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Debate on the Senate floor in June 2006 over the proposed Federal
Marriage Amendment to the United States Constitution had a peculiar quality.
As Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” remarked, it seemed to be primarily a
battle over obscure Scandinavian statistics. Supporters of the amendment
summoned arguments, numbers, and graphs largely developed by anthropologist
Stanley Kurtz to show that “[g]ay marriage undermines marriage.”[1] Focusing on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands,
Kurtz has argued that the introduction of same-sex registered partnerships in
these nations encouraged the substitution of cohabitation for marriage among
heterosexuals, drove up the proportion of births occurring outside of wedlock,
and raised the divorce rate.[2]
Opponents of the amendment summoned arguments and statistics framed by Yale
law professor William N. Eskridge, attorney Darren R. Spedale, and Swedish
jurist Hans Ytterberg to show that registered partnerships have been perfectly
“fine from the perspective of larger (and largely straight) society” in
Scandinavia.[3]
These authors argue that any trends toward heterosexual cohabitation, divorce,
and out-of-wedlock births in the Scandinavian countries pre-date the
introduction of same-sex registered partnerships and that Kurtz’s statistical
correlations do not hold up.
The dispute reached another phase this summer with publication of Gay Marriage: For Better or Worse? What We’ve Learned from the Evidence
by Eskridge and Spedale. The authors argue far more forcefully that signs of
deterioration in heterosexual marriage are the consequence of strictly hetero
innovations, notably the introduction of no-fault divorce and legal
recognition of cohabitation as a distinct status. They also summon new
statistical evidence to claim “no harm.” For example, Lee Badgett has traced
the average rise in non-marital birth rates in the European nations that
recognize same-sex partnership. She finds an increase from 36 percent in 1991
to 44 percent in 2000, an eight point difference. However, the increase among
European nation’s not recognizing same-sex partnerships was also
eight points (from 15 to 23 percent), a proportionately higher rate of change.[4]
Eskridge and Spedale marshall evidence showing that heterosexual marriage
statistics are actually improving in Scandinavia. In Norway, for
example, the heterosexual marriage rate rose from 434.6 (per 100,000)
in 1993—the year “registered partnerships” were introduced—to 564.6 in 2000
before declining again to 486.8 in 2004, yet still eight percent above
the base. In Sweden, the heterosexual marriage rate climbed from 380.7 in
1995—again, the year that registered partnerships became law—to 478.1 in 2004,
a surprising 26 percent increase. At the same time, the Swedish divorce rate
fell by 12 percent over the same years. Meanwhile, the proportion of
births out-of-wedlock climbed only three percentage points—to 56 percent—a
much slower rate of increase than during the prior equivalent time
period.[5]
“Where’s the harm?” they ask.
Kurtz responds by attributing increases in
heterosexual marriage rates to the behavior of older couples (although he
offers no actual numbers on this) and argues that the key Swedish date should
be 1987, not 1995; the prior year saw enactment of measures granting certain
legal claims on shared property to cohabiting couples, both hetero- and
homosexual. He also suggests that his best case for finding harm is actually
in the Netherlands, a non-Scandinavian country.[6]
It is my contention that this debate over the minutiae of
Scandinavian demography misses the real, and larger transformation that has
occurred in these nations. Eskridge and Spedale see the Scandinavians
pursuing equality and steadily “discovering the value of lesbian and gay
relationships.”[7]
Kurtz sees same-sex marriage upending traditional marriage, and so building
acceptance for “a host of other mutually reinforcing changes…that only serve
to weaken marriage.”[8]
Both largely ignore the real driving force: the triumph in Scandinavian four
decades ago of a unique ideology which seeks to dismantle the autonomous home
and to socialize all human life. The lead example of this change is Sweden.
