About two weeks ago, I asked: if this is really a “culture war,” what does winning look like? I was responding to Maggie Gallagher’s outstanding commentary on the recent unpleasantness. I wrote that I still supported the fight against the deinstitutionalization of marriage, but I thought there was also a need to resist the institutionalization of enmity between those of differing religious and moral convictions.
Among many others, Gallagher herself joined the discussion in the comments and asked a very good question:
Other than abandoning the uses of the word “war” and “victory” what are you proposing?
I promised a response. I hadn’t meant to let the question sit so long. I hope no one thinks I don’t take the question (or, God forbid, Gallagher) seriously. But I’m not paid to blog, so I have to wait for moments when my real job permits me to contribute.
Here are at least a few of the things I’m proposing. It’s not an exhaustive list, but it’s more than enough to start with.
1) Mrs. Gallagher, Tear Down this War
I actually think that asking for an end to the use of words like “war” and “victory” is such a huge challenge to the status quo that I don’t really think I’m under much of an urgent responsibility to propose much else. Asking “other than an end to the use of martial language, implicitly admitting that our opponents are not mortal enemies whom we need to defeat, subjugate and rule, what else do you want?” strikes me as a little bit like asking “other than a cure for cancer, what else do you want?”
Gallagher correctly points out that the term “culture war” began in the social sciences as a descriptive term. However, it has long since ceased to be a merely descriptive term. It is now a normative term; it is used to rally troops for battle to defeat the enemy. This normative use of the term, along with the whole constellation of martial language that surrounds it, is now ubiquitous. We ought to acknowledge this change and ask what its effects have been.
I believe this normative use of martial language has actually become the key obstacle to victory in our fight for life, marriage and even religious liberty. We have identified the success of these policies as a victory of our religious subculture over other subcultures. If you vote for marriage, you not just voting for marriage; you are voting in favor of being ruled by the conservative religious subculture. So people have to make a choice. What do I value more, marriage or my right not to be ruled by the conservative religious subculture? That’s a fight we will lose in the long run. And the main reason we will lose it is because we ought to. Our religion gives us no right to rule our neighbors.
The threat to religious liberty is especially acute. Because we have identified the victory of our issues with the victory of our religious subculture, we have effectively surrendered on the cause of religious liberty. If you vote for marriage, you are effectively voting against religious liberty, because you are voting to be ruled by the conservative religious subculture. If you vote for life you are voting against religious liberty. And this will remain true as long as we frame the issues in terms of a culture war. So we can talk about religious liberty until we’re blue in the face, but we will still come across as the enemies of religious liberty.
Just for clarity, I think the problem is not specifically with the use of martial language in any context, but with the identification of the battle for life, marriage, etc. as a battle for the victory of our religious subculture over others. So I’m not asking advocates to stop talking about “victory” for marriage, etc. I’m asking them to stop framing victory for marriage as victory for our side in a culture war.
Gallagher did not initiate any of this, and I’m not blaming her for it. But she is now in a position to initiate a change that could produce revolutionary benefits for our cause, and I am asking her to consider making it. Who am I? I’m some guy who writes books and blog posts. Gallagher is somebody; if she made a change, it would matter.
I will repeat that Gallagher is a personal hero to me; her book The Abolition of Marriage was a life-changing revelation. I repeat this in the hope that what I say next will be taken in the right spirit. Gallagher’s blog is called Culture War Victory Fund. She reports that she is uncomfortable with that title. I am only pointing out what I take to be the reason for her discomfort. If Gallagher renamed her blog and explained her reasons for doing so, that would be widely noticed. We might actually have a shot at reframing the fight for life and marriage as something people can support without signing up to be ruled by us.
Mrs. Gallagher, tear down this war.
2) Deinstitutionalize Enmity
The delay in my response was fortuitous, because in the interim Gallagher posted this in The Corner. In a debate, Gallagher said this:
A society that is serious about marriage would gently stand up to gay people and say ‘not this, not now.’ Changes in law are hard to undo, once they are institutionalized. I did not decide to debate gay marriage, gay-marriage advocates did. I responded to the challenge.
Gay website editor Ed Kennedy found this “monstrous”:
Wait our turn, Maggie? On civil rights? While teenagers kill themselves each day because they feel less than? [sic] That’s condescending and heartless. Monstrous, actually.
Gallagher is understandably frustrated:
It’s “monstrous” to oppose gay marriage. And the uncivil dialogue is my fault, in his view. That’s where we are.
