Over at the marriagedebate blog, William Eskridge and Darren Spedale respond to my piece, “Smoking Gun.” Well, although Eskridge and Spedale appear to be responding to me, they still haven’t actually discussed my points about “catching up,” remarriages among divorced, or birth order. Nor have Eskridge and Spedale responded to my more extended critique of their Scandinavia argument in “No Nordic Bliss.” They prefer to repeat their favorite points and ignore my replies, even as they claim to be issuing a response.
Eskridge and Spedale want to blame the substantial acceleration in Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrates entirely on the opening up of registered partnerships to both gay, and especially straight, couples in 1997. The implication is that any problems for marriage were caused by the symbolism of this “marriage lite” institution for straights. Supposedly, the passage of formal gay marriage in 2000 sent an opposite and more “conservative” pro-marriage message. But this whole line of thinking is mistaken.
What Eskridge and Spedale need to explain is how the same Dutch politicians who established a “conservative” institution like same-sex marriage in 2000 could have created a “marriage lite” institution like registered partnerships just three years earlier. The answer is that Dutch politicians never saw gay marriage as a conservative, pro-marriage step to begin with. Gay marriage didn’t draw Dutch politicians back to marital conservatism. On the contrary, gay marriage deepened their existing belief in a flexible “menu” approach to relationships. (For details, see “Going Dutch?”)
Gay marriage is not the conservative step Jonathan Rauch says it is. Gay marriage is just another form of marriage lite. Once you’re prepared to bring partners who cannot between them create children into either a de facto or a formal system of marriage, you are opening yourself to a “marriage lite” mentality. So it’s not surprising that the same legislators who favored gay registered partnerships should have also created straight registered partnerships. Nor is it surprising that when formal same-sex marriage was created, parliament kept the registered partnership system in tact. It was all part of the same way of thinking, rooted in the notion that the unified functions and benefits of marriage (parenthood, above all) can be disaggregated, disentangled, and reapportioned in many different ways.
Eskridge and Spedale ought to understand this, since they themselves have endorsed a marriage lite, “menu” approach to partnerships. Eskridge and Spedale even recommend that an American state should abolish marriage altogether and set up a flexible, across-the-board partnership registration system from scratch, in its place. Just as Eskridge and Spedale favor both gay marriage and various menu-like deconstructions of marriage, the Dutch parliament adopted gay marriage, not out of reverence for the institution, but as a way of deconstructing it.
Do Eskridge and Spedale favor the continuation of Dutch registered partnerships alongside of same-sex marriage? If so, they endorse a step that, by their own testimony, draws people away from marriage. Yet if Eskridge and Spedale do not endorse the continuation of a Dutch “marriage lite” alongside gay marriage, they are repudiating the menu approach they put forward in their book. It would appear that Eskridge and Spedale support a “marriage lite” policy that, by their own testimony, undermines marriage.
That energetic gay marriage supporters like Eskridge and Spedale can defend parental cohabitation, and even call for the experimental replacement of marriage by a complex partnership system, speaks volumes about the real implications of same-sex marriage. Eskridge and Spedale are trying to use Jonathan Rauch’s arguments against “marriage lite,” while actually revealing, by their own advocacy, that Rauch’s interpretation of gay marriage is incorrect. As with the Dutch parliament, Eskridge’s and Spedale’s own support for same-sex marriage flows from and reinforces their support for various forms of “marriage lite.”
Here’s another question. Since Eskridge and Spedale argue that unmarried parental cohabitation is really nothing to worry about, why do they even care whether the Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate goes up or not? Would Eskridge and Spedale like to see the Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate come down? If so, how can they reconcile that with their published defense of Scandinavian parental cohabitation? If not, what’s the point of this debate?
However much Eskridge and Spedale deny it, the substantial acceleration in Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrates following the passage of registered partnerships, and then gay marriage, is exactly the sort of evidence of rate accelleration they call for in their book. Comparable spikes in Eastern European out-of-wedlock birthrates are widely recognized as both significant and in need of explanation. And contrary to Eskridge and Spedale, I have discussed other factors that might have contributed to this rate increase in some detail (see “No Explanation.”) Moreover, in “Dutch Debate” I show that there are indeed those in The Netherlands who share my concerns about same-sex marriage.