On legislating morality

In the run-up to tomorrow's vote, I have often been disappointed at the lack of thoughtful debate about the constitutional amendment to define marriage. On both sides, the issue is considered self-evident - civil rights on the one hand, the sanctity of marriage as a foundational building block of family and society on the other. I have waited until the day before the election for the argument to get close to the core of the issue, which is what my illustrious life partner brings up in his post. The core question is: To what extent should we try to legislate morality?

In the 21st century, most of us agree that our laws should not land people in prison for adultery or showing their ankles in public, but they should punish theft or murder. It has little meaning to say that our laws should not legislate morality at all, because they inevitably do. The laws of the modern state lay down common rules so that different people can live harmoniously in close proximity, so that the freedom of one person does not result in harm being done to another. Sometimes that does require legislating morality: Even though some people may not consider stealing to be bad, it hurts others, so the government steps in with laws to make stealing illegal (unless you're a Wall Street banker, but that is a different story).

Now, what category does marriage fall in? Does a loving union of two people hurt others? Some would say that even if a union is entered by two consenting adults, it will hurt them or society in the long run. I say that to follow this logic would also be to forbid marriages between people under 30, those with low incomes, or between Evangelical Christians - all three groups more likely than the average population to get divorced. Using the same logic, someone may come along one day and say that my practice of the Christian faith is a backward mythology that impedes progress and hurts society, so I should be forbidden from teaching it to my children.

For people like me, who find rich nourishment in the Christian roots of our civilization, history is full of stark warnings against forcing others to live by our morality. Without the transforming experience of genuine belief, a legislated morality either produces a fundamentalist response in the opposite direction, or acts as a vaccine against the very faith that gives morality its meaning.

So should we as a society make a new law about marriage tomorrow? I would argue that we should not legislate on who should be able to marry, just like we should not legislate on who can hold a job, have kids or practice their religion. To use a literary metaphor, the laws we produce should not attempt to be a dictionary that defines words just the way we like them; but a grammar book showing how different particles with different logics can form a harmonious and meaningful whole.

Constitutional Marriage

On Tuesday in Minnesota we vote not only for our favorite politicians (or least disliked) but also whether or not to add an amendment to our state constitution to define “marriage” as between one man and one woman.

For the moment I would like to table any discussion of the morality of homosexuality (i.e. the religious judgment that it is wrong or not wrong) or arguments about equal rights and look at the issue from a constitutional lens. This argument centers on the separation of church and state and how this new amendment oversteps the bounds of the government.

I have heard many argue that they are for civil unions but not for gay marriage because “marriage” is a religious word that has always meant a union between a man and a woman. And I think I would be ok with that. I would be ok with a religion defining marriage as between one man and one woman and not allowing members of the same sex to marry in their church. I would disagree with them but that is their choice to do so.

My question is, however, what business does the government have in defining marriage? If marriage is a religious term, then the government should not be calling its ceremonies that it performs at its courthouses "marriages". Rather it should call all of these ceremonies "civil unions". (Both hetero and homosexual) We should leave "marriages" to be decided by different religions.

Now granted some churches would allow homosexuals to "marry" as they defined it and others wouldn't, but that would be up to that religion to decide. Just as it is up to religions to define who is “saved” or “baptized” even though these definitions look very different in different groups and these groups would disagree with one another’s claims.

And unfortunately the state has already adopted this term of "marriage" that it uses in its civil ceremonies. I wonder if it would be possible for us to instead of trying to increase government’s involvement in marriage, to decrease it by actually taking out the term “marriage” from civil ceremonies and have people no longer “married” in the eyes of the state but “unioned”. (someone would have to come up with a better term but you know what I mean) This would put the definition of marriage back into the hands of the church rather than the state.

It seems that we are going the wrong direction on this.

On having or not having children

Last night, we had the pleasure of sharing a a delicious last-minute dinner with our friends Joel and Crista. Being in a very similar place in life - young, married professionals with no kids, able to meet up at a day's notice - we slowly wandered into a conversation about the dilemmas of starting a family.

Like for so many people our age, the decision whether to have children is weighed by a huge disconnect between the family model we know and the world in which we live.

