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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
You can just imagine the conversations that some guests have in the car as they drive to the ceremony. Some are shaking their heads, already sure they're going to hate it. Others are ready for something really cool and original, and they'll be disappointed if it turns out to be kind of flat. Nonmarriage ceremonies have all the challenges of planning any event, saddled with the additional weight of conflicting expectations and trying to strike a meaningful, but not ponderous, tone for what is a significant rite of passage.
Could you give us some examples of commitment ceremonies you have attended or heard about?
Some commitment ceremonies are essentially weddings sans marriage license, complete with the white dress, the exchange of rings, the first dance, the Electric Slide. Others are totally private, personal exchanges, where a couple trade vows alone on top of a mountain. One couple who each had children from their previous marriages told us about their blended family's ceremony. The couple exchanged promise rings, the kids gave their blessing on the commitment, and the adults made a commitment to being the best parents they could be to all the children, biological or step. They felt like it made a real difference in the cohesion of the family, in the kids seeing themselves as brothers and sisters.
There are some wonderfully inventive rituals and ceremonies, where couples start with the basic idea of having their relationship witnessed and celebrated with friends and family, but then make it truly their own. One couple we interviewed, Priscilla and Joe, had what they called a Commitzvah, their combination of commitment ceremony and mitzvah, or blessing. They wanted their relationship to be validated by their community, not by the government, so instead of having a clergy person who would officially proclaim, by the power vested in them by the state, that they were married, they gave little bells to all the guests. At the end of the ceremony they asked their loved ones to send them off with a ringing endorsement, and as they walked off together, everyone rang their bells -- including Joe and Priscilla, who had bells, too.
What are some of the most heartening developments in the acceptance of unmarriage over the past decades?
It's incredibly heartening to read about what's happening in other countries in terms of family recognition -- some of these places are practically nearing the family-recognition finish line, while we Americans stand around debating which direction we want to run. Canada, France, Sweden and other countries have already overhauled their legal codes to treat domestic partners fairly, and the sky hasn't fallen in those places.
In fact, for all the concern about "what will happen to the children?" there are fewer low-birth-weight babies, lower rates of child mortality, and longer life expectancies in those three countries than in the U.S. Now, that's not just because they recognize domestic partners, but because they've adopted all kinds of policies that actually help real families, rather than trying to shape people's lives into some idealized notion of what family is supposed to look like.
I'm also really excited about the amazing growth in domestic-partner health benefits over just the last few years. It's really a very basic principle of equal pay for equal work. Benefits are one of the ways we compensate employees in this country, and domestic-partner benefits mean that unmarried employees get the same benefits for their family members as married employees get for theirs.
It's pretty remarkable: Ten years ago, most of us had never heard of domestic-partner benefits, and today, a third of Americans work for employers who provide them. People think of them as a benefit for gay couples, but 90 percent of the time, both same-sex and different-sex couples are eligible. This is another area where the U.S. is far behind the rest of the industrialized world -- we're the only country that doesn't guarantee healthcare for its citizens. We have this ludicrous system that gives you healthcare if you have a full-time job, or if you're married to someone who does. Domestic-partner benefits don't even begin to address the bigger problem, but it opens the healthcare door to larger group of adults and children. And, I might add, reduces the burden on society of having uninsured people.
Even Al and Tipper Gore's new book is good news. Here's a pretty mainstream, powerful guy, who won the popular vote in the last presidential election, and he's writing about how we need to do more to recognize that families come in all shapes and sizes and figure out how to support them. Coming to political grips with family diversity is not some zany, fringe idea -- most people understand it and polls suggest that people agree with it.
