In the Garden of Spirituality – Elizabeth Johnson

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“We are not on earth to guard a museum,
but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.”

– Pope John XXIII

The Wild Reed’s series of reflections on religion and spirituality continues with an excerpt from Elizabeth A. Johnson’s book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God.

In this particular excerpt, Johnson explores the practical implications that arise from our recognition of the triune God as “a communion of overflowing love enfolding the world with gracious compassion.”

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In its own singular way, religious belief in the triune God sums up the experience that, far from being an isolated monad, the unfathomable mystery of God is a communion of overflowing love enfolding the world with gracious compassion. “God is love,” penned an early Christian letter writer (1 John 4:8), summing up in this brief phrase the experience of salvation coming from God through Jesus in the Spirit. Anyone who talks of Trinity talks of God as Love in an idiom particular to the Christian story. Conversely, the symbol of the Trinity safeguards this Christian experience of God.

A rationalistic Trinitarian theology, dysfunctional and divorced from Christian life and ethics, has little practical effect. A revitalized Trinitarian theology, however, has strong down-to-earth ramifications. The opening sentence of Catherine LaCugna’s influential study, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, articulates this surprising claim with vigor: “The doctrine of the Trinity is ultimately a practical doctrine with radical consequences for Christian life.” The logic of this assertion is clear. God lives as the mystery of love. Human beings are created in the image of God. Therefore, a life of integrity is impossible unless we also enter into the dynamic of love and communion with others.

What practical pattern of life best enables us to do so? La Cugna proposes that the key resides in the reign of God, which Jesus preached and enacted. As glimpsed in his parables and practices, the reign of God is a gracious rule of saving love and communion. As a place where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven, it sets up a new kind of community where “the least of these” brothers and sisters are included, a gathering where the Samaritan woman, the tax collector, and the leper are equally at home. In this community tyranny is countermanded in the light of God’s self-giving ways; male and female are equal partners, as are Jew and Greek. Justice, peace, and the well-being of all creatures are the goal. If we are not living out the types of relationships that serve this pattern of the truth of the reign of God, then we haven’t got a clue about who God is. Knowing God is impossible unless we enter into a life of love and communion with others.

To say that the Trinity is inherently practical is not to imply that this belief gives immediate solutions to war and violence, blueprints to eliminate hunger, or concrete remedies for inequality. Rather, it functions as a source of vision to shape our actions in the world, a criterion to measure the fidelity of our lives, and a basis for resisting every form of oppression that diminishes community.

Deeply harmful attitudes and practices have arisen in church and society because one group imagines itself superior to another. The resulting stratification of power, with some dominant, some subordinate, shapes institutions of racism, sexism, ecclesiastical clericalism, and ruination of the earth, among other pernicious sins. The revitalized idea of the Trinity makes clear that, far from existing as a monarch ruling from isolated splendor and lording it over others, the living God is an overflowing communion of self-giving love. The practical importance of this notion lies in the way it exposes the perversion of patriarchy, racism, and other sinful practices.

Because such breaks in community totally oppose God’s very own way of relating, people of faith have compelling reason to behave otherwise.

The church’s identity and mission pivot on this point. Called to be a sacrament of the world’s salvation, the church is to be a living symbol of divine communion of equal persons related in profound mutuality, pouring out praise of God and care for the world in need, only such a church corresponds to the triune God it purports to serve.

Revitalized Trinitarian theology makes it clear that a God conceived of as an individualized monarch or as a self-enclosed, exclusively inner-related triad of persons, a God who watches from a distance as an uninvolved, impartial observer, a God who needs to be persuaded to care for creatures – such a God does not exist. This is a false God, a fantasy detached from the Christian experience of salvation. Rather, “God is Love,” related to the world in a threefold pattern of communion. Assimilating this truth we gain fresh energies to imagine the world in a loving way and to act to counter the self-destruction of violence.


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• No Patriarchy Hierarchy, No Rigid Conformity
• Conversing and Arguing with the Theology of Philip Pullman

For more of Elizabeth Johnson at The Wild Reed, see:
• Images of God (Part 1)
• Images of God (Part 2)

Recommended Off-site Links:
Liam Sullivan’s review of Quest for the Living God (Panorama of the Mountains).
Jill Riatt’s review of Quest for the Living God (Catholic Books Review).

Opening Image: Michael J. Bayly.