We grew up in families where both parents worked, but the mother either gave up her job when the kids were little, or continued to work part-time with some loss to her career. Women made large gains in equality in the workplace, but it was still assumed that the woman would naturally carry most of the responsibility for making a home and raising children. This is the model that we know from experience, and I've blogged before about the residual effect that it has on my expectations of myself as a wife.

But for a variety of reasons, this model can no longer be taken for granted because for many families, it simply no longer works. We live in a world where the economy is increasingly indifferent to the physical strength of men. The skills and abilities required in today's workplace - like emotional intelligence and the ability to work well with people - are predominantly female attributes. There is strong evidence that "the modern economy is becoming a place where women hold the cards" - women already get the majority of Bachelor's degrees, hold the majority of jobs in the US, and dominate in 13 of the 15 job types predicted to grow the most in the next decade.

We see this shift among the families we know - it is often the woman who has the more lucrative degree, gets the better job, and makes more money than the man. All this has profound implications for family life.

As it often happens, the shift in the economy coincides with a shift in prevailing attitudes. It's been interesting to observe this change in very different families we know - conservative and liberal, in Poland and America, both religious and not. It is no longer assumed that the woman is the automatic caregiver for her children, and we see many mothers continue their very successful careers while fathers scale back on work and take a much more active role in raising the kids. While it is hard for some at first, this new arrangement is no longer raising eyebrows like it used it.

This is nothing new. For example, at a time in ancient Mesopotamia when women were in charge of the fields and gardens, the society was a matriarchy and worshiped female gods. Then the means of producing food changed with the invention of the plough. The plough was much heavier and gave men the advantage over women in economic production, and it was right around the time when it was adopted that Mesopotamian society shifted towards patriarchy, with male priests and gods. It is crazy to think that differences in the status of women to this day are tied to whether their ancestors tilled the land with a hoe or the plough. We are now seeing a reverse shift - when the economy begins to favor women, women gain in freedom and social prominence.

Now, I would be wrong to claim that the model I grew up with no longer works for anybody. It works rather well for many women and my close friends who do a beautiful job at motherhood. But there is an important difference with the past - the decision for the woman to stay at home or scale back on work is not automatic, but the outcome of a mutual understanding between the partners. It is no longer assumed that it is mainly the woman's job to nurture the children - how that is arranged depends on a mutual decision.

So where does that leave us? We face the task of reaching a mutually satisfying understanding about how our family is going to work for two professionals who both find great fulfillment in our jobs. Is it possible to strike such an agreement in the 21st century? In the next post, I will talk about the many reasons why it's extremely hard. In the next one after that, I will try to explain how it might be possible. Meanwhile, the thoughts and comments of our mysterious seven readers will be much appreciated.

Rachel getting pregnant

My friend Rachel is pregnant. She and her husband Darren are the first in our immediate group of friends to pass this big milestone, and Rachel is the first close friend whose pregnancy I've gotten to witness in a day-to-day fashion. We used to joke around about who would have kids first, but it was always rather obvious it would be her - my labor phobia combined with our itinerant life plan pretty much guaranteed that. We even once went to an art fair together, and I bought a card especially for her that said in big letters "I'm glad you're having a baby," and in small letters "and I'm not." After the card gathered dust for a few years, I finally got to dig it up a couple of weeks ago, and I had a moment of profound awe as I placed it in the mailbox. I've had a similar feeling every time I see Rachel with her tummy slightly bigger than the week before. While the message of the card still holds true, and I do not feel anywhere close to ready to join in the club, I find it moving and, well yes, sort of epic, that my friend is becoming a part of a story that will reach so far beyond her and be told long after she is gone. To her little baby boy, she will be the first Woman. She will be somebody's mom, that defining figure he will associate with warmth and love; the mysterious force he will one day try to describe to a partner or decipher in therapy like I still try to decipher my parents. Maybe one day he will say to me: You knew my mom before I was born. What was she like back then? And I will answer - yes, I knew her. I saved a card for her for three years before you were born, saw her belly grow each week, and helped paint your baby room in their first house. Let me tell you about the art she made everywhere she turned, from stationery to food. In fact, let me tell you about the time...

I know kids don't usually ask these sorts of questions about their parents, at least until all their parents' friends are dead; I know these sorts of narratives are more common in literature than in real life. Yet I can't help but realize the good fortune of having friends close enough that the birth of their kids is a major event in my own life, inspiring dreamy and tender thoughts about their future as well as my own.

