There are many situations where kinship creates bonds and obligations not otherwise available to people. Commonly cited is the example of a person who has been in a serious accident and who needs someone to make major medical decisions for them — perhaps even the decision to take them off life support. Whom do the doctors wish to speak to? The next of kin. If married, the “next of kin” is always the spouse, and if that person is not available, the doctors move through children, parents, and siblings.
Gay activists often use a situation like this to point out the injustice done to gay couples who cannot marry, but I wanted to bring it up in order to ask you to take a fresh look at it. Why is the “next of kin” the spouse? After all, doesn’t a person have a stronger biological relationship with parents or children? Yes, but a stronger biological relationship isn’t the same as a stronger kinship relationship.
The relationship with a spouse is often treated as more important because it is a chosen relationship. You can’t choose your parents or children, but you can choose your spouse — the person you wish to spend your life with, share all levels of intimacy with, and establish a family with.
Heterosexual couples have the option to establish kinship with one another by marrying. Homosexual couples, whose love and intimacy cannot be judged as any less valuable or significant than those of straight people, do not have this option: they cannot form a kinship bond with one another. Because of this, their relationships are at a social disadvantage. There is, after all, much more to being “kin” than the legal benefits like what I describe above.
To begin with, there exist important moral obligations kin owe one another. These obligations may be enforced legally, as in some cases with marriage, but very often they are informal and unspoken yet nevertheless supported by one’s social milieu. Kin are expected to, wherever possible, financially and emotionally support one another when a crisis hits. A man who lets his mother become homeless will be ostracized by those around him, while siblings are expected to support one another when there is a death in the family.
The flip side of this are the obligations which the rest of the community owes to those who are tied together through kinship bonds. People who are kin are not supposed to be treated as if they were complete strangers to one another. If you invite a married man to a party, it is expected that the invitation is also extended to his wife — to deliberately exclude her would be a serious insult which would not exist if you invited one roommate but not the other. When a woman’s son achieves some success, you congratulate her as well — you wouldn’t act as though she had no significant connection to him.
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