I’ve been thinking about getting married. This is where my parents, devoted readers they are, have simultaneous heart palpitations. But it is the institution of marriage, in its broadest, most general sense that seems to be in the air lately.
My roommate, who is going to law school in the fall, has been advised by her mother to attend the cheapest law school possible. Why, her mother beseeched, would she want to accrue unnecessary amounts of loans? When she gets married, what if she wants to stay at home to raise her children? She may not be able to afford to because she’d have to work to pay back all the loans. My roommate patiently explained to her mother that she intended to practice law with her law degree – that however many dollars in loans she took out were simply an investment in a rewarding career. To me, she snapped, “Law school seems a bit far to go for my ‘Mrs.’ degree, don’t you think?”
I do think. And it was the second time that weekend that I was thinking about marriage in as many days. The day before, my aunt asked me if I had any friends who were getting married when we graduate in May. Capital N, capital O. My aunt, who did not marry until she was 37, was simply asking because she was in the minority as a single woman with no desire to marry when she graduated from Simmons College in the early 1970s.
I decided to send an email survey to 25 friends, probing their views of marriage. Because for all the upkeep I try to maintain with my current events, I am stuck on one buzz word: “sacred.”
Most opponents of gay marriage say that by allowing same sex partners to have a legally bound marriage, Massachusetts would be violating everything that makes a marriage sacred. Since I’m a fan of the U.S. Constitution and I like to keep church and state separate, I can’t really get a good grasp on what the term “sacred” means outside of religion in our society where, to use the clich, nothing’s sacred.
There was a time where certain things were mutually exclusive with marriage – religion, sex, the joining of property and finances – and the term “sacred” was much more easily defined. Those things made a marriage sacred because they were encouraged to exist within a marriage. Most people of our grandparents’ era married people who practiced the same religion, who were virgins on their wedding day and who would’ve blushed at the thought of living with a future spouse before they married.
When I emailed 25 of my closest friends and acquaintances, I really just wanted to know what makes a marriage sacred to our promiscuous, cohabitating, secular generation. Especially because most of us grew up accustomed to living in a culture where we saw divorce as an equally acceptable institution as marriage. Just ask Ms. Spears.
Through this email, I asked my friends questions regarding self-imposed age minimums and maximums for marriage, how they meet people of the desirable sex, the desire for children, how they visualize the “ideal” marriage, if they would stay at home to raise children and how they view the term “sacred” in the context of gay or straight marriage.
About half of the 25 recipients responded, and without offending these friends who were kind enough to help me out, their answers were pretty much all the same. It seems as though most 20- to 25-year-olds simply assume that they will be married one day. No one said they wanted to be married before the age of 25, due to schooling and financial burdens; in fact, many people chose 27 or 28 as the perfect age to be married. Most of my friends agreed that there is no age maximum to stop considering marriage, but many of my female friends want children before they’re 38.
Everyone who replied made good arguments in favor of same-sex marriage. One friend wrote that the sacredness of a marriage lies in how much effort a couple is willing to put forth to make the relationship work and to maintain (and allow to evolve) the love that got them there in the first place – for better or for worse. It seems to me that “sacred” has a whole new meaning, and it has less to do with religion, property and sex than it does with love.
After reading and rereading my friends’ responses, I take the overly simplistic, and possibly nave, stance: Most people get married because they want to, and not because they have no other alternatives. Sometimes, they marry the wrong person, and sometimes they stay with that person for 45 minutes or 20 years. Look, Massachusetts, I like boys and I’m entitled to tax and health benefits no matter how “sacredly” I treat the institution of marriage. If I liked girls, I’d probably want the same entitlements. So hop on over to the left, ye olde commonwealth – it’s nice over here.
I don’t find the debate surrounding same sex marriage all that interesting because, like my friends and I assume, we’ll marry one day – I assume it has to happen. What I find interesting is that we, as 20-somethings who have been brought up to only care about ourselves, assume that one day, when we’re 28 or 38, we’re going to realize that we’re “ready,” find a husband or a wife and make it work. What we should anticipate along with the legalization of gay marriage is how our selfish generation deals with an institution that requires the ultimate selflessness, gay or straight.
Good luck to us all.
Allison Keiley, a senior in the College of Communication, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press.