Everyone who’s the least bit plugged into the NFL or popular culture, or has spent at least five minutes out of a coma the past few months, knows why the Kansas City broadcast keeps cutting to the Chiefs’ luxury suite. Shots of Taylor Swift cheering for Travis Kelce are now seamlessly part of television coverage. Is it love? Is it a publicity stunt? Why does the media follow their every move so breathlessly—and why is America following along?

Only time might answer the first two questions, but history can help with the third.

Long before there was a Taylor and Travis (or, for that matter, a Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio), actress Helen Dauvray and baseball player John Montgomery Ward were the ones dominating the headlines of their day. The Dauvray-Ward romance and the media coverage it received offer a glimpse into the future of the celebrity power couple, from a time when entertainers and professional athletes were still socially suspect in the minds of the Gilded Age elites who valued the perceived purity of amateur pursuits.

In the late 19th century, the concept of publicity was starting to evolve. Instead of earning fame and media coverage through political or charitable deeds (or misdeeds), Americans started becoming newsworthy just by being well-known, in part due to the development of the celebrity interview, which both responded to and stimulated public interest, thus establishing a self-reinforcing public relations loop.

Helen Dauvray, the headliner of her own theatrical troupe, was a fixture of this loop. So famous was she that a October 12, 1887 New York Times article previewing her impending marriage to Ward identified her as “the well known actress” whose “history is too familiar for detail.” The journalist didn’t bother reprising Dauvray’s rise to fame as 1860s child performer “Little Nell,” and glossed over the actress’ time on the stage as Helen Gibson before she reinvented herself in Paris and changed her name because readers already knew the story; Dauvray had received 66 mentions in 1887 in the Times alone, not counting classified ads.

Her beau, John M. Ward, could not compete with Dauvray’s megawatt stardom. “[T]he man she is to marry is not so well known, although he has made a reputation on the diamond,” that same Times profile noted, providing readers with a thumbnail sketch of Ward’s baseball career so they could catch up: He’d won one championship, received bachelor’s and law degrees from Columbia, and had a role in founding the Brotherhood, the first labor union for major league baseball players. Not mentioned were the facts that Ward had pitched the second perfect game in professional baseball history, moved from pitcher to outfielder and shortstop, and served as player-manager of both the Providence Grays and New York Giants—all after allegedly being kicked out of Penn State for stealing a chicken.

If Times readers required a 101 course in Ward, no such introduction was necessary for enthusiasts (“fans” was just coming into usage) who subscribed to the Sporting Life or the Sporting News, the recently founded weeklies that were the ESPNs of the 1880s.  The front-page story in the October 19 issue of the Sporting Life called the Dauvray-Ward marriage “the sensation of the week” in “base ball,” which still appeared in print as two words.

The first breadcrumb of a Dauvray-Ward relationship appeared in late May 1887, when newspapers announced the actress’s gift of her self-named trophy, the Dauvray Cup, to be presented to the winner of a postseason championship series. On July 20th, her name was linked to Ward obliquely when Sporting Life identified her as a “perfect crank”—19th-century slang to describe an obsessive, unreasonable person—for his team, the New York Giants. Only in September did the first direct connection to Ward surface, when Dauvray mentioned him in a letter to the National League president that Sporting Life quoted from. Dauvray and Ward were not linked romantically until their Times marriage preview on October 12, just one day before they publicly tied the knot.

After the bombshell news dropped, papers were full of speculation about the couple, who were perhaps trying to avoid this very type of rumor-filled attention by keeping their relationship secret up until that point. As MLB historian John Thorn has established, the two had, in fact, first gotten married a month and a half before the Times reporter’s visit, on August 31, 1887. Was Dauvray playing games with the press when she didn’t admit to this on October 11? Doing so might have saved the couple a trip to Philadelphia the next morning to get married a second time.

The mystery around their coupling deepens when you consider an October 17 Detroit Tribune report that Thorn surfaced, which observed that the “newlyweds” appeared to be anything but happy: “[Ward and Dauvray] haven’t been married a week, but they didn’t seem particularly affectionate,” the Tribune correspondent wrote. “Ward shouted for the Detroits and Mrs. Ward applauded for the Browns … They occupied opposite ends of the box, and hardly spoke to each other during the contest.”

Reading between the lines more than 100 years later, such coverage raises the question of whether they were leveraging their relationship for attention, or if they were genuinely attempting to avoid feeding the rumor mill of 19th-century journalism. If they were seeking publicity, it’s worth asking for what end. Of the two, Dauvray would have benefitted the most from an image boost at that moment; the news of their relationship may have helped her recapture headlines after she canceled her fall season in early September following reports of a serious illness. Ward’s exploits on the field (he led the league with 111 steals that year) and the contract negotiations between the Brotherhood and the National League already kept him at the forefront of the sporting press.

After the hoopla surrounding the marriage subsided, the couple assumed a lower profile. Initially, they may have tried to stay out of the news after Dauvray’s brother was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a servant (the charges were later dropped). But minimal details were also given about their westward honeymoon travels in November, except that Dauvray intended to appear on stage during a charity event in San Francisco. This last detail seems to indicate that Dauvray, despite having announced her retirement from the stage following their marriage, was not ready to leave the limelight. Such speculation is supported by the pattern that developed over the next two years in the press: Dauvray’s name perennially appeared in the theater gossip column of the New York Times, where her return to the stage would be promised, only for those plans to be scuttled by some difficulty or illness.

Ward’s name, meanwhile, was in front of the sporting public regularly due to the mounting labor struggle between the Brotherhood Union and the National League. When that struggle came to a head in 1890, Dauvray and Ward received increased media attention again. As the leader of the Brotherhood, Ward was the face of the union’s labor war with the National League. In the reports of Ella Black, a Pittsburgh correspondent for the Sporting Life, Dauvray was credited as being perhaps both the inspiration for and the cause of the new major league formed by Ward.

