A rchive Date
[ 23-06-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/goodden.html
Marriage is eroding before our eyes
Herman Goodden, London Free Press
2003-06-23
At first glance, one might think these are pretty challenging times for the age-old institution of marriage. Certainly in all the more technologically advanced societies of the West, we are running unprecedented experiments that seem to be designed to see just what innovations or interpretations the institution can withstand, or perhaps to determine if the institution still needs to stand at all.
Traditionally understood for thousands of years to be the smallest cell and primary building block that alone gave future to the larger organism of society, marriage was revered and respected in all the Judeo-Christian cultures. It was set apart as an unbreakable and exclusive covenant between one man, one woman and God.
In addition to committing two adults to the lifelong care of one another, marriage also formed the sort of malleable and nurturing sanctuary that was optimally ordered to the bearing and raising of children.
Of course, mistakes were inevitably made along the way of any marriage. No one ever said the fusion of two infinite souls and the regeneration and perfection of the species was going to be easy or effortless work.
But that was the ideal - the grand working model - and for the most part, that model has worked pretty well. I mean, we're here, aren't we?
There are dozens of recent developments I could examine that currently challenge the old conception of marriage. Foremost on the minds of Ontarians and Canadians is the judicially imposed legalization of gay marriage this month.
Interestingly, while some gays in Canada, the U.S. and Europe are clamouring for the right to wed, ever-rising numbers of those same countries' heterosexual populations are displaying unprecedented indifference to the concept of tying the knot.
The news out of Norway last week was that for the first time ever, the majority of babies being born in that country are born to unmarried parents.
Many other couples in the developed world are electing not to bother having any babies at all. The widespread availability of contraception and abortion have brought us to a pass where many countries are no longer procreating at replacement levels and have to rely on immigration from less developed cultures to provide sufficient population, not just for growth, but to maintain their status quo.
But what strikes me as the far more distinctive note of our times is not that our societies are challenging marriage to become a richer and stronger institution, so much as we are hollowing it out and selling it short; are refusing to invest much hope or expectation in the matrimonial estate at all.
Reading newspaper coverage last week of the annual Sexuality Conference held each spring at the University of Guelph, I was chilled by the counsel of the keynote speaker, Claude Guldner, in an address on the inevitability and acceptability of extramarital affairs.
"I really believe that all of us are capable of being in love with more than one person," said Guldner, as if this were some kind of news flash.
It was as if the traditional moral strictures of marriage and the publicly spoken promises of the wedding ceremony hadn't been specifically devised to help men and women take a committed stand against just that "capability." Interesting choice of words, that. Would Guldner also characterize Winona Ryder's predilection for shoplifting as a "capability"? When I resist the impulse to blow my entire wages on books and records, am I suppressing a "capability"?
"The long cultural history that we have been a country which needed the bond between two people in order to survive economically and raise children (is) no longer true," Guldner said. "Women and men get along fine on their own."
Guldner concluded that a realistic view of marriage would not only accommodate the odd "capability" eruption, but in its aftermath, counselling should be extended not just to the couple whose marriage has been threatened but to the interloper as well. "I think our mental-health system has to recognize three people have been involved. We're only supporting two."
Is there any way anyone could ask less of a marriage? Guldner has envisioned a desiccated and meaningless institution to which committed lovers and idealists need not apply.
Herman Goodden is a London freelance writer. His column appears in Monday's and Thursday's Opinion pages. It no longer appears in Sunday's A&E section. He can be e-mailed at herman.goodden@sympatico.ca.
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