“Connecting sex, love, babies, money, mothers and fathers is hard.”

Up at Radcliffe last week, feminist and queer-theorist (forgive me if that’s not the right term) Prof. Janet Halley, who generously invited me to attend this conference, described this view of mine about the public purpose of marriage as “dark.” I don’t see it that way at all. Everything worth doing is hard — effortful. What’s dark is the alternative: where eros, desire, sex, love, marriage, and babies are intrinsically unrelated or practically separated.

But yes, this view of sex and marriage requires, in practical terms, nothing less than sacrifice. Men and women sometimes get married when they aren’t sure that’s the right thing, because the alternative for their child is even worse. (That doesn’t mean marrying the violent local drug dealer because you got pregnant. It may mean throwing your lot in with your boyfriend you love, even when you are fearful, anxious, and uncertain — because the alternative is cold-heartedly, cold-bloodedly deciding: Your kid is better off without his father in your home. Mind you, if the mom can say “yes,” that’s true, the baby is better off without THIS dad, at least in a cultural context where fathers are appreciated generally, I’m inclined to believe her. But that’s a different question than “I will be happiest if I marry this man rather than some other.”)

“Marriage is about the love of adults for each other; it’s about caretaking intimacy, passion, not necessarily about children.” When I hear people claiming they are marriage supporters and saying these things about marriage, I cringe. They do not know what they are talking about.

A marriage culture means married men who fall passionately in love with their secretaries or their junior law partners saying, “My marriage comes before my happiness; my family comes first.” It means women watching Oprah and feeling underappreciated, like they are “settling” for less than they deserve, stepping back to say, “It’s not humiliating to accept less than I ‘deserve;’ it’s grown-up. It’s motherly. It’s what women have done for all of human history and it is good.”

And then stepping back and saying: “His mother can love him; if he were my son I would love him, there’s got to be a way for me to love him well and truly even though right this second I’m feeling humiliated and angry with how I’m being treated.” No marriage culture can survive unless adults are actively encouraged to surmount this kind of ordinary temptation.

These decisions are being made every day: Sacrifice or immediate gratification? The audacity of hope or the audacity of fidelity? Grownups have to choose. A marriage culture consists of offering a provisional answer to grownups about how they should choose. Marriage as an individual right offers no cultural basis for helping people answer the questions that matter most.

In truth, my own view of divorce (or non-marriage) in most instances is so dark that it seems to me literally insane how often I find people choosing — “me, my rights, my desires” — over marriage.

But I’m old enough (close to 50) also to understand the temptation, if not first hand then through the lens of close friends and family: Because I understand: Choosing your marriage means choosing finiteness over infinite possibility. It means, for many many people, saying: “I’m never going to get what I really desire — but I can be live and be satisfied with what I have.”

In the end, I’m pretty sure that most people who choose faithfulness over infinite possibility are in fact personally happier than those who choose to pursue infinite possibility no matter who gets hurt (especially their own kids).

But, damn, it doesn’t always feel like that on any given day, does it?

Another reason why privatizing marriage (as I understand it) is such a disastrous option — whether we accomplish it by endorsing gay marriage, or by separating marriage and state does not much matter.

(To be continued. . .)