That same year, in 1890, the Cosmopolitan published perhaps the most telling piece of media around the Dauvray-Ward romance: a satirical short story that was part roman à clef melodrama and part Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Ward was recognizable as Algernon de Witt Caramel, the “Champion Short-Stop of America.” Dauvray appears as Miss Violet Veronica Van Sittart, “our hero’s peerlessly beautiful fiancée.” The story ended with the young couple, living off the millions Caramel made as a shortstop, “doing very nicely indeed.”

Given that John Ward’s salary was $3,000 in 1887, the idea that a baseball player would ever earn millions of dollars for playing a child’s game hints at the key to the story’s satire. Because magazines like the Cosmopolitan were written for an upper-class audience, the editor likely chose the story not because it painted the couple in a positive light, but rather because it encouraged an elite audience to laugh at the efforts of professional actresses and ballplayers to rise above their stations.

In real life, Dauvray and Ward’s union was short-lived; 1890 was also the year that newspapers quietly announced the couple’s separation. Though it was not public knowledge at the time, Ward had also been seeing actress Jessie McDermott, according to Ward’s biographer, Brian Di Salvatore. Equally small notices chronicled their divorce three years later.

From its supernova start, the dissolution of Dauvray and Ward’s marriage is most notable for its understated silence. Nonetheless, for a brief, shining moment in the late 1800s, enthusiasts of the lime-lit dramatic boards and dusty ball diamonds could thrill at this uniquely American aristocratic union that served as a trial run for Marilyn and Joltin‘ Joe 60 years later, and now again with Taylor and Travis in this century—when the millions in question have become a matter of billions.

The post Before Taylor and Travis, There Was Helen and John appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In May 2022, a video depicting a 25-year-old man in Hyderabad being publicly murdered by his wife’s family members in retaliation for the couple’s interfaith relationship went viral on social media in India. In March 2023, a similarly shocking incident made headlines: In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, a man of the Nadar caste had killed his 27-year-old son and injured his daughter-in-law out of disapproval for his son marrying her, a woman of Scheduled Caste, often known as Dalits.

Beyond these two particularly gory cases, there are innumerable others in which individuals who have chosen partners across religious and caste boundaries have been harassed, humiliated, excommunicated, and murdered. A recent report by the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network showed that in cases of intercaste marriages, violence is commonly perpetuated by powerful caste groups toward the marginalized Scheduled Castes and Other Backward Classes—official terminology employed by the Indian government and used commonly.

In a society that remains deeply divided along caste and religious lines, the stakes are high for young men and women in India who dare to transgress the socially-defined boundaries of love and family alliance. While Indian law gives all citizens the right to choose their partner, in practice, state actors often play a violent role in upholding conservative social norms. Caste, homophobia, patriarchy, religious bigotry, and state norms all nourish one another and accentuate the danger to the lives of non-normative couples.

Caste is a hierarchical system in which individuals are assigned an identity based on the social group into which they are born, and each caste group oppresses those below them while being oppressed by those above them. The caste location of an individual affects almost every aspect of their life, from their friendships to their educational opportunities, their job prospects to their voting behavior. The system operates through both force and consent, and Hindu religious scriptures support it.

Castes maintain themselves through the principle of endogamy, in which people belonging to a group are restricted in terms of their choice of partner to others from the same group. Any love or marital alliance that defies this boundary is seen as transgressing the institution. Historically, some forms of intercaste marriages have been dealt with more stringently than others. Hypergamy—marriage between a man of “higher” caste and woman of “lower” caste—has remained relatively acceptable, at least in India’s rural agrarian regions. This has never been the case with hypogamy—marriage between a man of a “lower” caste and woman of an “upper” caste—which is seen as a pollution of the bloodline and social standing.

While religion is not always birth-based in the same way as caste, discouraging social reproduction outside one’s religion is likewise a quintessential mechanism through which religions maintain their boundaries. Desiring the “other,” falling in love with them and marrying them has never been a regular feature of social life in India, and the idea of it has always been a cause of distress and animosity among caste and religious groups.

At a basic level, then, acts of violence against intercaste and inter-religious couples stems from anxiety within social groups about losing control over women’s sexual and romantic choices.

The Indian state condones and even facilitates the violence against couples who cross these socially-sanctioned lines. Legally, this shouldn’t be the case. When India gained independence and drafted its constitution in the 1940s, it established citizens’ right to choose partners beyond caste and religious boundaries. In 1948, the Hindu Code Bill enshrined for Hindu women the rights of divorce and property and the right to marry a partner of her choice. Subsequently, the Special Marriage Act (1954) and the Hindu Marriage Act (1955) were passed to realize these rights. Several state-sponsored programs have offered financial support to socially transgressive marital unions, and in some Indian states, courts have ordered the creation of shelters where vulnerable couples can seek police protection from angry relatives and community or religious groups.

Yet in practice, the state does not guarantee these rights. The bureaucratic process required to take advantage of the Special Marriage Act is onerous. One male partner of an interfaith couple told me that the process was so difficult that it seemed clearly designed to discourage inter-religious marriages. “We [have been] making rounds from one government office to another for months now,” he said. “Every time, they come up with a new loophole in our documents. This time, when nothing was left, they made an excuse out of the pixel size of our photographs.”

Another way that the state creates barriers to these relationships is through policing. In order to escape from the hostility of family members and others, couples often choose to elope and run away to seek state protection elsewhere. But a 2003 report by the People’s Union for Democratic Rights argued that more often than not, the state institutions charged with providing protection in such situations—particularly the police—side with the families of the eloped women. In some cases, state actors help families forge false cases against the couple, or bring couples out from hiding and hand them over to their families. The patriarchal ideology of “honor” and its “loss” holds sway over all social groups and compels members of the police, bureaucracy, and courts to have sympathy for the women’s parents and relatives.

Why does the state play this regressive role? India’s state machinery is predominantly represented by people from “upper” caste groups. The allegiance of the people sitting at the helm of power and running state institutions lies more towards their social identities, in other words, their caste and religion, rather than in favor of fair and equal rights.

