, adoption and taking in homeless children.  The Shakers lived in “families” of men and women who occupied a separate large house.  There were plenty of both genders to care for the children, and the structured “families” provided a safe and predictable environment.

         You may ask what this has to do with the same-sex marriage issue.  It seems to me the most powerful argument for one man/one woman marriage is the inherent duty of governments to encourage the continuation of the population through procreation, and to enact laws that structure the process and protect, as much as possible, all participants including the children.  It seems reasonable then, that a definition of marriage needs to include the potential ability to procreate.  This doesn’t, of course, preclude a need for some legal mechanism protecting “partnership” options, which in most areas other than procreation are similar to marriage.

         Lack of government encouragement of marital procreation has serious consequences.  The inability to pay for needed social programs in Europe and the U.S. can be directly attributed to declines in the birth rate.  In addition, healthy, growing economies need regular new crops of consumers.  European countries thought they could do without those pesky, expensive new generations, and found themselves not only broke, but also battling ever increasing hordes of immigrants willing to replace the internally procreated citizens who were never born.  Although we’re not quite as bad off as Europe, we seem to be careening down the same road at an alarming rate.

        The problem of equating “partnerships” with the incomparable, procreation-based institution of marriage is that same-sex partners can’t procreate within the marriage and the married folks feel less of a special obligation to procreate since they come to perceive their status as no different than a juiced-up cohabitation situation.

        The big question is: “Why is this distinction important?”  The answer is that all government policies have consequences, and this decision could have major consequences.  The Shaker experiment had nearly all the elements of a traditional family.  Men and women raised the children.  The “families” were safe and structured.  The children were well educated, religiously trained, and taught to work hard.  The one missing element was marital procreation.  There was obviously some procreating going on somewhere because the Shakers were able to acquire children outside the one man/one woman marital union.  The Shakers thought this was a solution to the procreation dilemma as do many of today’s supporters of same-sex marriage.  The problem is, it didn’t work out real well.  As of December 2009, there were three Shakers left.

       Obviously this comparison is not perfect, but I believe it does have some merit.  At the very least, as we consider this issue, we need to remember the possible consequences.  Would the consequences of returning one man/one woman marriage to its former status be as potentially catastrophic as continuing same-sex marriage?  The Shakers found out the answer too late.  Let’s try to do better.