Familienpolitik

Doug Kmiec responds to Eric Posner’s response to Kmiec’s blog post recommending that the U.S. pay families to have children the way they do in Europe.  I blogged about the discussion and gave my two cents on European family support plans here.

Kmiec defends the continued relevance of marriage, saying

In its traditional form, marriage transforms by covenant the emotional and sexual attraction of two individuals into a lasting relationship (AEI’s Michael Novak reports modern marriages have a 66 percent success rate) capable of sharing intimate personal goods as well as serving larger social purposes.

I’m not convinced that a 66 percent success rate counts as lasting, but I’m also not sure that marriage is a “bourgeois construct,” as Posner argues.  Regardless, I didn’t think that was what the argument was about in the first place.

Here are the givens we have: people marry, heterosexual couples receive benefits and protections from the state for being married, everyone should be treated equally, homosexual couples should receive benefits and protections from the state for being married (ok, this is still considered an opinion by 48 of our 50 states).

Happy, long-lasting relationships are a nice thing.  Happy marriages are a nice thing.  The question is whether marriage actually brings about benefits for the government and for the individual.  I’ve never been married so it’s hard for me to know.  Kmiec seems to think that marriage leads to children, and that non-immigrant, English-speaking children are a good thing for America, and that both marriage and children should be supported by the government.  Posner worries about overpopulation and thinks marriage is unnecessary.

I’d still like to imagine a world where people would make life partner and procreation decisions without government perks having any sort of influence.