Addressing these cultural and bureaucratic barriers is becoming all the more important as India faces a new political struggle: the nascent LGBTQIA+ movement’s efforts to seek recognition of same-sex marriage. In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India scrapped Section 377 of the colonial-era penal code, which criminalized homosexuality; a historic moment for Indians outside the country’s heteronormative social and legal orders. Now, the LGBTQIA+ movement has begun to seek the recognition of same-sex marriages through petitions to the country’s Supreme Court based on the Special Marriage Act. Yet even if those petitions are successful, same-sex couples might face similar obstacles to realizing their right to a relationship with the partner of their choice as current intercaste and interfaith couples have encountered.

To make life more viable for all, India’s state needs to address these structural barriers. The state needs to improve the process of registering a marriage under the Special Marriage Act, and to sensitize its bureaucratic agents—in particular, the Registrar of Marriages and the police. Couples who ask for police protection citing danger to their lives should be protected immediately, irrespective of whether they have obtained a marriage certificate or not. Protecting basic life choices of its citizens can be a small yet important litmus test for India’s democracy.

The post When ‘Honor’—and Bureaucracy—Stand in the Way of Marriage appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Over 20 years ago, I covered my face with my hands and shyly told my (now) husband, “I’m moving away for graduate school and I’d love you to go with me, but I want us to be married first.” After he agreed that it seemed like a great idea, we shopped together for an engagement ring before he chose one of the two I had liked best. He offered it to me from one knee a couple of months later in a “surprise” engagement. As a wife, I tell others he proposed. But as a social scientist who studies marriages and engagements, I’m not so sure.

Young, heterosexual adults increasingly prefer egalitarian relationships in which both partners work for pay and contribute equitably to childcare and domestic labor—even as they struggle to realize this balance. Equalizing the proposal—a single moment in time rather than an ever-changing, lifetime negotiation of labor—should be much easier. Still, the proposal process remains overwhelmingly a male responsibility—and privilege. The stubbornness of this seemingly last acceptable bastion of male control has a lot to tell us about gender, relationships, and the division of labor in 21st-century America.

Sociologist Sharon Sassler and I interviewed a number of cohabiting couples between the ages of 18 and 34 who were considering or in the process of discussing marriage with their partners. We explicitly asked them which partner should propose. We received a fair number of responses such as “Whomever wants,” especially from college-educated men and women. But when we changed the question slightly to “Who do YOU want to propose if the two of you get married?”, the response was overwhelmingly the male partner. And this remained true even among those who otherwise viewed their relationships as equal.

When we asked why, men and women alike expressed concerns that “flopping the question” would call into question long-established gender roles. “It’s just a manly job,” explained Terrell.* “It’s just natural.”

Nathan, who was committed to sharing the housework and financial responsibilities equally with his partner, Andrea, had just proposed. Although Andrea had been the one to initiate their move-in, he said of the wedding proposal: “I think it’s the guys’ job, not to be chauvinistic and old-fashioned. But I think I would have felt kind of like a putz if she would have proposed to me.”

Many women felt the same way. Tara told us, “I said, ‘If you don’t do it by a certain time, I’m just going to do it.’ But I don’t mean that, because I don’t want to do it ’cause then I’ll feel like masculine, and I don’t want to feel masculine.” Asked to elaborate, Tara said, “I’ve definitely been the initiator in some of our other circumstances that are traditionally I think male roles. This is just a big one. And because everyone will ask, ‘How did it happen?’ And I don’t want to say, ‘Well I did it.’ I can’t. It would kill me I think.”

Female proposals were not entirely out of the question. Dawn had planned to propose to Eric, only to be dissuaded by both her mother and Eric’s wishes. She said, “I’ve threatened to propose to him a few times. He’s like, ‘No, the man does it.’ I think he would feel unmanly if he didn’t do it. Yeah, I know that sounds weird from a guy that’s really liberal, but I just feel like he wants to—he wants control of the situation.”

Eric’s explanation was simpler: “I just see it as the guy should propose—the classic way.”

All of this, for one simple question. But the power to propose is not merely picking out the right place or time to ask those four little words. It’s the ability to determine the pace of the entire relationship. It stands to reason that if the male partner is the only one who can move the couples’ union into marriage, the female partner has only two choices: wait to be asked or leave. In this way, the man’s timeline determines the seriousness of the relationship, with couples often scarcely realizing just how much control that affords him. In fact, this kind of “hidden power,” which makes certain gender roles seem natural or inevitable, can continually and insidiously reinforce patriarchal norms without ever really being questioned.

So what’s a modern straight couple to do? What might a more equal proposal look like?

Well, for one, heterosexual cis couples could certainly look to their gay and lesbian counterparts. They often leave the power of the proposal to a decision reached through discussion before the partner who most wants to advance the relationship or who prefers to stand on ceremony is the one to propose. However, such a change requires overcoming centuries of tradition and internalized sexism.

More recently, “dual proposals” have begun to make the rounds on social media. In this model, each partner proposes, and each (hopefully!) accepts. Though, of course, this is not without its own challenges: Need the proposals occur on the same day? Who goes first? And is the engagement official after the first “Yes”?

As the age of marriage has risen over time in the U.S. to just over 30 for men and 28 for women and the institution has become more economically elite, a third possibility for the “new proposal” seems apparent. Far from being the blushing bride and fresh-faced groom leaving the family home, today’s betrothed couples typically already have established their own households—most often living together and perhaps even with children of their own. The pomp and circumstance of the engagement period that were designed to help provide a young couple with the goods necessary for setting up a new household, like hope chests, engagement parties, and bridal showers, are no longer a major factor. Now, marriage is a pinnacle marker of adulthood rather than its beginning. After discussing whether they wish to marry, couples could simply decide that they are engaged, no proposal needed. In fact, rather than spending money renting out the jumbotron or hiring the skywriter, they might choose to host a party announcing their engagement and celebrating all who have supported them along the way.

Human beings have agency—and with that, the power to choose to modify or reject social norms. If our society continues to promote the proposal as a nearly unquestionable male right, we will continue to go through great lengths to reach true egalitarianism. Regardless of when our engagement became “official,” in the end, my husband and I are no less married. We have crafted a life full of mutual admiration, equal sharing, and a whole lot of fun. The question will be, is the conventional start to that life together—a male proposal—a tradition that heterosexual couples want to eschew?

