Civil Unions and Public Policy

So Hawaii is once again considering civil unions for same sex couples. The proposed legislation would allow same sex couples to get "civilly unified" into relationships that are legally equivalent to traditional marriage.

I support the effort wholeheartedly. I support it from the perspective of human compassion and social justice. But I'm even more convinced that encouraging gays to form marital relationships (even if we call them something else) is very good public policy.

Marriage is, by far, the most beneficial social institution we have. Its not merely that individuals benefit in myriad ways from their own marriages (which is not true in every case, but true far more often than not). Its also that the prospect of marrying, and the expectation that one will eventually marry, promote and encourage a wide array of socially desirable behaviors among non-married people. This is particularly true among young people.

I wholeheartedly agree with conservatives on one point - marriage is a bedrock institution of our civil order. We have a keen interest in preserving marriage and keeping marriage the default expectation for adult life.

However, the opponents of gay marriage have misunderstood the main threat marriage faces. The greatest threat to marriage is not the inclusion of gays - its the proliferation of what Jonathan Rauch called alternative "marriage lite" arrangements. According to Rauch, a "marriage lite arrangement" is any program or system, legal or informal, that extends any of the legal benefits of marriage to "couples" who have either chosen not to marry or who are precluded from marrying. These include domestic partnership arrangements, reciprocal beneficiary systems, corporate programs if benefit sharing, and the like.

Marriage benefits us precisely because it conditions its benefits upon our solemn promises to meet very specific responsibilities to our spouses. The occasion of a wedding is not merely a celebration of love. It is a ceremony in which two people stand before their loved ones, their closest friends, and society at large (in the form of the law), and exchange promises of love, support, and faithfulness "for better or worse, in sickness and health, till death do us part." And these are promises that everyone present (rightly) expects them to keep (or to at least try to keep).

Alternatives to marriage, to a greater or lessor degree, mimic the legal privileges extended to marriages without imposing any marital responsibilities on the parties. That is, they validate and support mutual love, but ask for nothing in return. In marriage lite arrangements, promises need not be exchanged and commitments are not enforced, be it by law, custom, or social expectation. This makes marriage lite arrangements attractive to many people, and the more people that enter them, the more legitimate they become, particularly as alternatives to the comparatively onerous commitments of traditional marriage.

Unfortunately, because unmarried informal relationships are far less stable (and less prestigious) than traditional marriages, they fail to deliver many of the benefits of marriage, both to the alternatively arranged parties themselves and to everyone else. It turns out that its good for people to be in relationships where there are socially enforced and legally supported obligations of care and commitment. Arrangements requiring no commitment harm us all.

Society has a keen interest in supporting marriage as a default expectation for adult life (not a requirement, of course, but a legally supported social preference). It also has an interest in delegitimatizing "marriage lite" alternatives. Ironically, the fact that gays are precluded from marrying is the single biggest factor supporting the proliferation of marriage lite alternatives. Growing respect for gay relationships, and sympathy over the fact that gays are excluded from marriage, is the driving force behind the development of marriage lite alternatives.

The"civil unions" being contemplated by Hawaii's legislature are marriages in every way but name. By enacting civil unions, Hawaii would reap the enormous benefits of marriage being a default social expectation for all of our citizens. Hawaii would also undermine the legitimacy of marriage lite alternatives. For these reasons alone, we should do it.

I'm not crazy about the stigma implicit in our act of refusing to call gay relationships "marriages" - which was, by the way, the basis for the California Supreme Court's decision overturning its system of civil unions and requiring that all California citizens be allowed to marry. I'd prefer that we amend our state constitution to repeal the amendment banning gay marriage. But I think civil unions are a significant step in the right direction and, in the end, they will lead to marriage for all. So I support the bill.

Joe H.

P.S. These are not original arguments. Much of what I've come to believe about the subject was introduced by Jonathan Rauch in his book "Gay Marriage" which I highly endorse.