This is what I meant when I wrote about “the institutionalization of enmity.” Nothing Gallagher said was monstrous if you interpret it in light of her real intentions, but the institutionalization of enmity ensures that nothing Gallagher says can actually be interpreted in that light. Expressions of support for gay marraige will naturally be construed as monstrous because the larger context of how the debate is framed ensures this.
So what else can we do besides drop the martial language? We can:
A) recognize that this perception of “monstrosity” is not Kennedy’s fault any more than the prevelance of “culture war” language is Gallagher’s fault; Kennedy’s reaction is perfectly natural given the larger context of enmity being institutionalized.
B) intentionally work to deinstitutionalize enmity by naming this phenomenon and demonstrating our desire to achieve comity (to “live together,” as it was put in Gallagher’s earlier article) without sacrificing our consciences – we need to “find new ways to combine truth and love” (Gallagher again).
So, for example, Gallagher could have responded to Kennedy with something like this: “My comments weren’t monstrous; I don’t think it’s fair to interpret them as indifferent to the suffering of gay teenagers or gays in general. I’m not. I want America to be a society where people who experience same-sex attraction are loved and treated with human dignity. However, given the ‘civil rights’ lens through which Kennedy is viewing my comments, I can see why he responds to them as he does. I would ask him to consider whether the civil rights lens is distorting his perceptions of my comments, and of me as a person.”
3) Don’t Rule Out Compromise Prematurely
It is possible that marriage is an issue on which America will find no stable ground to compromise – on which there will be no “truce we can all live with,” as I put it. That was the main point of pushback that I got to my post from friends over private email. To this I have four responses.
A) Most importantly, if it does turn out that marriage is an issue on which no compromise is possible, let’s at least not institutionalize that all-or-nothing dynamic across the board on all issues. America is defined by its commitment to be a society where people of diverse religious and moral convictions can live together as civic equals. George Washington expressed this beautifully in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport: in Europe Jews are tolerated – they are permitted to be Jews - but in America Jews are, for civic purposes, interchangeable with their Christian neighbors. As I once heard a prominent American pastor put it, the survival of the American experiment depends on Christians cultivating strong and deep ties of civic solidarity with their spiritual enemies.
B) Beware of the temptation to depict compromise as unachieveable for instrumental purposes – because we hope to strengthen our troops in battle by convincing them that there’s no alternative to total victory. This point does not address the actual merits of the argument, but it is a temptation we ought to name and be vigilant against. Henry V’s speech before Agincourt is admirable, but his speech before Harfleur (“your naked infants spitted upon pikes”) is less so. I understand the realities of political activism; you’re not going to rally the troops to fight for marriage by telling them that we’ve already given up on victory and our goal is to establihs a stronger position so we can negotiate a better compromise. But let’s not say anything now that we’ll regret later in the event that total victory is unachieveable. Remember, the more we give Harfleur speeches to our troops, the more free the other side feels to do the same to their troops. What if they prove the stronger?
C) As recently as a few years ago, a lot of people used to talk about all kinds of compromise positions on marriage as viable and even desirable. Now, suddenly, no one does. Were all of the earlier arguments wrong in every respect? Or did the arguments change because the circumstances on the ground changed? If the latter, couldn’t the circumstances change again? One main argument against the viability of compromise is that the opponents of marriage won’t accept a compromise because they think total victory is close at hand. Well, what if that perception changes?
D) All the arguments that compromise is impossible seem to rest on the presumption that America will inevitably be forced to adopt a neat and tidy marriage policy that is logically consistent, morally justifiable and produces no absurd and contradictory outcomes. I would love to live in such a world, but as a practical matter I see no grounds for the presumption that we actually do live in such a world. “But when such-and-such happens, government will be forced to choose where it stands on such-and-such.” No, it won’t. Politicians and lawyers (including judges) are actually pretty good at having their cake and eating it too. The end result of the conflict over marriage may not be a tidy, coherent policy that makes sense and is morally justifiable. In fact, I’d place a long bet that it won’t be.
There’s more I could propose, but that seems like enough to be going on with for now.
July 11th, 2012 | 12:00 pm
I think your approach actually amounts to a capitulation. My own experience has been that the other side doesn’t want to engage in reasoned discussion. They’ve made up their minds and now simply make assertions and engage in polemic. If you disagree with their assumptions you’re by definition a hater. They have coordinated strategies, effective tactics, and a large group of people willing to do whatever it takes to achieve the vision; in short, an army. And they are certainly in action now.
