Unlike Greg Forster, I find Matt Franck’s worries about the reshaping of our foreign policy to promote a very particular and controversial gay-rights agenda wholly understandable. The bending of American foreign policy to prosecute the culture war abroad has been taking place for some time, as documented by R.R. Reno in our February issue (subscribers only), and we need more clear-eyed takes like Matt’s, not just to counter the agenda of sexual libertinism, but also to preserve the integrity of our foreign policy.
What I want to object to here, though, was a response from Kevin Williamson arguing that the contest over marriage’s legal meaning doesn’t matter because, well, no-fault divorce has already rendered marriage unrecognizable. The unions most Americans enter into, Williamson says, have nothing to do with the thing described by St. Paul or by the doctrines of the Catholic Church: “Marriage has been shot through the head, and they are calling the dentist. What we call “marriage” today is certainly not the marriage of the New Testament, the Christian tradition, or our Anglo-European heritage.”
This is an impossibility. The Christian tradition which Williamson tries to characterize understands marriage precisely as something whose meaning cannot be effaced by changing legal definitions. Despite the rise of no-fault divorce, most couples think of marriage as permanent. Despite the rise of swingers, most think of marriage as exclusive. And even if gay marriage is broadly recognized, most people will think of marriage, centrally, as involving a complementary sexual union. That’s why gay couples adopt. Because marriage just is the kind of thing that leads to children.
I doubt Williamson recognizes the serious implications his view would have in the internal life of his Church. It would mean, for one, that almost any marriage entered into by your standard, inattentive cultural Catholic—anyone who doesn’t take the time to read Elizabeth’s Anscombe’s Contraception and Chastity or John Paul II’s Theology of the Body— is annulable. As John Allen just wrote in reporting on a conference in Rome:
Polish Bishop Antoni Stankiewicz, dean of the Roman Rota, the Vatican court that handles most marriage cases, told the conference that interpretation of canon 1095 must avoid an “anthropological pessimism” that would hold that “it’s almost impossible to get married, in view of the current cultural situation.”
“We must reaffirm the innate human capacity to marry,” Stankiewicz told the group.
The session during which Stankiewicz spoke was presided over by American Cardinal Raymond Burke, who heads the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s equivalent of the Supreme Court.
Stankiewicz argued that Christian doctrine insists upon a “natural disposition to marriage” because the “gift of Christ is not exhausted in the celebration of the wedding. It extends to all of married life, supporting the spiritual growth of the spouses in the necessary virtues, duties and commitments of marriage.”
His conclusion was that church courts should not be quick to presume an inability to give consent.
May 2nd, 2012 | 1:29 pm
I agree wholeheartedly that Wiliamson’s position is inadequate, for more or less the reasons you give. I’m Protestant and am not all-in for the whole CST package, but my response to Williamson would be pretty similar to yours.
My concern is this: The issue here was not whether it was OK for Romney to have an advocate of gay marriage on his foreign policy staff. Franck said that was OK. The issue was whether Grenell was “unhinged” in his advocacy of that position.
So we’ve now established a precedent that single-issue advocates can veto candidate staff who are deemed to be “unhinged.” There is no possible way that story ends well for our cause.
Williamson is already crowing in The Corner that our “victory” over Grenell (he’s been fired) will be a long-term win for people like him and a loss for people like us. He’s right.
May 2nd, 2012 | 2:13 pm
“And even if gay marriage is broadly recognized, most people will think of marriage, centrally, as involving a complementary sexual union. That’s why gay couples adopt. Because marriage just is the kind of thing that leads to children.”
Part of the reason why everything is so screwed up today is because all the focus is on making the baby and yet no mention of raising one. It takes five minutes to make a baby and 18 years to raise a child.
There is an epidemic of single parents who are deadbeats and don’t take care of their kids. If a gay couple is committed and qualified and wants to adopt a child why do we want to stop that? Last I checked, two parents are better than one.
The Catholic Church has changed its position before. It will do so again.
May 2nd, 2012 | 3:10 pm
“There is an epidemic of single parents who are deadbeats and don’t take care of their kids. If a gay couple is committed and qualified and wants to adopt a child why do we want to stop that? Last I checked, two parents are better than one.”
This is the kind of thing you hear from people who see social ills primarily as the result of individual poor choices rather than a systemic problem.
Also, Mr. Schmitz should write more.
May 2nd, 2012 | 3:41 pm
Is Mr. Forster seriously worried that Mitt Romney is proving to be too responsive to the concerns of social conservatives?
May 2nd, 2012 | 4:44 pm
Is Mr. Forster seriously worried that Mitt Romney is proving to be too responsive to the concerns of social conservatives?
I think Mr. Forster is concerned that a great many people reading the back-and-fort between Kevin Williamson and Matthew Franck would say, “There’s something creepy about the way these two guys are discussing homosexuality and same-sex marriage. What is it with conservatives?”
May 2nd, 2012 | 5:12 pm
No-fault divorce does not change the basic assumptions that adultery is unacceptable or that children have the right to a relationship with their biological parents (a right that is to be severed only if and when a judge rules that it is in a child’s best interest to do so).
No-fault divorce has surely damaged marriage, but divorce does not give any parent the right to sever a child’s relationship with the other parent on the grounds that “Mommy doesn’t love Daddy, so therefore you don’t need Daddy”.
Nor does divorce grant any parent the right to “give” the child to the parent’s new spouse; there is no right to argue that “Mommy loves George now, so therefore George will be your only daddy.” Only a judge has the power to do that, and that only after the parental tie has been severed.
Yet same-sex marriage will grant gays the right to do exactly that – rewrite and falsify genealogical information so as to “disappear” unwanted co-parents and “give” children to biologically unrelated others. The argument is entirely based on these two claims: that it is unreasonable to expect gays to co-parent with people they do not love, and unreasonable to refuse to grant gays the right to “give” their children to the person they feel love toward.
May 2nd, 2012 | 5:12 pm
And Catholics of course will no longer be able to teach that sex and procreation ought to go together.
May 2nd, 2012 | 5:23 pm
David Nickol – I find your comment to be childish; it displays a intellectual immaturity in belittling the notion that some people remain concerned about the definition of marriage.
I also find it laughable that there are those conservatives who would really have us believe that the vocal promptings of Richard Grenell would have a President Mitt Romney, together with the back of Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader McConnell would make the expansion of same-sex marriage an international priority. This is called cutting off your nose to spite your face.