This ideology rests on a unique blend of conventional socialism with
feminism and neo-Malthusianism. Pursuing a perennial socialist goal, it lifts
up the state as a substitute for the family. It embraces sex education,
contraception, and abortion as tools of liberation, the vehicles for gaining
only “wanted” children. It deliberately undermines gender roles, even those
conditioned by nature. Androgyny becomes a specific goal. This ideology
transfers the costs and cares of rearing children from the natural couple to
the state. Children born in and out of wedlock are treated exactly the same,
for all are in essence children of the collective. Equality is gained as
husbands are no longer dependent on wives, nor wives on husbands, nor children
on parents, nor parents on children. All are equally dependent on the
largesse of the state.
This ideology specifically targets marriage for diminution, for it
recognizes the truth of G.K. Chesterton’s claim that the “institution of the
home is the one anarchist institution…[I]t is older than any law, and stands
outside the State.”[9]
Or as Chesterton put it in another tract:
The ideal for which [marriage] stands in the
state is liberty. It stands for liberty for the very simple reason…[that] it
is the only…institution that is at once necessary and voluntary. It is the
only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the
state, and more naturally than the state.[10]
From a socialist perspective, such a rival cannot be allowed to stand. In the
new dispensation, marriage would be redefined, expanded, and deconstructed all
at once. Stripped of any meaningful functions, it could be endlessly reshaped
around varied relationships. No longer bearing any authority, what did it
matter?
Legal reforms toward this end explain the
Scandinavian experience over the last four decades. The legalization of
same-sex partnerships was not the cause of this change. Rather, it was a step
in the process, useful mainly for underscoring the severing of marriage from
procreation. Perhaps with some level of awareness, or perhaps unwittingly,
Sweden’s same-sex marriage advocates have been useful tools in the larger
ideological project. The real “harm” of legalizing same-sex partnerships lies
here, in the political sphere that defines liberty.
SOCIALISM THROUGH THE HOME
The theory behind the larger project dates from the early 1930's, when a declining marriage rate and a
sharply falling fertility rate led to calls for radical changes in the Swedish
home. In 1932, the young socialist intellectual Alva Myrdal generated a furor
by advocating "collectivized homes" for Swedish families, where young mothers
would join fathers in the full time labor force, with infants and toddlers
cared for in common nurseries and with meals prepared in collectivized
kitchens. With husband Gunnar Myrdal, she co-authored in 1934 the book
Kris i befolkningsfrågan ("Crisis in the Population Question"). They
argued that raising the perilously low Swedish birthrate required radical
changes in the natures of marriage and family. Fathers should be freed from
their distinctive "breadwinner" role; mothers freed from "homemaking." All
adults should work, and massive new state welfare benefits funded by a
“bachelor tax”—including clothing allowances, daycare subsidies, universal
health care, and low interest “marriage loans”—should pay the costs of
parenthood.
On the surface, the Myrdals appeared to elevate
the public importance of marriage. At a deeper level, though, they sought its
diminution. The marital home, under their scheme, would largely cease to be a
significant economic unit. As the feminist historian Yvonne Hirdman explains,
the Myrdals adopted “a successful Trojan horse tactic” here: they would
“smuggle socialist forms into the capitalist society” at its most vulnerable
spot, “the home.” This turn to population policy “set the stage for the
politicization of private life” by radically altering “everyday life.”[11]
Neo-Malthusian ideas formed another key aspect
of the project. Early and universal sex education, freely available
contraceptives, and liberalized abortion would insure that all children in the
new order would be wanted children. In seeking an end to Sweden’s ban
on the sale of contraceptives, the Myrdals implicitly embraced another new
concept: the right of married couples not to procreate, which subtly
untied the bond of marriage to procreation.
[12]
Working through The Royal Population Commission
of 1935 and the Swedish Parliament's Women's Work Committee, the Myrdals
enjoyed a remarkable influence for the balance of the decade. Notably,
Parliament legalized contraceptives, inaugurated sex education, gave new legal
protections to working women, and expanded state welfare programs.