July 11th, 2012 | 1:09 pm
Forter writes as though conservatives have made war on liberal policy, and that if we just stopped our war-mongering, all would be better (an argument that is vaguely familiar).
In fact the opposite is true.
If this is a war, from the conservative perspective, it is defensive one, in the sense that our enemies (yes enemies) mean to destroy us, our virtues, our civilization, our Church.
Calling it a war does not mean that we wish to rule others – it means that we do not wish to be ruled by those who hate us, and that we do not wish for those who hate us to gain power over us.
July 11th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
It is hard to know where to begin in addressing what is radically wrong with Greg Forster’s piece.
Let me begin by agreeing that I also hate the term “culture war,” but for the same reason I hate — even more — the term “family values.” If we can’t call God’s laws by their proper name, we shouldn’t engage in the obscenity of referring to them as “family values.”
There is, of course, no culture war in America. What there is the mopping-up operation of modern paganism (which we, of course, call “liberalism” or “progressivism”) in which an American society is now being created that rests on the equality, and the unity, of the human race apart from belief in Christ.
We will shortly only be permitted to call ourselves “Christians” so long as this is a matter of “private identity,” and a private identity that possesses no universal spiritual, political or social implications. This is the meaning of “liberalism.”
I suppose Mr. Forster might argue that no one of us is being forced to believe in this paganism universalism. But the use of force turns out to be unnecessary. In David Putnam’s latest book, the name of which escapes me at the moment, 94 percent (the statistic sticks in my mind) of high school students in Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, agreed with the statement that Christianity alone was true and that everyone ought to be a Christian. Today, among the general adult population of Americans, only 40 percent of self-identified conservative Christians agree with a very similar statement.
The pagan spiritual revolution — based on the pagan control of the public schools, the mass media, and the mass culture — has triumphed without the use of force.
It is thus impossible for me, to read Greg Forster’s statement that we should not treat the enemies of Christ in American society as if they actually were not the enemies of Christ as anything other than the spiritual nonsense that it is.
Let me put the matter another way: the idea that we have a “problem” in American society with “competing sub-groups,” rather than that we are living through the last stages of the triumph of paganism over Christianity in America is — to me –delusional.
July 11th, 2012 | 2:24 pm
I’m with PC. Wars of conquest are not the only kind. There are defensive wars and wars of independence (like the American Revolution). I don’t think it’s at all a stretch to see conservatives–or rather traditionalists, since many libertarians call themselves conservatives–as being in a defensive culture war. And the cultural left is, in effect if not in intent, the enemy of our culture. This is indeed a war, with casualties, e.g. the babies killed since Roe v Wade, the lives ruined by drugs, the victims of crimes committed by criminals coddled by liberal judges (admittedly less common now than 40 years ago, but that’s no fault of the cultural left), the victims of the multi-generational dependence created by “Great Society” programs, etc. It is, unfortunately, a war the right has already lost, but it is a war nonetheless.
July 11th, 2012 | 3:21 pm
Well, for what it’s worth I commend Greg Forster for posting this. I say this as someone who would have to be considered a part of the ‘enemy’, though I hasten to add that I don’t recognize myself in the slightest in the caricature of “liberals” presented by earlier commenters. I would also say that my “side” is certainly not innocent in all of this. So in short, I agree it’s high time this nonsense of about “culture wars” be put to rest.
July 11th, 2012 | 3:25 pm
Unlike previous commenters, I think Greg’s piece is quite thoughtful and serious, and should be taken seriously.
As the previous comments indicate, however, everything turns on a person’s valuation of compromise and the estimation of its likelihood. As olaf shows, one man’s “compromise” is another man’s “capitulation”. Consult the Irish Civil War as a notable instance.
Here are my impressions following each point.
[1] “Tear down this war” is witty. It also seems to be a purely tactical point and thus fine as far as it goes.
[2] This one is more serious. Do we favor “comity” or “enmity”? Another way to phrase the issue is “is this a war or not?” If this is a fundamental clash over incompatible world-views in which one will bloom triumphantly and the other will wither and fade, no amount of preaching “comity” and classical liberal toleration will work. It’s a matter of judgment, of course. Personally, I think elite American society is way beyond toleration. Certainly the pro-SSM marriage side is beyond it. And yet Greg’s suggestion here seems to me to be a call at least to live in a condition of classical liberal toleration. Since, in my estimation, that horse left the barn about a decade ago, I don’t find point [2] persuasive.