May 2nd, 2012 | 6:26 pm
Blake: “No-fault divorce does not change the basic assumptions that adultery is unacceptable”
True. But, I think you worded this in a sneaky way to hide the fact that people view adultery in a radically different way than they used to. The basic assumption that adultery is wrong has not changed, but the definition of marriage did change with no-fault divorce, which resulted in a changed definition for adultery. Where it once was considered adultery to have relations with another woman while your first/only wife was still alive, it is now widely considered morally okay as long as you have divorced your first wife (or second or third…). Many millions in the country are in relationships that they geniunely feel aren’t adulterous because they have been divorced and remarried in the eyes of the state, when, according to Catholic theology (which I agree with), they are indeed committing adultery, irrespective the view of the state.
Question: why don’t Catholics push for some kind of marriage law pluralism which maintains a prudential common good agenda? Jews can have their marriage contracts, we can have ours, Muslims theirs, Protestants thiers, with all being recognized in the eyes of the state. Obviously, there would have to be some common features of all these marriage contracts (notice I don’t mention gay marriages or polyamorous marriages), but I think that issue could be easily resolved. What do you guys think??
May 2nd, 2012 | 6:29 pm
Kevin Williamson wants to pretend this is all a matter of pointless semantics, a debate reserved for mythical times of “peace and plenty.” Let me give Kevin Williamson an example of how wrong he is.
When the state of Illinois recently barred Catholic Charities from continuing its adoption services after the passage of civil unions, Lisa Madigan’s attorney general’s office wasn’t quite up to speed on how to talk to the press about this yet.
The legal question of what was going on hadn’t been settled yet, and so Madigan’s office couldn’t cite a specific legal requirement as to why it stopped CC from continuing its adoption services.
So instead, her office released a statement that they were doing what “is in the best interests of the children.”
Notice that the day before the civil union bill passed it was considered in the best interests of the children to have CC run a substantial portion of Illinois adoption services. And then poof! Like magic and through no action of their own, CC was deemed to no longer be working in the best interest of children because of CC’s refusal to place children with couples where they could never have either a father or a mother.
And so, by virtue of the mere semantics Kevin Williamson is rolling his eyes about, an unknown number of IL children are being literally robbed of either their mother and father by the state redefinition of marriage.
May 2nd, 2012 | 7:30 pm
>>I think Mr. Forster is concerned that a great many people reading the back-and-fort between Kevin Williamson and Matthew Franck would say
That may be but few of those people are likely to fail to vote for Obama and none of those people understand what is at stake.
May 3rd, 2012 | 5:07 am
Nathan
Thank you for a very interesting post.
Your suggestion of separate marriage régimes, usually referred to as « statut personnel » already exists in one form or another in many countries. It is of immemorial antiquity in India, where one has the Muslim Marriage Act, the Hindu Marriage Act and so on. Similar régimes existed in France’s North African colonies and throughout the Ottoman dominions..
In Europe, questions of personal status, such as marriage, filiation, legitimacy and succession to movables is everywhere governed by the law of the individual’s citizenship or domicile. I am not an expert on US law, but similar questions must arise there, between the laws of the different states.
However, problems can arise, for example over marriages that are actually or potentially polygamous. The German courts have taken the view that the relationship that exists between a man and the ladies living under his protection in a polygamous union is different in kind to that which exists between husband and wife, as those terms are used in the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch. Let the laws of their native country call it what they will, it is not what Germans understand, when they speak of marriage.
The French courts, whilst recognizing polygamous marriages for some purposes, do not give matrimonial relief to the parties. To allow the wife of such a marriage to complain of her husband’s adultery, because he marries a second wife, in a country where this is legal, would be to create rights, rather than enforcing them.
May 3rd, 2012 | 5:44 am
“It would mean, for one, that almost any marriage entered into by your standard, inattentive cultural Catholic… is annulable”
Now, “annulable” means “void” and I find this proposition astonishing. It is an indispensable rule of all civilised jurisprudence that a person who enters into a contract engages for a competent knowledge of the law governing that contract. If he rashly presumes to contract without such knowledge, he must take the inconveniences resulting from such ignorance upon himself and not attempt to throw them upon the other party who has engaged under a proper knowledge and sense of the obligation, which the law would impose upon him by virtue of that engagement.
May 3rd, 2012 | 9:47 am
Blake –
You’ve been long on claims about that but remarkably short on examples.
May 3rd, 2012 | 10:22 am
David Nickol – I find your comment to be childish; it displays a intellectual immaturity in belittling the notion that some people remain concerned about the definition of marriage.
Josh D.,
It is not the fact that some people remain concerned about the definition of marriage that is disturbing about the exchange between Franck and Williamson. (And by the way, have you actually read their pieces? Williamson really does not care.) It is their tone. If you had someone undecided about the same-sex marriage debate, would you really refer them to this exchange between Franck and Williamson to clarify things for them?
May 3rd, 2012 | 10:28 am
@Ray Ingles,
Well just off the top of my head you might refer to a decision handed down by the Court of Appeal for Ontario (ONCA) in A.A. v. B.B. (Canadians don’t like to use names, what can I say?) wherein ONCA upheld a lower court decision redefining marriage and as a result of that declared that the child’s (referred to as D.D. in court documents) genealogical records shall be expunged and rewritten to reflect that he is now the son of three parents.
Does that help?
May 3rd, 2012 | 10:51 am
When the state of Illinois recently barred Catholic Charities from continuing its adoption services after the passage of civil unions . . . .
Douglas Johnson,
This is not quite accurate. Illinois did not bar Catholic Charities from providing adoption services. It declined to renew state contracts for adoptions services with Catholic Charities. When the state declines to fund groups who want to obtain contracts from the state but spend the money as they, not the state, sees fit, those groups are not being barred from providing services. They are declining to take state money, or the state is refusing to give them money, because the groups and the state cannot agree on the terms of a contract.
Some people argue—and I think they have a point—that when a religious group accepts government money, they are putting their religious freedom in jeopardy, since when you take money from the state, it is very difficult to resist doing what the state wants you to do. Conservatives often claim that “welfare” (for individuals) fosters “a culture of dependency.” Wikipedia tells us, “Catholic Charities received a total of nearly $2.9 billion from the US government in 2010. In comparison, its annual revenue was $4.67 billion. Only about $140 million came from donations from diocesan churches, the remainder coming from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees, and community donations.” The government is providing more than half the funding of Catholic Charities, and yet when the state of Illinois refuses to renew a handful of contracts with Catholic Charities, somehow it is considered a flagrant violation of religious liberty!
May 3rd, 2012 | 11:28 am
David Nickol,
Two points. First let me quote you quoting me:
When the state of Illinois recently barred Catholic Charities from continuing its adoption services after the passage of civil unions . . . .
