Here in New Jersey where I live and work, the state legislature, controlled by Democrats, has put same-sex marriage at the top of its agenda. We already have same-sex civil unions, thanks to a legislative response to an activist state supreme court ruling several years ago. Governor Chris Christie–who sent a rather mixed message the other day when he nominated the first-ever openly gay state supreme court justice, the Republican mayor of Chatham–has said he would veto a same-sex marriage bill. And it doesn’t look like the votes would be there to override his veto. Now Christie has called for putting the question to the people in a constitutional referendum, but it sure doesn’t seem likely that this legislature will go for that. (In New Jersey, a constitutional amendment gets on the ballot via the legislature, not by petition. Either three-fifths of each house, acting once, or simple majorities in each house, acting in two consecutive annual sessions, need to vote to propose any amendment to the people.)
Meanwhile, last Friday the seven Catholic bishops in the state (for the six geographic dioceses and for the Syriac Catholic diocese) issued a statement strongly defending the conjugal understanding of marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman:
Marriage as a union of a man and a woman has its roots in natural law. Throughout all of human history marriage has been held to be a union of man and woman. Marriage as a union of man and woman existed long before any nation, religion or law was established. Marriage which unites mothers and fathers in the work of childrearing is the foundation of the family, and the family is the basic unit of society.
Sadly, the institution of marriage is being challenged by a society so concerned with individual freedom that some view marriage as a temporary or disposable convenience. Now, there is even an attempt in the New Jersey Legislature to pass a law that would change the very definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
As citizens, we must protect marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Same-sex unions may represent a new and a different type of institution, but it is not marriage and should not be treated as marriage.
January 25th, 2012 | 3:58 pm
Good job NJ bishops.
January 25th, 2012 | 4:31 pm
Excellent article, you can see how difficult this issue is in our modern society, when even high ranking politicians send out mixed messages to their voters. You have to know where you stand in order to make important decisions. Thanks
January 25th, 2012 | 4:47 pm
I am not Catholic (although I was raised one). Why should the clergy of a denomination I don’t belong to be able to determine whom I declare to be my legal spouse?
“Throughout all of human history marriage has been held to be a union of man and woman”
Most people are heterosexuals, so they’ve constructed a wide variety of legal constructs to protect those relationships. Should I be impressed by the fact that they’ve disregarded and ignored the needs and relationships of gays throughout history (that is, when they weren’t actively persecuting them)?
“Marriage which unites mothers and fathers in the work of childrearing is the foundation of the family”
If *civil* marriage licenses were granted only upon some proof of parental capabilities, then perhaps this argument would hold water. At this point, however, we grant civil licenses to convicted rapists, pedophiles and murderers — all people whom no person with any empathy would want near a child. We also grant marriage licenses to the infertile and elderly (who are incapable of bearing children). Are these latter couples of “less value” to society because they will never produce new offspring?
“Sadly, the institution of marriage is being challenged by a society so concerned with individual freedom that some view marriage as a temporary or disposable convenience. ”
Then why not revisit divorce laws for heterosexuals? When’s the last time you heard a member of the Catholic clergy demonize a divorced heterosexual from the pulpit or next to a political ally as they continually do with gays? Besides, if anyone has made concessions to human weakness, it’s the Catholic Church with their “annulment” process which pretends that an actual civil marriage (even one blessed by their own denomination) never happened in the first place! Isn’t that what they did when Newt became a Catholic and wanted to marry yet again? Why? Well, heck … a guy gets lonely. Why enforce those apparently unlivable Biblical standards of fidelity and chastity on him?
If you stand back and look at these arguments with any degree of objectivity, you’d realize this has far more to do with a personal antipathy towards gays than anything else.
January 25th, 2012 | 4:53 pm
A little sleight of hand here:
I think few would deny that, at least for the overwhelming number (but not all) of cases that we know of, marriage united a man and woman—but not one man and one woman. Polygamous marriage was and still is marriage.
January 25th, 2012 | 5:30 pm
David, technically there are no polygamous marriages. Polygamy is the practice of one man marrying several different women, but the women are not married to each other. This is why when the husband dies, none of the wives is married anymore and each is a widow in relation to her deceased husband. Thus, you even have in plural marriage one man and one woman, though it is the same man that marries each of the women. If it were not so, then the husband’s death would not mean that the marriage had ended, for the women would still remain married to each other.
January 25th, 2012 | 5:31 pm
At his Cooper Union speech, Lincoln made the argument that the South could never be satisfied with containing slavery to the South. Rather, Lincoln said, the South won’t stop until we not only stop calling slavery a moral wrong, but affirm it as morally right. That was necessarily true for Southerners, and the same thing is true for the new confederacy now advocating the redefinition of marriage.
Abortion provides a good example of what I’m talking about. Before Roe, the nation was overwhelming against abortion. Not only did all the churches oppose it, but even its biggest defenders in the Democratic Party opposed it: Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, and Dick Durbin!!
How could it be that someone could morally oppose abortion one day, and then the next day way up and declare it a moral good?
But think about why that HAD to be so. Everyone opposed abortion because everyone viewed it as the taking of an innocent life. If that’s what abortion is, then how can any politician countenance being a member of a party that kills innocent children? The moral weight of the question is so profound that the you can’t walk a middle ground (especially in 1973). You can’t say “well I view it as the killing of innocent children, but its perfectly okay for you to kill innocent children, if you don’t view them as human the way I do.”
The only way out is to stop calling it a moral wrong and to start calling it a moral right, which every Democrat serving in Congress today now asserts (wasn’t Stupak the last pro-life Democrat serving in Congress? Think so, not sure). You certainly can’t say that it’s right for some people to kill children but not others, and I believe that is partly what Lincoln was talking about in his Cooper Union speech when he described the same trajectory with regard to slavery.
At present, every consenting adult in the United States can marry. The only way we can exclude any consenting adults from marriage and make marriage the ward of the state is if we redefine the institution. In the new definition, the only thing that will be prohibited is the idea that marriage has anything in particular to do with a conjugal union between a man and a woman premised upon the procreation of children. In other words, modern relativism can no longer tolerate marriage.