[3] “Compromise” is too abstract here. What kinds of “compromise” is suggested? Domestic partnerships? Civil unions? Privatization of marriage? Leave it indefinitely to the states? New monasticism? Quietism? All the legal options are going to be delimited if not defined by the Supreme Court long before any grand political project initiated by Maggie Gallagher gets off the ground. If the suggestion is a cultural one rather than a legal one, I’ll wait to hear it.
I think point [3D] is a very insightful one, however, and one all should bear in mind. It’s all well and good for the intellectuals to speak on what the logical implications of X and Y are or are not, but in the material world beyond the Pure Forms, logic almost never does not play itself out with ruthless abandon.
July 11th, 2012 | 4:46 pm
Oftentimes the vitriol follows quite naturally from making bad capitulations. Let me give a specific example.
So often those who want to redefine marriage will say something like this “we just want equal rights…transfer of social security benefits, Family and Medical Leave, Immigration and the ability to marry and bring your spouse to the USA, etc.”
I have seen marriage supporters left flat-footed in their response because they try and come up with specific reasons why traditional marriages should get those things but “gay marriages” shouldn’t.
Do you see the concession the marriage supporter has made which led to the heated exchange and the charge that he or she is bigoted? By arguing why “gay marriages” shouldn’t get this or that he has already conceded that gay couples can be joined in marriage and then he’s left arguing why one marriage should get X and the other shouldn’t. Problem is, that’s not the debate, but he’s foolishly allowed his opponent to frame it in a way that he can only be considered a bigot.
Here’s how I answered this argument recently and my opponent wasn’t the least bit upset and didn’t accuse me of being a bigot. I said:
So my answer here is we would have avoided so much of this vitriol if folks didn’t make the mistake of making concessions. Always remember what this debate is about and what it isn’t. It IS about whether or not we should redefine marriage. It is NOT about what we should do now that we have redefined marriage.
July 11th, 2012 | 5:19 pm
@jlw
All well put. Is there an example in the history of mankind where the side willing to compromise beat an opponent who would only accept unconditional surrender?
Greg Forster’s comments could apply to any issue. Let’s say instead of marriage we were talking about the official government recognition of a new Bible, written by the United Nations. Or that in the name of tolerance churches could no longer exclude those who deny Christ from receiving communion (and priests and pastors could no longer deliver sermons that were definitive on who Christ was without losing their tax-free status).
It doesn’t matter the issue; the question is whether the issue is worth fighting for. Greg Forster, despite declaring what side he’s on, doesn’t think this is worth a big fight. The other side does.
It’s for all the suggestions that Greg Forster wrote above that Fr. Neuhaus wrote Neuhaus’ law:
July 11th, 2012 | 6:29 pm
It means that we do not wish to be ruled by those who hate us, and that we do not wish for those who hate us to gain power over us.
The Church spent its formative years being ruled by people that hated it. It is quite possible, even likely, that liberals will win the remaining battles in the “culture war”.
The survival of the American experiment depends on Christians cultivating strong and deep ties of civic solidarity with their spiritual enemies.
This does sound like loving one’s enemies, which I’ve always found unpalatable and verging on incomprehensible – especially when they are indeed enemies causing real harm, have no need to compromise, and won’t reciprocate our attempts to “live together”.
July 11th, 2012 | 8:37 pm
olaf says, “My own experience has been that the other side doesn’t want to engage in reasoned discussion.” The problem with that is, according to olaf, apparently there are only two sides. If I don’t want to be on his (and assuredly I don’t), I have to be the enemy.
I have to say that I don’t see (from the other side) what olaf sees. I see plenty of discussions on sites like Vox Nova, Commonweal, Mirror of Justice (and occasionally even here!) in which there is a back-and-forth between those who oppose same-sex marriage and those who approve it that is thoughtful, rational, with no charges of hatred from or against either side. Unfortunately, that’s not the norm, but it’s not an insignificant exception.
One of the things I found interesting about Greg Forster’s original piece was the question If this is really a “culture war,” what does winning look like? I haven’t seen anyone really answer it, though. Does winning the culture war over marriage mean no more states legalize same-sex marriage? Does it mean rolling back same-sex marriage in the states that do have it, and annulling the marriage already entered into? Does it mean no civil unions? Does it mean a return to the 1950s when only a few very odd and/or very brave people identified themselves as homosexual? Does it mean all the gay characters must disappear from television? No more gay pride parades? What does total victory look like? I’d be interested to hear.