The Adventures Continue

I love Elisabeth Sladen – and her character of investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith, first introduced way back in 1973 as the space/time traveling companion of the Time Lord known simply as “the Doctor” in the classic sci-fi TV show Doctor Who.

Since 2006, Sladen has reprised the role in guest appearances in the “new” Doctor Who (see here and here) and in her own TV show, the successful Sarah Jane Adventures (see here and here).

The third series of The Sarah Jane Adventures is currently showing on UK television, while the second is set for DVD release here in the US on November 10.

Both series boast some entertaining stories of alien threats to Earth being thwarted by Sarah Jane - with help from her extraterrestrial super-computer, Mr. Smith; her sonic lipstick; and her son Luke and his teenage friends Clyde Langer and Rani Chandra (all of whom share a delightful Harry Potter-esque camaraderie).



Perhaps the most compelling story of Series 2 is “The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith,” which sees our plucky heroine succumb to the temptation of going back in time and preventing the deaths of her parents in a car accident.

It’s all part of a devious plan by the Trickster (right) to have Sarah Jane unwittingly open a fault in time by tampering with a fixed point in 1951 - the year of her parents’ death. The opening of this fault in time allows the Trickster to physically enter reality and ravage Earth for the last half century – something Sarah Jane and Luke discover upon returning to their own time.



Yikes! Rest assured, things are eventually put right.

Series 3 is getting a lot of press at the moment due to the fact that it features a guest appearance by none other than the Doctor himself – at Sarah Jane’s wedding, no less! And as you’ll see, the Doctor isn’t the only unexpected guest . . .





Yes, it’s the Trickster – once more up to . . . er . . . his old tricks. This story, like so many before it, bears testament to the fact that the show is, as one critic notes, “a marvel; delivering epic, affecting adventures with great style.”

In promoting the third series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Elisabeth Sladen recently appeared on the UK television show The Wright Stuff, where she was asked to share her opinion on “gay hate teen attacks” – a topical issue in the UK in the wake of incidents such as this.





Lis’ wise and impassioned remarks remind me of the insightful observation of Juliet Cowan (who played Chrissie Jackson in Series 1-2).

The Sarah Jane Adventures is not a kind of watered-down version of Doctor Who. It’s more about relationships; it’s about living within all the different families, made-up families, alien families. The series kind of stays there: the characters don’t travel in the same way that the Doctor does, they have a base and a home, and they have to deal with their experiences within that.

Here’s hoping that given the concern in Britain about “gay hate teen attacks,” one experience that the characters of The Sarah Jane Adventures will deal with in future episodes will involve a gay character, family and/or storyline.



Of course, some may think it odd for a grown man to be so enamored with a TV series basically aimed at kids. But think about it: many books and films beloved by adults were originally produced for children and/or teenagers - The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, all things superhero-related . . . Oh, and my all-time favorite novel, The Neverending Story.

It’s no wonder then that critic Alex Newman writes of how The Sarah Jane Adventures, “this supposed children’s program . . . tackles loss, loneliness, fear and despair - all ingredients of ‘adult’ drama - but in a way that allows the characters to grow and learn something about themselves and their boundaries - and other people.”

And as has been especially observed in the development of the character of Sarah Jane over the three series of the show, such growing and learning involves opening up and trusting others, risk-taking, and a willingness to change. Sarah Jane isn’t the reclusive, frosty woman first seen at the beginning of Series 1. She’s an altogether different person; and it has not been her encountering of exotic aliens that has changed her for the better, but rather her entering into relationships with regular human beings. (Okay, in the case of Luke, not so regular!)



Newman observes that the show accomplishes all of this “without hitting the younger end of the audience over the head,” and also avoiding “falling into the trap of producing tacky syrup for the older end of the spectrum.”

All of which proves series writer Gareth Roberts’ point that, “Like all the best children’s stories, [The Sarah Jane Adventures] should work for everybody.”

And it does, Gareth, it does!

Why? Well, I think it has a lot to do with what Lis Sladen recently identified as the special “nub of emotion” at the heart of Doctor Who and, by extension, The Sarah Jane Adventures: “It’s about being different,” she says. “It’s about you being allowed to be a loner. And everyone has that in them . . . they don’t really want to be one of the crowd but dare they be anything else?”

