In making a clear and original argument that the state should not be involved in the institution of marriage, Untying the Knot offers a provocative contribution to a pressing and complex political debate. But that is only one half of what Tamara Metz seeks to accomplish in this thoughtful and thought-provoking book. As Metz puts it, “the liberal case for disestablishing marriage must include an argument for the creation of an ICGU status” (p. 151). An ICGU is an intimate care-giving union, and readers' reactions to this book will be based as much on Metz's case for the creation of this new institution as on her proposed change regarding marriage.
At the heart of Metz's argument is the idea that state-regulated marriage currently conflates two things. Marriage is a category by which the state relates to citizens for material and instrumental purposes. But marriage is also something deeper: a formal and “comprehensive” status that can have profound effects on our self-conception and beliefs. Metz believes in the ideal of a liberal state—a state that protects citizens from harm and treats them equally, but also values liberty and respects the limits appropriate to it. Since only instrumental purposes are appropriate responsibilities for a liberal state, Metz suggests we hive off that aspect of marriage and embed it in a new state regulated institution. The deeper aspects of marriage can then be left to cultural groups to define and manage.
It is impressive that Metz gets you to think about marriage in a new way while appealing to liberal ideas and values that are so familiar. As Metz acknowledges, the case for disestablishing marriage has been made elsewhere. Metz's contribution is to think through the case carefully from the perspective of liberal theory. In doing so, she offers the sort of clear and reasonable argumentation that characterizes this tradition (perhaps at the cost of engaging the messier stuff that often animates our politics). But Metz is right that in addressing marriage, her book goes to the heart of one of liberalism's primary dilemmas: how to delineate the line between those matters that can be clearly understood to concern the public (and the state), and those murkier matters that are rightly a private concern.
For the sake of clarity, Metz engages in a substantial amount of ground clearing. In one chapter, she uses court decisions to identify a tension in the way the state in the Unites States conceives of marriage. The courts know that there is something special about marriage compared to other contracts, but they are inarticulate about just what that is. In the next chapter, she makes an analogous argument regarding the tradition of liberal theory, focusing on John Locke, John Stuart Mill, and Susan Moller Okin. Metz examines these liberals to see if they offer a compelling justification for why the state must regulate marriage, and she concludes that “they do not” (p. 81). These chapters have a slightly worker-like quality, and by the time Metz gets to Okin, she refers to the “now familiar manner” by which liberal theory fails to justify the state's role in establishing marriage.
What Metz gleans from these theorists is that in liberal theory, “the material side of marriage is the only appropriate concern of the state” (p. 72). This is a plausible take on things. But there are other interesting ideas that might be gathered from these liberal theorists, including some of what they say about the “meaning” side of marriage that Metz would like to excise. One common theme is the relationship between marriage and parenting, which Metz notes is central for Locke (p. 56), Mill (p. 70) and Okin (p. 77). Metz's chapter on the courts reveals that judges have been no less concerned with the relationship between parenthood and marriage.
Rather then wrestle with these liberals' ideas regarding the way parenthood helps determine the meaning of marriage, Metz turns away from liberal theory to engage Hegel's ideas about what marriage “means.” She summarizes Hegel's take on how marriage, consecrated by an ethical authority, transforms isolated individuals into fully integrated members of the community. Hegel saw that marriage had the power to remake an individual's self-understanding and a “unique power to train behavior and belief” (p. 97). True to her liberal roots, Metz believes such powers are too much for the state. Thus marriage should be left to cultural groups to define, publicly acknowledge, and celebrate.
What is left to the state is the interesting business of “insuring” caregivers against “the risks of intimate care” (p. 129). Separating this responsibility from marriage would allow, Metz argues, for a wider variety of care-giving unions to be formally recognized and “insured” by the state—single parents, gay parents, gay and straight couples, adult cohabitators, etc. These are the groups that can form ICGUs and invite the state to regulate them for the purpose of ensuring that caregivers are treated fairly. Metz summarizes: “the combination of value and risks inherent in intimate caregiving gives the state good reason to provide some sort of insurance, in the form of a status for those who engage in … relatively long-term intimate care-giving unions” (p. 173).
Metz is eloquent, if brief, regarding the value of intimate care: the way it enhances lives and society in a way impersonal care cannot. She relies mostly on feminist critiques of marriage to explain the “risks” involved for caregivers, who are often guaranteed few material rewards for this profoundly important work. Precisely the best way the state can “insure” caregivers against those risks, Metz suggests, is a matter for debate—a debate she hopes will be clearer and more fruitful than our current debates about marriage.
I worry that in untying the knot between marriage and state, Metz's proposal would encourage a proliferation of new knots between the state and those citizens who give and receive care. When you tie enough knots, you get a net, and nets often snatch up more than we intend. Metz argues that a defining feature of intimate care, one integral to its special value and effectiveness, is that it is “private” and “unmonitored” (p. 121). But she demands we create ICGUs because “the costs and benefits of care … cannot remain hidden behind the veil of marriage” (p. 129). One reason Metz would like to separate marriage from the state is that “when the state moves in, its presence is overwhelming” (p. 144). Tocqueville would agree. He argued that the growth of the French state corroded the relationship of care that existed between the nobility and peasantry, until finally, they were ready to use the power of the state to destroy each other. Divorcing couples often do something analogous before judges.
Such misgivings about the state should be applied to the idea of ICGUs as well. Already, the state infringes on the care and education of children in ways that would seem scandalous to Locke and Mill. In her conclusion, Metz admits that her proposal to disestablish marriage is “radical … in some sense” (p. 153). She is right. What is most radical is the suggestion of this new ICGU status, which does not set new limits on the state but, rather, potentially invites the state much deeper into the substance of our lives.