I can give a quick sketch of what I think total victory would be like from “the other side.” Gay people would be allowed to marry in every state. They would be treated like opposite-sex married couples, including when it came to adoption. They would not, however, claim discrimination if an adoption agency chose a same-sex couple over them in a particular adoption situation, even if the adoption agency said they thought opposite-sex parents would be best for this particular child. They could claim discrimination, however, if an adoption agency flatly refused to consider same-sex parents in any and all situations.
Socially and in public education, same-sex couples would be in a position similar to divorced and remarried couples. Some might disapprove on religious or other grounds, but no one would try to deprive them of the right to have a job, or buy a house, or rent an apartment. They would not object to religious schools teaching it was wrong for same-sex couples to marry, in much the same way a religious school would teach that it is wrong to divorce and remarry. They would expect public schools to teach tolerance of a kind, but also to teach that it was unacceptable to discriminate against same-sex couples, in the same way it was unacceptable to discriminate against the divorced and remarried. Same-sex couples would be welcome in the Catholic Church in the same way divorced and remarried couples are welcome (and they are, or should be, according to the current and previous popes), but they would not wage campaigns for same-sex marriage in the Church any more than the divorced argue for second Catholic weddings. Good Christian couples could teach their children that gay marriage was wrong, they would not forbid their children to associate with the children of same-sex couples if they would not forbid their children to associate with the children of divorced and remarried couples or children born out of wedlock.
Everyone, at least in my vision of total victory, would acknowledge that marriage is in a sorry state, and real efforts would be made to encourage marriage, discourage out-of-wedlock births, and divorce where children were affected. And if it took donations to nonprofits or higher taxes (assuming there was something government could do and do well) to better the state of marriage and the lives of children, people would be happy to pay.
Same-sex couples would not campaign for polygamy, for incestuous marriage, or for the right to marry one’s dog, and in fact they would campaign against such things if anyone suggested them. Same-sex couples would not try to destroy the Catholic Church or any other church, and would not try to end civilization as we know it. Everyone would recognize the right of religious freedom (or the equivalent) for Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists, and no one of any philosophy or religion would try to turn the United States into their own Christian (Jewish, Muslim, etc.) country. Also, the top 20% of Americans wouldn’t own 85% of the country’s wealth with the bottom 80% of the population owning only 15%. And 40% of homeless men wouldn’t be veterans, although I am beginning to digress.
July 11th, 2012 | 11:08 pm
In David Putnam’s latest book, the name of which escapes me at the moment, 94 percent (the statistic sticks in my mind) of high school students in Muncie, Indiana, in 1924, agreed with the statement that Christianity alone was true and that everyone ought to be a Christian. Today, among the general adult population of Americans, only 40 percent of self-identified conservative Christians agree with a very similar statement.
jlw,
I assume you are referring to American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by Robert D. Putnam. If so, the following is probably the passage you are remembering. Remarkably, where you see bad news, I see good news, and I think Putnam sees good news, too.
Where you see the “last stages of the triumph of paganism over Christianity,” Putnam sees ecumenism, religious tolerance, and a decline of religious chauvinism. You are in despair, whereas Putnam says that “by every possible indicator Middletowners were far more religious in the late 1970s than in the 1920s.” Somehow that’s a bad thing! I hope I am misunderstanding you, but you seem to see the culture war as a battle between Christians and non-Christians, where the non-Christians are “enemies of Christ.”
You seem to be opposed to a guarantee of religious liberty for all and in favor of control by conservative Christians. As Greg Forster notes:
Either religious liberty is for everyone, or there is no religious liberty at all.
July 12th, 2012 | 7:47 am
I want to take one more crack at this and to speak more generally this time.
I think Greg Forster’s long response can be boiled down to the question, “Why fight?” His post didn’t really contribute anything to the marriage debate itself, but rather addressed questions relevant to the fight of any social conservative cause.
If the fight produces enmity, he asks, and enmity is bad than why fight? On top of that, if you think you might very well lose, then why engage the battle when it will end in enmity and defeat? And as Christians, our fighting will be interpreted by our secularist enemies as the march of a nasty conservative religious subculture that wants to rule over everyone, which Mr. Forster says is also bad.
I engage the marriage debate every day and to date I don’t think I have ever made an argument from a strictly Christian viewpoint. But when it comes to the question “why fight?,” and especially the question of why fight a war you might very well lose, I feel compelled to give a Christian answer.
Victory, it turns out, isn’t the thing. The fight is the thing. It’s in the fight itself, win or lose, and the absolute refusal to surrender that we answer the far, far more important question of “WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?”
