Marriage, gay ‘marriage’, love and football

Over a decade ago a famous British sociologist called Anthony Giddens was asked to give the Reith Lectures for the BBC which he entitled, “Runaway world”.  Each lecture he addressed what he perceived to be the major challenges we are facing as we experience life in a new ‘global’ world.  So significant were these changes that he describes us as living through a period of revolution.   In his fourth lecture Giddens began with these words,

“Among all the changes going on today, none are more important than those happening in our personal lives – in sexuality, emotional life, marriage and the family. There is a global revolution going on in how we think of ourselves and how we form ties and connections with others. It is a revolution advancing unevenly in different regions and cultures, with many resistances. As with other aspects of the runaway world, we don’t know what the ratio of advantages and anxieties will turn out to be. In some ways, these are the most difficult and disturbing transformations of all. Most of us can tune out from larger problems for much of the time. We can’t opt out, however, from the swirl of change reaching right into the heart of our emotional lives.” (emphasis mine)

Among all the changes going on today, none are more important that those happening in our personal lives.  I couldn’t agree more.

That was 1999.

Today is 2012, and things continue to change.

As if to confirm the truth, Barak Obama, the president of America, recently declared himself in support of Gay marriage.  His own journey reflects the speed of how ideas and attitudes are changing.  Just 18 months ago he said this, keeping his options open while reasserting that civil unions were sufficient equality for gay people.

“As I’ve said, you know, my feelings about this are constantly evolving. I struggle with this. I have friends, I have people who work for me who are in powerful, strong, long-lasting gay or lesbian unions, and they are extraordinary people, and this is something that means a lot to them and they care deeply about.  At this point, what I’ve said is, is that my baseline is a strong civil union that provides them the protections and the legal rights that married couples have. And I think — and I think that’s the right thing to do. But I recognize that, from their perspective, it is not enough. And I think this is something that we’re going to continue to debate and I personally am going to continue to wrestle with going forward.”

Over the last 18 months his ideas have changed and so today he said this,

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbours when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married”

I was born in 1967.  At the beginning of 1967 gay sex in the UK was illegal.  By the end of the year it had been decriminalised.  We have come a long way as a society in a short time.  In 44 years we have moved from seeing gay sex as illegal to seeing gay marriage as completely acceptable.

Giddens was right.  And it’s affecting every one of us, every family, every person, every school, every college, every church.

The tide has turned and nothing is going to stop it.

So it is of no surprise as a leader of a church, within a wider church that is wrestling with these issues in a very visible way, that I too am having to rethink my ideas from the ground up.  Should I let go of my increasingly out dated inherited views and join the president?

I’m not yet convinced and neither is the church, as a whole, which has ordained me.  In response to the consultation launched by the Government the church has just made a statement that has highlighted the significance of opening up ‘marriage’ to gay couples.

I remember as a child learning to play football with my brothers being frustrated that my older brother was more skilled than me.  Unable to beat him fairly I would sometimes pick up the ball with my hands and run away with it down the other end before kicking it in his goal.  My brother was naturally cross and called me a cheat, discounting my ‘goal’ and setting up a free kick, which he’d usually score from.  Handling the ball is just not football.  It’s against the rules.  Football, as my brother would remind me, is not Rugby.

When is a marriage a marriage?  This question lies at the heart of the discussions we are currently having.  One side says a marriage is only ever between a man and a woman.  The other disagrees.  Why not simply call ‘gay civil partnerships’ ‘gay marriage’ they ask?  Why not ‘marry’ gay couples in a committed, faithful and monogamous relationship?

The logic for this move is simple and it’s strong.  As we no longer see homosexuality as immoral, let alone illegal, and as we have accepted homosexual partnerships to be equal in law to heterosexual partnerships (something that is yet to happen in America), why do we discriminate against homosexuals preventing them from being married?  Surely this is inconsistent and wrong.  If gay couples are allowed to raise children, and they live in committed, exclusive relationships, why can’t we let them get ‘married’ as well?  Surely it would be wrong not to?  This is why Giles Fraser is so ashamed of the statement made by the Church of England – because to him this is an issue of justice, equality and fairness.  Marriage is a good thing.  Excluding gay couples from enjoying it is discriminatory, unchristian, and wrong.

