Steve Watson

On the Modification of an Institution

A discussion with a group of friends turned – never mind how – to the subject of same-sex marriage (SSM.) I made the traditionalist claim that marriage is an institution whose purpose and function is to regulate sexual behaviour, to provide support for children and child-bearing women, and to support the nuclear family which is the smallest sustainable social structure and the fundamental partition of society. The laws supporting this institution accepted that function until quite recently. I argued that the SSM campaign and the changes to the law that it has occasioned are destructive of the traditional notion of marriage and risk subverting its valuable social function.

The problem with SSM, as I see it, is that the most popular argument given in support of the change is that marriage is supposed to be a recognition of inter-personal love and a support for the continuance of a relationship deemed essential for the happiness of the partners. This being the case there is no reason not to extend its coverage to partnerships of the same sex. Love and happiness are everyone’s right! Of course, I deny that this is a principal motivation for the continuance of the marriage institution – it is at best an incidental and historically unusual feature of modern marriage customs. As an end of marriage, however, this is competitive with the social good traditionally intended. It is not at all clear that the two ends can both be served by the same institution; nor has any effort been put into demonstrating or arguing that they can. If society comes to accept that rationale for marriage (implicitly even more than explicitly) and begins to treat marriage in general as being intended to support hedonistic goals rather than socially functional goals, then the originally accepted function of marriage may be subverted, and the institution may fail to produce the good effects of a well-functioning institution of marriage. In support of this contention, I think we’ve already begun to see the dire consequences of no-fault divorce – which was another institutional modification defended on reasonable grounds but inimical to the good functioning of the institution.

It occurs to me also that the case of the acceptance of SSM gives a clue to at least one mode by which institutions are made dynamic rather than static. Let us suppose that the form of marriage observing the traditional norms of that institution was in fact effective in bringing about the ‘intended’ stability in the formation and maintenance of the family unit. It may nevertheless have been the case that dissatisfaction with that institution arose from the perceived inability of that institution under those conditions to reasonably provide for the happiness (romantic contentment, companionability, etc.) of the participants. Dissatisfaction there might have led to a conviction that such happiness ought to be an intended outcome of the institution – or that the institution that made such personal happiness impossible ought to be dissolved. The latter is an extreme conclusion, but it is one that has certainly had its defenders in the socialist, feminist, and (prior) homosexual rights movements. Desiring to retain the institution, however, and desiring modification of its intended function to include the happiness criterion, would naturally lead to a modification of the set of norms that are considered applicable to the institution. Modification of the normset would then lead to a modification of the Institutional Function of marriage. Whether the modified function would match the intended function is quite another question.