Yesterday I read that the ever dwindling Episcopal Church USA has adopted some liturgical ceremonies for gay couples that mimic marriage. I could point out that this sort of thing should keep the exodus from the Episcopal and UCC churches flowing, but it’s bigger than that. The experiment of all of our mainline Protestant churches to keep up with culture have resulted in their ever declining numbers. If your church is in a race to keep up with popular culture, wouldn’t it make more sense to just leave the church and join the popular culture?
Once enough people lose this focus on the eternal then the remaining few can do little to stem the cultural tide. This leaves a pathetic few, such as my fellow Eastern Orthodox Christians, in seemingly pointless rear-guard action, with barbarians charging on their one side and barbarians fleeing on their other. So why do it? Why fight? If I could look in the future and see that I’ll all lose everything I have in two years, the temptation would be to stop the struggle and start having some serious kick-ass fun, as Richard Dawkins advised in this bus advertising campaign he so supported. Sure, fight when there’s a chance you can win, but shouldn’t we just worry about ourselves and our families when the battle is lost (although I see no evidence that the marriage battle is in any way lost)?
My point is that even if you are just shooting your .22 at a 100,000 Perez Hiltons in tanks, you only have two choices: Fight to the end, or lay down your arms and give into the cultural fashions of the present. The one thing you can’t honestly do, is to surrender to the present while laying claim to the eternal. Ultimately, the social conservative fight is completely tied up in what Tocqueville described as “the final aim beyond life,” or in Christian terms the question of, “Who do you say that I am?” If our eyes are on the eternal and that is why we are fighting, then the fight is the thing. Every time you walk onto the battlefield in defense of a sacrament of the church you are answering the question “Who do you say that I am?” And anytime you seek compromise or surrender on that battlefield, you are answering the same question. Whatever mundane enemy we are up against, win or lose doesn’t really matter in the end. The fight is the thing.
July 12th, 2012 | 10:07 am
Whatever mundane enemy we are up against, win or lose doesn’t really matter in the end. The fight is the thing.
Douglas Johnson,
This reminds me of the book War Is a Force That Gives us Meaning, of which the following is the book description on Amazon.
We love war and we glorify war. As the descriptions says, war can be exhilarating and even addictive. I find it difficult to reconcile what you are saying with the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus. I think you are injecting war and militarism into Christianity where it doesn’t seem to me to belong. And I think you are mixing up religion and politics.
July 12th, 2012 | 10:12 am
David, with all due respect, you just created a pristine illusion. It is a world of no conflict and I dearly hope that no one falls for this. It is rhetoric at its finest.
Here is one example of a real situation happening now. Are you aware of the case in which Christian photographers are being sued by a lesbian couple for refusing to be the wedding photographers? This is one of many examples of how David’s future world is an illusion. The future is now and it is filled with hatred, bigotry, and divisive action against any who stand in the way of same-sex “marriage.” What is so very absurd about this case is that the lesbian couple could have respectfully gone to any number of other photographers and refused. Instead, there is revenge of the lowest form and this couple is using formal, legal means—-the courts—to inflict harm on the photographers who were trying to sincerely and gently and honestly stand by their religious convictions.
I point out one more rhetorical move by David. David lumps together the “rights” of having a job, renting an apartment, buying a home, and having same-sex “marriage” as all equivalent. Do you see the conflict being created in his future world? What would happen to an institution, as one example, that deliberately denied a gay man the right to a roof over his head? And what if that institution said it was part of their time-honored belief system that gays must not have a roof over their heads because it is a sin for gays to be sheltered from the rain and the wind? The institution would be denied public funding. Their access even to private grants would be diminished. They would be taken to court, as happened to the two professional photographers. The court decision could result in a horrendous lawsuit in which the institution is forced to close.
Now fast forward to David’s world where same-sex “marriage” is a human right, as he equates it to the right to shelter in the above example. Follow the logic and tell me if David’s pristine, conflict-free world is closer to reality or to an illusion. Tell me the fate of the Catholic Church as we follow the logic of the photographers and the scenario used as a futuristic example.
One more issue, if I may. No one, ever, has explained sufficiently how same-sex “marriage” is a fundamental right. No one has because it is not a fundamental human right. No one, for example, must deny a human being shelter based on age ( saying, for example, that 8-year-olds for such-and-such a reason cannot be sheltered). Yet, 8-year-olds are denied marriage. Therefore, it is not and cannot be a fundamental human right.