(I must admit I’m impressed with the artfulness of whomever it was that thought up the term “gay marriage” as if homosexuality could somehow just be included in an institution that only came into existence because men and women procreate children. It’s a tautological sleight of hand that makes its oxymoronic conclusion the premise of its argument. And they even managed to get their opponents using the term!)
The advocates won’t stop until we cease calling the meaning of marriage morally right, and start calling it morally wrong.
Better gird your loins.
January 25th, 2012 | 5:36 pm
Not to defend polygamy, but the sleight of hand is all yours.
Polygamous marriage is still the marriage between one man and one woman. It just involves the man entering into additional, concurrent marriages.
Of course, polygamy doesn’t fit the Christian notion of marriage, but it also doesn’t bolster the argument for homosexual marriage.
January 25th, 2012 | 6:15 pm
Sorry for all the typos in the previous post. Let’s see if I can avoid a few more as I’d like to say a little more.
All of us need to start fighting harder and better. The moment anyone shelves this as just another issue that may or may not interest him, that person have moved the ball in favor of the redefinition of marriage.
My advice is to cease using the terms “gay marriage” and “same-sex marriage” at all costs because it makes a massive concession. What I oppose is the redefinition of marriage.
“Same-sex marriage” or “gay marriage” is a like a magician’s sleight of hand: the choice of words isn’t supposed to be the thing you notice or even see, but contained therein is the whole trick.
Consider the difference. The term “Same-sex marriage” assumes that such a thing could have effectively existed all along–even at the very beginning–and the only reason no one ever heard of the idea until now is because the heirs of racial bigotry have imposed their private morals on the government, which therefore prohibits it. The whole question as supporters of “same-sex marriage” see it, is whether those marriages should be allowed to blossom, or whether the government boot should should remain on their necks.
On the other hand, the “redefinition of marriage,” assumes that marriage is a conjugal relationship that came into existence for a reason that has nothing to do with any government at any time: because men and women procreate children. This is why marriage is a natural right, and not a positive right created by government.
The real question before us with regard to marriage and family is whether or not the government should have the power to redefine the natural rights that it was created to protect (click on my name above for more on that topic). Indeed, I can’t think of a totalitarian government that hasn’t tried to redefine the natural rights of marriage and family for its own ends.
If we were having an honest debate, no one on either side would ever use the terms “gay marriage,” or “same-sex marriage.” But the only reason a magic trick works is if you follow the misdirection and fail to notice the sleight of hand.
January 25th, 2012 | 6:51 pm
Douglas writes: “[T]he only thing that will be prohibited is the idea that marriage has anything in particular to do with a conjugal union between a man and a woman premised upon the procreation of children”
If you ask a hundred heterosexual couples, I’m doubting they’ll tell you that they’re seeking a marriage license merely as a means for providing a two-parent household for the children they wish to have. That’s not to say that children are not a goal for them but rather that they are not the primary consideration.
Instead, people marry primarily because they see in another person a companion with whom they wish to establish a legally binding and stable relationship. That stability is provided in no small part by the legal benefits and obligations granted by the State.
What you are implying, I think, is that there is no public interest in providing this stability to any couple unless there are children in the mix (gay or straight).
If so, that in itself is a worthy debate. Is there a point to a couple’s commitment and fidelity when there are no children? If so, what is it?
My thought is that commitment, while at times difficult, is part and parcel of what it means to live an ethical life (not to mention the fact that is does bring personal contentment to many). That all-important “other” should be the person who provides what no other can: support, attention, affection, understanding and care throughout good times and bad. While extended family can provide this, the spouse is generally the one who can extend this sort of care at a much deeper level.
To say that this commitment is “irrelevant” just because there are no offspring in question is grossly oversimplifying, don’t you think?
January 25th, 2012 | 7:38 pm
David, technically there are no polygamous marriages. Polygamy is the practice of one man marrying several different women, but the women are not married to each other.
Francis,
Would you say, then, that the state amendments that are all worded something like the following do not rule out polygamous marriage?
January 25th, 2012 | 7:42 pm
If marriage can be anything, then marriage is nothing.
January 25th, 2012 | 10:37 pm
†JMJ†
Hi, James,
After reading your posts, I’d just like to say a couple things.
” ‘Sadly, the institution of marriage is being challenged by a society so concerned with individual freedom that some view marriage as a temporary or disposable convenience.’
“Then why not revisit divorce laws for heterosexuals? When’s the last time you heard a member of the Catholic clergy demonize a divorced heterosexual from the pulpit or next to a political ally as they continually do with gays? Besides, if anyone has made concessions to human weakness, it’s the Catholic Church with their ‘annulment’ process which pretends that an actual civil marriage (even one blessed by their own denomination) never happened in the first place!”
It’s frustrating that the Church seems to be against homosexuality in all circumstances but against divorce only if people do not get an annulment. I’d argue, though, that this is not at all what the Church is doing. The Church never sees divorce as a good thing in itself. Jesus preached against it (Mt 19:1-8; Mk 10:1-12). The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches against it in most cases, taking into account some practical and special situations (CCC 2382-2386; http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm#2382).
An annulment does not declare that there was never a civil marriage. It only declares that there was never a sacramental marriage, a beautiful, binding spiritual union between the man, the woman, and God. If it is determined that a sacramental marriage did indeed happen, an annulment is not granted. “Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.” (Mark 10:9)
No one should ever, ever be demonized, neither men and women who are divorced nor men and women with homosexual tendencies. I apologize on behalf of the Church if you have ever heard a member of the Catholic clergy demonize a person who is divorced or who has homosexual tendencies. Bishops and priests do teach that divorce and homosexuality are not good, as a matter of truth and love for people in order to spare them the suffering that comes from not living the way God intended, but they do not (or should not) condemn those who have already gotten a divorce or acted on homosexual tendencies.
In terms of the Church’s stance on homosexuality and those with homosexual tendencies, I suggest Blessed Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, as outlined in Christopher West’s “The Good News about Sex and Marriage” (You can read parts of it and get it used at 4 dollars here: http://www.amazon.com/Good-News-About-Sex-Marriage/dp/0867166193/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327548578&sr=1-1). If we try to suspend disbelief and and really read the Church’s argument, we might find it makes a lot of sense.