Douglas Johnson,
This is not quite accurate. Illinois did not bar Catholic Charities from providing adoption services.
What I said was that Illinois barred CC from continuing its adoption services. I anticipated your response which is why I made sure to make clear that the IL Atty General was barring CC from continuing its services as it has long delivered them.
The second point is WHY the AG decided to do this, and the answer they gave to the Chicago Tribune was clear: the AG was doing what it thought was in the “best interests of the children.” In the opinion of IL AG Lisa Madigan, CC was now not working in the best interests of the children by insisting on placing children with an adoptive mother and father. The day before the passage of the IL Civil Union law the AG seemed to think that CC was working in the best interests of the children, but then a day later CC was regarded as harmful to children even though CC didn’t change a single policy.
May 3rd, 2012 | 11:31 am
David Nickol writes:
Wikipedia tells us,
That is all.
May 3rd, 2012 | 11:45 am
What I said was that Illinois barred CC from continuing its adoption services.
Douglas Johnson,
My point remains exactly the same. Catholic Charities was not “barred” from doing anything. It had contracts with the state of Illinois that the state declined to renew. It is your use of the word barred that I object to. Jay Leno has a contract with NBC to do The Tonight Show. When NBC decides they don’t want to renew the contract, Jay Leno won’t do the show any more. He will not be “barred” from the show.
May 3rd, 2012 | 11:52 am
Douglas Johnson – Hmm. Blake was complaining about “the parental tie [being] severed” and acting to ““disappear” unwanted co-parents”. Not seeing that in the (single) case you mentioned.
Blake also claimed that “…Catholics of course will no longer be able to teach that sex and procreation ought to go together.” I’m curious to hear how he thinks that’d be implemented.
May 3rd, 2012 | 12:50 pm
Douglas Johnson,
You are copping out. Information from Wikipedia is certainly reliable enough to quote in a discussions such as this, particularly when others cite no sources at all. It can be verified from any number of sources that Catholic Charities (and many other large charities as well) receive huge amounts in government grants. In fact, take a look at this excerpt written by Father Neuhaus himself in First Things in May of 2000:
Are you willing to dismiss Father Neuhaus writing in First Things as a source unworthy of consideration?
May 3rd, 2012 | 1:02 pm
It would be a welcome thing if you would address the arguments I have made and not those I have not.
For instance, you write: “The Christian tradition which Williamson tries to characterize understands marriage precisely as something whose meaning cannot be effaced by changing legal definitions.” I wrote: “You can call a same-sex union a marriage, or you can call it four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie, but changing words does not change reality, even if you wear a very impressive black robe and sit in a high place at 1 First Street NE, Washington, D.C.” Which is to say, I wrote the same thing, but better.
You write: “I doubt Williamson recognizes the serious implications his view would have in the internal life of his Church. It would mean, for one, that almost any marriage entered into by your standard, inattentive cultural Catholic—anyone who doesn’t take the time to read Elizabeth’s Anscombe’s Contraception and Chastity or John Paul II’s Theology of the Body— is annulable.” No, the Church’s rules and obligations are always the same, whatever the changing legal environment. The state of marriage laws in the United States has no bearing on the Church’s ability to ensure that people enter into the sacrament of marriage with eyes wide open and full knowledge of their duties. It’s on the bishops to make sure that they are holding up their end of the bargain and that inattentive cultural Catholics receive teaching; it’s not on the U.S. Supreme Court.
A bit more:
“Despite the rise of no-fault divorce, most couples think of marriage as permanent.” You’re mistaking stated preferences for revealed preferences. The divorce rate suggests precisely the opposite: That many or most couple do not think of marriage as permanent.
“Despite the rise of swingers, most think of marriage as exclusive.” The rate of adultery argues otherwise.
“I do not know what view of marriage Kevin Williamson holds”—no kidding—“but it is not quite the Catholic one.” No, it just isn’t your view. The question of how you would know whether my view is Catholic or not without knowing what my view is is not answered.
But if my view on marriage is not Catholic, then neither is that of the Magisterium, inasmuch as it is from that body rather than from the political authorities that I wish our thinking to be drawn.
Render unto Caesar, sure, but marriage isn’t all Caesar’s, and he obviously can’t be trusted with the small part of it that is his.
May 3rd, 2012 | 1:55 pm
Ray Ingles,
Okay, so I guess that means you are all honky-dory with what is actually happening then in Canada, and you look forward for the same here. That’s good enough for me.
Then you say:
Blake also claimed that “…Catholics of course will no longer be able to teach that sex and procreation ought to go together.” I’m curious to hear how he thinks that’d be implemented.
Well I suspect you’d see it run something along the lines of the case I laid out above with regard to adoption.
Or take the example of Texas. This one doesn’t deal with the Catholic Church directly but it gives you the basic playbook. The state gets $30 million annually from Washington to care for low-income women, and the Catholic hospitals provide much of that service supplemented by the massive pro bono work Catholic hospitals do for which there is no substitute.
The state is not legally required to funnel those funds to abortion providers, but the Obama administration is insisting that abortions be performed with that money. Last year Kathleen Sebelius warned that if the state didn’t start using some of that money to provide abortions, they would would all their federal funds that assist poor women in need of medical care.
The kicker in this story is that Kathleen Sebelius not only yanked federal assistance to indigent women in the state, but she actually flew to Houston to announce to these women that their federal tax dollars were being taken away.
David Nickol suggests, hey, just don’t take the federal dollars, what’s the big deal? For that I would suggest you look to the story of Hillsdale College and the incredible legal fight it took to get it out from under the thumb of Washington rule. At first Hillsdale said they would no longer accept any federal funds. Then Washington came back a year later and pointed out that some of their students had student loans back with federal dollars so Hillsdale must do what they are told. Obama has since mandated that all students must go to the government to get their loans for college, which means if you need a loan for college, then your college will do what Obama says. If you’ve ever seen The Godfather, that’ll give you a good idea of what’s going on…
To sum up, the way you get the church to obey is you find where the church is serving the poor and where the state benefits immensely from any kind of Catholic charities through which government dollars might flow. Then you threaten the mission of the church to serve the poor–and not by any means just the Catholic poor–unless they do your bidding. That’s pretty much the playbook.
May 3rd, 2012 | 2:12 pm
David Nickol,
Yes, I get what you are trying to do and I’m not going to play some third grade game where I parse the sentences down word by word for you. The state refused to continue letting CC provide the adoption services in the manner it always had because they said CC was no longer in the best interests of the children.