Marriage is not a fundamental human right to seek and to obtain for anyone and for all. Why? Because throughout all of human history, marriage has never, ever been based on simply what one wants. It has been based on what marriage is—man and woman bringing forth children in a stable environment for the children’s protection. Save marriage, protect children. Redefine marriage, deprive children of the fundamental human right of having a mother and a father.
In the final analysis, same-sex marriage is the usurpation of the fundamental human rights of children. And the photographers are being sued for trying to uphold this right. This is David’s brave new world.
July 12th, 2012 | 10:56 am
This is David’s brave new world.
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
I think you have misunderstood the entire purpose of what I wrote. I was answering from “my side” the question If this is a war, what does victory look like? I think the first appropriate response to what I wrote is to outline what victory would look like if “your side” won and “my side” lost.
What would happen to an institution, as one example, that deliberately denied a gay man the right to a roof over his head? And what if that institution said it was part of their time-honored belief system that gays must not have a roof over their heads because it is a sin for gays to be sheltered from the rain and the wind? The institution would be denied public funding.
Assuming that institution qualified as a public accommodation under civil rights laws, it has no more business turning away a gay person, purely on the grounds that that person is gay, than any other person based on race, color, creed, natural origin, or any number of characteristics.
The New Mexico wedding-photographer case is ongoing, but I am inclined to agree with the lesbian couple. The wedding photographer ran a commercial business and was covered by antidiscrimination laws. Many people had religious objections to racial integration, and we did not exempt them. Should anti-Catholic or anti-Semitic wedding photographers be able to refuse to photograph Catholic or Jewish weddings? I don’t think so.
In any case, my only purpose was to say, from my viewpoint, what winning the culture war over same-sex marriage and homosexuality would look like, in my opinion. You have given only hints of what it would look like from your point of view, and I urge you to flesh out your idea of what total victory would look like.
July 12th, 2012 | 10:56 am
David Nickol said to jlw:
Where you see the “last stages of the triumph of paganism over Christianity,” Putnam sees ecumenism, religious tolerance, and a decline of religious chauvinism. You are in despair, whereas Putnam says that “by every possible indicator Middletowners were far more religious in the late 1970s than in the 1920s.” Somehow that’s a bad thing! I hope I am misunderstanding you, but you seem to see the culture war as a battle between Christians and non-Christians, where the non-Christians are “enemies of Christ.”
You seem to be opposed to a guarantee of religious liberty for all and in favor of control by conservative Christians…
My reply:
I accept Putnam’s statistics, but not his interpretation. For example, I agree that indeed people are more serious now about religious belief than in the twenties. That’s because the Christian uniformity of the twenties was a facade, while by the seventies orthodox Christians had begun to understand that liberalism — political and religious — was the enemy of Christ.
Putnam’s endorsement of tolerance and ecumenism, and his quizzical inability to understand why anyone would choose otherwise, is clearly the expression of his own “religious liberalism.” I put the words “religious liberal” in quotes because this is a euphemism that we currently employ to describe those who are nothing more than heretics.
Understand what Putnam is defending: the belief that Christianity is true for me but may not be true for you, and its all okay. Of course, that’s heresy. It couldn’t be anything else. And heresy increasingly describes what the majority of conservative Protestants (and Catholics) now believe in America. Putnam does report that.
As for my supposed opposition to religious freedom, I am the one who is in favor of religious freedom, not you. Real religious freedom, for example, would mean that there would no more be a public school than a public church.
The public schools of America were once the Christian (i.e, the Protestant) common schools down almost to the middle of the twentieth century. Today’s public schools are the pagan common schools. Real religious freedom would end pagan, or Christian, control of the public schools under the understanding that no education is religiously neutral.
Perhaps I’m guessing wrongly, but you sound to me like you would probably deny that modern American public education is pagan, or that it has done, and is doing, irreparable spiritual harm to this country.
July 12th, 2012 | 11:38 am
David,
You write:
The quick and smart answer here is, who cares what you think? You didn’t engage a single point I wrote, and you quoted a review of a book you haven’t read that bears no substantive relationship to the discussion. And then you summed it telling me how you feel.
The stupider answer, but I can’t help myself, is to point out that the government just decided to dictate that people of my faith must pay for abortifacients and contraception against our own conscience and beliefs. By your reckoning, no matter what the government does Christians should surrender their guard because that’s the Christian way.
If only John the Baptist, Christ, and the apostles could have taken your advice (not to mentions millions of Christians since) it would have spared them crucifixions, beheadings, stonings, and clubbings.
As the fourth century monk Abba Moses said, man’s chief duty to Christ is to stand guard over his soul. Countless kings and governments have come along and demanded that we take off our armor. The martyrs are those that refused to take it off.