January 26th, 2012 | 3:53 am
James is right, when he says that people do get married for all sorts of reasons, from romantic love to a residence permit. Similarly, people join the army for all sorts of different personal reasons, but the public purpose of the army remains the defence of the nation.
As the philosopher, Bertrand Russell, observed, “But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex, It is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.” The famous anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, observed that “the family—based on a union, more or less durable, but socially approved, of two individuals of opposite sexes who establish a household and bear and raise children—appears to be a practically universal phenomenon, present in every type of society.” Both, by the by, were convinced atheists.
As to the old canard about infertile opposite-sex couples, the problem for the legislator is that they (unlike same-sex couples) do not really form a class, at all. Such individuals may be suffering from a range of pathologies, they may be too old, or it may be simply a question of volition. Some of these conditions may appear to be irremediable, whereas others are plainly not. Besides, some conditions that, in the past, were irremediable, are now treatable and it would be a bold legislator who attempted to anticipate such advances. Laws are made for the general case.
Moreover, in the context of adoption, an infertile opposite-sex couple present to the child, and to the wider community, the model of the natural (procreative) family, which, some experts assert, makes the establishment of the parental bond between the adopters and the adopted child possible or, at least, easier and spares adopted children the additional difficulty of having to integrate into a “non-standard” family, however loving.
January 26th, 2012 | 10:03 am
As to the old canard about infertile opposite-sex couples, the problem for the legislator is that they (unlike same-sex couples) do not really form a class, at all.
If you passed a law barring an infertile individual from marrying, that would be unconstitutional – in a way that is different from prohibiting certain types of unions or couplings.
One is a matter of singling out individuals (or a class of persons affected by a particular trait) for different treatment under the law, while the other is preferring appropriate processes while refusing to subsidize inappropriate processes.
It is the difference between refusing to recognize a “gay couple” as married – vs. denying a marriage permit to a gay man because he is gay.
January 26th, 2012 | 10:11 am
If *civil* marriage licenses were granted only upon some proof of parental capabilities, then perhaps this argument would hold water
We do not test people for parental capabilities because we do not choose who can and cannot reproduce – since we have come to realize that Buck vs. Bell was in fact a human rights violation, it is now commonly believed that the right to reproduce is a basic human right.
And this is true for gays as well as straights. You have the right to reproduce yourself.
What is at stake in “gay marriage” is not whether gays will be allowed the freedom to reproduce. They do have that already – there are no restrictions on how they mingle their genes; while they like to compare themselves to interracial marriage, their situation is really far more comparable to polygamy than interracial marriage, because restrictions on polygamy are restrictions on how one goes about making a family (process), whereas interracial marriage involved people who wanted to use the regular, appropriate, approved processes, but were barred because people wanted to keep black genes segregated from white ones.
What is at stake is how we define a family – whether we continue to legally enforce the common and universal understanding of “family” as meaning biological kinship, or whether some newly introduced idea of “affection” is the dominant trait by which we determine when and whether a family does or does not exist.
January 26th, 2012 | 10:12 am
Of course, polygamy doesn’t fit the Christian notion of marriage, but it also doesn’t bolster the argument for homosexual marriage.
sbreau,
I am not interested, at least here, in bolstering the argument for gay marriage. I just find it dishonest to speak of marriage as if polygamous marriage were not marriage. I will withdraw my comment if it is universally agreed that the statement “marriage is between one man and one woman” does not rule out polygamy, but it seems to me that many same-sex marriage opponents claim that monogamous marriage of one man and one woman is, and always has been, the only arrangement that can be called marriage. For example, here a brief excerpt from Robert George’s “What Is Marriage?”:
He does say in a footnote elsewhere, “Even in traditions that permit or have permitted polygamy, each marriage is between a man and a woman.” Nevertheless, unless I am somehow badly misreading him, he does say that “real” marriage is between one man and one woman, is monogamous and exclusive, and is permanent. While claiming to arrive at a definition of marriage without appealing to religion, he arrives at not merely the Christian definition of marriage, but the Catholic one. He excludes not merely polygamy (which was practiced in Old Testament times with no apparent disapproval on God’s part) but divorce and remarriage.
If the argument is that civil marriage should conform to this ideal of “conjugal marriage,” that would exclude not only polygamy (which I am more than happy, personally, to exclude from civil marriage) but also divorce and remarriage, which, if there were to be reforms in American marriage laws, would have so little support that it would not be worth discussing.
I suppose there is a slight implied bolstering of the case that same-sex marriage is thinkable in that what I am saying is that civil marriage is far removed from the ideal type of “conjugal marriage” Robert George espouses, and almost everyone is perfectly happy to let civil marriage and their concept of “real” marriage differ. Catholic “sacramental marriage” is nowhere near being identical to civil marriage, and this does not prevent the Catholic Church from maintaining the concept of sacramental marriage. So the fact that same-sex marriage does not conform to some conservative definitions of marriage prompts the question, “So what?” The argument is not that civil marriage should reflect some idealized version of marriage, but rather how close should civil marriage be to some idealized version of marriage. People are free to argue that same-sex marriage is too far, but it also could be argued that divorced people should not be permitted to remarry civilly, because marriage is between one man and one woman, exclusively, for life. So a perfectly reasonable argument can be made that the divorced and remarried are not really married at all but are living in state-sanctioned adultery.
January 26th, 2012 | 10:23 am
Of course, polygamy doesn’t fit the Christian notion of marriage, but it also doesn’t bolster the argument for homosexual marriage.
Nice to hear someone admit it. Presumably maybe now the anti-SSM can admit finally that SSM does not equate to an argument for polygamy either!
Douglas Johnson
At his Cooper Union speech, Lincoln made the argument that the South could never be satisfied with containing slavery to the South. Rather, Lincoln said, the South won’t stop until we not only stop calling slavery a moral wrong, but affirm it as morally right. That was necessarily true for Southerners, and the same thing is true for the new confederacy now advocating the redefinition of marriage.
Cool, someone who thinks the US needs a new civil war premised on a massive jihad against all who happen to have the wrong beliefs. Why stop with just abortion and marriage? Why not wipe out everyone who doesn’t think the way you do? Why not finally wipe out all those bad Christian denominations (those would be all the ones other than the one you follow)? Once you have ‘settled’ everything, I’m sure you’ll be quite happy with the utopia you’ve instituted!