For as Sarah Jane Smith knows all too well, being something other than “one of the the crowd,” being open to all kinds of questions, and never giving up in trying to put things right, often results in others thinking you’re eccentric, moody, weird, even insane. Yet as Sarah Jane defiantly declares: “I don’t care what people think of me. Never have. I just want to find the truth.”

Ah . . . the inspiring Sarah Jane Smith! Did I say how much I love this character and the actress that brings her so wonderfully to life?








Following are some images from the Series 3 story, “The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.”

Above: The Doctor makes a house call
to 13 Bannerman Road, Ealing.


Above: Luke, Rani, and Clyde inside the TARDIS.


Above: The Doctor and Sarah Jane say goodbye.
(But they’ll be meeting again in “The End of Time,” the last story
for David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor prior to the character’s
regeneration into his eleventh incarnation,
who will be played by Matt Smith.)

For more on Sarah Jane Smith at The Wild Reed, see:
Blast from the Past: Sarah Jane Smith Returns to Doctor Who
What Sarah Jane Did Next
She’s So Lovely
Impossible! . . . It Can’t Be!
She’s Back!
Too Good to Miss


Recommended Off-site Link:
Love and Marriage: A Review of “The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith” - Frank Collins (Behind the Sofa, November 6, 2009).
Sarah-Jane.tv

Reflections on Maine

Here’s a sampling of what online commentators are saying about yesterday’s election results, in particular the repealing in Maine of the state’s new law allowing same-sex marriage.

The Day After Election Day - Jim Burroway (Box Turtle Bulletin, November 4, 2009).

The Other Marriage Nail-Biter: Victory - Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish, Movember 4, 2009).

What Thomas Jefferson Would Think of Maine Voting on Other People’s Rights - Mike Alvear (Huffington Post, November 4, 2009).

A Few Words on Maine and the Dying Hog of Homophobia - Pam Spaulding (Pam’s House Blend, November 4, 2009).

Election Night: Several Steps Forward, One Step Back - Terence Weldon (Queering the Church, November 4, 2009).

Bigotry and the Infusion of Religion in the Civil Laws Prevail in Maine - Michael B. Hamer (Michael-In-Norfolk, November 4, 2009).

How Outright Lies Were Used to Defeat Prop 1 in Maine - Colleen Kochvair-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, November 4, 2009).

Gay Marriage Activists Look Ahead After Big Defeat in Maine - Michael A. Lindenberger (Time, November 4, 2009).

The World’s First “Civil Likes” Movement - Wayne Besen (TruthWinsOut.org, November 4, 2009).

Maine, Detroit, and the Closet - John Corvino (Independent Gay Forum, November 7, 2009).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Set-Back and a Victory
Maine Vote on Gay Marriage Too Close to Call
Scandalous News from Maine
Maine Becomes Fifth State to Allow Same-Sex Marriage
An Ironic Truth
Separate is Not Equal
The Same Premise
A Catholic Voice for Marriage Equality at the State Capitol
Patrick Ryan on the “Defense of Traditional Marriage” Argument
John Corvino on the “Always and Everywhere” Argument
The Changing Face of “Traditional Marriage”

NOTE: The opening image is by Elliot Ryan. It was first published at Box Turtle Bulletin.

A Set-Back and a Victory

By a narrow margin voters in Maine have repealed a state law that would have allowed same-sex marriage.

I resonate with Andrew Sullivan’s take on this news.

I am heart-broken tonight by Maine, and I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

Somehow losing by this tiny margin is brutalizing. And because this is a vote on my dignity as a human being, it is hard not to take it personally or emotionally. But I also know that the history of civil rights movements has many steps backward as forward, and some of those reversals actually catalyze the convictions that lead to victories. A decade ago, the marriage issue was toxic. Now it divides evenly. Soon, it will win everywhere.

I know for many younger gays and lesbians, this process can seem bewildering and hurtful. But I’m old enough now to be able to look back and see the hill we have climbed in such a short amount of time, and the minds and hearts we have changed. Including our own.

Know hope.

And Sullivan helps us know hope in his reporting on the results of “the other marriage nail-biter”:

In Washington State, another referendum on gay couples’ equality was also a squeaker. But in this one, gay couples won. The state’s domestic partnership law grants gay couples all the rights of married couples at a state level. The usual forces tried to reverse it, as they tried in Maine. But in Washington, the gay side won by 51.1 to 48.9 percent. Again, it's such a slender margin, it’s stupid to draw any vast conclusions.