Saying “yes” to an overhaul of the marriage proposal might be beneficial not only to our own relationships, but for generations to come.

The post Who Should Put a Ring on It? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Consider in this light the upper reaches of the workforce. During the 20th century, white Americans monopolized the highest-paying jobs. In 2000, nearly 85 percent of the baby-boom workers occupying the top quarter of occupations (ranked by annual salary) were white.

But, since the beginning of the new century—and as a consequence in part of the demographic decline in the numbers of young whites entering the labor market—the young adults starting these jobs have increasingly been non-white or Hispanic. (These figures are derived from the Census, so I use the Census term “Hispanic” in that context.) Now, one-third of the new job entrants are minorities. That means not just more persons of color with good incomes, but fewer whites in positions of authority—to decide who gets hired or promoted.

But there’s a catch. The minority individuals benefitting from upper-level opportunity are predominantly from recent immigrant backgrounds—they are mainly Asian Americans, both immigrant and native-born, and U.S.-born Latinos. But the share of Black Americans in these good jobs has budged just slightly over time and hovers around 5 percent.

A similar disparity appears in the surging diversity at colleges and universities, which is likewise dominated by immigrant-origin minorities. The 2019 report of the American Council on Education highlights a steep rise in the number of Latino graduates—including a doubling of the annual number earning baccalaureates in 2004-14 alone. Correspondingly, the share of whites among graduates dropped from 73 to 64 percent in the same period. At elite universities, the white share of students has fallen sharply over several decades.

But for Black Americans, the decades of the new century have not brought such good news. Their college graduation rates grew strongly during the second half of the 20th century but have slumped recently. That same ACE report notes that Black students have relatively high rates of dropout from baccalaureate programs, and have the highest level of student indebtedness. At a time of rapidly growing diversity among college students, the stagnating fortunes of Black students are an unacknowledged crisis.

These patterns resonate with U.S. history. During the quarter century following World War II—a period of momentous ethnic change, when mass assimilation ushered previously marginalized eastern European Jews and Irish and Italian Catholics into what had been an Anglo-Saxon Protestant mainstream—immigrant-origin groups leapfrogged over African Americans.

On a smaller scale, a similar assimilation seems to be happening today.

American society continues to operate in two registers for minority Americans, as it has done historically. The registers, taking the term in its musical sense, refer to the notes, or signals, that people, especially young people, perceive in their everyday environments and in contacts with institutions such as schools and the police.

In one register, bright notes outweigh dissonant ones and encourage many youth to strive for the mainstream. In that register, ethnic and racial distinctions diminish in importance; and there’s a chorus of voices proclaiming that we live in a meritocracy where young can be whomever they want to be. In the other register, the notes are more uniformly somber. The tune here is that only the most exceptional will escape the severe disadvantages of their minority status; everyone else need not try.

The common view holds that this disparity among non-white minorities is connected with skin color. But in reality, it has more to do with the different ways that groups have arrived, either through immigration or through conquest and enslavement. Embedded in the nation’s historical psyche are preferences for immigrants as individuals who have chosen America to improve their lives. But also embedded are prejudices against the descendants of enslaved and colonized peoples—because of the continuing influence of moral justifications used by whites during slavery and conquest. Some immigrants and their children also feel this prejudice, especially those with very dark skin, and those who have been denied legal status despite long residence.

The increasing inclusion of minorities in mainstream settings is now reaching into, and altering, American families. A widely noted trend of recent decades has been the steady increase in intermarriage: Since the Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967, the percentage of intermarriages among newlyweds has risen from 3 percent to 17 percent, or one out of every six marriages. The great majority of them unite a white partner with a minority one.

The mixing in families is the most revelatory indicator of the quiet ethno-racial reshaping of the societal mainstream. It is impacting America’s child population in ways that have profound long-run implications. According to my analysis of birth certificates, almost 15 percent of the babies born in 2018 had parents from different ethnic or racial groups, and 11 percent—or one of every nine—had a white parent and a minority one. The most common combination by far involves whites partnering with Hispanics.

The obvious question is where children from multiple backgrounds fit in a still racially divided American society. This question holds particular import for those children with white and minority parentage.

The evidence about mixed minority-white Americans that we have to date, though far from complete, is broadly consistent. It includes census data, large-scale surveys (especially by Pew), and in-depth interview studies. The bulk of these (mainly) young people appear to be participating in diverse social worlds. They have grown up with whites and count whites among their close childhood and adult friends; they have high rates of marriage to whites as well, which is perhaps most telling. In addition, their educational attainment is greater, on average, than would be the case if it was determined mainly by their minority origin.

The self-identities of this growing cohort of mixed minority-white Americans are unusually fluid, but typically incorporate their white ancestry. As the sociologist Hephzibah Strmic-Pawl describes Asian-whites in her insightful study, they feel “white enough,” but not exclusively white.

Americans with mixed Black and white parentage are the hugely important exception. By and large, they grow up in less affluent circumstances and are exposed to more severe individual and institutional discrimination (evidenced by, among many other things, their frequent complaints of mistreatment at the hands of the police). They are more comfortable with Blacks than with whites and usually identify with the Black sides of their family heritage. Yet, despite the racism that impacts their lives, they too exhibit a level of integration with whites that exceeds that of other African Americans: they are as likely to marry whites as to marry Blacks.

The mainstream in many parts of the U.S. is tilting away from exclusive whiteness. The naming of Kamala Harris as the Democratic vice presidential candidate is one more indicator of this tilt. But Harris’s background cuts another way, too, and is a reminder of the dual registers of our society. In this century, both major-party nominees of color for national office—the California senator, and President Obama—had an immigrant parent and came from racially mixed families, reminding us of the selectivity of the processes diversifying the mainstream.

As these inclusive processes advance, they may call into question the harshness of racism. But as long as American society continues to operate in the second register, where the individual and institutional processes of racism stifle Black Americans and some other minorities, the country will not succeed in overcoming racism.