January 26th, 2012 | 1:07 pm
I am inclined to think that the main driver of SSM, philosophically, may not be a claim based on liberty or justice or equality, but rather an amalgam of these in the form of Razian autonomy (with its supposed correlate of dignity). While the distinguished Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz does favor SSM, he has never employed his highly original “perfectionist” liberalism for a sustained defense of SSM. Curious.
I believe there are good reasons to reject the perfectionist-autonomy argument as it applies to SSM, but the matter appears to be extremely complex. The fact that it has been so little discussed is one reason why politicians and jurists need to slow down and let the philosophical debate get carried out in a way that does not attribute simple-minded neutralism to the liberal creed. Neutralism, in the form of the usual liberty and equality arguments for SSM, seems entirely question-begging to me. Liberty and equality need to be understood in terms broader than liberal political philosophy can provide.
A very good statement by the New Jersey bishops. So far, no such illumination has been forthcoming from the bishops in my home state–Washington–where SSM is on the legislative agenda.
January 26th, 2012 | 3:10 pm
Well Boonton,
So I take it from your comments that you do not believe the preservation of natural right justified the Civil War? Rather than preserve natural right, it would have been better if those 600,000 soldiers had not died when they did.
January 26th, 2012 | 5:19 pm
Douglas Johnson,
The Civil War was fought to save the Union, not to free the slaves.
January 26th, 2012 | 10:47 pm
Actually Douglas I don’t think the 600,000 soldiers who died in the Civil War gave a fig for your thoughts on gay marriage, or even abortion. But I’m sure they appreciate the fact that you’ll exploit their inability to speak to us today by presuming to speak on their behalf.
Ken
I am inclined to think that the main driver of SSM, philosophically, may not be a claim based on liberty or justice or equality, but rather an amalgam of these in the form of Razian autonomy
I’m sorry but I’m not really following your argument.
The fact that it has been so little discussed is one reason why politicians and jurists need to slow down and let the philosophical debate get carried out in a way that does not attribute simple-minded neutralism to the liberal creed.
Naaa, there’s no way of telling where philosophers will take a debate, except that we can pretty much guess it’s going to end with a “to be continued sign…”, esp. when tenure is at play. For better or worse we don’t live in the world of philosopher kings. Civil law on SSM will continue to be decided by politicians and jurists just as all the other civil laws are so decided.
January 27th, 2012 | 7:34 am
David Nickol,
I described the basis for the Civil War as the “preservation of natural right,” and I’m happy to go through each of Lincoln’s speeches point by point to demonstrate this. But you took issue with this (using words I didn’t use), which is actually very interesting to me that you couldn’t let the words “preservation of natural right” stand.
Lincoln’s march into the war wasn’t premised on saving just a geographical union, or to preserve a union without particular concern with the political form it might take, but to preserve the ideal of a union founded upon the natural right premise found in the Declaration of Independence.
I suppose this interests me because more and more I’m seeing a visceral reaction against natural right philosophy coming from this movement to redefine marriage, which of course makes sense. After all, if marriage was not an invention of the state, but rather is entirely pre-political and came into existence because of the biological necessity of men and women to procreate children, then it becomes clear that the movement to redefine marriage cannot tolerate marriage having anything IN PARTICULAR to do with natural rights. The new definition of marriage must therefore be stripped of any basis in natural right, and become a strictly a matter of positive law.
More on this here.
January 27th, 2012 | 9:30 am
oops! hit the button by mistake…
…I was saying that the government’s role in replacing biology as far as determining or severing kinship ties is important, and I was going to give an example from my own life, where some kids who were raised to think of themselves as part of my family were abruptly taken out of my family when their “parents” broke up.
When families are built out of emotion rather than biology, families change every time emotions change. Children already are being raised to think of themselves as “kin” to people they’re not biologically related to – which means kids can never really know just who they are related to: being related to someone has no meaning when it is not based on biology and can be taken away (or “discovered” to have never existed in the first place).
The other way in which redefining marriage will result in expanded government: if we trade the strong and stable ties of biology for the weak and fickle ties of “affection” – and it becomes legitimate to use the law/government to break rather than enforce biological ties – then we are going to need a lot more welfare. The government will have to expand to include functions that families currently take care of independently, because even family units that want to maintain strong family ties will find the government restricting and limiting their ability to do so.
January 27th, 2012 | 12:37 pm
Douglas Johnson,
I sympathize with, and largely share, your natural rights thinking, but I worry about too much anti-historical “Yankeeism.” Available online–just google the title–is Donald Livingston’s fascinating essay “A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy.” (Livingston is my former teacher–I learned Humean conservative philosophy from him.) I strongly recommend this essay to all thoughtful Yankees.
You endorse, as do the New Jersey bishops, marriage as “pre-political.” I like this idea but don’t know what it really is based on. Is the pre-political a quasi-natural–quasi-social concept? If we understood the “pre-political” a little better, we could maybe neutralize the crucial, but mainly tacit, liberal belief in social, political, and moral *contingency*–otherwise, liberal supporters of same-sex marriage will be inclined to just ignore the supposedly fallacious appeal to the purely natural (read: obsolete) norms contained in the whole concept of the pre-political. In other words, do people have to believe in classical natural law in order to embrace the idea of the pre-political, and “pre-political” institutions such as marriage? I hope not. That won’t take the opponents of same-sex marriage very far.
January 27th, 2012 | 5:21 pm
I described the basis for the Civil War as the “preservation of natural right,” and I’m happy to go through each of Lincoln’s speeches point by point to demonstrate this.