But I do want to point out that, from the perspective of just a decade ago, to have an even split on this question in a voter referendum is a huge shift in the culture. In Maine, where the Catholic church did all it could to prevent gays from having civil rights in a very Catholic and rural state, gays do have equality but may now merely be denied the name. The process itself has helped educate and enlighten and deepen the debate about gay people in ways that never happened before the marriage issue came up.

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Maine Vote on Gay Marriage Too Close to Call
Scandalous News from Maine

Recommended Off-site Links and Updates:
The Day After Election Day - Jim Burroway (Box Turtle Bulletin, November 4, 2009).
What Thomas Jefferson Would Think of Maine Voting on Other People’s Rights - Mike Alvear (Huffington Post, November 4, 2009).
A Few Words on Maine and the Dying Hog of Homophobia - Pam Spaulding (Pam’s House Blend, November 4, 2009).
Election Night: Several Steps Forward, One Step Back - Terence Weldon (Queering the Church, November 4, 2009).
Bigotry and the Infusion of Religion in the Civil Laws Prevail in Maine - Michael B. Hamer (Michael-In-Norfolk, November 4, 2009).

Image: Partners Lisa Brackbill, left, and Lisa Pugh, right, both from Buckfield, Maine console one another along with Darlene Huntress, center, of Portland, after learning about the unofficial defeat on Question 1 at election night headquarters in Portland, Maine, early Wednesday morning, Nov. 4, 2009. Maine voters decided to rescind the Legislature’s approval of same-sex marriage. (AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach)

Image 2: A same-sex couple from San Francisco, attend a marriage equality rally on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC in 2004. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Alex Wong)

Image 3: Ellen Pontac, left, and her wife Shelly Bailes celebrate their one-year wedding anniversary in Sacramento, California, last year. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Max Whittaker)

Maine Vote on Gay Marriage Too Close to Call

The Associated Press is reporting this evening that the gay-marriage vote in Maine is too close to call.

As I’m sure most readers of this blog would know, the issue of gay marriage was put to a vote in Maine today in a closely watched referendum that many of us hope will see marriage equality prevail at the ballot box.

Following are highlights from Glenn Adams and David Crary’s AP article on this unfolding story. It’s an article that does an excellent job at succinctly summarizing the significance of today’s vote - however it turns out.

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Voters [in Maine] had to decide whether to repeal or affirm a state law that would allow gay couples to wed. The law was passed by the Legislature in May but never took effect because of a petition drive by conservatives.

Early returns showed a close contest, as forecast. With 148 of 608 precincts reporting, each side had 50 percent of the votes.

A vote to uphold the law would mark the first time that the electorate in any state endorsed gay marriage. That could energize activists nationwide and blunt conservative claims that same-sex marriage is being foisted on states by judges or lawmakers over the will of the public.

However, repeal — in New England, the region of the country most supportive of gay couples — would be another heartbreaking defeat for the marriage-equality movement, following the vote against gay marriage in California a year ago.

It would also mark the first time voters had torpedoed a gay-marriage law enacted by a legislature. When Californians rejected same-sex marriage, it was in response to a court ruling, not legislation.

Maine’s secretary of state, Matthew Dunlap, said turnout seemed higher than expected for an off-year election and voter interest appeared intense. Even before Tuesday, more than 100,000 people — out of about 1 million registered voters — had voted by absentee ballot or early voting.

Five other states have legalized gay marriage — Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut — but all did so through legislation or court rulings, not by popular vote. In contrast, constitutional amendments banning gay marriage have been approved in all 30 states where they have been on the ballot.

“If we don’t win, then Maine will have its place in infamy because no state has ever voted for homosexual marriage,” said Chuck Schott of Portland, who stood near a polling place in Maine’s biggest city with a pro-repeal campaign sign.

Another Portland resident, Sarah Holman said she was “very torn” but decided — despite her conservative upbringing — to vote in favor of letting gays marry.

“They love and they have the right to love. And we can’t tell somebody how to love,” said Holman, 26.

Hundreds of gay-marriage supporters gathered in a Portland hotel ballroom in the evening to await the results. On display was a three-tiered wedding cake topped with two grooms on one side, two brides on the other, and the words “We All Do.”

