Is Marriage Still Possible

Note that Blankenhorn is not describing the elevated view of marriage in Judeo-Christian orthodoxy, as presented in sacred and secular works, such as the “Song of Songs,” the comedies of Shakespeare, and Milton’s “Paradise Lost”— works that emphasize the delight of man and wife in each other, the dance of the sexes, not their chronic contempt for each other.

Blankenhorn simply sets out the basic elements of marriage, not only in Judeo-Christian sexual morality, but also as it was codified in the earliest known legal codes and has been understood always and everywhere for the past 5,000 years — but is no more.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s, with the Pill, pornography, and the normalization of almost every kind of sex in and out of marriage, broke the basic natural links in Blankenhorn’s definition, and with that, the idea of the sexes being made for each other, coming together in a sexual union ordered to the bearing and raising of children and a commitment to each other and to any children that resulted.

Instead, marriage has been redefined as a kind of state-registered friendship, with no necessary requirement of sex, let alone the one and only kind of sex that can ever result in new life (though obviously, it does not always do so every time or in all circumstances).

Like friendship generally, there is, in the redefined version of marriage, no serious expectation of fidelity of the couple.

The new marriage involves, for now, a bonding of only two adults rather than three or more. In this it imitates conjugal marriage, where the couple forms a single reproductive system of man and woman, father and mother, rather than having any inner logic of its own.

As with other kinds of friendship, there is no permanence, no long-term commitment to each other or to parenting. All of this retreat from the principles of conjugal marriage preceded legal recognition of same-sex “marriage,” which was not the cause but one expression of the decay of marriage and its deinstitutionalization.

With the decline in marriage, the later ages at which it happens when it does, the increase in cohabitation, the decline in fertility, and the increase in birthrates out of wedlock, marriage is no longer the social institution it was for millennia.

“Once-familiar structures, narratives, and rituals about romance and marriage — how to date, falling in love, whom to marry, why, and when — have largely collapsed, sustained only in subgroups, and that with increasing difficulty,” he wrote in his 2017 book “Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy.”

But is marriage as once understood still possible today, even as an option, even in sub-groups? Marriage depends on the virtues, such as self-mastery — controlling our strongest impulses and appetites, rather than being a slave to them.

It depends on prudence or practical judgment, on justice and courage in giving others their due and keeping our vows and commitments. These are personal virtues, but we all live in a moral ecology where a legal code, cultural institutions, popular culture, and mores either make it easier to cultivate and exercise the virtues required for marriage, or frustrate our ability to behave virtuously.

I live in a small town where marriage and the virtues needed for it are highly prized. It is the home of a small, orthodox Catholic college with stricter-than-usual rules about students visiting each other in their dorms, let alone living together in dorms for both sexes (which do not exist). There is no sex week promoting and normalizing all kinds of non-marital sexual behavior (instead students organize an annual Love Week), and no condom machines on or off campus. There is more community life among students and with the community.

Such activities, informal and semi-formal, may be essential to a healthy culture of marriage. But there can be few if any communities that remain unaffected by the hookup culture. Everything in popular culture — movies, TV shows, music — is saturated with the message of casual sex.

High-definition pornography is ubiquitous and addictive — a kind of cheap sex that cheapens all sex. Even staid detective series seem compelled to include preachy messages that normalize nonconjugal sexual activities and deny the brokenness of broken homes.

So my answer to the question of whether marriage is possible today is yes but barely, and only with a lot of community support and personal commitment.

There is no utopia in our broken world.

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