The post Who’s Left Out of the New American Mainstream? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Smith’s account of his time in Virginia undoubtedly appealed to many would-be colonists, but the Virginia government was less enthusiastic, outlawing most English-Native American relationships. Still, they recognized that such prohibitions would have little effect if they did not offer alternatives. As a result, the government declared its intention “to plant [the colony] with women as well as men” and embarked on an ambitious plan to send ships of unmarried Englishwomen, later known as “tobacco brides,” to the Virginia colony.

Today, American men are once again facing a lack of potential marriage partners, for entirely different reasons. American women have more choices, both economically and socially, than ever before, which allows them to reject men their grandmothers might have married (or been forced to marry). This has been a primarily positive change for women, but not always for the men left behind. In his book The Decline of Men, Guy Garcia describes these changes, writing, “Men are opting out, coming apart and falling behind. They are losing their sense of place in society and their direction as individuals.”

One answer for these men is to simply advise them to adapt, to work harder, dress better, and wash more dishes if they wish to remain desirable to American women. However, if some men can’t or don’t make these changes, does this mean they must be romantically written off?

At various points in American history, gender disparities have occurred that impeded the formation of romantic partnerships, leading the government to step in. Historically, these disparities were usually caused by the uneven geographical distribution of men and women, unlike modern disparities, which result from the changing status and expectations of women. In both cases, men seeking relationships exceed the number of women available or interested in them as marriage candidates, resulting in a large population of unhappily single men. Throughout U.S. history, the government has made many efforts to reduce gender disparities and assist with partner redistribution. And while the idea may seem quaint or bizarre in the age of Tinder, it’s worth looking at how those programs worked in the past and which ones might be worth reconsidering.

Not all government matchmaking attempts were the same. While the 17th-century bride ships were a national effort, there have been many other initiatives on the state and municipal level, through various forms of legislation and administrative agencies. Some of the most significant assistance occurred after Western expansion, the California gold rush, and the Civil War left large regions of the country highly gendered.

In the late 19th century, men far outnumbered women in the West, while the reverse was true in Eastern states. Western men became increasingly unhappy with the lack of available marriage partners—meaning white women—and as a result, state and territorial governments began discussing ways to bring these women west. However, such concern and assistance was limited to white couples. At the same time, the state and territorial governments were bringing white women west, they were also seeking to prohibit the immigration of most Asian women.

At the state level, many solutions to the marriage crisis included enacting legislation benefiting women, such as liberal marriage and divorce laws, martial property reform, and women’s suffrage. It is no coincidence that male-heavy Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote. The Wyoming legislature was quite explicit about its motivations, stating that members enacted suffrage because “the territory desperately needed immigrants, particularly the feminine variety.” Economic incentives and various criminal protections were also commonly proposed.

By the turn of the 20th century, the geographic gender disparity had been largely remedied, yet the belief that the government had an obligation to facilitate matchmaking remained strong. In fact, demand for government-assisted matchmaking among men and women was so widespread that cities began creating their own matrimonial bureaus. Cities like Des Moines, Omaha, and Los Angeles all ran large municipal matrimonial offices. The one in Los Angeles was set up in 1907 by Mayor Arthur C. Harper, providing free matchmaking services to single men and women, and according to a Los Angeles Herald article entitled “Life Partners for the Asking,” it was populated by numerous “men and women ready and anxious to marry” whose only “trouble has been the lack of opportunity.”

The Des Moines matrimonial bureau, which described itself as “a clearing house for lonely souls,” was run through the mayor’s office and advertised its services to all “men and women desirous of securing a helpmate.” Interested women were told to send “their address, their age and description. A photograph must accompany the description. Men must furnish reference from their banker, minister and postmaster.” The bureau emphasized the serious nature of its services by noting that “Beauty will not be taken into consideration in the classification of feminine applicants.”

Singles living in places too small for local government intervention began requesting help from their elected representatives. In 1910, the press secretary for Speaker of the House Joseph Cannon mentioned to a reporter from The New York Times that Cannon had received a letter requesting matrimonial assistance. Shortly thereafter, the Congressman found himself inundated with similar letters from singles throughout the country. Others began requesting the creation of a national marriage bureau.

One such demand came from the editorial board of the Otter Tail Press, a newspaper based in Otter Tail, Montana. After reprinting a story about the thousands of poor single women and girls struggling to live in New York, the newspaper penned an editorial calling for the “formation of a national association with branches everywhere whose object shall be the collection of statistics showing the relative population of the sexes in every city” and “for distributing the women fairly and evenly over America.” Other papers, such as the Anaconda Standard of Montana, heartily agreed with the Otter Tail’s sentiment but suggested that such an important organization should not be left to individuals; rather, they suggested it be made “a distinct department at Washington in charge of a cabinet officer.”

A national marriage bureau never materialized, but government involvement in partner redistribution did not disappear. In fact, today’s family-based immigration laws providing immigration priority to the spouses, fiancés, and fiancées of American citizens continue this tradition. Through these laws, the government encourages lonely Americans to expand their pool of potential partners beyond the borders of the United States.

These relationships, often derisively called “mail-order marriages” are a form of partner redistribution, but it is far from a dystopia. In fact, studies indicate that due to government involvement in these relationships and the various protections and incentives provided, foreign women typically benefit from these marriages. For example, as Zina, a young bride from Russia, explained, “In Russia, all the men know what women’s obligations are—to sew, to cook, they know that by heart. But they have no idea whatsoever, what their obligations might be. Here [in America] it is just the opposite. The men know what is wanted of them and what their obligations are.” Other foreign brides typically echo these sentiments while also adding additional ones such as American men’s willingness to marry older women, divorced women, and single mothers. Consequently, despite the stereotype of the desperate and exploited mail-order bride, these relationships can actually be empowering for women.

American women tend not to seek spouses through dedicated international matchmaking services, but many still take advantage of laws permitting them to fast-track the immigration of a foreign fiancé or spouse. Similarly, since Obergefell v. Hodges was decided, LGBTQ men and women have also started taking looking outside the United States for potential marriage partners.