To read this article in its entirety, click here.



Recommended Off-site Links and Updates:
Heated Battle in Maine’s Same-Sex Marriage Vote - Joe Garofoli (San Francisco Chronicle, October 28, 2009)
Stakes are High in Maine's Vote on Gay Marriage - David Sharp and David Crary (Associated Press, November 2, 2009).
Gay Marriage Vote Being Tallied in Maine - David Sharp (Boston Globe, November 3, 2009).
As Maine Goes, So Goes Gay Marriage - Alexander Burns (Politico, November 3, 2009).
Bishops Redefine Church and State - Geoff Farrow (Father Geoff Farrow, November 2, 2009).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Patrick Ryan on the “Defense of Traditional Marriage” Argument
John Corvino on the “Always and Everywhere” Argument
The Changing Face of “Traditional Marriage”
Scandalous News from Maine
The Same Premise
Is Anyone In the Least Bit Surprised By This?
The Real Gay Agenda
Separate is Not Equal
An Ironic Truth
A Catholic Voice for Marriage Equality at the State Capitol
A Surprising Finding Regarding Catholics and Gay Marriage
A Catholic Presence at Gay Pride

Image 1: Supporters of same-sex marriage Suzanne Blackburn, left, and Ann DiMella, of Portland, prepare to set up a “NO on 1” sign in Deering Oaks Park, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2009, in Portland, Maine. Voters will decide Question 1, the proposal to rescind the Legislature’s approval of same-sex marriage. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

Image 2: Kathy Stickel holds a sign while joining supporters who turned out for a gay-rights supporter rally the day before election day in Portland, Maine, on Monday, Nov. 2, 2009. Gay marriage has lost in every single state in which it has been put to a popular vote. Come Election Day, gay-rights supporters are hoping to make Maine the exception. (AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach)

Image 3: Supporters turn out for a gay-rights rally the day before election day in Portland, Maine, on Monday, Nov. 2, 2009. (AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach)

Patrick Ryan on the “Defense of Traditional Marriage” Argument

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The “consensual approach toward commitment,”
says Patrick J. Ryan, is the keystone of modern society
and the strongest justification for same-sex marriage.

In the November-December 2009 issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review, Patrick J. Ryan, an associate professor of childhood and social institutions at the University of Western Ontario, has an insightful article on how “traditional marriage”’s roots in property and commerce are ignored by conservatives (including, it should be noted, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops).

The general premise of Ryan’s piece is that what reactionary elements within various religious institutions and groups call “traditional” family values, including “traditional marriage,” have virtually no long-term history.

“Marriage,” writes Ryan, “is a human institution embedded in a political and economic history. If we allow the ‘defenders of traditional marriage’ to blind the public to this history under the false premise that changes to marriage are a threat to the natural order or a challenge to God’s law, we will have missed the opportunity to understand the full implications of the modern world we have created.”

The crucial questions concerning “consumerist families of market societies,” writes Ryan, “must be pursued, but they should not create any nostalgia for the marital and family relations of the traditional world” – relations marked by an understanding of the home as a “site of production” and a “framework for the master-servant order.”

I thought I’d do my bit to help folks understand the “full implications of the modern world we have created” by sharing highlights from Ryan’s excellent article. This seems especially timely given that in Maine today voters will be asked to vote either Yes or No to the following question: “Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?” A Yes vote will take away the right of same-sex couples to marry, while a No vote will keep the right of same-sex couples to marry.

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The “defense of marriage” argument rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of marriage as an institution and as a word, and a deep confusion about what constitutes a “traditional” way of life. When marriage is redefined in terms of heterosexuality or even the capacity of two people to have children, it is not being reestablished in a “traditional” form but instead in a uniquely modern form, one that’s underpinned by a preoccupation with sexuality and a desire to police its forms of expression.

Traditional families hardly exist today in the United States or any other industrial society. This is not because we’ve lost our moral bearings but because we have rejected the ethics of a traditional master-servant world. Instead, we’ve constructed modern family ideals around consensual love, competent individualism, child development, and egalitarian companionship. Modern family ideals have a reciprocal relationship with a civil political order based on individual rights and a capitalist economy.