Douglas Johnson,
I do not pretend to have gone through everything Lincoln ever said with a find tooth comb, but I do know he wrote this in a famous letter to Horace Greeley:
January 27th, 2012 | 11:03 pm
The founder of this magazine (remember him?) once signed a petition to admit a gay pro-life group which had been excluded from the organized right-to-life movement. Fr. Neuhaus was about nothing if he was not about moral seriousness. I don’t recall that he ever repudiated his civil rights activism. On the contrary. What he criticized was an unthinking and unfeeling “civil-rightsism” that was no longer morally serious. No longer compassionate. See Andrew Young, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Black Congressional Caucus et al. Any law school or progressive church you might wander into. Marriage, children, and family are morally serious at their core. But like the Civil War or the fight to protect the unborn, purity of intent is not always present in the daily living of it. I suppose the same could be said for the daily practice of the Catholic faith. It’s certainly true for me. Arguing about polygamy or polyandry simply isn’t morally serious. It does recall a phrase from the Authorized Version, “the whited sepulchre.” I will ask the question again: why do so many gay people I meet as well as the daily Hollywood campaigners in sitcoms and cop shows always curl their noses at “family values” or “the Catholic Church.” Why the cheap jokes? Why the stupid slogans? Why the recourse to slander at the slightest resistance? All of which civil rights campaigns has in common with doctrinaire feminism. I’m not signing up for institutionalized cynicism and never will. Sarcasm isn’t thought. Overt contempt isn’t a coherent argument. Calling complete strangers “h8ters” does what it is intended to do — make the thoughtful, experienced, and well-intentioned feel powerless and despairing of any hope for reason.
Which raises one more question. Why are leftists such poor winners You always get what you want…
January 28th, 2012 | 4:20 am
I do not believe that we need to assert marriage as “pre-political” (a concept I find puzzling, unless we take it in Aristotle’s sense, when he says in the Eudemian Ethics that in the household are first found the origins and springs of friendship, of political organization and of justice) It is only necessary to look to the coherence of our legislation and its underlying policy.
What is it that distinguishes marriage from unregulated cohabitation and civil unions for same-sex and opposite-sex couples? The answer is the rule that the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for its father. In other words, marriage is concerned with the juridical bond between fathers and their children, which rests on the obligation of fidelity between spouses and reflects the commitment made by the husband during the celebration of marriage, to raise the couple’s children.
If the state’s interest in civil marriage is to ensure, as far as possible that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide, why relevance does it have to same-sex couples, who are incapable, as a class, of reproducing?
January 28th, 2012 | 9:43 pm
Graham Combs
Arguing about polygamy or polyandry simply isn’t morally serious. It does recall a phrase from the Authorized Version, “the whited sepulchre.” I will ask the question again: why do so many gay people I meet as well as the daily Hollywood campaigners in sitcoms and cop shows always curl their noses at “family values” or “the Catholic Church.”
Wow, all in one paragraph. We begin with a demand for ‘morally serious’ argument. Then we switch to analyzing morality by the types of gay people Graham hangs out with….if that’s not enough we then extend our ‘moral analysis’ of gays to unnamed ‘sitcoms’ and ‘cop shows’ because, well I guess Hollywood = gay.
Can you imagine a discussion of, say, anti-semitism where someone enters a room and says something like “tell me if this whole outcry against anti-semitism is morally serious why do the Jewish friends I have all have big noses and why do I know so many rich Jewish guys at the upper reaches of the financial elite!” and is actually taken seriously!
Michael PS
What is it that distinguishes marriage from unregulated cohabitation and civil unions for same-sex and opposite-sex couples? The answer is the rule that the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for its father.
You mean that’s the rule in France which is all well and good except marriage exists in plenty of places other than France and existed long before modern French law ever existed.
If the state’s interest in civil marriage is to ensure, as far as possible that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide, why relevance does it have to same-sex couples, who are incapable, as a class, of reproducing?
I’m pretty unclear still what relevance marriage has at all in this view of French law. A hundred years ago a paternity dispute could easily descend into a ‘he said she said’ shouting match between a husband who claims his wife cheat on him and a wife who denies it. One could easily see why a simple rule was adopted which said basically if you’re married, we are going to assume your the baby daddy unless you have really, really, really good proof otherwise. Of course you couldn’t apply such a rule to ‘unregulated couples’ because then they wouldn’t really be ‘unregulated’ would they? Also in a time of nobility and titles whether or not someone was a legitimate heir was a real social concern.
Today nobility is gone for the most part and even where it’s not it isn’t applicable for 99.9% of the population. Where paternity is disputed, DNA testing works just fine to decide the issue with near perfect confidence.
January 29th, 2012 | 9:40 am
Michael PS,
On second thought I would have been on firmer ground using the term “pre-governmental” rather than “pre-political.” Thanks for the correction.
Marriage exists because it takes a man and a woman to procreate a child, and so fundamental to marriage is this biological complementarity. This is what I mean by it being pre-governmental and therefore part of natural right.
A C.S. Lewis quote seems pertinent here:
“The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We are our rulers are of one kind only so long as we are subject to one law. But if there is no law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators, and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside is own creation.”
David Nickol,
I am well aware of the Greeley letter, and it is one of numerous examples of what he said in that letter. I think your confusion stems from the fact that twice now you have put words in my mouth and then argued against those words as if I actually said them.
The enslavement of blacks in the South is what happens when we abandon the idea of unalienable rights endowed to each individual by God, or natural right. It is inarguable that Lincoln wanted to end slavery. When or where we ended slavery was less important to Lincoln than that we end it because we understand it to be incompatible with unalienable rights endowed to us by God. Slave labor is one terrible consequence of a failure to give regard to natural right. To sustain slave labor, it was necessary for the South to dismiss the idea of unalienable right contained in the Declaration of Independence. Likewise, if the government is successful in redefining marriage as strictly a matter of positive law, it will also require an abandonment of natural right.
So again, Lincoln wanted to save the Union but by that he meant he wanted to preserve a Union founded upon the unalienable rights of the individual.
January 29th, 2012 | 10:35 pm
Marriage exists because it takes a man and a woman to procreate a child, and so fundamental to marriage is this biological complementarity. This is what I mean by it being pre-governmental and therefore part of natural right.
This would seem to be in dispute. I would put forth the following:
1. Jesus seems to indicate that marriage exists because it is in human nature for men and women to seek out each other and bond together. One need not adopt a Christian worldview to give this consideration. Even if you don’t think Jesus was divine in any way, the fact that such teachings have found resonance for thousands of years indicates that there must be at least something to it.
