An adult approach to marriage

The Washington Supreme Court decision concerning gay marriage revolved around the question of whether the Legislature made a reasonable judgment when it limited marriage to an individual man and an individual woman. The court's majority decision invoked precedent and history to suggest that the Legislature was reasonable (although not necessarily right) to believe that promoting heterosexual marriage serves the vital public good of creating households in which children are raised by their biological parents.

Even if we put aside the fact that thousands of American households no longer fit the Legislature's description, the court concluded that the Washington Legislature set out a legitimate public-policy goal without violating the fundamental rights of any group of citizens under Washington's constitution.

The premise of the court's decision is that the primary goal of marriage has historically been to manage reproduction by ensuring that children are raised by their biological parents.

While one cannot doubt that this is a part, perhaps the most important part, of marriage's history, Americans do not limit marriage's benefits exclusively to children. Marriage serves adults as well. If adults benefit from marriage, we are forced to question whether the benefits of marriage should, or even can under the state constitution, be limited to heterosexual couples.

Modern American marriage dates to the early 19th century. In the decades after the American Revolution, Americans abandoned much of the old Colonial heritage of the male-controlled patriarchal household. In its place, American writers emphasized the importance of love between husbands and wives and between parents and children. While only a handful of Americans in this period advocated equal rights for men and women, families were transformed into affectionate communities in which mutual obligation through love replaced the older ideal of male control and female and filial duty.

Love was meant to promote the well-being of children, of course, but it also served adults. At a time of intense social and economic change, marriages were seen as sources of stability in which both men and women were given a permanent helpmate to aid their way in the world.

One of the most popular writers about marriage, Henry Clarke Wright, wrote in his 1854 book "Marriage and Parentage" that marriages must serve both partners. In marriage, spouses commit themselves to each other, helping each become a better person.

This point was echoed by many others. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, considered marriage the basis for individual self-improvement. With the help of a loving mate, we can become better people. Our mates help us become all that we can be.

Marriage is particularly well-suited for this purpose. Unlike other relationships in society, marriages are intended to be permanent. Because they are permanent, each partner has a vested interest in promoting the well-being of the other. Marriages are also distinct because they are unions of love and not self-interest.

In the market, individuals buy and sell based on mutual self-interest. Society sanctions each seeking to get the most at another's expense. This is good business. In a loving relationship, however, partners must commit themselves to promote the other's happiness rather than one's own. As a result, married couples are provided lifetime companions whose love ensures their continued support through the perilous waters of life.

Because marriages serve adults as well as children, the state authorizes various benefits to spouses. While the legitimacy of many of those benefits was not at issue in the case before the court, and remain to be litigated, they remind us that marriages in Washington and throughout the United States provide tangible legal and economic privileges to heterosexual adults that go well beyond what is needed for the care of children. This is because we see marriages as involving a relationship between adults as well as between adults and children.

To the extent that marriages are about more than just reproduction, discriminating on the basis of gender violates one of the traditional reasons that Americans have supported marriage. We each deserve the help of another. Life is hard enough.

The aid of a loving companion devoted to our welfare is sometimes the biggest benefit we have in negotiating life's obstacles. Limiting marriages to heterosexuals denies gays and lesbians one of the biggest public and private benefits of marriage.

Johann N. Neem is assistant professor of history at Western Washington University in Bellingham.