No simple definition

The first thing that one might say is that it’s nonsense to speak of marriage as if there was ever a golden age when it was a well-regulated, uniform, untroubled institution immune from political or economic conflict. Most marriage forms in the history of the world (approximately three-fourths) have been polygamous. This includes the patriarchs of the Hebrew scriptures. Until a few centuries ago, beginning in Europe, a multiplicity of forms among ordinary people were usually practiced without state or church regulation. Across the globe, marriage and sexual practices included persons we would call children or youths. It has been common in many places and times for sexual relations (including homosexual ones) to have been ritual parts of communal initiation. Thus sex has existed for most of humanity outside of a monogamous marital monopoly, or even the concept of consenting adulthood. This strange diversity troubles any simple definition of “traditional” marriage, but it makes one thing clear: what the religious Right calls “traditional” family values have virtually no long-term history.

What, they would ask in disbelief, haven’t heterosexual monogamy and protecting children from the outside world always been the central reason for marriage in Western civilization? The answer, in fact, is No. This concept of marriage wasn’t predominant until the Protestant Reformation ushered in a capitalist economy and the modern individual.

In English, the word “marriage” was derived from the French “marier” (to join) and the French suffix “–age” (denoting a condition or state of being). It referred to any joining with the connotation of permanence, whether one was marrying two bottles of wine or two people together. Against these deep and flexible etymological roots, our current sense of marriage is only a few centuries old.

The medieval church didn’t much concern itself with the regulation of the profane: sex, children, women, marriage, or family. Medieval marriage was one of the lesser oaths of master-servant fealty. In everyday life, if you lived as husband and wife, you were married. For many centuries in traditional Europe, what we call “common-law marriage” was how the vast majority of couples were bonded prior to the 16th century. Marriage banns, elaborate ceremonies for commoners, state licenses, family courts, the preoccupation with sexuality, and demands of romantic love, along with a sentimental approach to childbearing – all these accoutrements of modern marriage have conceptual origins in the Protestant Reformation, but they took centuries to develop and were irregularly practiced until the 19th century.


The history of “husband,” “wife,” and “family”

We can get a glimpse into family life prior to modern marriage by more closely examining the history of the relevant words. While it is true that “husbands” have always been male, this is because all owners of property were male. “Husband” comes from combining two words, “house” and “bounde” (ownership). To be a husband was to own, work, and improve the land – this is why we still speak of “husbandry.” Prior to industrial capitalism, a propertyless man was not only an undesirable spouse, he had no right to “espouse” (claim) a wife and had to accept a life as a servant in another man’s house. This makes perfect sense when we know that the term “family” originated, not as a reference to children or sexual procreation, but through the Latin word “famulus,” which meant servant, and its immediate forerunner “familia,” which meant household. A man who had no property had no way to establish a family. As a result, most men lived in a position of servitude within their master’s household. Even sons of propertied fathers, who could hope to become masters and husbands, usually had to await their inheritance before establishing an independent household. This traditional pattern of paternal control over property did not begin to erode in the Anglo-American world until the 18th-century.

The chief point of all this for the current marriage debate is that prior to the era of the American Revolution, property ownership, not individual sexual behavior or companionate preferences, defined both the terms of marital choice and what husbands did.

It is telling that the history of the term “wife” does not correspond to the term “husband.” Wife is directly linked to the word “woman,” but it is entangled with terms for women who traded things or provided valued services: “alewif,” “fishwife,” “midwife,” or “housewife.” The “housewife” legally and economically belonged to a husband (a house owner). This legal status (called “coverture”) is well represented by the practice of the dowry. Studies of colonial America have calculated that the dowry (tools and materials for household production) given at marriage with the bride were typically valued at about one-third of the property coming from the groom’s family. This property exchange at marriage ensured a competent household, which was the late medieval and early modern meaning of having a “family.”


The traditional household

Thus the words for familial and spousal relations in English did not draw boundaries around sex, reproduction, love, or children, but were far more concerned with relations of labor, ownership, and economic exchange. The pre-capitalist, pre-modern household was not a private “home,” a closed space for child rearing and romantic love of the domesticated kind. It was a site of production – a shop, a farm, a manor, a great trading House – where the distinction between public and private space was not at issue.

The traditional household was not about individual sexuality; it was a framework for the master-servant order. Just as the term “husband” was tied to the land and “wife” to trade, the terms related to childhood and youth – such as garçon, boy, bride, groom, and many others in English, German, and French – referred to the hierarchy of master-servant relations.