2. Most (possibly not all) traditional marriage vows emphasize a life long bonding of the couple who pledge mutual aid and support to each other and promise to share in whatever fate may bring them. This is unnecessary if we are just trying to get reproduction to happen. No one need care about couples who have had and raised their kids to adulthood.
3. The fundamental word ‘marriage’ itself does not speak of procreation but uniting. To ‘marry’ two metals is not to create an alloy but to fuse them together. This implies marriage exists as a kind of logical asymptote. A marriage is the closest two humans can get to each other while still remaining two distinct humans. Using this definition in its pure form, almost no marriages have probably ever existed. An ideal marriage would be one where the couple is so close that they could not get any closer while remaining two individuals. In this sense its probably more proper to talk not about two people ‘getting married’ but about people ‘attempting marriage’ (that phrasing I clip from an article I read in a Catholic newspaper, BTW).
4. Suppose, just for the sake of argument, humanity was suddenly struck infertile (think perhaps of the movie Children of Men which had this premise). I would argue that if such a thing happened and marriage for reproduction suddenly became moot, many people would still seak out marriage and get married.
5. In fact, from a sociological view marriage isn’t so much about procreation as about birth control! The procreation argument seems like it is born in some alternative universe where humans hate sex and have to be coaxed into it by some institution otherwise people will just never get around to doing it and there goes the human race! In fact it’s just the opposite, humans are perfectly willing to procreate just about anywhere and everywhere. The human species, though, requires so much energy and time in reproducing that more often than not the problem isn’t getting reproduction to happen but keeping reproduction from happening at ‘bad times’. Before anyone invented birth control, marriage worked both before and after to control births. Before by demanding virginity on the part of women (and men to a lesser extent). After by forcing men to maintain a long term relationship with their wives which usually means some regulation of the sex drive on the part of men to ‘synchronize’ with women’s. Many men who marry thinking its the golden ticket to endless sex on demand as if they had brought a suite in Hugh Hefner’s mansion quickly discover it’s much more complicated than that. If you don’t buy this, try to imagine what human society would look like with some other system than marriage. Say human males kept females as cattle to have sex with whenever they wanted. Do you not think such cultures would have women having many more babies than from simple marriage? Probably so, but the human race works not by tossing off massive amounts of offspring but by pouring a lot of energy into raising offspring.
From all of this, it would seem pretty sensible to conclude it’s a human right to ‘attempt marriage’. Gov’t should not be in the business of trying to decide ahead of time which couples will or will not be successful in marriage anymore than it tries to predict which businesses will work ahead of time. Gov’t should not deny couples who want to marry a marriage license. I have no problem with religions and philosophers arguing that certain marriages may never work. I can entertain an argument that a large portion of same sex marriages may fail because the a life long union is very stressful and difficult to navigate and you just need something like the way the sexes compliment each other just as those attempting to climb Mt. Everest absolutely can’t succeed without bottled oxygen. But when you get down to it, it’s not gov’t's place to stop people who want to attempt it from attempting it. It is religion’s place to stop people frm attempting it, though! Just as a good mountain guide would say no to an inexperienced, amateur climber who wanted to scale Everest, religion has a long history of throwing water on people who want to try marriage. One would hope that religion would not only discourage marriages it thinks has no chance of success but also marriages that might work in theory but are unlikely too in practice because the couple isn’t serious, isn’t mature, is in over their head etc. But again no one is required to follow the advice of a particular religion or any religion at all. IMO, religion has no choice but to make it’s regulation of marriage an affair only for those willing to join the club of that religion.
January 29th, 2012 | 10:45 pm
The enslavement of blacks in the South is what happens when we abandon the idea of unalienable rights endowed to each individual by God, or natural right. It is inarguable that Lincoln wanted to end slavery. When or where we ended slavery was less important to Lincoln than that we end it because we understand it to be incompatible with unalienable rights endowed to us by God. Slave labor is one terrible consequence of a failure to give regard to natural right.
Unfortunately the innocent person wishing to abide by natural rights and law who honestly looked at the slavery question in 1840 or 1850 would discover a very vocal and even logically coherent argument for slavery. The pro-slavery side was not just simple thugs who argued for slavery because it gave white slave holders material advantages. There were slavery apologists who developed sophisticated arguments in slavery’s favor. They argued that slavery was in fact quite natural because men were naturally unequal. They cited ancient history, law and even the Bible in defense of this assumption. They argued that the north was just as unequal as the south but did those on the bottom a disservice by pretending everyone was equal and simply rewarded according to what they put into the system. They argued that slavery was a two way street where slave owners also had a responsiblity to the slave for ensuring his well beign, a responsibility that, say, the northern factory owner did not have to the men, women and often children that slaved away in his shop.
While we all agree now they were wrong, it’s a disservice to think they were just stupid brutes who all had no consideration for doing the right thing. A person approaching the issue blindly, might very well end up concluding that the ‘natural law’ argument was with the pro-slavery side (Lincoln himself said if he had been born and raised in the south, he very well probably would have been a supporter of slavery….this ‘there but for the grace of God go I’ stance helped him argue for reconciliation over revenge against the south). So today we are stuck with an equally troublesome issue. Are natural law arguments really about ‘reading the natural law’ or are they just rationalizations for the position we happen to feel comfortable with and what could be more comfortable but to discover the things that ‘feel natural’ to us are in fact the law and will of nature herself!
January 30th, 2012 | 10:47 am
Booton,
Setting aside some minor points there isn’t much to disagree with in what you wrote. For instance, Alexander Stephens argued that Lincoln was right, that the founders actually did mean “all men created equal” but, he argued, the advancement of science over the last 100 years demonstrates that all men aren’t equal. But Stephens didn’t interpret that part of the Declaration differently than Lincoln, he merely said it no longer applied.
President Obama has argued that many of those men signing the Declaration hailed from slave states that were not among those states to drop slavery immediately after the founding, and that therefore the Founders never intended to include blacks when they said “all men.” Ironically, that is precisely the same argument used by Jefferson Davis and John Calhoun against Lincoln. Here again, Lincoln obviously thought otherwise, but the split between Obama-Davis-Calhoun vs. Lincoln was a question of whether or not we should read the Declaration literally.