A Day in the Life

For one day in November, Billy and I had a chance to participate in an amazing art project made possible by our dear friend Becca. It all started a couple of months ago, when I was looking at our wedding pictures and the thought occurred to me that the photos most of us have in our albums are taken on extraordinary occasions that represent a departure from what life is normally like on a daily basis. There are pictures of weddings, vacations, Christmases, graduations - important days that happen just once. Most of our life, meanwhile, happens between those times, monotonous and undocumented. Yet it's those repetitive days full of repetitive activities that constitute most of our lives, and those things often go undocumented. In five years, will I remember the shape of the leaves on the sidewalk on my way to the bus? Will I be able to picture our first apartment, the look of my bathroom mirror as I brushed my teeth every morning, the slant of afternoon light through the kitchen window?

Some time later, I was talking with Becca, who is an amazingly talented artist and the owner of a small business called Liminality Photography. She was telling me about a wedding she had shot, and I shared my recent thoughts with her - how it's a great thing to have a record of the grand days, but I'm sad that we don't capture the mundane ones. That conversation was how the idea of a Day in the Life photo shoot was born. For one day in November, Becca followed us around for an entire day - waking up, walking around our neighborhood, going to work, having late night drinks with friends. It is a record of not just one day, but a unique season of life turned into art. We're so grateful to Becca for creating this, and our hope all along was that these photos would inspire others to document the precious details of our daily lives.





































All photographs copyright of Liminality LLC

A Short History of Patriarchy

Being the enlightened and emancipated couple that we are (well, and strapped for money as well), Billy and I decided this year to take turns cooking.

Before that, I made most of the food for two simple and related reasons:

1. I'm better at it
2. I genuinely enjoy cooking
(As in, I admire vegetables at the farmer's market like some people admire sculptures in a museum, and there are few things I enjoy more than hosting a feast of a dinner party for friends)

So for as long as I had time to do it, I gladly reigned over the kitchen.

The time condition changed radically when I started my doctoral program. Being the enlightened and emancipated couple that we are, we both thought it was not fair for just one of us to do all the cooking when we both work about the same. So we decided to take turns - he cooks for a week, I cook for a week, and that way we can shop for whatever ingredients we need for the whole week. By the end of the first month, I began to feel like the bones of patriarchalism that I thought I'd buried a long time ago were sticking out of their shallow graves right and left.

It was not Billy who dug them up, either. As soon as his schedule got a little busier and preparing meals became an extra stretch, I was overcome by a sense of guilt and responsibility. Whenever it appeared like cooking was causing him any stress, I jumped right in to rescue him and say that it was ok, I could just do it, don't worry about it. Somewhere deep down, I had it ingrained in me that even though it's great that he's "HELPING", it is ultimately MY job to feed the household. I kept doing this even though it left me tired and at times bitter that "I do more of the work around here". It took a few long conversations to make me realize that my constant rescuing did not help either one of us - it actually made Billy feel terrible about not doing his part in our house.

All this made me think again about the meaning and relative novelty of domestic equality. My deep-seated sense of responsibility is probably a thousand years old. It took birth in a cave or shack, at a time when the roles of men and women were defined by their physical attributes and how those translated into their ability to survive in a hostile world. Over time, these differences were translated into timeless roles sanctioned by deities of all sorts and shapes. At one point in the past, this role division allowed our species to survive, so it became entrenched as the ultimate norm.

It reminds me of something I noticed about my grandparents a while ago. To survive the war and the hard times that followed, they went into a kind of survival mode - a total focus on the basic necessities of life that cut out marginalities like emotions for the sake of overcoming external threats. That strategy probably saved their lives, but when the war was over, they were so used to functioning this way that they went on in the same way, bringing about alienation and lack of intimacy. In survival mode, there is often only one right way to go, unanimous action is crucial, and dissent can be fatal. This is how you function in crisis - but if it becomes the long term operating procedure for a marriage, for raising children and sustaining a family, the same thing that once saved your life becomes deadly. I can't help but think it's the same with patriarchalism - it's a strategy that once worked very well for us, but in a changed reality it threatens to erode the well-being we've fought so hard to achieve. That is what happens, for instance, when a woman is expected to still take care of the home and raise children even though she works equally to the man outside the home.