. . . Only in the past two centuries have the terms for childhood taken on the modern concerns with internal development and socialization. Placing the development of children at the center of traditional marriage misconstrues Old World marriage and family practice – and obscures the revolutionary implications of modern childhood development. Modern childhood aspires to create hardworking, competent individuals equipped to survive in a complex, market-based society. Starting in the 18th century, child rearing practice has overturned not only any particular tradition but traditionalism in general, favoring in its place a notion of the sovereignty of the individual and an ethic of progress.


A human institution

This brings us to the central flaw in the claim that constitutionally redefining marriage in terms of sexual identity will protect “traditional” family life, much less some imagined “natural order . . . enshrined since the beginning of time” [phrases used by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops] . Marriage is a human institution embedded in a political and economic history. If we allow the ‘defenders of traditional marriage’ to blind the public to this history under the false premise that changes to marriage are a threat to the natural order or a challenge to God’s law, we will have missed the opportunity to understand the full implications of the modern world we have created.

Modern marriage has helped to redefine legitimate family relations according to new ideals of consensual love, companionate gender and inter-generational relations, the rearing of children, and the warmth of domestic life as a shield from the competitive world. Its origins coincide with the era captured in the novels of Jane Austen, the Brontës, and Louisa May Alcott – works that rebelled against the enslavement of women in traditional marriage and insisted that the desires of the heart be included in the pursuit of happiness. The accompanying shift in family life helped shatter traditional patriarchal systems. American women sought divorces in vastly increasing numbers beginning in the late 18th century. By 1830, a Connecticut law articulated the modern definition of marriage that was coming into practice. Divorce was to be granted on the grounds of anything that “Permanently Destroys the Happiness of the petitioner and defeats the purposes of the marriage relation.” Alexis de Tocqueville observed at this time that “in America the family, if one takes the word in its Roman and aristocratic sense, no longer exists.”


A new order

In a very real way, the American Declaration of Independence was a writ of divorce from the traditional world, and with it the master-servant family started to give way to a new order. In 1848, the feminists of Seneca Falls, New York, sought to move the process along, taking Jefferson’s document as the model for their “Declaration of Sentiments.” There are factors that contributed to the development of secular society and its family relations, but if you need a scapegoat for the death of tradition, you can’t blame the gays; you have to go back to the American Revolution and to the rise of capitalism.

As family law was transformed into modern terms throughout the 19th century, market societies consolidated wealth through the rise of corporations, factories, and mills, and this progressively put the small householder out of business, transforming members of peasant, yeoman, merchant, and craft households into either laborers or professionals. Servants and slaves were replaced by employees, masters by employers. Apprenticeships became compulsory public schooling. Women gained rights to property; dowry and coverture were abandoned. No longer were all mothers, children, and laborers the property of a master. In line with the new economy, marriage emerged as a contractual state between consenting adults. Same-sex unions are the logical extension of this transition, because they rest on the strongest source of modern authority, the authentic wishes of the individuals engaged in the relationship.

Much has been written to condemn, and rightly so, the vulnerability and dehumanization of workers under capitalism, and there are serious questions about whether the consumerist families of market societies are ecologically sustainable. These fruitful lines of thought must be pursued, but they should not create any nostalgia for the marital and family relations of the traditional world.

One example might suffice: in early modern English law the rape of a girl over ten years of age could only be prosecuted as a property crime against her father. If he could not work out a deal with the “seducer,” he might sue for damages to his household. During the Industrial Revolution, such violence was re-conceptualized in law as a crime against the personhood of the victim, and a whole new possibility for human dignity became conceivable. This legal shift highlights the stunning moral reorientation that has come with the decline of the traditional family grounded upon the paternal ownership of property.

The larger public appeal of the religious Right in America hangs on certain key mystifications. One of them is the difference between a traditional and a modern social order; another is confusion about the world-historical role that American families have played in undermining Old World traditionalism. Clarifying the two allows one to relate modern marriage to the rise of personal autonomy over traditional bondage. Once this is established, it becomes harder to escape the conclusion that the consensual orientation of modern values provides the ethical foundation for a right to same-sex marriage. It should be part of a conscious effort to reframe the discourse around the question of equal protection under the law. Obviously, much division will remain. It seems to me, however, that a consensual approach toward commitment remains the keystone of modern society and the strongest justification for same-sex marriage.