Violent assertions of a right to sex or a partner, as has happened in recent months, are undeserving of sympathy. But the idea of addressing and reducing loneliness is valid. There was a time when the government took the romantic concerns of single people seriously, and it may be time to do so again. Today’s plethora of internet matchmaking services means the need for government-sponsored marriage bureaus no longer exists, but modern government can still play a part in aiding marriage redistribution. This role could range from providing tax credits for using matchmaking services to offering travel and relocation subsidies for men and women interested in moving to areas with better marriage prospects (similar to Vermont’s recent efforts to increase its population). Such measures would demonstrate the government’s ongoing support for marriage, as well as its recognition that these relationships play an integral part in many people’s happiness and well-being.

The post How Mail-Order Spouses Helped Settle America appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Historically, U.S. policymakers were troubled by such marriages not only on the grounds of race, but also because they created conflicting loyalties within the American nation. The questions of consent and coercion are at the essence of contests over sovereignty. And consent is a central tenet of Western marriage.

Until the 1930s, women of American birth who married foreign nationals faced particularly hard choices regarding their national identity. Under the principle of coverture, the legal status of a married woman, including her citizenship, was subsumed under that of her husband’s.

The Marshall judgments of the Federal Court of the 1830s declared that Indian Nations were nations in their own right, in the modern sense. However, they were classified as “domestic dependent nations” and considered subordinate to the United States. Indigenous families who had occupied their land for generations and who had matrilineal systems where the women had rights to land and property were gradually subsumed under a patriarchal system similar to that of the United States.

Controversies over citizenship continued. Consequently, during an active time for the American Indian Wars, some of the most heated moments between Native Americans and U.S. citizens happened not on the battlefield, but across the more intimate sphere of heterosexual unions.

This was the case in Connecticut in 1825, when the talented editor and Cherokee Indian Elias Boudinot asked for the hand of Harriett Gold, a white woman from a highly regarded family. The town went mad, burning effigies of Harriett and an archetypal “Indian” on a huge bonfire, threatening to lynch Elias, and protesting the Native American man’s “right” to marry a white woman.

Previously known as Gallegina Uwatie and Buck Watie, Elias had already crossed many transnational boundaries. He moved to Connecticut for an advanced education and strategically took the name of one of its patrons: Elias Boudinot, the New Jersey statesman, president of the Continental Congress, and president of the American Bible Society. Presented in fashionable clothing and practiced in the manners of American higher-ups, Elias was sought after by many of New England’s philanthropic elites, regardless of his Cherokee roots.

Despite rejection by her beloved family members and almost every lifelong friend in her hometown, Harriett went ahead with the wedding. By cover of night, the newlyweds travelled to their new home, New Echota (in present-day Georgia), the capital of the Cherokee Nation.

It was 1825, and Harriett was emigrating—a decision with serious risks.

When Harriett became a resident in the Cherokee Nation, their matrilineal society meant that she had no clan status and, therefore, no official citizenship. The uprooted Harriett was deeply interested in belonging, and she understood the emotional bonds that would make that possible. Upon her arrival there, she reported that her new family “joyfully” stated, “You are welcome in this nation.” In turn, she proclaimed, “I am now at home. Here I expect to pass the remainder of my days.” She was relieved that her relatives treated her like an old friend rather than a stranger.

Locket images of Elias Boudinot and Harriett Gold, circa 1826.

Harriett was well aware of the uncertain future of her new nation, of the Cherokees’ “final destiny,” as she put it—Native Americans were considered inevitably condemned by the arrival of Europeans on their lands. In a letter to her parents, she made it clear where she stood: “Whatever may be their doom I shall share and suffer as a Cherokee.”

Harriett’s parents, who had adamantly opposed the marriage, soon travelled to the Cherokee nation in the South to visit their new family. Contrary to their own expectations, they were thoroughly impressed with what they saw. Harriett’s father Benjamin became an advocate of the Cherokee nation, assisting in their political struggles to gain great support in the north. Proud of their grandchildren, his soft and wryly expressed affection translates across the ages: “The oldest little girl is as smart and pretty and healthy as can be found, and the next is a bright, well-looking child. All who see her say, ‘She is the handsomest child I ever saw.’ You must not think that I brag.”

Through her family life, Harriett became a courageous border crosser. She was also a Cherokee nationalist who expounded the virtues of their civilization and backed their cause in asserting their sovereignty rights. The couple raised highly accomplished children who were proud Cherokees and who, as diplomats and lawyers, continued the struggle for their treaty entitlements through the courts.

Harriett had willingly joined a nation whose future was under constant threat from her own birth nation. Harriett and Elias’s story reveals how intimacy and family shaped and redefined individuals and nations with a glue that neither colonizer nor colonized state could dissolve.

The post In Choosing to Be Cherokee, She Was Forced to Renounce the U.S. appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

A Court decision that relies on our federal constitution to legalize gay marriage across the country would be a triumph for individual liberty, common sense, and human decency. It would also amount to a well-deserved blow against that most persistent of villains throughout American history: the destructive creed of state rights and state sovereignty.

That same creed is at issue in the Obamacare case that is also expected to be decided this month, as the Court concludes its current term. At first glance, the Affordable Care Act and the institution of gay marriage don’t seem to have much in common as litigation subjects, but this case, too, is as much about the proper relationship between the states and the federal government as it is about anything else—which is true of so many of our political and legal fights these days.

King v. Burwell, the Obamacare decision, is a fluke of a case, an opportunity for opponents of the law to take another swing at the piñata (which they damaged, but did not break it in an earlier challenge) by capitalizing on some careless legislative drafting. The law allows the federal government to provide subsidies to lower-income insurance customers who sign up for coverage on the new exchanges “established by the state.” Trouble is, pursuant to other sections of the law, it was the federal government that ended up establishing an exchange for those states that refused to establish their own—and no one involved in drafting the law intended for its patients to be denied the same subsidies available to people signing up for coverage on a state-created exchange. Now, in their feverish desire to interfere with the relationship between American citizens and their national government, opponents of the law are hoping the Supreme Court will cut off millions of people from the support and coverage they are receiving.

As we await these landmark decisions that are so of the moment, it’s worth reading Joseph J. Ellis’s new book, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution 1783-1789. It’s a masterful reminder of how timeless this tension is between the concept of the United States as a singular nation and the United States as merely a confederation of sovereign states.

