I happen to think Dennis Prager is right — and I say this as someone who does not have a personal stake in the adultery issue.  I’ve known people who committed adultery because they were obnoxious jerks, and people who committed adultery because it was the only way to survive emotionally in a terrible marriage that nevertheless needed to continue as a marriage.

I’m curious as to what you think.

As you may recall, after I saw the movie Julie and Julia, I wrote a very scathing post about the movie, arguing that it contained completely unnecessary attacks on Republicans.  Long-time blog friend Earl left a thoughtful comment arguing that the movie was redeemed, completely, through its presentation of marriage:

What I LOVED about Julie and Julia, and the reason I’m telling all my friends and relatives to go and see it, was the positive portrayal of marriage…..loving, imperfect, “real”…..especially Julie’s. The “modern”characters each act badly at times, but they realize it and make amends and get back together and do better. They’re truly committed in a way that young people need to see…and self-centered as Julie is (and she REALLY is – but I act a bit like that [ignoring 'most everything in my focus on the immediate] when things get tough at work, so I was cutting her some slack), she “gets it” pretty quickly, and she deletes a mention of the fight from her blog, and really does reach out to her husband when he shows up. “Please be back” just hit me in the solar plexus — she didn’t have to say that, but it communicated everything!

While very much respecting Earl’s viewpoint (and wishing more movies met his standards), I argued that the modern Julie character was so awful the movie made the marriage look more like a martyrdom than a partnership.  This was separate from the fact that Julia Child’s marriage apparently was a true match of adoring equals:

However, I also find that it’s a woman’s movie in that, with the modern Julie character, it says that you can be utterly self-centered and demanding, as long as you cry prettily and express remorse when the chips are down. That Julia’s husband would love her makes sense. Although I found the shrieks and whoops irritating, her lust for life was clearly an attraction. With the Julie character, I just didn’t get it — and maybe that’s because I’m a gal and saw only another in a series of neurotic women. I’m good friends with a lot of neurotic women — heck, I am a neurotic woman — and there’s a fine line between charming and unlovable.

Perhaps because I’m such an aficionado of women’s romance novels, it turns out that my read was probably a more accurate one, if not of the movie, than of the real situation in the real Julie Powell’s life.  You see, Julie has written another book about what happened after fame, and it’s ugly, at least as applies to her and her attitude towards marriage, fidelity and her husband:

But now, in Ms. Powell’s “Cleaving,” two years have passed, and things have changed. Despite her phenomenal literary success, her 10-year marriage to Eric is falling apart. She is having a sado-masochistic affair with “D,” an old flame, whom she ends up stalking. Oh, and she has decided to become a butcher’s apprentice.

[snip]

Ms. Powell juxtaposes the details of her butchering with her obsession with the dreaded “D.” She loves being bruised and roughed up by him. It makes her feel “fierce, strong—emancipated.” How could this be so? “The first time he slapped me across the face, after all, I was bound in trusses I’d given him.” Readers may find such passages disturbing, as they are no doubt meant to be, not least because they echo earlier scenes of humans lethally dominating animals.

The author shows a certain sadistic streak of her own in the way she treats Eric. A tiny detail says it all. Did she really have to write that, when “D,” in one of their trysts, unzips Ms. Powell’s black high-heeled boots, he finds that she is wearing what she calls “stupid argyle socks,” adding “Eric’s socks, actually”?

I continue to applaud Earl’s belief that marriage is neither a sleaze-fest nor a relationship of impossible perfection, both of which are normative for Hollywood movies.  I wish that Hollywood would portray the ordinary tensions of truly loving matches.  And while it might have touched upon that in Julie and Julia, there’s no doubt that the real Julie’s narcissism made such a relationship impossible to sustain.

(This is the first in what I hope will be a series of very civil essays examining marriage.  Suek got me started with this idea based on a comment she wrote saying that, well, we need to figure out what marriage is all about.  Planned future essays will involve separating the religious aspect of marriage from the civil strand, examining polygamy and polyandry, the effect of feminism on marriage, the Hollywood culture and marriage, and, possibly, the economic benefits that flow from marriage.

