In 2010, Washington, DC redefined marriage so that same-sex couples could marry.
Part of the argument in favor of redefining marriage has been that same-sex couples in committed relationships should be allowed to marry because they are in a long-term relationship…that sort of looks like marriage.
Now DC is considering legislation (at the Council level) that would make it easier for same-sex couples married in DC to divorce. This would also apply to any same-sex couple that married in DC and now live in a state where they can’t divorce because same-sex marriage is not recognized in the state.
On the one hand, I understand that divorce laws are an unfortunate necessity. But when such an issue was made concerning the level of commitment that same-sex couples were supposed to be living, it does give one something to ponder. We were told that such couples were already living the type of commitment that married people should be living.
I know that marriage for heterosexuals isn’t in the greatest shape and that divorce is all too common a result for many couples.
But isn’t it slightly off that after all the championing of same-sex marriage, we suddenly (less than two years since DC Council approved same-sex marriage) need to pass divorce laws?
Before we start redefining marriage, we ought to do what we can to strengthen it. If creating more marriage-like relationships just leads to more divorce, I’m not sure what the upside is for expanding marriage beyond its traditional definition.
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Part of the misinformation in the divorce rate is that not all “divorce” is equal. For couples who marry north of around 25 years old, who have never been married before, who have never lived with anyone before, who don’t come from divorced homes, and who have no children prior to marriage, the divorce rate is around 20 percent (I don’t recall the exact numbers.) But when you pile on multiple marriages, people with prior children, people who lived together, etc. you end up with the 50 percent statistic. True “traditional marriage” has a low divorce rate. People who have huge amounts of baggage have high divorce rates. We shouldn’t all get lumped together.
Hm. I wonder, how long after Loving v. Virginia the first interracial couple asked for a divorce.
By your own logic, if it was a couple years, more or less, then we should perhaps have fixed the “problems” of traditional intraracial marriages first before “redefining” it in those states to include interracial couples.
If this is the kind of “ethical and cultural analysis” typical of your work, Dr. Pia, frankly I’m not impressed; and you should be ashamed of appealing to an argument of this form. The argument for same-sex marriage is not that these couples are *more* committed that heterosexuals, just that their commitment levels are pretty similar. As are those of inter- & intra-racial couples. The suggestion that there is something suspect about the fact that same-sex marriages have, at times, the /same/ troubles that opposite-sex marriages do, instead of seeing that this illustrates their basic equality, reveals that you just plain don’t get the point.
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