Making an almost identical argument to Alexander Stephens, Woodrow Wilson said that the advancement of science and the course of history has brought us to a point where we no longer need to read the first part of the Declaration of Independence, and that we can now give more powers to the state to do the things Wilson believed the state needed the power to do. Calvin Coolidge responded by saying that the first part of the Declaration is the most important part, and that it must always remain the sine qua non of our nation’s founding.
The reason I bring all this up is to show how over time the same arguments repeat themselves with regard to natural right. I agree it is not a matter of perfect moral hindsight (indeed both the North and the South would view our 53 million abortions as a savagery exceeding the slavery question). The two sides of the issue were split over whether or not natural right still applied (Stephens, Wilson), or over whether it applied in the first place (Davis, Calhoun, Obama).
With regard to the literal understanding that natural right refers to rights that come from God and not men (and is thus “unalienable”) there is no disagreement.
Few who want to redefine marriage today would deny that marriage only came into existence because of the biological necessity that takes a man and a woman to procreate a child, which is what makes it a natural right. Rather, like Alexander Stephens and Woodrow Wilson, they argue that history has made natural right irrelevant and something not to be considered. Therefore, they tell us, marriage is whatever we want to say it is and it therefore completely a matter for government redefinition and control.
January 30th, 2012 | 11:00 am
Boonton,
I hadn’t seen your 10:35 post when I wrote my response above. I will simply say that I think you are on the weakest possible ground when you argue that Jesus didn’t see the procreation of children by a man and a woman as fundamental to marriage. I see no reason to even bother with a counterargument on that point.
That said, I wouldn’t condemn you for making this argument. On the contrary, I wish more folks who want to redefine marriage would make the arguments you make.
With regard to your point that you want to get the government out of marriage…how would you go about doing that? I presume you would pass a law. Or perhaps you would engineer a law suit to end up before the Ninth Circuit. In other words, you would use government power to accomplish your ends.
Marriage wasn’t created by the government. Marriage, as a natural right, is pre-govermental. What the government does with marriage (e.g. marriage license) is recognize this natural right and do things to protect it and its consequences (children, family, and the posterity of civilization).
Anyway, I’m out of time. This is my last post on this thread.
January 30th, 2012 | 11:05 am
You mean that’s the rule in France which is all well and good except marriage exists in plenty of places other than France and existed long before modern French law ever existed.
Yes, but “gay marriage” relies on that presumption of paternity to give it the illusion of coherence.
Would “gay marriage” be nearly so popular if every time a gay couple created a baby via egg or sperm donation, they were recognized as adulterers?
I have yet to meet an advocate of gay marriage who supported strict penalties for gays who chose adulterous methods of procreation. Since gays require adulterous unions if they are to “have a baby together”, instead of adhering to existing norms, they expect exemptions from those norms.
They want the right to have their marriage recognized as real and equal to other marriages, but at the same time they think their unions come with a “right” to be exempt from the expectations that characterize real marriage (just as they feel they have a “right” to adopt without being constrained by what’s actually in the child’s best interest).
Real equality involves obligations as well as benefits.
January 30th, 2012 | 12:38 pm
Blake,
Yes, but “gay marriage” relies on that presumption of paternity to give it the illusion of coherence.
No such presumption is relied upon. As was demonstrated on multiple previous threads, the legal presumption of paternity was never absolute. A man could challenge paternity of his wife’s son if he could prove he was not the biological father. This often happened in cases where the husband, say, was overseas for an extended period and could prove there was no way he could have fathered the child. It also happened where the wife and her lover asserted paternity was not the husbands. Despite your claims to the contrary, it was never the case that the law automatically assumed any married person whose spouse had a child was automatically the parent.
The only place where this may have coherence is a marriage of two women one of which gets pregnant either by a man through sex or by a man through IVF. The legal presumption of paternity would have no bearing. The other woman’s status would be that of stepparent at best. The man would have the right to assert himself as biological father and could even demand to be heard for custody or visitation.
January 30th, 2012 | 12:43 pm
Douglas,
If you want I’ll try to give a more extensive response to your post but I think you’re misreading me. For example, I did not argue that gov’t should ‘get out of marriage’. I argued that gov’t had no business telling people they couldn’t marry because it believed they could not be successful in marriage. Likewise I didn’t argue that the DOI was wrong. I pointed out that many sophisticated natural law arguments were in fact made in support of slavery….I didn’t comment on how those making such arguments reconcilied them with the DOI. I would imagine multiple strategies were probably employed ranging from rejecting the DOI as flawed to holding that it only applied to certain types of people to holding that ‘equal’ had only a very limited meaning. The point is the question remained to the preson seeking to employ ‘natural law’, were they in fact really articulating natural law or were they just defending laws that ‘felt natural’ to them.
January 30th, 2012 | 10:51 pm
Yes, but “gay marriage” relies on that presumption of paternity to give it the illusion of coherence.
No such presumption is relied upon.
The act of asking us to pretend that a child can “have two mommies” relies on this.
If infertility grants any special rights to accommodation or exemption from the usual rules of marriage – including the taboo against adultery – such special rights must reside with biologically infertile individuals, not with couples – otherwise it is not a slippery slope to point out that what gays are demanding as ‘reasonable’ would apply equally well to polygamous and incestuous couples.
‘Gay marriage’ only makes sense if the “right” to unrestricted sexual pleasure is prioritized over the other aspects of marriage such that the “right” to sexual pleasure is not only the first good of marriage, but preeminent over other goods of marriage (including the well-being of children). If sexual pleasure is the first and most important good of marriage, then the principle of equality under the law demands that every person with a sexual desire incompatible with traditional marriage should receive equal accommodations.
January 30th, 2012 | 10:55 pm
1. Jesus seems to indicate that marriage exists because it is in human nature for men and women to seek out each other and bond together. One need not adopt a Christian worldview to give this consideration. Even if you don’t think Jesus was divine in any way, the fact that such teachings have found resonance for thousands of years indicates that there must be at least something to it.
This is not separable from Jesus also teaching us that man and woman should become one flesh, and should continue the family.
Family was the center of Jewish life, so any attempt to use Jesus must also include this context – that his civilization was one in which the individual had relationships and obligations to and with past and future generations just as important as the relationships with any other kinsmen and neighbors.
