Marriage is About Community

Dean Obeidallah characterizes marriage as an antiquated, death dealing institution—something quite outdated and useless.  See his article.   His premise is that, today, postmodern, liberal people seem to have arrived at an understanding of marriage that approaches mere nonchalance.  It is perhaps much less a matter of fulfilling your social destiny, and more a matter of preference, something relegated to one's inimical thirties (a.k.a. the mysterious fog demarcating life after your twenties).  There is nothing sinister about marriage itself, it’s just that marriage, supposedly, doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore—especially given that nowadays most liberals move-in together, have sex, and can get palimonies without ever skipping and hopping over to the Justice of the Peace. 

Like my mother has always said, it probably was never a very good idea to get married just for the sex. 

It seems increasingly feasible that 1) life wouldn't fall apart if not everyone on the planet got married, and 2) many people just are not hardwired for strict monogamy much the same way that ten percent of the population is homosexual, bisexual or transgender (not counting the other thirty percent who won't admit it, including my mother).  More and more of the couples I meet (married or not) run open relationships, it seems, without a hitch.  See Mark Oppenheimer’s article about Dan Savage. 

If all that ever constituted marriage was sharing bank-accounts, then, hell, my apartment mate and I could get that arranged right now!  So, then, what would be the point of wasting a bunch of money, and inviting a lot of people I barely know, to celebrate a relationship I already have, and in a suit I’ll probably never be skinny enough to wear again?

I ask this question while bracketing a discussion of legal privileges—as if this were the only tangible explanation for why people get married anymore.

The value and the beauty of community have been neglected in much of the discussion I see floating around town—especially in liberal circles.  For a second I’d like to imagine that the individual is not the most important entity in the universe.  For a second I’d like to imagine that robust, supportive and vital community is just as important as individuality (if not more so) for a person’s life.  To rephrase an earlier iteration—I hope that when I get married I can invite everyone in my life who is important to me; everyone who constitutes my family.  For now, I define family broadly. 

Imagine, additionally, that “wedding” is just a word for the celebration of a commitment between two people to meet each other’s needs for intimacy, sex, family, love and purpose (however these needs manifest for the couple).  And imagine that “marriage” is just a word for this commitment.  Much akin to why we celebrate people’s lives with birthdays, and love with anniversaries, it seems just good fun to throw a party to celebrate commitment.  So, then, we could call it a commitment ceremony, or a life-partner party, and not merely a wedding.  Happiness and good things deserve ritual celebration in my opinion, and as a lover of parties, I support weddings and marriage simply for this reason. 

What is marriage, then?  What is the difference between calling my life-partner my husband, as opposed to my committed lover, as opposed to my alpha-guy, etc?  I suppose some of it pertains to individual preference; some of it pertains to religious tradition; and some of it depends on whether you want to be committed for life or just for the foreseeable future (although I was never sure of the difference when I was growing up).  Certainly, I want to be committed to someone, and I want that commitment to be and to remain life-giving.  We have somehow come to think of marriage as inherently death-dealing (as seen with Dean Obeidallah).  But that’s just stupid.  You should not be getting married, or committing yourself at all to someone with whom you do not feel enhanced life.  And this applies to all types of relationships (romantic and otherwise).    

I’d like to get married and to have a nice Quaker wedding.  And I’d like to do this because marriage is about commitment in the context of a community, which pledges to support, nurture, and shepherd it (along with any of its fruits).  Marriage is about affirming family, and it is about growing family (connecting two different people and their communities).  When people celebrate a commitment and pledge to support it, they also pledge to support the additional members of the family the couple might introduce.   They pledge to engage in relationship with everyone “on the other side of aisle.”  This is about the villages we all carry around with us (in our cell phone contact book and on Google+ now, instead of in the surrounding huts).  For me, getting married will be just as much about affirming my commitment with my fiancé, as it will be about re-affirming the beauty and the deep bonds of the community, which provide me with (more than any thing else) a sense of home on this earth.