I've found that the adaptation of operating procedures to new realities can be especially difficult for people with strong religious beliefs. As people of faith, we believe the Divine Being revealed Him/Her-Self to humanity, and if He/She did, isn't it reasonable to assume that the Revelation was singular, unchanging, and once-and-for-all? If so, both men and women working equally outside the home a shift to a post-industrial economy don't mean a thing, because gender roles have been defined once and for all by God.

Within my own religious tradition, I find two strands that delightfully subvert this gateway to fundamentalism. First is the underestimated and underinterpreted biblical Wisdom literature, where we often see two contradictory statements right next to each other. Which one is right? Which is the divine will? It depends! Wisdom is not a once-and-for-all formula, but rather the ability to choose the right formula for the right situation, God's redemptive gift for fundamentalizing humans. The second is the Incarnation itself - the ultimate act of Revelation was not a holy rule book or codex, but a Person - thoughtful in solitude at dawn in the Galilean hills, tongue-in-cheek at a wedding in Cana, mad as a hatter at the cleansing of the Temple. Proclaiming a message that notoriously throws our expectations upside down - last being first, poor being rich, humble exalted, the Kingdom all unlike what we're used to.

This incarnate wisdom of God (incidentally or not quite so incidentally personified as a woman - Sophia - in biblical wisdom literature) is ultimately why I continue to practice taking it easy on the couch while Billy cooks, and telling myself it's ok. It's not as hard as it first looked.

Vignette of a Marriage

Yesterday Billy and I began celebrating our first anniversary. Since we were married twice within one week, the festivities will not be limited to just one day, but we kicked them off in grand style by having dinner at our favorite restaurant in St. Paul and looking back at the first 365 days of our marriage. When Billy asked about my most significant memory, it was not our honeymoon in Greece or surprise weekend at a Victorian Bed & Breakfast...

One night a few months ago, we were lying in bed about to fall asleep, but my heart was troubled with a lingering heaviness. "I don’t know if we’re still connecting like we used to" – I finally said out loud.

Billy must have been tired, but he turned towards me and asked me to say more – what made me feel that way? How were things different than before? I struggled to put my finger on just what it was that troubled me in that vulnerable hour before sleep and followed a few rabbit trails. "I don’t know" – I finally said. "Maybe it’s just that I wonder if we still really see each other... I worry that maybe we’ve grown so used to each other that we only see shadows made up of what we expect to see instead of the real person?"

There was a brief silence, and I grew worried that I’d hurt him with my words or unnecessarily raised his anxiety about the condition of our relationship, and I wished I hadn’t said anything at all. Silly, emotional woman. Of course we’re ok, how dare I wonder – we have a great relationship, why would I ever jeopardize it with silly nighttime worries that I can’t even figure out myself?

Then his soft voice in the silence... Open. Unafraid. Undefensive.

"Is there something you wish that I were noticing about you, sweetie?"

I lay there wide-eyed as these words crossed the silence, tearing up as soon as they reached me.

Instead of moving away, Billy moved towards me. In doing that, he opened some hidden dam that now stood wide open – as open as the stream of tears on my face while I considered his question.

"No, Billy. I think it’s just that I haven’t even been noticing who I am these days. I’m so busy that I don’t even look inside anymore, and I feel so foreign and uninteresting to myself when I’m finally quiet."

Our conversation that night stands out in my memory in a different way than the others – it wasn’t planned, it just happened in the midst of the daily stress of life while neither of us was prepared, rested or Sunday best. It was an unexpected moment of vulnerability, and even in that unguarded moment, Billy's first instinct was to move towards me rather than away from me; to be for me rather than against me; to really hear me rather than build up a defense against the potential danger of my words. What I find supremely ironic is that if he did become defensive or anxious, something completely unrelated to the condition of our marriage would have probably become all about it. I have a feeling that this is precisely how conflict and misunderstanding take root in most intimate relationships. Experiences like that late night conversation have rooted in me a lasting sense of peace and security. It means more to me than I can explain to know without a doubt in my very inmost being that Billy is truly, deeply for me. And that, more than anything else, cuts to the core of my fierce love for the man I married 366 days ago.