Some Folks Just Shouldn't Get Married

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts effectively abolished the institution of marriage last week. It didn't say that in its decision holding that same-sex couples had a right under the state constitution to marry in a civil ceremony. Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall, author of the majority opinion, insisted that the court was doing exactly the opposite -- reinforcing "the importance of marriage to individuals and communities" by extending it to gay and lesbian couples. The traditional notion that marriage is supposed to be a union between a man and a woman is just plain irrational, she wrote, like the anti-miscegenation laws that used to bar marriages between people of different races.

Problem is, a union between a man and a woman isn't a restriction on marriage like an anti-miscegenation law. It is what marriage is. Or, more properly, it is what marriage has been deemed to be for as many millenniums as human beings have walked the Earth on two legs. It is not, as some people assume, just a religious definition mandated in the Bible or the Koran. It is implicit in the Twelve Tables of Roman law, from 450 BC, which defined a woman's rights when her husband managed her property, and in the Code of Hammurabi, written in 1750 BC, which said that a man must execute a marriage contract when he took a wife, or "that woman is not his wife."

To put it bluntly, marriage is gender discrimination. It is an institution that by its nature restricts one's choice of partners. To say, as Marshall did, that marriage is something else -- a government blessing for one's romantic commitments, for example -- is to abrogate the very idea of marriage.

There are reasons why formally and publicly recognized unions of men and women constitute the world's oldest and most enduring social institution. By keeping, or at least attempting to keep, sexual activity and procreation within the family, marriage fosters the stable emotional and financial conditions that are best for the raising of children; parents focus their energy and resources upon their offspring and each other. Marriage also protects women financially and emotionally after their years of childbearing and peak sexual attractiveness have passed. It creates powerful kinship networks that transcend personal feelings -- witness "The Sopranos" -- and provides incentives for the accumulation and orderly transmission of property.