– Excerpted from “Here’s Your ‘Traditional Marriage’” by Patrick J. Ryan (The Gay and Lesbian Review, November-December, 2009).


See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• John Corvino on the “Always and Everywhere” Argument
• The Changing Face of “Traditional Marriage”
• Scandalous News from Maine
• The Same Premise
• Is Anyone In the Least Bit Surprised By This?
• The Real Gay Agenda
• Separate is Not Equal
• An Ironic Truth
• A Catholic Voice for Marriage Equality at the State Capitol
• A Surprising Finding Regarding Catholics and Gay Marriage
• A Catholic Presence at Gay Pride

Recommended Off-site Links:
Same-Sex Marriage Supporters Rally Outside Catholic Church – (WMTW, November 2, 2009).
Gay Marriage Supporter Removed from Ministries – Chuck Colbert (National Catholic Reporter, October 29, 2009).
Six Tests for Equality and Fairness – New York Times (November 1, 2009).
A NO Vote in Maine is Important for Uganda – Colleen Kochivar-Baker (Enlightened Catholicism, November 2, 2009).
Marriage Equality as a Religious Issue – Terence Weldon (Queering the Church, November 1, 2009).
In Maine, Same-Sex Marriage is a Catholic Issue – Chuck Colbert (National Catholic Reporter, October 29, 2009).
Beyond Comprehension – Thom Curnutte (Ad Dominum, October 23, 2009).

Halloween Hijinks

As I mentioned in my previous post, I attended a Halloween party this past weekend in Benson, MN.

My friends Angie and Bryon live in nearby Kirkhoven, and since Bryon’s birthday is November 1, he has developed a tradition of having a combined Halloween/birthday party. This year, our group joined several others at a party at McKinney’s Restaurant in Benson.

Bryon and Angie always go all out with their costumes. This year they were Frankensteins monster and his bride. Angie’s brother Randy dressed as Dr. Frankenstein.

I traveled from the Twin Cities to Benson with my friends Terri and Cathy. Terri dressed as a Renaissance noblewoman, while Cathy dressed in scrubs. And, no, I wasn’t a zombie. I was actually going for the look of one of those skeleton figures in the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition (right).

Here’s part of what Wikipedia says about the Day of the Dead as celebrated throughout Latin America:

Many people believe that during the Day of the Dead, it is easier for the souls of the departed to visit the living. People go to cemeteries to communicate with the souls of the departed, and build private altars, containing the favorite foods and beverages, as well as photos and memorabilia, of the departed. The intent is to encourage visits by the souls, so that the souls will hear the prayers and the comments of the living directed to them. Celebrations can take a humorous tone, as celebrants remember funny events and anecdotes about the departed.

In the photo above, I’m standing at left with (from left) Randy, Terri, Bryon, Cathy, and Angie.

Following are some more images from the Halloween party we attended in Benson. As you can see, there were some great costumes.

Above: Yeah, buddy, I’d be worried too!

Above: Angie and Bryon with their friend Doug.

Above: One guy I met at the party at McKinney’s, Dan, was dressed as a monk. Actually, he and a friend both came as monks together, which compelled one drunken reveler to ask: “Did you two come as gay guys?” (Yes, Benson is somewhat of a hick town!)

To be honest, I can’t work out if this question was asked because Dan and his friend were simply dressed alike, or because they were dressed as monks! If it was the latter, what does that say about people’s perception of priests and monks? And is it really that off? Of course, this particular guy may have meant his question to imply that priests and monks are child molesters. In other words he may have been conflating homosexuality and pedophilia, a common though inaccurate connection (see in particular my second comment in relation to this previous Wild Reed post. Regardless of the motivation or intent, it was definitely a weird little experience. And given the setting, one that I couldn’t really explore further at the time.

Anyway, I thought Dan’s outfit and mine kind of matched, especially when you think of the frequent mixing of Roman Catholic and indigenous religious traditions throughout Latin America.

Wikipedia notes, for instance, that:

In Haiti, voodoo traditions mix with Roman Catholic Day of the Dead observances, as, for example, loud drums and music are played at all-night celebrations at cemeteries to waken Baron Samedi, the Loa of the dead, and his mischievous family of offspring, the Gede.

Above: Death on the dance floor!

See also the previous Wild Reed post:
Halloween Thoughts