Traditionally, the idea of being a little bit married made no more sense than being a little bit pregnant: You either were or you weren't. But that isn't so black and white anymore. As courts in the US deal with the issue of same-sex unions, they are reconsidering a fundamental question: What is marriage? And the ruling Tuesday by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court that the state constitution gives gay couples the right to marry opens the way for more litigation over the shades of gray.
For more than a decade, European countries have experimented with different forms of Marriage Lite -- from the registered partnerships that started in Norway and Denmark, to France's "civil solidarity pacts," which can be dissolved by either party on three months' notice.
The US, too, has gradually recognized more nontraditional unions, gay or straight: Many employers, including some state and local governments, extend some benefits to domestic partners. And Vermont recognizes "civil unions" between same-sex couples.
In different realms -- and different political circles -- there is now talk of creating new forms of semi-marriages, about blurring the lines between marriage and cohabitation, about common-law marriage and even about "delegalizing" marriage by taking the state out of the whole business of recognizing private relationships, and leaving people to solemnify their unions in religious ceremonies or private contracts.
Since the 1960s, marriage rates have declined, while unmarried births, cohabitation and divorce all increased, along with criticism of marriage as a flawed institution. Cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births are not going away.
In fact, there is evidence that the US is becoming a post-marital society. Americans living alone made up 26 percent of all households in the 2000 census, the first in which single-member households outnumbered married-couple households with children.
But these days, in part because of the debate over same-sex marriage, the institution of marriage is getting a rosy rethinking, one that stresses both the profound human yearning for lasting love and the practical benefits that marriage brings to both children and the marital partners.
"In the last five years, there's been much less written on `why do we need marriage, it's an oppressive relationship,' and much more on alternative forms of marriage," said Carol Sanger, who teaches family law at Columbia Law School.
The very idea of alternatives is an unhappy one for conservatives. "Whenever we have strayed from the idea of men and women committing themselves permanently in a caring relationship, and committing themselves to raising their children, that has meant the serious diminishment of well-being for men, women and children," said Glenn Stanton, the senior analyst for marriage and sexuality at Focus on the Family, a conservative group in Colorado.
Political and religious conservatives maintain that the word "marriage" must be reserved for the union of men and women. Since 1996, 37 states have passed laws declaring that marriage must join male and female, and a push is under way for a constitutional amendment along those lines.
But some conservatives recognize a need for new social forms like civil unions. "I'm not opposed to civil unions," said James Q. Wilson, the social scientist and author of The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families. "I understand that people who wish to live together may want to manage their affairs."
The most radical structural change being discussed these days is taking the state out of the marriage business.
"People who wanted religious ceremonies could still have them," Sanger said. "People could also write their own contracts formalizing individual agreements. To some extent, it's already happening, with prenuptial agreements, and homosexual couples' ceremonies that have nothing to do with the state. We're not used to thinking of commitment outside marriage, so the social status of other arrangements is unclear: Do you have to give presents if someone has a civil union, or registers a domestic partnership?"
Most conservatives say that the state must keep its central role in marital arrangements -- both because marriage is such a central institution and, as a practical matter, because when a private union dissolves, the state may have to decide what becomes of the children and the property.
"The state has to be involved in marriage," Wilson said. "Marriage is the foundation of organized society, our way of coping with intractable problems like getting men to take responsibility for children, managing the allocation of property, settling questions of custody. The argument that we could do it all by contract comes mainly from law professors, who have a much stronger belief in the power of contracts than other people."
Undoubtedly, marriage maintains unique symbolic value. For many homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, a civil union, a commitment ceremony or a registered partnership simply lacks the emotional, psychological and spiritual weight that centuries of tradition added to marriage.
"Marriage is more than a bundle of rights and privileges," said Nancy Cott, a history professor at Harvard and author of Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. "It's a word that's sacred to many people, and because of its symbolic value, its customs and history, it has superior status."
Witness the proliferation of same-sex weddings. "I am part of the first generation of gay people for whom coming out was not a big problem," said Steve Silberman, a San Francisco writer who last summer celebrated his union with his partner, Keith Karraker. "So when I met a guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and we thought about how to celebrate, the word marriage came to mind because I never thought of myself as anything other than normal. I wanted the tuxedos, the dancing, the Republican relatives flying in and my mother crying."
He added: "We just wanted marriage. Words are important and we deserve that word."
But is it marriage, if it is unrecognized by the state? What defines marriage? And what is it for? Procreation? Sex? Property distribution? Religion? There is no consensus: The debate over how and why marriage began, and its purpose today, is as contentious as the legal fight over same-sex marriages.
In recent surveys, most Americans say they disagree with the statement that having children is the main purpose of marriage. At the same time, polls find, most Americans oppose gay marriage.
"We have largely collapsed one model of marriage, where gendered identities were relatively clear, and we don't know where we are going with whatever the next one is going to be," said Hendrik Hartog, a history professor at Princeton.
"We may end up with differing worlds of marriage in differing parts of the country, just as, up to the 1940s, we had differing worlds of divorce in different states. It's not the most healthy situation, but I can't imagine that Utah's going to recognize gay marriages any time soon, whatever happens in Massachusetts."
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