By 1940, however, the Myrdals’ ideas were in retreat. The onset of
World War II and Sweden's perilous position as a "neutral" nation surrounded
by Nazi German conquests encouraged a conservative nationalism. Relative to
the family, an alternate worldview found in the labor unions—namely that
"women were to be liberated from the labor market rather than liberated
to participate in it" and that men deserved to earn a living "family
wage"—regained popularity. Sometimes called “maternalism,” this attitude saw
Alva Myrdal’s egalitarian feminism as part of the problem, not the solution.
Capitalists, this older socialist claim went, should not be allowed to control
the mothers, wives, and daughters of the working class. The labor unions,
collectively organized as the LO [Lans organization], negotiated with
employers in 1938 the historic Saltsjöbaden agreement, which
crystallized job segregation by gender, reserving the better industrial jobs
and the higher wages for the unions’ male members.[13]
Some feminist analysts label the consequent
1940-67 period as "the era of the Socialist housewife." Public policy
encouraged the full-time care of small children at home. Instruction in
modern homemaking and child care became mandatory for all Swedish girls. The
marriage rate climbed, while the average age at first marriage fell.
Fertility also rose: Sweden's mini-Baby Boom. As late as 1965, only three
percent of all Swedish preschool children were in some form of non-parental
day care. The "traditional Swedish family" seemed solid.[14]
Indeed, feminist historians quietly acknowledge that as late as the mid-1960’s
there was no pressure for change coming from young Swedish housewives
and mothers.[15]
FORMS OF COHABITATION
All this changed during the 1960’s. Radical outbursts—the Red
Brigades in West Germany and Italy, the New Left riots in France,
“Eurocommunism”—dominated the news. At the same time, Europeans launched a
values revolution. The Christian principles of “responsibility, sacrifice,
altruism and the sanctity of long-term commitments” gave way across Western
Europe to “secular individualism” focused on the needs of the self.[16]
Sweden entered into what Yvonne Hirdman calls its "Red Years,"
1967-1976.[17]
At their core was a massive "gender turn" that required the radical
transformation of marriage. A joint report prepared in 1968 by the Social
Democratic Party and the LO abandoned the “family wage” ideal and concluded
that "there are…strong reasons for making the two breadwinner family the norm
in planning long-term changes within the social insurance system."[18]
Alva Myrdal chaired a major panel, "On Equality," for the Social Democrats.
Its highly influential 1969 report concluded that “[i]n the society of the
future,…the point of departure must be that every adult is responsible for
his/her own support. Benefits previously inherit in married status should be
eliminated." “Natural” differences between women and the men, the report
argued, should not pose a barrier to reform. Interventions by the state would
make such innate distinctions unimportant. On Equality also demanded a
tax policy based on individual earnings. This would mean no preference for
any "form of cohabitation," which was Alva Myrdal’s deflating new term for
conventional marriage and its new rivals.[19]
The Swedish government moved to alter its marriage law. A Committee
of Experts formed under the Justice Ministry, and the Minister of Justice
issued detailed Directives. At the outset, the Committee was to consider
whether there was still even a need for marriage law and, if so, how it should
be reconfigured. The Minister pointed to the "clearly anachronistic" nature
of community property, based as it was on the now-to-be-discarded Christian
notion of "one flesh." He directed the Committee also to consider the
shrinking importance of marital status in Sweden, the growing pursuit of
"personal fulfillment," the swelling demand for divorce, falling public
interest in material property in favor of public pensions and other benefits
of the welfare state, and the new place of gender equality as the cornerstone
of Swedish social policy. In addition, the State’s provision of Social
Security should be accepted “as a fact” and this system should not face
competition from dependency obligations between family members.[20]
Showing the same spirit, Sweden's Parliament approved in 1971 a fundamental
reform of the income tax. At the philosophical level, this change ended the
tax treatment of marriage as an economic union, the material expression of the
“one flesh” ideal. As historian Christina Florin summarizes, “the household
as an economic unit with the father as family provider” lost its functional
identity under this change, to be replaced by “two free-standing economic
individuals.” Also lost was the family’s position as a distinct legal unit,
with its own claims and authority.[21]
Significantly, Florin notes how socialists elites in the media and government
strove to keep the real questions involved “away from the people.”