Ellis chronicles how four of our more visionary Founding Fathers—George Washington, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison—recognized from the earliest days after independence that the individual states, and the excessive power retained by them under the loose Articles of Confederation, were a serious threat to the promise of the American Revolution.

Hence this influential “quartet” pushed for the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Washington’s greatness lay in the fact that, from his earliest days leading the Continental Army, he transcended his narrow identification with Virginia, to think more broadly in terms of an American nation. He came out of self-imposed retirement to lend his enormous credibility to the Philadelphia proceedings. Washington wrote at the time (in what can be read as a challenge to pro-confederation Virginians then, but also to Virginia Confederates who’d secede from the Union in the following century): “We are either a United people or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern act as a nation … If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.”

Ellis captures the rare brilliance and admirable foresight of Washington’s three intellectual partners in this quest—Jay, Hamilton, and the first president’s fellow Virginian, Madison. All three men had a clear vision of an America destined to be a unique power in the world, defined by its collective sense of purpose and its citizens’ liberty. They understood that to survive, and thrive, as a continental power, the United States needed a stronger national government representing, and protecting, all of its people.

Madison, often cited as the father of the Constitution, lost plenty of battles at Philadelphia, starting with his bedrock insistence that sovereign power be shifted entirely from the states to the central government. Madison gave up on what he initially considered his non-negotiable demand for a federal veto power over state laws, as he would later have to surrender on his proposal that some of the Bill of Rights also limit the power of states. Though the closest of political partners at other times, Madison and Jefferson disagreed vehemently over whether it was state governments or the new federal government that would be the biggest threat to individual liberty and rights, and history has proven Jefferson spectacularly wrong in that debate. It’s hard to blame him: Madison’s (and Hamilton’s) belief that the larger, more distant national government could be a more representative embodiment of “We the People” was a very modern concept.

But being so ahead of their time limited The Quartet’s contemporary success. They were able to remedy the immediate flaws of the Articles of Confederation, bind the new nation closer together and set it on the right course, but their new Constitution, by political necessity, was riddled with fraught compromises – such as the electoral college and the equal vote of each state in the Senate—whose underlying tensions would define much of American history.

Abraham Lincoln ratified and reinvigorated the Quartet’s accomplishment to the point where he deserves to join Ellis’ crew, and make it a Quintet. The Civil War and its aftermath—especially the 14th Amendment on which the gay marriage case should hinge—delivered on the Madisonian concept of a federal government empowered to protect citizens—especially minorities—from the bullying of local and state authorities (i.e., majorities). But that doesn’t mean the fight is over.

Nowadays we don’t often think about these federalist debates that have haunted our history, because we are too busy—and this goes for both conservatives and liberals—gaming the tension between Washington and state capitals. Even within the gay marriage legal fights over the last decade, both sides have taken turns, depending on the prevailing winds, arguing in favor of a state’s right to define marriage for itself, damned what the rest of the country thinks.

Too rarely do we ask ourselves the more fundamental question of whether we are citizens of California or Texas—or the United States? If the Quartet had invented a time machine and paid us a visit, they’d be astonished at the resilience of the state sovereignty creed, despite all we’ve been through as a nation. Too many Americans stubbornly cling to the belief that the United States is a confederation in which citizens’ fundamental rights—on issues like marriage, access to baseline health care, and what is taught in their public schools—can and should vary across state lines, to accommodate local biases.

Let’s hope in the coming days and weeks that five such Americans aren’t sitting on the Supreme Court.

The post What Do Gay Marriage and Obamacare Have in Common? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Proponents and opponents of marriage for same-sex couples agree that heated debates about religious liberty are one effect of the marriage debate. But they strongly disagree about what America and its families will look like if same-sex couples can marry throughout the nation. Opponents have made dire predictions of marital instability, falling birthrates, and increases in children being born outside of marriage—in short, the destruction of American families.

But an examination of the data—particularly as it relates to the children in this country most in need of loving and stable families—does not support those predictions.

In a recent friend-of the court brief that I submitted to the Supreme Court, I explore what demographic and social science research tells us about the impact of the upcoming ruling. Today, nearly 1.4 million men and women are part of the estimated 700,000 same-sex couples living in this country. About 350,000 of them are married couples and 122,000 are raising more than 200,000 children under the age of 18.

Michigan couple April DeBoer and Jayne Rouse, plaintiffs in one of the cases currently before the Supreme Court, offer an example of how same-sex couples already play an outsized role in caring for some of the nation’s most vulnerable kids. They have adopted four children, two with developmental disabilities who require special care. U.S. Census Bureau data show that April and Jayne are not alone.

Same-sex couples are three times more likely than their different-sex counterparts to be raising adopted or foster children. Among married couples, same-sex couples are five times more likely. In states where same-sex couples can legally marry, more than 3 percent of adopted or foster children have same-sex parents. Since only about 0.3 percent of all children in those states have same-sex parents, it means that adopted and foster children there are nearly 10 times more likely than children in general to have same-sex parents.

As marriage becomes more widely available for same-sex couples, they will likely expand their already disproportionate role as parents to some of the nation’s neediest children. In 2013, 19 percent of same-sex couples without children were married compared to 33 percent of those with children. If they had adopted or foster children, the figure was 41 percent. In states where same-sex couples can marry, 60 percent of those with adopted or foster children are married. Clearly same-sex couples raising kids, especially adopted and foster kids, have a strong preference for marriage.

Opponents of marriage for same-sex couples argue that children do best when they are raised by their married biological parents. They reason that reserving marriage only for different-sex couples promotes that ideal. Assuming that kids do best with married moms and dads is a false read of social science research. A more careful review of the literature shows that children tend to do better when they are raised by two parents who are in a stable and committed relationship. Marriage offers a way for many couples to strengthen and support their desire for stability, love, and commitment. Kids with married parents, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender of those parents, benefit from the security that marriage offers to many couples.