And this is where Barak Obama has ended up too.  As someone once said, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”  Mr Obama’s argument is the same.  “If it looks like a marriage, acts like a marriage, and sounds like a marriage, then it probably is a marriage.”  Whether the couple are gay or not is irrelevant.

But is it?

It comes down to definitions and meanings.

That’s why I mentioned football.  As we all know there is an inner logic, a natural law you might say, about football – and that is that you can’t touch the ball with your hand.  This is why it’s called football.  And not simply ‘ball’.  And why we know it to be different from Rugby.  It is core to the game.  Change this one rule and everything about the game changes.  As my brother would have pointed out there’s no point playing football if you can pick up the ball with your hands.

Despite the shifting ideas swirling around us, some people still think that when you call a gay relationship ‘marriage’ you have broken the inner logic of ‘marriage’.  You have changed the game.  Of course, having changed the rules of the game, you can call it marriage if you want to, but actually it’s not the same game after all.  A gay couple can never be ‘married’, they would argue, just as a football game would never really be a ‘football’ game if you could pick up the ball and run with it even if new laws allowed it. It might call itself ‘football’ but football it isn’t.

The inner logic which these people think lies at the heart of ‘marriage’ and which distinguishes it from other forms of relationships is summed up in the prologue spoken at the beginning of every Anglican Church marriage service.  The service begins with these words:

“Marriage is a gift of God in creation
through which husband and wife may know the grace of God.
It is given that as man and woman grow together in love and trust,
they shall be united with one another in heart, body and mind,
as Christ is united with his bride, the Church.

The gift of marriage brings husband and wife together
in the delight and tenderness of sexual union
and joyful commitment to the end of their lives.
It is given as the foundation of family life
in which children are born and nurtured
and in which each member of the family, in good times and in bad,
may find strength, companionship and comfort,
and grow to maturity in love.

…Marriage is a sign of unity and loyalty
which all should uphold and honour.
It enriches society and strengthens community.”

These words summarise the meaning and purpose for marriage as a reminder at the beginning of a marriage service just how it all works and just how good it all is.  Three times in this ‘prologue’ we repeat that marriage is a gift of God.  It is good.  It is a gift, a present to us.  But we go further. We say that it is a gift of God ‘in creation’ which means that we perceive an inner logic to marriage which is core to its meaning which you can’t change even if you change the rules of the game.  This inner logic is then outlined in more detail and it is set out in the following way.

• Marriage is about the union of a man and a woman – husband and wife
• Marriage is a setting in which love and trust should grow
• Marriage is a picture of the union between Christ and the church
• Marriage is the right context for sex – the union of male and female
• Marriage is about life-long commitment
• Marriage is about family – it is the foundation for family life and the right context in which children are born and nurtured
• Marriage is a gift to the wider community, whether single or married, as it strengthens society

Now, there’s quite a bit in here and each bullet point expresses an aspect of the core inner logic of marriage as Christians have conceived of it.  But looking through it point by point what is clear is that the inner logic for why people get ‘married’ today has changed.  The words we say from the front as Vicars may be the same, but the real reasons people are choosing to get married have completely changed.  The ‘meaning’ of marriage has shifted.  While a few hundred years ago the majority of people in our communities might have understood marriage in the way that the ‘prologue’ puts it, I would like to suggest that most people, Christian or not, currently have very different ideas about what it’s all about.  And at the centre of what most people think marriage means today is ‘love’.

Last summer I read a fascinating book called “Marriage, a History” by Stephanie Coontz.  Its subtitle was this, “From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage” and it was a really interesting read.   In it she plots how the meaning and solidity of marriage has dramatically changed over time in line with the changes to the things we value most in our relationships.  In earlier days it we valued security, position, family, duty, and covenant more than we did love, intimacy, passion, romance.  Today these things have been reversed and naturally the meaning of marriage has shifted away from being about family and children – a social good – to being about love and intimacy – a personal/individual good.