Technically, the measure abolished the taxation of households
through the joint income tax return premised on "income splitting" by married
couples. In the future, all Swedes would be taxed as individuals, without
attention to marital status, dependents, or income of a spouse. Sweden would
now have the most "fully individualized taxation system" in the developed
world. In the context of high marginal tax rates, this change—by
intent—strongly aided the two-income household, while penalizing the
traditional one-income breadwinner.[22]
Scholars of this era are nearly unanimous in
viewing this shift from "joint" to "individual" taxation as the most sweeping
social change in Sweden over the last 40 years. Anne Lise Ellingsaetes
reports that the male providers role was "more or less eradicated."[23]
Sven Steinmo calls it the most “radical” change marking the turbulent 1970’s,
because “it meant that the Swedish tax system would ignore family
circumstances” in imposing tax burden.[24]
Maude Edwards calls the turn to equal taxation “the most important step in
promoting equality between women and men.”[25]
Annika Baude, a leading Swedish feminist, concludes: “If I were to choose one
reform which has…done the most to promote equality between the sexes, I would
point to the introduction of individual income taxation.”[26]
Further steps toward the new order followed. A 1972 report from the
Family Law Experts Committee urged complete neutrality toward forms of
heterosexual cohabitation. This meant that marriage could hardly “be
maintained as a special legal institution.”[27]
A year later, Parliament approved a new measure governing marriage and
divorce. Access to marriage actually expanded. Paradoxically, though, this
actually meant that the special status and importance of marriage
diminished. Parliament abolished most impediments to heterosexual marriage,
including a narrowing of the definition of incest. In the future,
half-brothers and half-sisters, aunts and nephews, uncles and nieces, and
first cousins all could marry. Only siblings and persons related by blood in
unilinear descent faced prohibition; bigamy and polygamy remained banned. The
minimum marriage age for both spouses would be 18.
The same measure embraced “no fault” divorce.
Premised on the idea of marriage as a voluntary union, it was—in one
advocate's words—“only natural that if one of the spouses is dissatisfied, he
or she may demand a divorce." In practice, this 1973 law meant that the
community or state no longer had significant interests in the preservation of
a marriage. "Fault" would no longer be considered in divorce proceedings, nor
would marital misconduct have any bearing on the division of property. This
brought the elimination of “adultery” and “fidelity” from marriage’s
institutional construct. If both husband and wife agreed to the divorce, it
would be immediately granted. If one spouse objected or if there was at least
one child under age 16 in the home, the new law fixed a mandatory
reconsideration period of six months. In addition, "separation" no longer had
legal status. The measure assumed adult self-support and largely ended the
concept of alimony (except in limited cases where "maintenance" payments for a
set time might be required).[28]
The result was large. In the words of jurist
Jacob W. F. Sundberg, the 1973 reform succeeded in achieving “a goal perfectly
analogous to that which loomed before the [Russian] Bolsheviks in 1918: carry
socialism to its logical conclusion in the field of family law.”[29]
Also adapting a principle of ancient Roman law, libertas matrimonii,
Swedish jurisprudence now implicitly held “that free marriage is only
tolerable if marriage is deprived of most of its legal consequences.”[30]
WOMAN’S WORK
In 1972 a new Social Democratic prime minister came to power, Olof
Palme. Alva Myrdal served in his cabinet with the portfolios of Disarmament
and Church Affairs. Openly under her influence, Palme addressed the women of
the Party that year, declaring an end to the socialist housewife. “In this
society,” he said, “it is only natural for both parents to work. In this
society it is evident that man and woman [i.e., not “husband and wife”] should
take the same responsibility for the care of the home and the children.”
Underscoring the socialist imperative, he added that “[i]n this society…the
care of these future generations is just as naturally the responsibility of us
all.”[31]
Palme launched a true revolution. The Party abolished its Women’s
League, the enclave of the homemakers.[32]
Women would now become “real members” of the Party, he said, dealing with
“common issues” alone. New policies made employment nearly mandatory for all
women in their twenties and thirties. Surviving homemakers would pay dearly
through heightened marginal taxes on their husbands. Small children now moved
massively into daycare: 460,000 held places in 1995, compared to only 23,000
three decades earlier.[33]
Hirdman ably underscores the sweep and the novelty of change here.