I am not writing these posts to oppose gay marriage.  I am writing them because I still want to do what the courts have prevented me from doing:  I want to take a good, analytical look at our social institutions and determine how proposed changes will affect them.  The changes may be good, bad or neutral.

Please do not take this post as an opportunity to engage in attacks against gays or even against gay marriage.  On the other hand, please do use this post as an opportunity to give your views about the core nature of marriage in American society.)

Long-time readers know that I tend to be suspicious of Democratic initiatives that start off with something being “about the children.” Illegal immigration should be allowed because it’s about the children of illegal immigrants. The corollary is that deporting illegal immigrants should be disallowed because it’s about the children of illegal immigrants. Socialized medicine should be created because it’s about the children.

For every Democratic initiative, children are the wedge. If you’re against the Democratic viewpoint, you’re obviously a monster who is against children. This is not reasoned argument. This is emotion-based demonization of the political opposition, and I don’t like.

Some things, however, really are about the children, because children are central to the issue. I’ve been worried — not adamantly opposed to, but worried — about gay marriage because I’m unclear whether its existence, which takes marriage away from its procreative function, will affect the children.

I’m no fool, of course. I know that not all heterosexual marriages result in children. Heck, I don’t even know if half of the heterosexual marriages end in children. However, I’m firmly convinced that the heart of marriage, going back into the dim recesses of pre-recorded time, is about a man’s ability to recognize his own children without a DNA test.

Marriage, regardless of the society or the time in which it was created, either gives the man an assurance that the child from his wife’s body is in fact his, or it forces him to accept that child as his (placing on him the burden to police his wife’s access to or desire for other men). This worldwide, time-long societal construct, which has men either know that a child is actually theirs or be forced to pretend that it is, places on men an overriding obligation to provide for that child, so that the state doesn’t have to.

The socialist state, of course, flips that pattern on its head, by substituting the State for the father. (Just the father, not the mother, because of the direct biological connection of pregnancy, childbirth and lactation.)  We’ve now seen “the socialist state as father” play out three times, and none of the results have been pretty.

In America, the test case for socialized fathering, starting in the 1960s, was the African-American community. Up until social workers with the welfare state actively convinced African-Americans that they’d do better to place their faith in government than in African-American men, the community was making great strides. Despite racism in the North and Jim Crow in the South, black families were nuclear and were seeing solid economic progress. Crime rates were only slightly higher than among white families who were similarly situated economically.

Thus, while life in a very- to semi-racist country was not easy, it was getting better. What changed all that was the Nanny State. Well-intentioned social workers, trained in Marxist doctrines of reallocation of wealth, poured into the black communities, and bullied, cajoled and blackmailed families into applying for welfare. And the deal with welfare was that you got more of this “free” money if (a) there was no bread winner and (b) you kept having children. Being economically reasonable people, the women kicked their men out and kept having babies. And being equally reasonable, the men got free sex and no responsibility. Sounds good.

Except it wasn’t good. It was awful. It turns out that men aren’t useful just to bring in the money. Instead, it’s actually very positive to have them around, serving as a role model of male maturity for both boys and girls. Children need those models. And if they’re absent, they’ll start seeking them wherever there is an alpha male. In the ghettos, sadly, that alpha male was likely to be the corner drug dealer or the gang banger — and the latter could hang around being tough because he didn’t have to work to bring home the bacon for his one wife and his children.

As to that latter point — his children — the situation worsened as the women started having children by multiple fathers. When a mom does that, no one father has an interest in providing for that family, since he knows that, even though he may earmark funds for his child, those same funds will inevitably benefit the other man’s (men’s) children as well. In any event, the Nanny state provides, absolving him of all responsibility.