Funny thing though…the only thing that upsets you here are the technicalities regarding the words “renew” contracts vs. “continue” contracts even though the main point of my posts is that the AG declared that CC’s insistence of not denying a child a mother and father was no longer in the interest of children.
Do I take it from your replies that you too think it’s right for the state of Illinois (and Massachusetts) to not provide adoption contracts to organizations that believe it is in the child’s best interest to have both a mother and a father?
May 3rd, 2012 | 2:59 pm
Ray Ingles,
Let me try and say this more succinctly. You write:
Blake also claimed that “…Catholics of course will no longer be able to teach that sex and procreation ought to go together.” I’m curious to hear how he thinks that’d be implemented.
This is what the redefinition of marriage largely says: we must educate children against the idea that sex and procreation ought to go together.
If that’s the goal, and you have every federal dollar tied to it, and you have a President doing everything he can to make as many activities dependent on federal dollars as is possible (student loans!), then there are all sorts of ways of trying to force this upon the church.
May 3rd, 2012 | 4:50 pm
David Nickol,
Let me try it again:
Do agree with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan that the state should not renew its contract with Catholic Charities because CC’s work is no longer in the best interest of children?
The more you try and make this argument about something else, the more I’ll just keep putting the question to you.
May 3rd, 2012 | 5:42 pm
Kevin Williamson,
You argue that you don’t really care what the state does to marriage because it’s not theirs to redefine. I agree, except it’s not as if government social engineering is without profound consequences. For instance, it was also outside of the state’s authority to define who was a human being and who isn’t, but that fact didn’t stop the state from maintaining slavery and green lighting abortion.
With regard to marriage, those states that have redefined marriage now teach our next generation of boys within our public schools to sever the idea in their heads that there’s any particular connection between marriage and procreation (an experiment the black community has already lived through which likely explains their profound opposition to redefining marriage at the government level). Not to mention what they’ve done to adoption (see above).
But I’m kind of amazed that folks at the National Review have come to the conclusion that it really doesn’t matter if we turn over the very definition of the foundation of family to the government. Won’t it matter if the government mandates its new definition be taught in all our public schools? Sure we don’t know the consequences of that, but what’s the big deal? It’s just a little government social engineering after all. Rousseau advocated the redefinition of marriage for the benefit of the state. As did the Bolsheviks. As did Freud. Not like this is anything new, right?
You are absolutely right that marriage is not the government’s to redefine because no government created marriage. What we are witnessing is yet another attempt by the government to redefine natural right itself. But just as the computer does not get to redefine the man who designed it, neither does the government get to redefine the families and civilization that created it. Isn’t that what we mean by unalienable right?
But what has amazed me over the past few years is the degree to which the National Review now shrugs its shoulders as the government is about to free itself from the only two pillars that restrained it from the total authority it craves. Jefferson recognized this. As did Tocqueville, Lincoln. EVEN John Adams. From what playbook is NR reading these days?
May 3rd, 2012 | 6:00 pm
“Despite the rise of swingers, most think of marriage as exclusive.” The rate of adultery argues otherwise.
Isn’t this roughly the same argumentation used against the Catholic Church on the HHS mandate? “Catholic women have abortions and use contraception so it’s nuts for the church to be against it.” Does that argument resonate with you?
Just because a lot of people get divorced and have had an adulterous relationship doesn’t mean they are indifferent to marriage. In fact it’s often through the horrible experiences of these acts that many learn how vitally important the institution really is.
May 3rd, 2012 | 6:43 pm
Do agree with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan that the state should not renew its contract with Catholic Charities because CC’s work is no longer in the best interest of children?
Douglas Johnson,
Yes, I agree that to always and automatically exclude same-sex from the pool of potential adoptive parents is not in the best interests of the children. I have no quarrel with those who consider the ideal adoptive parents a man and woman who are legally married to each other. However, if Catholic Charities placed children with single parents (and it did), then refusing to consider same-sex couples was simply prejudice against gay people. It is not always easy to find a home for older children or special-needs children. Who is to say, in advance of knowing all the circumstances, that two women or two men are not the best available adoptive parents for a particular child? Suppose a same-sex couple is made up of a doctor and a nurse who both work professionally with special needs children, and they are interviewed and are willing to adopt a special-needs child. Say no married opposite-sex couple is willing to adopt the child. Why should that child not get a permanent home with two adults who are ideally suited as caregivers? Because the Catholic bishops think same-sex couples are immoral? In the eyes of the Catholic Church, people who have been validly married, divorce, and remarry are committing adultery. Does Catholic Charities refuse to place children with adulterous couples? (No, they don’t. They would not be permitted to discriminate against divorced and remarried couples, even if they wished to.)
When Catholic Charities handles adoptions because it has a state contract, its job is to place each child in the best available home as determined by the state. They are working for the state, not the Catholic Church. They are being funded by the state. And it is simply wrong to allow them to automatically eliminate potential parents because of Catholic religious beliefs when there are anti-discrimination laws the prohibit others from doing so.
I believe, but am unable to verify, that Illinois Catholic Charities occasionally placed children with same-sex couples prior to this whole controversy. I know this was the case in Massachusetts, where a similar conflict occurred. The people directly responsible for placing children sometimes felt same-sex parents were the best available choice. But when the bishops found out about that, they forbid it. Why should bishops be better judges of parents than people who actually work for adoption agencies?
the AG declared that CC’s insistence of not denying a child a mother and father was no longer in the interest of children
You seem to feel very strongly that children placed for adoption must be put in a home with both a mother and a father. Virtually all Catholic Charities that I have looked up (for example, the Catholic Charities here in New York), places children with single parents. Do you oppose Catholic Charities for this reason? Would you give them a state contract to handle adoptions only on the condition that they never place children with single parents?
May 3rd, 2012 | 7:17 pm
Douglas,
“an unknown number of IL children are being literally robbed of either their mother and father by the state redefinition of marriage”
That’s one way to look at it, but another way is to see these children as finally being given a family to love them. If there were a surfeit of families seeking to adopt, then you might have a case against gay families adopting, but you’d still have to answer a lot of questions first.
“The day before the passage of the IL Civil Union law the AG seemed to think that CC was working in the best interests of the children, but then a day later CC was regarded as harmful to children even though CC didn’t change a single policy”
This is what happens when laws change. Things that were once legal become illegal. You portray the change as whimsical, but others have felt for some time that these children should not be left to linger while good parents await.
“Do agree with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan that the state should not renew its contract with Catholic Charities because CC’s work is no longer in the best interest of children?”