Women’s work in this new Swedish had on a remarkable quality. The number of
employed women actually declined in the fields of agriculture and forestry,
while in private industry it grew only modestly. However, in the heavily
governmental service sector, the number of employed women rose from 269,000 in
1950 to 819,000 by 1990; in the education, day care, and health care sectors
(exclusively governmental), the number of employed women rose nearly three
fold, from 282,000 in 1950 to slightly over 1 million by 1990. These were
enormous changes for a nation of eight million people.
In short, marriage and family policy had been
used as a lever to achieve something “truly revolutionary”: the shriveling of
private homes resting on marriage and a massive expansion of the state
sector. In short, socialism had been smuggled in through the eclipse of
marriage and home. Women were now largely doing the same work they had done
in private homes before, but now they worked for the state in specialized
tasks of day care, elder care, institutionalized cooking, and other
“services.” Private patriarchy had given way to the public patriarchy
inherent in the socialist model. Pointing specifically to the experience of
Alva Myrdal, Hirdman explains the sweep of change affecting marriage:
New ideas of gender replaced old-fashioned ideas
about the couple. We witness [here] the birth of the androgynous individual
(and I speak about the explicit ideal) and the death of the provider and his
housewife. We thus witness old ideas popping up, ideas that had been buried
for decades—but ideas that very quickly found their advocates and became
developed: people, men and women, eager to speak the new tongue of gender.[34]
In a related development, the Social Welfare Act of 1980 greatly
enhanced the power of state social workers to take custody of children away
from their natural parents. No detrimental effects had to be shown; judgments
about the parents’ mental character and “personal disposition” were
sufficient. One subsequent case of some notoriety, Ulla Widen
v. Sweden, involved charges that the mother was simply a poor
house cleaner.[35]
The number of children in state custody grew sharply, as did the cadre and
compensation paid to state foster parents. Again, these were logical
consequences of a system consciously designed to diminish marriage and the
home and to enhance the central state.[36]
FAMILY FORM NEUTRALITY
Sweden’s Parliament further codified this social
revolution in two 1987 laws. Focused on property and inheritance questions,
the new Marriage Code weakened again the concept of marriage as an economic
partnership. On the surface, this was not immediately clear. Despite
pressure for a more individualistic formulation, the new law did retain the
concept of "deferred community property" first codified in 1920. In
principle, a spouse remained entitled to a half share in marital property at
the time of divorce or death. The Courts gained more power to set aside
pre-nuptial contracts establishing separate property. Surviving spouses also
won greater control over marital property relative to children and other
heirs. While appearing to raise the claims of marriage, this latter change
actually represented the "amputation of the blood line" in Sweden, the
deliberate severing of children’s economic bonds to their parents.[37]
Other, more representative provisions gave spouses increased
independence. One ended the obligation that each person had to manage and
preserve matrimonial property. Joint liability for debts acquired by
household expenditures or children's education also disappeared. And the 1987
Code ended the husband's special responsibility to support the family.[38]
In one commentator's words, the new Code reflected "the increasing focus in
the law itself on termination of marriage, rather than on its
preservation."[39]
The Parliament also approved The Joint Homes Act in 1987. This new
measure governing "relationships similar to marriage" rested on "the principle
of neutrality toward family form." As legal analyst Ulla Björnberg explains:
The principle states that individuals are free
to develop their personal lives at their own will, to choose
a living arrangement and ethical norms for their family
life. The role of family law is restricted to providing solutions to
practical problems and to formulate rules of a kind that can be
accepted by almost all individuals.[40]
Still, the Joint Homes Act did not quite equate "cohabitation" with
"marriage." Specifically, cohabitators did not gain the equivalence of
"marital property rights" in inheritance or a right to claim “maintenance”
after separation. Rather, the rules in this measure applied only to the equal
splitting of a dwelling and household goods acquired while living together.