What happened to African-Americans was not some fluke, unique to America. Precisely the same thing happened in England, as Tom Bethell details in an article that discusses myriad areas in which Britain — which has traveled quite far down the path on which Obama wishes to place America — has collapsed. It’s a long and excellent article, with a lengthy discussion about the effect the welfare state has on families.  I’m going to quote from that section at some length here, since it so precisely parallels what we in America, with our “Great Society,” did to blacks:

The ruling-class embrace of semi-capitalism has brought about the rise in prosperity, but this has been accompanied by mounting social chaos. One of the main indicators is the rise of family breakdown (or non-formation) and out-of-wedlock childbearing. The key enabler of this change has been the transfer of tens of billions of pounds to fatherless households. Only a society wealthy enough to collect and redistribute revenue on this scale can sustain widespread illegitimacy. Without the tolerance of wealth-creation, redistribution on this scale would not have been possible. Traditional families and moral standards were undermined in consequence.

Melanie Phillips, a Daily Mail columnist and a refugee from the left (formerly she was with the Guardian newspaper), wrote recently that the “overclass” has “deliberately and wickedly created over the years a legal and welfare engine of mass fatherlessness and child abandonment, resulting in a degraded and dependent underclass and a lengthening toll of human wreckage.”

A couple of sensational crime stories were in the headlines when I was there, illuminating this “welfare engine of mass fatherlessness.” The rot beneath the surface became conspicuous.

One involved a 15-year-old girl named Scarlett whose hippie mother had taken her to the drug infested beaches of Goa, a former Portuguese colony on the coast of India. The mother then headed off to other Indian beaches with her other children, leaving Scarlett behind. A few days later the young girl was raped and murdered on the Goan beach.

The amazing part of the story was that the mother had nine children by five men, lives in two trailers in Devon, and receives government “benefit” (welfare) for each child, adding up to about $50,000 a year. Having saved about $14,000, she was able to take eight of her children on a six-month holiday to India, and return, sadly, with seven of them.

The mother was shocked to find that the Goan police seemed to be protecting the guilty parties, but then (when the tabloids got hold of the story and ran with it) was even more shocked to find that, instead of being regarded sympathetically, a few residual bluenoses and moralists in England viewed her conduct with some opprobrium.

The second case involved a nine-year-old girl called Shannon who was reported missing by her mother and then found, 24 days later, hiding in the house of one of her numerous step relatives. She may have wanted to escape from the chaos at home, but one of her step-relations was charged with kidnapping. Shannon’s mother, it turned out, had seven children by five different men. The shocking detail in her case was that she referred to Shannon and another of her children, born a year earlier, as “twins.” She actually thought that they were twins because they had the same father.

The truth is that decades of intervention by social engineers who either do not understand the importance of fatherhood and family, or, more likely, think they ought to be undermined, is reducing British society to something barely recognizable.

As for Scarlett’s mother, her “whole lifestyle has been one from which the words responsibility or judgment have been excluded,” Melanie Phillips commented. People have been increasingly encouraged to think “they have an absolute right to live exactly as they want without anyone passing judgment on them.” Further, “our deeply irresponsible overclass has put rocket fuel behind the exponential growth [of broken family life] through tax and welfare incentives.”

Now we have an “N” of two, both showing the devastation the Nanny state creates when it makes fathers superfluous, whether in African-American communities or traditional white British communities.  Let’s add a third “N” — this time, the whole of Europe (h/t:  Danny Lemieux):

There is one marital breakdown and one abortion in Europe almost every 30 seconds, a report that claims to chart the collapse of family life said yesterday.

In a survey of life in the 27 European Union countries, the Institute for Family Policy said that pensioners now outnumbered teenagers, and more people were living alone.

The report, The Evolution of the Family in Europe 2008, which was unveiled in the European Parliament in Brussels, described the European birth rate as “critical”.

It said that almost one million fewer babies were born in the 27 EU countries last year than in 1980. There were six million more over65s than under14s in Europe last year, against 36 million more children than pensioners in 1980.