Yes, the Attorney General did the right thing. Catholic Charities has been working against the best interests of children by denying them places in good homes.
May 4th, 2012 | 8:40 am
Blake –
Yet same-sex marriage will grant gays the right to do exactly that – rewrite and falsify genealogical information so as to “disappear” unwanted co-parents and “give” children to biologically unrelated others.
You’ve been long on claims about that but remarkably short on examples.
I’ve provided enough. The Miller custody trial, for instance – the woman’s claim to her former lesbian lover’s child (whom she is biologically unrelated to) is entirely based on her “rights”. She does not have a parent-like relationship with the child, and there’s no reason to suppose it’s in the child’s best interest for her to have these “rights” – and if she were a man, she would, like so many other stepparents, have no rights whatsoever, because she isn’t the child’s parent.
But really, the entire argument that a child “can have two mommies” – or that children should be taught that “some kids have two mommies” – should be taken as proof. If marriage is not about procreation, and families can come in any shape and size, then why do lesbians (and gay males) need to deprive their children of fathers (and mothers)?
However, I’ve said this before: if you are really persuaded that marriage is not procreative, then would you support prosecuting men and women who use marriage’s presumption of paternity (and all those other procreative benefits that “don’t exist”) to falsely claim paternity of children they know they aren’t really biologically related to? I think that act should be recognized as fraud (two types of fraud if they put in any claims for benefits based on their supposed status as having dependent children), plus child abuse. Would you agree with that? Because if you’d agree to some reasonable protections against abuse – which shouldn’t be an issue if gay marriage doesn’t involve procreative issues at all – then I could consider whether maybe gay marriage is really going to be destructive.
I’m not into anti-adultery laws for the sake of telling people what to do in their own private rooms, but at the point where it starts becoming a behavior that affects innocent bystanders (especially children, who have a claim on us for protection) and also public institutions and expectations, I do think some form of adultery protection would be necessary if we legalize gay marriage, because otherwise it would be tantamount to legitimizing adultery.
So what do you say, are you willing to commit to a statement to the effect that you’d be absolutely willing to support criminal charges against people who use marriage to knowingly and deliberately and falsely claim other peoples’ children as their own?
And do you think the “gay rights” community would be in favor of legislation to that effect?
May 4th, 2012 | 8:40 am
I don’t see it as ever being a widespread issue. Whatever its origin, same-sex attraction ain’t all that common. And so long as the rights of biological parents aren’t severed without need, how people rear children is within what I believe the Church calls “prudential judgment”.
That’s… one way to phrase it. “Made available if abortion is chosen” might be a better way.
In any case, I don’t see this as a particularly “religious liberty” issue, though. Abuse of the commerce clause and similar chicanery is rampant today (in lots of areas). I think we can find common cause there.
Nope. That’s just incorrect.
Legalizing divorce, for example, does not in any way compel the Catholic Church to educate children that marriage isn’t necessarily a lifelong commitment.
May 4th, 2012 | 8:50 am
That’s one way to look at it, but another way is to see these children as finally being given a family to love them.
Is there some reason to suppose these children would not have been adopted by an intact family?
If these were kids who were adopted by gays only after it was determined that for some reason they would not be likely to get adopted by an intact family, then your statement is accurate.
But mostly what I am hearing – in a nation where tens of thousands of children have been adopted from overseas, because there are not enough adoptable children for all the couples that wish to adopt – is that these children are lucky to have any parents at all, and therefore it’s okay if the parents aren’t really willing to be good parents and do right by the kids.
“Loving” parents do what is best for the children. These parents are not doing what is best for the children.
If you have to justify yourself (and I hear the film “The Kids Are Alright” cost quite a bit of $$$ to make), then you aren’t just wrong, but you’re wrong and you know you’re wrong.
May 4th, 2012 | 10:33 am
Is there some reason to suppose these children would not have been adopted by an intact family?
The issue of children awaiting adoption having some kind of “right” to a mother and father is a bogus issue. Approximately 30% of adoptions in the United States are by single parents. (And that’s adoptions from foster care. I am sure if private adoptions and foreign adoptions were included, the percentage would be higher.) As I have noted before, Catholic Charities places children with single parents.
If your criterion for good adoption services is that children are placed only with opposite-sex parents who are legally married, then you can’t approve of Catholic Charities.
To avoid confusion, it should be noted that there is a national organization called Catholic Charities, and there are affiliated local organizations. I believe all local organizations set their own policies on things like adoption services. So when I say Catholic Charities permits single-parent adoptions, that does not mean every local branch does. Overall, Catholic Charities does not have a policy against single parent adoptions, and many Catholic Charities place adoptive children with single parents. Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York places children with single parents, as did the Illinois Catholic Charities whose contracts were not renewed over the issue of discrimination against same-sex couples.
May 4th, 2012 | 10:34 am
Kevin Williamson is
very smart in his approach to this controversy. He is tackling the problem by first taking a clear-eyed view of the ruinous landscape. His reporting on the state of marriage is not an indication of his disrespect for marriage; it is a prerequisite for discussing the way out of this mess.
If an intelligence officer gives his general a rosy assessment of the state of the battlefield, when it is actually quite dire, that officer is not doing the cause any favors. And a cold-eyed calculation of the difficulties ahead is not the mark of despair, much less betrayal. To note that marriage is a shell of its former or ideal self is a requirement before its eventual repair.
Grenell is a red herring, but the controversy he created is illuminating. We don’t require unanimous solidarity on this issue to advance its cause, Grennell was too loudly political for an advisory role, and a disagreement about tactics is not a rejection of principle.
Franck was correct to note Williamson’s insouciance: marriage is not a frivolous or inconsequential issue in the long run, and Williamson’s treatment of it as such risks misplacing our priorities — sacrificing short term gain for ultimate goals.
At the same time, Franck took ideological enforcement too far by importing the marriage debate into a controversy that was essentially about one ornery homosexual’s political tactlessness.
Williamson and Franck both want the same thing and disagree only slightly about how to get there. A contrived fight over trifles and tactics is easily mistaken for a disagreement over principles in the heat of rhetoric. In any event, no one is served by intramural squabbles of this kind. They lead to further obfuscation over the proper ends of our mutual effort rather than clarity and synthesis.
May 4th, 2012 | 11:31 am
Blake –
Right! No one ever responds to slander, libel, or vituperative rhetoric!
May 4th, 2012 | 12:01 pm
“Is there some reason to suppose these children would not have been adopted by an intact family?”
Yes, there is. Some of the intact gay families I know adopted children who were passed over many times by straight families.
