One excellent point Sam Schulman makes in “The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage” is that heterosexual romantic love (and heterosexual romantic marriage) is not threatened by same-sex marriage. Rather, it’s the political “kinship system” of marriage that’s threatened.

The kinship system the the method through which women are treated as sexual property and breeding stock, and the “marriage” is not really the marriage of a woman and a man but one family unit to another family unit. Schulman says same sex marriage makes these elements of the kinship system inoperative:

1. Families protect the honor and virginity of women until marriage.
2. After marriage the groom joins the bride’s male family members in peerage, while the bride joins the groom’s family in service to the more senior female family members.
3. The kinship system allows the family or wider society to determine what sexual relationships are legitimate or illicit.
4. Marriage is an initiation rite which marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adult responsibilities.

Most people I know are glad to see the end of features one, two, and three. If same sex marriage can put a nail into the coffin of this vision of marriage, the funeral can’t happen fast enough.

Not Schulman, though. He thinks same sex marriage is a fad that will pass because it’s not compatible with this, the bedrock principles of marriage.

Lest you think I’m a little harsh in my characterization of Schulman’s argument, he’s pretty direct about thinking the kinship system’s most compelling purpose is to treat women as breeding stock:

This most profound aspect of marriage–protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex–is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status of the sexuality of one partner but not the other (and her protection from the other sex)–these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers.

And here’s where he describes how same sex marriage makes it difficult to create political alliances and determine the proper servile status of the bride:

In many societies, such as village India and Jewish Chicagoland, a new bride becomes no more than an unpaid servant to her mother- and sisters-in-law. Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband. [ ... ] A wedding between same-sex lovers does not create the fact (or even the feeling) of kinship between a man and his husband’s family; a woman and her wife’s kin. It will be nothing like the new kinship structure that a marriage imposes willy-nilly on two families who would otherwise loathe each other.

Which side is he arguing? I mean, is this the society we really want?

Our modern vision of marriage assumes both individuals are adults, that they are both capable of making their own decisions, and that they are peers. Parents have a guidance role in this but no actual financial or authoritarian interest. The woman’s interests are protected not by the males of the family but through the same legal framework men have always had.

This is the mechanism that has already supplanted the kinship system in most of the regions adopting same-sex marriage. Most of us — those who believe in personal liberty and female equality — find this a much more effective and equitable system.

Ignoring our new implications

Schulman’s assumes that same-sex marriage is just about the pomp-and-circumstance of weddings, and since homosexuals can’t participate in the kinship system there’s no other reason for a marriage to happen. But he’s ignoring both the emotional commitment marriage celebrates and the financial and legal status marriage solidifies.

Schulman says:

Can we imagine Frank’s family and friends warning him that “If Joe were serious, he would put a ring on your finger”? Do we ask Vera to stop stringing Sally along?

Well, yes. Many gay people are looking for stable, life-long committed relationships, others are just having a good time — which is no different from heterosexuals. Schulman may have to imagine, but I have actually heard these kinds of discussions. Toying with someone’s affections is considered inappropriate in both heterosexual and homosexual culture.

Gay marriage may reside outside the kinship system, but it has all the wedding-planning, nest-building fun of marriage but none of its rules or obligations (except the duties that all lovers have toward one another). [ ... ] But without these obligations–why marry? Gay marriage is as good as no marriage at all.

In western democracies, however, marriage is not based on the kinship system but on civil contracts.  People rely on access to courts and law, not family, to protect their personal and financial interests. Marriage confers access to those legal structures regardless of any “kinship” ties. here’s significant legal ramifications for living together versus being married.

An attack on romantic love

Schulman’s vision does far more damage to my own marriage than the relationships of my gay friends ever could. Because we rejected the kinship system — consciously, and with the support of both sets of parents — I assume Schulman also sees our marriage as “no marriage at all.”

Schulman says he has been married three times, and he would probably never have married at all except for the “kinship system.” It would seem, then, that the kinship system does not work any better. At least, not in an environment in which women legally belong to themselves, and not their husband’s family.

I would never have married, myself, if I had thought the woman I loved would be subjected to the whims and authority of my aunts, uncles, parents, and grandparents. And I doubt she would have married me.