Marriage
A union where society recognizes that a partner can share or exercise some of the other's rights in perpetuity.
From 1996 to 2015, public opinion on same-sex marriage in the U.S. changed dramatically, with 27% of the population supporting it in '96 and 60% supporting it in 2016. That's an amazingly quick change of opinion for a large amount of a people in a short time. Many other social issues have taken generations to see that kind of change in opinion.
The interesting thing here is that the idea of marriage is incredibly old—it's been around for thousands of years. And yet, within two decades, millions of people had changed their minds about how it works. Did they suddenly start using a new definition of marriage? Or maybe they'd never really thought about the definition of marriage before, and once they did, they changed their minds?
Our national change in opinion is even more surprising given how marriages have changed over the last hundreds and thousands of years. Is it possible to come up with a single definition that could cover all of them?
Looking at the definitions of marriages we might see today, we can determine that they're not very reliable:
- the state of being united as spouses in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law
- any of the diverse forms of interpersonal union established in various parts of the world to form a familial bond that is recognized legally, religiously, or socially, granting the participating partners mutual conjugal rights and responsibilities
- the legally or formally recognized union of two people as partners in a personal relationship
The first definition doesn't work because it relies on an understanding of the word "spouse," which is defined as someone who's married, so the logic here is circular. Without "spouse," marriage is just a contractual relationship recognized by the law, and this includes any agreement two people make by signing a contract.
The second definition relies on the way marriages are already recognized, so it doesn't help us if we're considering changing marriage laws or norms. Someone arguing against a change in marriage law could always say, "But marriage is what's recognized now legally or religiously, so we can't change." That definition also doesn't cover anything that used to be called a marriage but wouldn't be recognized today as the same. So, what should we call those "old" marriages instead?
The last one is probably the best of these options, because it uses "personal relationship" as the defining characteristic of the recognized union. However, I still see some problems with it. It limits marriage to just two people, which isn't always true depending on the time or place we're talking about. Also, personal relationships aren't just marriages. If a single parent adopts a child, that's a legally recognized union of two people. So we want something that will recognize certain kinds of personal unions and not others and that doesn't rely on a circular definition.
A union where society recognizes that a partner can share or exercise some of the other's rights in perpetuity.
Does that work? In any society, there is some kind of formal or informal government or at least some set of laws or norms that are followed. And these laws include, either implicitly or explicitly, individual rights, rights that are either granted by a government or society to individuals or that are considered natural and inalienable. We all have rights that we can choose to exercise for ourselves but that we don't have to. Marriage is the unique situation where someone else can now choose to exercise some of your rights as well.