All the same, the measure did affirm that parenthood in consensual unions
would involve rights and responsibilities equal to those in marriage.
Unmarried fathers must register with the state. Joint custody of children
after separation would be the assumption for both cohabitating and married
couples.
A novel aspect of the 1987 reform, attracting
relatively little attention at the time, was that rules for unmarried
cohabitation applied to both heterosexual and homosexual couples.[41]
I would underscore that this latter innovation came near the end of the
radical revision of marriage, not at its beginning.
In 1995, the Swedish Parliament expanded on this change and—adapting
a policy already developed by Denmark (1989) and Norway (1993)—approved a law
granting same-sex couples the ability to form a "registered partnership."
This represented a civil contract providing rights and responsibilities nearly
identical to those of conventional marriage. For example, “registered
partners” gained claim to “deferred community property.” The legal rights not
granted to “registered parents” were adoption, the joint custody of children,
and publicly funded artificial insemination.
THE RELATIONSHIP STATE
In their 1934 book, Kris I befolkningsfrågan, Alva and
Gunnar Myrdal summarized their vision of the “new family’:
In the new family,…the wife will stand as a
comrade by her husband’s side in productive work ….During working hours,…the
family will be split to adapt to an industrialized society’s broader division
of labor: the adult working people must be at their jobs; the children must
play, eat, sleep, and go to school. Common shelter, common free time, as well
as that elusive, subtle, personal relationship that is, we believe, a
constituent element of the family, will remain. Maintaining a
private household, individualistic parental responsibility, and the wife’s
home-centered life, however, will not remain. These must be driven out of
the picture as an adaptation to social evolution.[42]
At this time, Alva Myrdal still felt it necessary to retain an indirect
reference to marriage in their portrait. However, 35 years later, in her
report On Equality, she no longer felt so constrained. If one
subtracts marriage from the above vision, what remains is a “new family” where
the collectivist state has supplanted the home, where the function-rich
household has been supplanted by “elusive, subtle, personal relationship[s],”
and where the caring and nurturing work of women has been socialized. While
Yvonne Hirdman, a self-labelled radical feminist, and Jacob Sundberg, a
conservative jurist and scholar, are worlds apart in political philosophy,
they agree that this change constitutes a profound revolution.[43]
Granting certain claims to cohabitating gays and lesbians in 1987
and extending “registered partnerships” to the same groups in 1995 were part
of this historic transition: from the family as an autonomous institution
focused on the bearing and rearing of children to the “new family,” socialist
in form, understood as an ever-changing network of relationships dependent on
the state. Relative to the autonomous family, the principle “harm” done by
marriage-like “registered partnerships” was to amplify the dissolution of the
once vital bond between marriage and procreation. Sterile by definition, the
very concept of same-sex marriage strips the heart out of the traditional
institution, to the confusion and disorientation of society as a whole, and of
the young in particular. If honest in their claims that they want to
strengthen marriage, same-sex marriage advocates let themselves be used here
as tools in a larger project to scuttle the institution of marriage.
In truth, though, the bond of procreation and marriage was already
seriously weakened by the prior legal embrace of contraception within
marriage, the intentionally childless marriage, elimination of “illegitimacy”
as a legal category, and recognition in law of heterosexual cohabitation.[44]
Indeed, Eskridge, Spedale, and Ytterberg make a powerful rejoinder that “[i]f
the chief concern of family law should be the creation of a stable family
structure for the rearing of children, then most of the hetero-liberalization
of the last generation—no-fault divorce, cohabitation, rights for non-marital
children—has been a mistake. Marriage in America has been compromised in ways
that should be reclaimed.” They add that any traditionalist defense of
marriage that “leaves no-fault divorce and cohabitation untouched” has already
embraced a radical redefinition of marriage, one that has done much more
measurable harm to children and society than same-sex marriage.[45]
On empirical grounds, here they are correct.
Endnotes: |
