The qualitative and quantitive framework of marriage
Prof. Michael Scaperlanda has this post at Mirror of Justice. He writes:
Marriage – as a public institution – is in deep trouble, there is no doubt about it. And, to be perfectly clear, the trouble has nothing to do with the debate over SSM. Traditionally marriage has had one quantitative and three qualitative elements: two people; man and woman; monogamous; and permanent. (…)
Biologically, 1 + 1 = 1 when it comes to the coupling of one man and one woman, but 1 + 1 = 0 when it comes to the coupling of two men or two women. In nature, one man and one woman make one reproductive unit. Does this biological fact signify a deeper reality about the nature of man and woman and the relationship between the two or is it merely a fact of nature that has been overcome by technology?
The entire Western tradition of marriage echoes in Prof. Scaperlanda’s post. As Professor Charles J. Reid, Jr. (University of St. Thomas) argues in The Augustinian Goods of Marriage: The Disappearing Cornerstone of the American Law of Marriage, 18 BYU J. Pub. L. 449 (2004), marriage jurisprudence owes a fundamental debt to “the work of St. Augustine, the fifth century North African bishop and doctor of the Church, who identified as the three essential elements of the marital relationship procreation, fidelity, and lifelong unity.”
According to Prof. Reid, the Augustinian influence extended even into modern American jurisprudence. This is not surprising given that the Catholic Church, itself, argues that the foundational principles of marriage identified by St. Augustine are not dependent on religious or sectarian dogma as such, but rather they reside in the natural order to which all men are subject. See, e.g., Catechism of the Catholic Church, para. 1601 et. seq. Historically, most Western thinkers would have agreed and joined Catholics in citing Christ’s appeal to nature in his response to the Pharisees over the question of divorce. See, Matthew 19:8. Disagreements about the theological meaning and significance of marriage have persisted in Western society at least since the Reformation. The legal and political means of regulating marriage have also varied, but the essential attributes of the marital definition were not in question.
Professor Reid sets these “goods of marriage” and the tradition that has upheld them against the taken-for-granted assumption - resistant to what Scaperlanda calls the “deeper meaning” of marriage - that “affection” and “preference” are adequate legal grounds for the institution of marriage. Reid writes:
But affection, personal commitment, love between persons, seem to be insufficient, without more, to provide a coherent foundation for marriage. What does it mean to say that a marriage is grounded on “affection?” What if affection, or commitment, vanish? What if affection cannot be confined to a single party? What if loyalty shifts? The Augustinian goods provided a framework for answering these and other such questions. It is unclear what framework could or should prevail if the traditional conception of marriage comes to be supplanted.