The institute said: “Europe is now an elderly continent.” Almost one in every five pregnancies ends in abortion. The marriage rate fell by 24 per cent between 1980 and 2006. Two out of three households have no children, and nearly 28 per cent of households contain only one person.

The report urges national governments to set up a ministry for the family.

That’s kind of “N” squared, isn’t it?  Family hasn’t just been damaged, it’s been destroyed entirely.  With the government inserting itself as a wedge between man and woman (essentially by emasculating men), and with its ability to infantalize both men and women by making it unnecessary for them ever to grow up and take responsibility either for themselves or for another, Europe has simply disintegrated entirely.  It’s citizens are no longer capable of or interested in fulfilling their primary biological functions.

I want to see marriage restored to preeminence in America, not just because I’m a stubborn reactionary, but because I think it’s an absolutely necessary thing for a high functioning society, with a thriving “next” generation.  If gay marriage will reignite the excitement about marriage for everyone, then I think gay marriage is a good thing.  However, if it devalues marriage, I have a problem.

Fundamentally, I’m a pragmatist, and I don’t think marriage is about true love (which should be available to all), or financial benefits (which should be available to all who wish to partner permanently in a society), or about registration at Williams-Sonoma (which should definitely be available to all).  Marriage should be about children:  having them and raising them in a way that is best for them and best for the larger society.  (Incidentally, as a pragmatist, if gay marriage is a wash, neither helping nor harming a fatally wounded institution, I also think citizens, not courts, should be in favor of it.)

Marriage is not, and never has been, a personal right.  In Western society, it operates at two levels.  First, it functions at a religious level.  This is a deeply personal level, because in every religion, marriage is, or is equivalent to, a sacrament.  In America, you have the Constitutional right to be married in the church of your choice — if the church doctrine allows your type of marriage to be performed.  A further Constitutional right is that the state cannot force a church to change its doctrine to accommodate your desires.

Second, marriage functions at a state level.  The state has an interest in encouraging marriage because a dynamic state needs a growing population, and the best way to assure that is to have men marry women and have babies.  (Even polygamy has that point behind it:  in ancient times and primitive cultures, with excessively high maternal and child mortality rates, you wanted to ensure that as many women as possible are breeding.  Polygamy advances that cause with a vengeance.)  Married men are also a more stable population:  they are more likely to defend, rather than attack, the home front, because they have acknowledged children to protect.  (You see, marriage means that a man knows who his children are.)

To advance the benefit it receives from married couples — increased children, and a stable male population invested in protecting the country — states create marriage incentives.  They embrace religions that advance marriage and they give financial incentives and status recognition.  These perks are not for the individual’s benefit or freedom; they are for the state’s benefit and strength.

The problem arises when people conflate the deeply personal nature of the religious marriage ritual with the highly political nature of the state’s interest in productive heterosexual marriage.  When this happens, they suddenly start babbling about personal rights in and from the state where none existed before.

The state can, of course, determine that its interest is served by any marriage and that encouraging gay couples to settle down will advance some state interest.  But when I say “the state can,” I really mean that, in a democratic society, “the voters of the state can” determine that it is in their collective interest to extend to all comers the right to a state sanctioned marriage.  The one thing that should never happen is that judges, to advance their own personal biases, create a personal right where none has ever existed before.

Two further points regarding this issue.  First, read Stuart Taylor’s excellent explanation of why the California Supreme Court decision was a strikingly dishonest piece of judicial activism.

Second, if this judicial activism offends you, vote for John McCain.  And don’t fall into the trap of thinking that, because only liberal justices are old enough to leave the Court, Obama won’t be able to harm the Supreme Court if he’s elected for four, or even eight years.  Bad things happen.  It is entirely possible, although God forbid it should be so, that right in the middle of the Obama presidency, Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas could all drop dead from freak accidents or illnesses.  Even if that happens to only one of them (again, God forbid), Obama will have the ability to change the Court in ways that will certainly affect the Court into your grandchildren’s lifetimes, and possibly change the separation of powers forever.