It has often been said that “love makes a family” and to that I can bear witness. For me, family includes my husband and the dogs who fill my daily life with love, laughter, and companionship. There are two sons, two daughters-in-law, four grandchildren, all of whom we adore. We have siblings, nieces and nephews, and the list goes on to include extensions like “step” family members, brothers from other mothers, sisters from other misters. There are some deep long-standing friendships that rise to the level of everything that “family” means to me. My family then, is large and loving, and I can look in any direction and feel blessed in the knowledge that I am loved.
Against that backdrop, I have already noted one of the first executive orders of the current administration which declares that there are only two genders: male and female. You can read what I wrote about that in The Earth Isn’t Flat. The proclaiming of something from the Oval Office doesn’t make it true. This one expresses an ignorance of science, a narrow religious viewpoint, and an outright rejection of families like mine.
Where does this come from? David Graham’s recent article in the Atlantic describes “restoring the family as the centerpiece of American life” as the top goal of the Project 2025 which by any estimate is THE blueprint for everything the administration is doing. No universe exists in which the president thought all of this up. (The Heritage Foundation makes up all of the hot air in this balloon.) They say a family is "a married mother, father, and their children,” and that this one family type is the “foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society.” They argue that the government should shore up organizations that “maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” and that other forms are less stable.
Apparently they haven’t met my family, nor countless others I could name who have managed to create homes that are stable and loving environments for the nurture of children and grandchildren, homes that make contributions to the community and the common good, people who pay taxes, help others and rescue pets.
To be clear, I affirm all those hetero procreating couples out there who have established happy, loving, and stable families. But based on divorce rates and statistics on domestic abuse and violence, it is not their heterosexuality alone that makes them happy, loving, or stable. There are countless happy, loving, and stable families established by those who are LBTQIA+, whose children are living examples of everything we might describe as “success,” so let’s just admit that no single gender identity or expression possesses a monopoly on stability.
What catches my eye as a theologian, however, is the phrase “biblically based social-science-reinforced definition of marriage.” We can have an interesting conversation about social science, but at the moment I need to park on the “biblically based” part, for the Bible is something I know a bit about.
I’m always intrigued when I hear the word “biblical” in relationship to marriage. The question is, which biblical marriage are we talking about? The patriarchs of the Old Testament routinely had multiple wives and concubines. King David, the “man after God’s own heart” had seven wives who are named in scripture, but it is also written that he had other wives and concubines. Between wives and and concubines, Solomon had about a thousand of them.
In New Testament times, wives were traded like property, and in the first century it was commonplace to simply give a woman a “bill of divorcement” and send her off on the slightest whim. There is no record of Jesus having been married at all. The Apostle Paul idealized celibacy as the choice for people who were spiritual. Marriage for him was an accommodation for weakness. “It is better to marry than to burn.” Now there’s a ringing biblical endorsement for institution of marriage!
Paul also made rules about marriage that seem to resonate with the Heritage Foundation, that the husband is the “head” of the wife, and that she and her children should “obey” the head of the home. He also says women shouldn’t cut their hair, wear jewelry, or speak out loud in church. If there’s something they don’t understand, they should ask their husbands about it at home. Project 2025 doesn’t say anything about women and haircuts, so it appears that they are biblical only to a point.
What I am getting at is that the idea of marriage has continually evolved over thousands of years, and that evolution is recognized through the history of these sacred writings. You might argue with me on this, but I don’t think we benefit from turning back the clock to find some form of marriage that we can call remotely biblical.
What makes a stable home is mutual respect, compassion, and love. It is a place of truth telling, of healthy communication, of fun times and mutual enjoyment. It is a covenant of commitment when times are tough, a place to practice reciprocal behavior like the Golden Rule. It is a place of teaching, training, modeling, and creativity. A stable home isn’t a perfect one, for a perfect one does not exist, it just means we want to do our best, and if we’re raising children that we do so honorably and with integrity.
If the people in Washington who are drunk on power at the moment want to come for my marriage rights, that’s one thing. But our families are not going away, and neither are we.
Well spoken, as always!! I'm so proud to be a part of your family!! Love you!!
What you are saying is very consistent with the social science as I understand it. Family forms have certainly changed over time. When I taught sociology, I quit referring to "the family" as a category of social institution because it had the 50s connotation of a "Leave it to Beaver" household, which is where the rabid right is trying to take us. There is a lot of diversity in how humans organize themselves as families in the broad sense. That horse is out of the barn and it's not going back. Why should it?