There is much to learn from the story of marriage that Coontz outlines, but one really interesting thing is how just as intimacy or love has ‘conquered’ marriage, it is precisely this victory that weakens it as an institution.  Love wins but marriage loses.   The more it’s about love, the less people choose it and the sooner they leave it.   Fascinatingly Coontz argues that because we have refocused the meaning of marriage on personal goods such as intimacy and love, rather than social goods such as family, children and society, that the ‘institution’ of marriage, and the solidity of marriage, has been radically undermined, precisely because when marriage becomes ‘personal’ social rules about it become irrelevant.

So, take a couple who phones me up, as they have done this week, to ask if they can get married in my Church and to see if I will marry them.  What are they looking for, wanting, expecting?  What is the meaning of this marriage, or of this wedding?

The answers will be multiple but here are a few I can think of:

• Getting married is our way of saying that we love each other
• A wedding is a celebration of our love
• I’ve always wanted to be a bride
• We’ve got the house, we’ve got the children, it’s right to get married now
• We want to formalise our relationship in law
• We want to make promises to each other about our love

All of us have had conversations about marriage simply being a ‘piece of paper’ and it is this idea that is most often rejected by today.  The last thing couples want their marriage day to be about is simply the formal establishment of them as a social unit.  They are already a couple, a partnership, a family, a unit.  The paper changes nothing.  What a wedding does, in their eyes, is give them a chance to display their love for each other as individuals, make promises to each other in front of their friends and family about their love and give them an opportunity to celebrate this love with a party.  The marriage is about them as a couple.  The last thing it is about is us as a community, or us as a society.  It’s all about them.

What’s interesting to me about this analysis is just how much I’ve bought into it all.  I lead many weddings each year and prepare many couples for marriage.  I am inclusive and welcoming.  I am glad people want to be married and am always keen to help them have, not just a great wedding day, but a successful and life-long marriage.  But reflecting on what I teach them, or talk to them about, I have realised that the meaning has changed for me too.  I do not generally talk about children, or family life, or God’s design in creation for man and woman to become one.  I certainly can’t remember talking about Christ and the church.  No, what I talk about is love.  I talk through the ‘love languages’, I talk about strengthening their relationship, I talk about resolving conflicts and communication.  The focus of marriage is intimacy and without this intimacy and pleasure I warn them that their marriage will be on tricky ground.

And so because marriage is now about love and not about family and children it seems crazy to restrict gay couples from accessing it.  Why would we stop people telling each other that they love each other?  Surely we must give gay couples access to the same ceremony so that they too can celebrate their love, make promises and formalise their relationship.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck.  How dare we exclude people in love from the delight and power of marriage?

Which gets me back to football.

Every Saturday thousands of football fans scream at referees in unison, “Handball!!”  Sometimes the ref blows his whistle, other times he ushers the game on.  Either way the rules are set.  Football is about feet, not hands.  These are the rules and we all abide by them.  Change these rules and you change the game.  You could still call it football if you like but you’d have to add another word to it to distinguish from the real kind of football.  And so ‘American football’ is born.  Everyone in the world (except Americans) knows that football is about the feet.  But in their determination for wanting to have it their way they have invented another word for football – soccer.  It looks like football, it sounds like football, it has the same rules as football, but they call it soccer.  And they are wrong.  We know this.

The same is happening to marriage.  The word no longer means what it means.  It has become an empty shell of a word filled with new meanings.  The ceremony might look the same, the buildings may look the same, the clothes may look the same, but the meaning has changed.

And it is this ‘new marriage’ that gay people want to join in with.

“Equal Love” is a campaign that aims to challenge the twin bans on gay marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships and they say that they want ‘marriage’ to be available to gay people and civil partnerships available to straight people.  According to ‘Equal Love’ this is justice issue.  Here is what they say, “The only apparent reason for maintaining the system of segregation is to use the law to mark same-sex couples as socially and legally inferior, and different-sex couples as socially and legally superior. Same-sex couples are excluded from marriage, which is the universal system for legally recognising a loving, committed, sexual relationship between two adults. This legal segregation is similar to having separate beaches and drinking fountains for white and black people, as existed in South Africa under apartheid.  It is comparable to having a system of marriage for Christians and civil partnership for non-Christians.”