What about the argument that reserving marriage for different-sex couples encourages them to raise children within marriage? This argument implies that allowing same-sex couples to marry might decrease the likelihood that different-sex couples decide to marry and have kids. Even if every same-sex couple in the country got married tomorrow, they’d only represent about 1 percent of all married couples. The notion that their marriages could alter the behavior of the other 99 percent of married couples (and unmarried heterosexuals for that matter), especially regarding such important and personal decisions like whether or not to marry or have children, seems ludicrous on the face of it. It turns out that the research agrees.

Two studies published last year in Demography, the premier academic journal in the field, find no evidence that allowing same-sex couples to marry has altered the marriage rates of different-sex couples in the U.S. or in the Netherlands, the country that has allowed same-sex couples to marry longer than any other in the world. In 2013, the portion of children being raised by married different-sex parents in the U.S. was actually a little bit higher in states where same-sex couples could legally marry (65 percent) compared to states where marriage was restricted to different-sex couples (64 percent).

The recent events in Indiana and Arkansas prove that a Supreme Court decision bringing marriage for same-sex couples to all parts of the nation won’t end political conflict associated with LGBT rights. But it will improve America’s families. The nation will have more married couples, more kids with married parents, and more stable homes and families for the country’s most vulnerable children. It’s hard to understand how that could ever be a bad thing.

The post Why the American Family Needs Same-Sex Parents appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Also possible: marriage implodes into the Milky Way.

Shall we speculate upon what mansion and brothel have in common?

Nope, let’s mutate. Enjoy our asanas, our cups of blankness.

The strange wine of error: how long it’s taken to get the vintage just so.

The post Tossed Into the Air appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The Accident is my term of endearment (really!) for my baby sister Katie, who arrived, unexpectedly, 11 ½ years after me and seven years after my brother. She is scheduled to exchange vows late Saturday afternoon in L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley with her longtime boyfriend, Matt, in a big family wedding that (my mother would like you to know) is costing a fortune.

I thought this family milestone was a totally unremarkable story—hardly worthy of a column—until I came across some data on California and its families. In our state, a seemingly conventional marriage is now exceptional. And Katie and Matt—who, if encountered on the street, would appear to be fairly conventional millennial professionals—just might be radicals.

Marriage rates are declining across the country and the industrialized world, and married couples represent fewer than half of American households. In California, the trend runs even deeper: The state’s marriage rate has reached almost European lows. There are fewer than six marriages a year now for every 1,000 Californians, putting the state at or near the bottom of the nation. (The rate in Arkansas, for example, is nearly twice as high.) Matt and Katie are swimming against a strong tide.

In California and around the country, people who are tying the knot are waiting longer to do so. The reasons for this are much debated, but one factor seems to be how long it takes people to get through school and find an economic footing. Such waits are particularly long in high-cost places like the Bay Area, where Katie and Matt live. My sister tells me that people there keep telling her that she’s “pretty young” to be getting married. That’s flattering but not true. She’s 29, a couple years older than the average American (and Californian) bride.

A decline in marriages may not be worrisome in itself, but in California it has been accompanied by a rapid decline in the number of children. The number of children under 10 in L.A. County dropped by 17 percent in the last decade. Some demographers have raised alarm that the sliding birth rate, in combination with diminished immigration, is producing a child shortage in the state. We need to produce more future taxpayers to buy houses and support the retirements of the old.

It should be noted that, while the decline of big, married, mom-and-dad families has its costs, the rise of other kinds of family arrangements is good news, especially when the alternative might well be miserable marriages. The number of California’s one-person households is soaring. Households made up of people who aren’t related to one another also appear to be more common. And many couples happily choose to remain unmarried, perhaps as their forebears might have secretly wished to do. My grandmother, a San Mateo hippie-before-her-time who is 97, was married to my grandfather for 59 years, until his death. But she’s been telling me for years that if the mores of the 1940s hadn’t required marriage, the two of them might have happily spent life together unmarried.

Non-traditional attitudes about marriage are something of a California tradition. One reason that we’ve long had liberal marriage laws, like allowing people to get married without producing a public record, is because 19th-century clergy had such trouble convincing Californians to get married. The idea has been to make it easier so more people will try it. And the state itself was conceived in short and broken marriages. During and after the Gold Rush, California, so full of men, had some of the world’s highest divorce rates, since the relatively low number of women could be choosy about partners.

Of course, this is the same state that, through Hollywood, has produced images of families that have defined the traditional and conventional while also subverting it. For all the fluidity and variety in the household set-ups of today’s Californians, we still seem to yearn to fit today’s diversity into traditional molds. As Pomona College professor of politics Susan McWilliams pointed out during a talk at Pepperdine University last week, two of the more popular shows on television right now—ABC’s Modern Family and NBC’s Parenthood—are about big if somewhat unconventional California families that are tight-knit, have three generations living together, and are deeply tied to the community. (Each family has a member running for local political office.)

When we’re investing more venture capital than the rest of the country or shielding immigrants from federal deportation, California exceptionalism is a good thing. But it has a dark side too, from massively overcrowded prisons to the world’s most inflexible initiative process. Our exceptionally dysfunctional governance, in combination with our wide-open culture, can create voids that don’t get filled. They make life—long commutes, the difficulty of finding good schools for your children, the lack of housing options that don’t break the bank—much harder than it has to be.

I even worry about people with the resources of Matt and Katie. They commuted for three long years of attending law schools 60 miles apart (he at Davis, she at Berkeley). The law used to be a reliable profession, but not now and not in California. We’ve produced a glut of lawyers, nearly twice as many attorneys as there are jobs for attorneys. So far, they’re among the lucky who still have work, with my sister, in adherence to the family tradition of never turning an elite education into any real money, toiling away in an East Bay public defender’s office.

I’m tempted to use this occasion to give them advice. I might tell them that they should have gobs of California children—but that’s a job for my mother, who has an unsurpassed record of nagging on this and other matters (I have three kids). I might suggest that, once they have gotten married and thus presumably gotten the desire to be different out of their systems, they might choose to make their lives easier. Perhaps even switch to a less cutthroat profession.

But I won’t. They’ll continue to do things the hard way. They’re Californians. Mazel tov.

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