“there are not enough adoptable children for all the couples that wish to adopt”
Not true. There is a waiting line for healthy infants, but there is a long line of older children and special needs children waiting to be adopted.
“it’s okay if the parents aren’t really willing to be good parents and do right by the kids”
All adoptive parents are required to be examined by social workers, the FBI, the fire department, etc., to prove their fitness to be parents. Which is more than biological parents are asked to demonstrate.
May 4th, 2012 | 5:29 pm
David Nickol writes:
Is there some reason to suppose these children would not have been adopted by an intact family?
The issue of children awaiting adoption having some kind of “right” to a mother and father is a bogus issue.
Yes, who are these damn freaking kids or anyone else to think they have “some kind of a right” to a mother and father? Look people, the government already already decided to place kids with single parents, ipso facto there’s no reason a kid should have a mother and a father.
When the government decides that it’s not in the best interest of the child to have a mother and a father, then it is no longer in best interest of a child to have a mother and a father. End of story. Or as David Nickol says: And it is simply wrong to allow them to automatically eliminate potential parents because of Catholic religious beliefs when there are anti-discrimination laws the prohibit others from doing so. Yes indeed, there it is! Even after the state has declared that the benefits of a mother and father are based on nothing more than a “stereotype” (to quote the Iowa Supreme Court on the matter), you still have these fanatical Catholic types suggesting otherwise.
Really, why should anyone care if a kid has a mother and a father?? Want some laughs? Here’s Maggie Gallagher actually trying to suggest that not having a father isn’t a good lesson for the next generation of fathers. Yeah right.
May 4th, 2012 | 8:10 pm
Blake –
If you have to justify yourself (and I hear the film “The Kids Are Alright” cost quite a bit of $$$ to make), then you aren’t just wrong, but you’re wrong and you know you’re wrong.
Right! No one ever responds to slander, libel, or vituperative rhetoric!
The film “The Kids Are Alright” is not an appropriate response to “slander, libel, or vituperative rhetoric”. It is exploitative and has all the characteristics of propaganda.
In fact, it only confirms what is being asserted: that these people are not prioritizing these kids’ interests, and they are not “loving”. Loving parents do not put Billy on the stand., because they understand that grown ups are supposed to work to make sure childrens’ needs are taken care of – not the other way around.
Ditto all the parents who film their kids “witnessing” or “testifying” about how great their gay “mommies” or “daddies” are and how they don’t mind not having a dad or mom at all. (And, yes, I do believe that it would be just as wrong for a Jehovah’s Witness to tape their kids “witnessing” – especially if the kids had to “testify” to being happy their family never celebrates pagan holidays like Christmas. Nobody in their right mind would look at such a thing and take it as proof positive that Jehovah’s Witnesses are “lucky”.)
May 4th, 2012 | 8:12 pm
Not true. There is a waiting line for healthy infants, but there is a long line of older children and special needs children waiting to be adopted.
Well, I don’t mind if gay couples are allowed to adopt kids that are truly unwanted.
I only object to the idea that we should view a gay couple as equal to a healthy, intact family. Obviously they’re not equal. They are either unwilling or unable to provide what an intact family can and will provide. And let’s be honest: the reason they’re unwilling to provide for their children is selfishness – they could give their kids both a mom and a dad, they just don’t want to.
May 5th, 2012 | 7:31 am
The only case of adoption of a minor by a single person that I have encountered in my own practice concerned two children. Their mother died, when they were very young, their father remarried and, ten years later, he died also. The step-mother adopted them. This was simple adoption, so their inheritance rights from their grandparents were unaffected and there was a close extended family, with the step-mother very much a part of it. The family council would certainly have appointed her guardian, so the real reason for the adoption was French tax law on gifts and inheritances, representing a potential saving of some €690.000 (about US $903,000), on gifts and legacies by the step-mother to the children. By adopting them, they acquired the right to two-thirds of her estate. That is why the adoption of adults by single, childless people is quite common.
The whole process was approved by the Parquet and the court in about three weeks. Stranger adoption takes about two years.
This was an exceptional case, but the law should allow for exceptions.
May 5th, 2012 | 3:38 pm
Really, why should anyone care if a kid has a mother and a father??
Douglas Johnson,
It would be great if every child waiting to be adopted could be placed with a mother and a father. If you are going to insist that every child waiting to be adopted be granted the “right” to be placed with a mother and father, then many of those children will never have a permanent home and will spend the rest of their childhood in foster care. There aren’t enough married couples willing to adopt.
You were incensed that Catholic Charities was accused of not acting within the best interests of the children because, you thought, they only placed children with married couples. Now that you know Catholic Charities places children with single parents, you will be forced, if you are consistent, to accuse them yourself of not acting in the best interest of children.
There’s the old cliché of “making the perfect the enemy of the good,” and it’s just what you are advocating here if you would insist that a child remain in foster care if no married couple is available to adopt him or her. It is the job of those providing adoption services to find the best possible situations for the children they are looking after. Placing a child with a married couple may be an ideal, but if no married couple is available, and if there is a loving, caring single parent, or a loving, caring same-sex couple who can provide a better home for a child than foster care, then it is the job of Catholic Charities and other adoption-service providers to place that child in the best available home.
That is why I say the “right” to a mother and a father is bogus. Call it an ideal if you like, but if you are going to say that placing a child with a single parent, or a same-sex couple, when they would provide the best home available, is a violation of the child’s “right” to be placed with a mother and a father, then by insisting on that “right,” you are working against the best interest of the child.
You know, don’t you, that children in foster care may be living with single parents? You don’t have to be a married couple to be a foster parent. So refusing to allow single parents to adopt children in foster care may just mean leaving the children in the care of single foster parents. Does that really make any sense at all? Leaving children with single foster parents because you can’t find married couples to be adoptive parents?
May 5th, 2012 | 5:23 pm
Douglas,
“Look people, the government already already decided to place kids with single parents, ipso facto there’s no reason a kid should have a mother and a father”
I think you are blaming the government for too much here. Yes, states—not the federal government, mind you, but states—have made adoption by single parents legal, but they did so at the request of adoption agencies who had more children than they had parents. Some of these adoption agencies were public, some private, and some religious, including Catholic Charities.
Furthermore, states have been allowing single-parent adoption for decades. Adoption by single parents only became scandalous in some circles when it became an argument against gay marriage. The alarm thus rings a little false.
“Really, why should anyone care if a kid has a mother and a father??”
I’m a middling sort of parent. Good on some things, weak on others. I know single parents who are better parents than I am, and others who are worse. I know gay couples who are better parents, and others who are worse.