The argument is simple and effective and I’m sure that many will be persuaded.  My point is however to get us to think for a moment about the kind of marriage that Equal Love wants to open up to gay people.  In this quote marriage is defined as how we legally recognise ‘a loving, committed, sexual relationship between two adults.’  Whilst traditional marriage is a legal recognition of a loving, committed and sexual relationship between a husband and a wife this is not the core inner logic of what a marriage is.  It is part of what happens as a result of being married, but it was not the core inner logic for marriage.  Marriage was for children, family and society, before it was for the couple. 

In exactly the same way football is not just about people running about kicking a ball, enjoying themselves for 90 minutes, although this is what happens in a football game.  These are components of a football game but they are not its purpose.

Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner behind Equal Love put it even more clearly in his article in the Guardian in response to Obama’s shift in views.

“Gay marriage is all about love. The love of same-sex couples is just as real, strong and committed as that of married heterosexual men and women. Prohibiting same-sex marriage devalues and denigrates the love of lesbian and gay partners. It signifies our continuing second class legal status; to have separate laws for gay and straight people is a form of sexual apartheid.”

Gay marriage is all about love.  This is exactly right.  This is exactly what ‘gay marriage’ is all about.  But it is not about children, family and society.  It is not about physical sexual union.  It is not about procreation.  That is not its purpose or its inner logic.  It’s about love – pure and simple.

And perhaps this is how people see heterosexual marriages too – simply about love?  Perhaps, as Stephanie Coontz points out, love has conquered marriage.  Perhaps marriage is now all about love.  And if this is the case why wouldn’t we include gay love in this expression of commitment?  Surely to restrict them from doing so would be unjust, wrong, nasty.

And it is because marriage has changed its meaning for everyone (not because of gay people or by them or for them) that I believe gay people will be allowed in time to be ‘married’ in the UK as they are right across the world from Denmark to Argentina.  Marriage is now, for the majority of people, gay or straight, Christian or Atheist, Black or White, about love.  It is not about sex.  It doesn’t need ‘consummation’.  It is not about children.  It is not about family.  It is not a foundation for society.  It is about a couple’s love.

So be it.  If this is what we want, this is what we will get.

But perhaps, after the fight has been won and the law has been changed, and after time has passed and we have lived for a while in the new world where only love holds a marriage together, we may just begin to regret what we have done.  If we make marriage just about love, it will be society as a whole that loses out.

Imagine a world where you can handle the ball in football.  Might some not look back to the days when it was illegal to do so with a little regret that they gradually let things drift? Wouldn’t there be some who can remember the way we used to play the beautiful game and recall the likes of Pele or Messi and wish we’d never changed the rules?  I imagine so.

And so I wonder if it will not be like this with marriage.  Perhaps in making these radical sweeping changes to the rules of marriage the thing we all apparently treasure so much will gradually disappear from sight as it is replaced by another kind of ‘marriage’ echoing the old one but nothing like as wonderful, powerful or meaningful.  If we empty marriage of family, of children, of union between a man and a woman and if alongside this encourage children from their earliest days that sex is perfectly fine, indeed even good, outside marriage whilst also providing them with technologies to enable them to have ‘safe sex’ (as if it used to be ‘dangerous’) without commitment of lifelong fidelity, and if we instead fill marriage with new meanings of self-fulfilment and pleasure and make these the central purpose of the covenant, what will happen to us?

My prediction is that over time we will find that fewer people actually get married in the future, that more children are born outside married relationships, and that marriages become shorter and end sooner.  And I wonder if ironically we will also find that gay people, after perhaps a period of enthusiasm for being married, will increasingly choose not to want it so much after all.  After all they can get all they want – passion, commitment, legal rights and sex – without having to get married.  Why go to the bother?

Love may well conquer marriage, but in doing so, perhaps marriage may disappear altogether.  It will certainly be weaker than ever and we may well find that hardly any of us want the piece of paper after all…