January 31st, 2012 | 8:05 am
The act of asking us to pretend that a child can “have two mommies” relies on this.
No it doesn’t. Plenty of same sex couples parent even though they are not married. Likewise plenty of parents are not married themselves yet no one considers that a factor in calling them parents.
Gay marriage’ only makes sense if the “right” to unrestricted sexual pleasure is prioritized over the other aspects of marriage such that the “right” to sexual pleasure is not only the first good of marriage, but preeminent over other goods of marriage (including the well-being of children).
At first I was going to pounce on this as yet another example of argument by straw man. Of all the arguments for gay marriage presented here in tedious detail, none of them were based on a ‘right to unrestricted sexual pleasure’. A good reason why the anti-SSM has failed so often in this debate. Rather than actually listening, they create an imaginary SSM advocate in their heads and respond to that fictional person rather than the real people who put a great deal of effort presenting a case in the real world. Of course, one just can’t mumble to imaginary friends all day long and be taken seriously so there’s a superficial effort made to appear to be responding to SSM advocates, but scratch the surface and you realize most of the time the critics have not bothered to even try to examine the real arguments.
But Blake gives the game away here. He says sexual pleasure is but one aspect of marriage. OK. He says there other goods of marriage, including the well-being of children. But note here that we don’t have two goods (well-being of children #1, sexual pleasure #2). We have many goods that Blake implies exists with marriage. So there you have it. Having biological children is but one good of marriage and not a good that one would require of all marriages. Blake can’t argue that it’s just about sex unless Blake is seriously going to argue that marriage is *JUST* about babies and sex and the debate over SSM is a debate over which order those things should be placed!
This is not separable from Jesus also teaching us that man and woman should become one flesh, and should continue the family.
One flesh could be read in two ways. One way is an allusion to sex (and also the emotional and spiritual intimacy of the married couple in general). Another is producing children. We know, though, the discussion came up with the question of whether or not divorce was permitted. While Christians have taken different views on divorce, I don’t believe anyone has asserted that Jesus was saying divorce was ok unless the married couple had already had a child. He would seem to be saying that a person cannot achieve marriage to another and then see that bond broken by human law or try to create that bond with others while still married to another. Whether or not the coupld has had a child yet seems to have nothing to do with it.
January 31st, 2012 | 10:56 am
But Blake gives the game away here. He says sexual pleasure is but one aspect of marriage. OK. He says there other goods of marriage, including the well-being of children. But note here that we don’t have two goods (well-being of children #1, sexual pleasure #2). We have many goods that Blake implies exists with marriage. So there you have it. Having biological children is but one good of marriage and not a good that one would require of all marriages.
This is true: there are multiple reasons why people marry and enjoy marriage. I didn’t even realize this was in dispute.
My argument was not that people might want to marry for other reasons. My argument has to do with how we as a society go about handing out licenses to do things. You might want to go hunting for reasons that have nothing to do with taking down a deer, needing food, or whatever it is that hunting is “about”. But in my state, before you can go hunting you have to meet certain requirements. Your motives are irrelevant: it is whether you do or don’t meet those requirements. If you don’t, then you don’t get a hunting license.
The requirements for a marriage license grant certain benefits. I do not dispute that gays might be eligible for some of the benefits granted by this license – but I do dispute that they’re eligible for the specifically procreative benefits that are granted to those with valid marriage licenses.
The difference between a childless couple vs. a gay couple is not that marriage obliges one to have children (in fact, I think “gay marriage” would be much less problematic if only gays would promise to not “have children”). The difference is that they are not the same, but are mirror opposites: the childless couple has demonstrated that they qualify for benefits they choose not to use, while the gay couple wants to use benefits they don’t qualify for.
January 31st, 2012 | 12:22 pm
Blake,
I thought I would pass on this excerpt from the Douglas Farrow article in the current Touchstone magazine. As the government attempts to redefine marriage any legal definitions will have to apply universally, and therefore the sexual complementarity of men and women has been legally precluded from the new definitions. Toward that end, the Iowa Supreme Court saw it legally necessary for the government to declare the benefits of a child being raised by its natural mother and father are based on nothing but “stereotype.” We saw the same thing going on in Canada, which Farrow explains, was strictly necessary:
February 1st, 2012 | 12:26 am
My argument was not that people might want to marry for other reasons. My argument has to do with how we as a society go about handing out licenses to do things. You might want to go hunting for reasons that have nothing to do with taking down a deer, needing food, or whatever it is that hunting is “about”. But in my state, before you can go hunting you have to meet certain requirements. Your motives are irrelevant: it is whether you do or don’t meet those requirements. If you don’t, then you don’t get a hunting license.
Then pray tell why are people who should not have children….people who, in fact, if they did have children the state would swoop in and take them away….not barred from getting a marriage license? Consider child abuse and neglect. You can have your kid taken away for it. YOu can go to jail. YOu can be barred for life from ever working a job that involves kids, like school teacher….yet I never heard of a law that said those convicted loose their marriage licenses or right to get marriage licenses. Yet make it a habit to chronically drink and drive and you’ll lose your driving license. Violate fish and game laws enough and you’ll loose your hunting license. Start holding up gas stations and you’ll loose your license to carry a concealed gun.
Douglas,
I see you’ve decided to follow the usual tactic of stuffing your fingers in your ears and debating with imaginary SSM supporters rather than real ones. I’m not sure, though, whether it’s a good thing that even doing this you only seem to manage to pull a draw out of the debate!
The substitution of blood relations is almost certainly not due to SSM but due to the fact that many heterosexuals these days end up parenting kids that are not biologically there’s but are from what we euphemistically call ‘previous relationships’.
Even leaving you a right to a ‘natural relation with one’s biological mother and father’, you have said nothing about SSM. Instead you’ve made an argument about how the law should treat adoption, IVF assisted reproduction and blended families. But banning IVF entirely and prohibiting adoption except in extreme cases of neglect or abuse by biological parents (or orphans) has nothing to do with SSM. It would, of course, make it more difficult for some gay couples who want kids to have them, as it would infertile heterosexual couples, but it has nothing to do with marriage.
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