There’s social science data that suggests that in general two-parent families are stronger, but that’s a gross generalization based on slippery measures. I don’t think the government is wise enough to decide who is or is not a proper parent. But you want to give government the power to prevent some people from raising children. You have more faith in government than I do.
May 5th, 2012 | 5:33 pm
“Ditto all the parents who film their kids “witnessing” or “testifying” about how great their gay “mommies” or “daddies” are and how they don’t mind not having a dad or mom at all.”
At his confirmation, one young man in my church said the best day in his life was the day he was adopted by a gay couple. He was five years old when he was adopted, and he had bounced from one foster home to another because no straight couple would adopt him. He had lots of problems. His birth mother had been addicted to crack, and he had physical problems and learning delays and disabilities. One of his adoptive daddies, however, was a special educator, and his patience and faith worked wonders. The young man is struggling in college but persevering.
I guess you would tell me that he’s been brainwashed. And I guess Douglas would tell me that he would have been better off being adopted by a straight couple like me. But frankly, I’m struggling to raise the child I have who has mild learning delays and disabilities. I know for a fact that this far more challenging boy was better off with the two daddies he got.
May 5th, 2012 | 5:41 pm
“Well, I don’t mind if gay couples are allowed to adopt kids that are truly unwanted”
It sounds like you are saying that gay couples should only be allowed to adopt children who have been passed over by straight couples. Rules like that end up making the adoption process longer. The ideal is to get children into adoptive families as soon as possible.
“I only object to the idea that we should view a gay couple as equal to a healthy, intact family.”
I object to the idea that you think you know whether one couple will be better parents than another based on their genitalia alone.
May 5th, 2012 | 5:43 pm
“they could give their kids both a mom and a dad”
How could a gay couple possibly give their children both a mom and a dad? I’d love to hear you answer that question without evasion or insult. I’m just trying to understand what you mean by such a statement.
May 6th, 2012 | 11:32 pm
This is what the redefinition of marriage largely says: we must educate children against the idea that sex and procreation ought to go together.
Nope. That’s just incorrect.
Legalizing divorce, for example, does not in any way compel the Catholic Church to educate children that marriage isn’t necessarily a lifelong commitment.
Ray Ingles,
Think about this for a second. I doubt very much the police will raid the Catholic Church Sunday schools any time soon to tell them what to teach, and I wasn’t suggesting that was imminent. I was merely pointing out what is already being taught in public schools as soon as the state redefines marriage. Marriage only exists because it takes a woman and a man to procreate a child. That’s what a marriage is for. Now when marriage is redefined, state education programs immediately re-educated our kids in the public schools that that is no longer the definition of marriage. Since procreation can have nothing to do whatsoever with any homosexual relationship then it is necessary to re-educate children about what a marriage is for (and if you want some consequences of that see the Maggie Gallagher article I linked to). So no, it’s not “just incorrect,” it’s what must happen.
@David Nickol,
Well you’ve gone to making stuff up about what I’m writing, and that the point I always bow out with you. It takes too much time to write paragraphs such as “where did I say…?” and then quote you and then describe why you do this, and so on. I don’t know why you always do it. I guess you just like to get the last word. Well have at it.
May 7th, 2012 | 10:05 am
Well you’ve gone to making stuff up about what I’m writing, and that the point I always bow out with you.
Douglas Johnson,
If I am “making stuff up,” that should be easy enough to demonstrate. All the evidence for it would be right here on this web page. Why bow out when victory is so near?
I think, actually, that all your arguments have been based on the misconception that Catholic Charities and other adoption services insist on placing children with married couples. Now that it has been made clear to you that they don’t, you either have to disapprove of their behavior, or you have argue that all same-sex couples are unfit to be adoptive parents. I would not be surprised if the latter was actually your underlying position from the outset.
May 7th, 2012 | 3:36 pm
David Nickol,
And where did I say that Catholic Charities insist on placing children with married couples?
May 7th, 2012 | 5:40 pm
And where did I say that Catholic Charities insist on placing children with married couples?
Douglas Johnson,
You said:
I inferred that if considered it wrong for CC to be forced to place a child with a same-sex couple because that would result in the child not having a mother (but two fathers) or a father (but two mothers), that you would equally object to CC placing a child with a single parent, thereby providing the child with a mother (but not a father) or a father (but not a mother). Your theme throughout was that a child has a “right” to both a mother and a father. You were quite incensed when I said that right was bogus. So I am confused now if you say that a child has a right to both a mother and a father, but it is acceptable for Catholic Charities to deny a child one or the other by placing the child with a single parent, but it is not acceptable to deny the child one or the other by placing the child with a same-sex couple. You seem to be saying it is best for a child to have a mother and a father (and with that I agree), but better to have only one mother (not two) or one father (not two). If that is the case, it seems to me what you object to is not honoring a child’s right to both a mother and a father, but placing a child with a same-sex couple. It is your right to object to placing a child with a same-sex couple, but it is inconsistent to say a child has a right to a mother and a father, but it is okay to place a child with a single parent, just not a same-sex couple.
May 7th, 2012 | 7:13 pm
Uh huh. QED.
May 7th, 2012 | 7:34 pm
You seem to be saying it is best for a child to have a mother and a father (and with that I agree), but better to have only one mother (not two) or one father (not two).
Actually I think what we have learned from various social experiments (such as open adoption, which turned out to be far more successful on paper than in real life practice) does raise some real concerns about whether “having two mothers” is an inappropriate emotional burden to put on a kid.
We need to recognize that the child has a mother and a stepmother. In fact, we should pursue normalcy as far as possible for these kids, and deviate only when it’s necessary – not to accommodate political agendas.
These kids are not ours to experiment on. That’s not why they’re here.
May 7th, 2012 | 7:35 pm
By the way, the question remains unanswered: if marriage has nothing to do with procreation, why does the child need to have “two mommies”? Why can’t we just recognize that Mary is Susan’s daughter but not Lydia’s daughter, and Scott is Lydia’s son but not Susan’s?
May 8th, 2012 | 5:44 am
Blake,
Your 7:35 comment is an excellent point. I didn’t get the significance of it at first glance, and then it hit me. Yes! Why indeed! Answer: Because redefining marriage isn’t about the kids.
May 8th, 2012 | 12:26 pm
Douglas,
“Uh huh. QED.”
Now, I’m confused. Like David, I thought your position was that children should only be adopted straight couples. But now it sounds like you’re saying that you’re ok with adoption by single parents. Is that right?
May 8th, 2012 | 12:39 pm
“We need to recognize that the child has a mother and a stepmother.”
What exactly do you mean here? Are you asking for some kind of legal definition or social recognition? I’m just not sure how your suggestions are practical. My children refer to me as daddy. So do their friends and teachers. No one refers to me as their adoptive father, except when we’re discussing adoption. It would be impractical and an “inappropriate emotional burden” to ask my children to refer to me as “adoptive father” all the time. I don’t see how gay adoptive parents are in a different situation than I am.
“By the way, the question remains unanswered”
There are lots of questions you haven’t answered. Try answering the questions I asked you on May 5th.
“Why can’t we just recognize that Mary is Susan’s daughter but not Lydia’s daughter, and Scott is Lydia’s son but not Susan’s?”
I’m not sure what exactly you’re asking for. Every child I know—whether in a gay or a straight family—knows who his birth parents are. Ask a child in a lesbian family which mommy carried him in her tummy, and he’ll tell you.
May 8th, 2012 | 1:00 pm
Douglas,
“Because redefining marriage isn’t about the kids”
We’re told in Genesis that the purpose of marriage is to end loneliness by entering a union outside the birth family. The expectation after that is to become fruitful and to multiply. Gays want the unions they have been entering to be recognized for they are. Christian teaching on love, fidelity, mutual support, and openness to children still applies.
May 8th, 2012 | 5:30 pm
Uh huh. QED.
Douglas Johnson,
I think you are reluctant to divulge your true position. Do you or do you not approve of Catholic Charities and other adoption services placing children with single parents? You defended them based on the assumption that they wanted to place children with both a mother and a father. Are you still defending them now that you know they are willing to place children with single parents? Were they acting in the best interest of children when they placed children with single parents?
May 8th, 2012 | 7:11 pm
“We need to recognize that the child has a mother and a stepmother.”
What exactly do you mean here? Are you asking for some kind of legal definition or social recognition?
I mean that there is no way to both force children to play along with the “two mommies” fantasy and stay true to the “child’s best interest” standard.
There is no way to make what gays want coincide with what’s best for children. It needs to be recognized: if you choose what the gay parents want over what’s best for the children, you are violating the “child’s best interest” standard.
No child should be forced to pretend to have “two mommies”. If gay marriage is truly “not about procreation” then this is not a problem – we might recognize that it is okay for Lydia to love Susan, but that does not imply that Lydia and Susan have a right to raise Mary and Scott together as if they were united by kinship. They’re not united by kinship, and in that respect they are different from kinship units aka families.
If marriage were really “not about procreation”, this would not be a big deal. But it is a big deal, because gay rights advocates are simply not being truthful when they say it’s “not about procreation”.
May 8th, 2012 | 7:20 pm
At his confirmation, one young man in my church said the best day in his life was the day he was adopted by a gay couple. He was five years old when he was adopted, and he had bounced from one foster home to another because no straight couple would adopt him.
Yes, all the children of gay parents are very ready to testify to how happy they are with their family and how lucky they are to have parents.
And how lucky they are to have a home. And how lucky they are to have parents.
It’s been my experience that you have to go carefully here, because if you say “so you’re really saying you don’t mind having never known a mother?” there’s a good chance they’ll get very upset and their cognitive dissonance falls apart, and that’s mean.
But really, it’s quite clear that there are three problems with this. The first is that, while gays are comparing themselves against an ideal of what people should have, the children of gays are not comparing themselves against an ideal of what children should have, but against its inverse opposite – a nightmare image of what children without any family at all would have. The unspoken other half of “how lucky I am” is, “seeing how it’s me we’re talking about – and I’m worth less than other people” or “seeing as how I’d be living in a dumpster if this particular pair of people hadn’t adopted me”.
And yet there is no reason to suppose that gays are more likely to want “unadoptable” kids than other couples – except that their current situation (not being willing to provide an intact family for the child they adopt) makes them less desirable as adoptive parents, and so it is easier to be less picky. This situation has already changed, now that laws are forcing adoption agencies not to discriminate against gay couples.
The second thing that’s going on is that these kids are pressured. Again, see the film “The Kids Are Alright”. The parents here are quite demonstrably investing a great deal of time and effort into building a narrative, and that creates a situation of duress for these kids – who are not free to say whatever they really feel, but are expected to say what their parents need them to say.
The third thing that’s going on here is that these kids are being raised in an extreme left environment: at least some of these kids genuinely believe that the right consists of people who want to literally hurt their parents (I actually met one teenager who quite seriously feared that the right might put gays “in camps”). This also provides a strong incentive to uphold the “gays are ideal parents” narrative.
So really, there are strong reasons why we should be skeptical of “testimonies” from the children of gays.
Incidentally, more than one adopted kid has insisted how great the parents were until the parents are safely dead – at which point the adopted kid has an identity crisis, now that there is no longer a need to uphold a dishonest narrative “for the sake of not hurting them”.
May 9th, 2012 | 10:09 am
Blake,
You write:
But really, it’s quite clear that there are three problems with this. The first is that, while gays are comparing themselves against an ideal of what people should have, the children of gays are not comparing themselves against an ideal of what children should have, but against its inverse opposite – a nightmare image of what children without any family at all would have.
This might be quite clear, but what’s often difficult for people in the marriage debate is that people aren’t skilled at having to argue for self-evident truth, simply because IT IS self-evident. What I’m trying to say is that you make yet another great, great point here.
What’s troubling about this debate is that typically the best points are so damned obvious that I can’t believe I ever stumbled the first time I heard any of these anti-marriage arguments. And what’s worse I see people every day fumbling on the easy stuff–and because we are talking about the self-evident, it is all easy stuff.
It is understandable, however. Imagine if there were a movement to make womanhood universal, and academics rolled out of their seminars and started arguing for universal womanhood by noting that gender is merely a choice, why should the government get to decide who is a woman and who is not, etc. blah, blah, blah. Most of us would be caught flatfooted because we never had to argue that “woman,” like “marriage,” actually means something. I have no doubt that within a handful of years after the invention of the concept they could have 40% of the country jumping up and down demanding universal womanhood.
Anyway, keep posting.
May 10th, 2012 | 7:01 am
Douglas,
“This might be quite clear, but what’s often difficult for people in the marriage debate is that people aren’t skilled at having to argue for self-evident truth, simply because IT IS self-evident.”
I wish you would explain what is so self-evident here. I don’t get what you’re excited about.
May 15th, 2012 | 9:36 am
Douglas Johnson –
Wait, what’s the curriculum that covers marriage? Example texts, anything?
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