July 12th, 2012 | 11:40 am
Understand what Putnam is defending: the belief that Christianity is true for me but may not be true for you, and its all okay. Of course, that’s heresy. It couldn’t be anything else.
jlw,
You seem to equate the increase in ecumenism and tolerance, and the decrease in what Putnam calls religious chauvinism with relativism . . . and heresy! Christianity (Protestant or otherwise) was never the state religion of the United States, although of course Protestantism was very influential. True religious freedom requires that children of Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and so on, should all be able to go to public schools and not be indoctrinated in Protestantism. An education system in which people of all religions can learn, get along, and respect each other isn’t even remotely pagan. Secularity is not paganism.
July 12th, 2012 | 11:43 am
Perhaps I’m guessing wrongly, but you sound to me like you would probably deny that modern American public education is pagan, or that it has done, and is doing, irreparable spiritual harm to this country.
Of course I would deny that. There is a great deal the needs fixing in American public education, but it is not “pagan.”
July 12th, 2012 | 12:56 pm
I’m so heartened to see Forster making this argument. It’s the culture war mentality that is so destructive of our ability to have civil debate, make political progress, rescue our democratic heritage, and follow the gospel. It’s not the culture war that threatens democracy and the gospel; it’s the belief that there is a culture war—that there is “another side,” that it is bent on total victory, that its adherents are fundamentally dishonest, and that less alarmist voices are weak-kneed moderates that will so sap the energy of the righteous that they are worse than the enemy.
Olaf illustrates the problem, seeing the other side as incapable of reasoned discussion. I’ve had fewer reasoned conversations here on First Things than I have had elsewhere, but I’ve had them enough here and elsewhere to continue believing in them.
PC is such a righteous adherent of the cause that, like every other warrior, he claims self-defense—the other guy started it. In gay marriage, for example, PC argues that liberals are making war on traditional marriage and thus on Western civilization and the Church.
He’s right that you will find some Leftists who believe that marriage itself in all forms is oppressive and monogamy is as well. But these Leftists would never call themselves liberal, and most liberals think these Leftists are talking nonsense.
Liberal proponents of gay marriage generally don’t think of themselves as making war on marriage but of including those who for centuries have unjustly been excluded. These liberals value marriage; they’re not out to destroy it.
There’s a reasonable argument to be made that gay marriage will destroy the institution when it expands it, but to argue that the intention is destruction is to get the facts wrong. It is equally fallacious to say that the Right wants to oppress gays. There’s a reasonable argument to be made the Right’s attitudes and policies demean the dignity of gays, but that is not the Right’s intention.
To get beyond the culture war mentality is to pay attention to what others are actually saying, to realize that there are a variety of positions on the “other” side, and to cultivate as allies those with whom you share common ground. I disagree with both Maggie Gallagher and Fred Phelps, but I can tell the difference, and I know who I am willing to talk to and when I’d be wasting my breath.
jlw practices the culture war art of distortion and name-calling. There’s no liberalism, only modern paganism. The fact that few people understand themselves this way means nothing to him.
Fred lists the body count for his side, but I wonder whether he could list the body count for the other.
Tristian and Darel respond graciously.
So, too, does Douglas Johnson in his first entry, where he proposes that the type of stand you take makes a difference. It’s an interesting idea worth following up.
Johnson’s second entry returns to culture war form. The other side is big and bad and only has destruction on its mind. Neuhaus’s dictum is vague. Optional for whom? Hasn’t orthodoxy always been an option? Isn’t that why God gave us the gift of free will?
Johnson’s third entry misinterprets Forster’s article. Forster isn’t asking why fight. He’s asking why fight in this way. Why assume that people’s intentions are monstrous? Why assume that compromise is defeat?
I wonder how exactly Peter understands Jesus’s command to love one’s enemies. Jesus was referring in part to the Roman occupation, and I hope Peter would agree that the Romans were more intent on doing “real harm” to Christians than liberals are.
I love David Nickol’s first entry because he rises to the more interesting challenge that Forster poses. I’d love to hear what total victory means to those who oppose gay marriage. I hope someone rises to Forster’s and Nickol’s thought experiment rather than tearing them down. My vision is pretty close to Nickol’s.
July 12th, 2012 | 2:04 pm
Michael,
You write:
Let me take an attempt at explain Neuhaus’s law, which you describe as vague.
Roman Catholic churches, Jewish synagogues, Protestant churches, Eastern Orthodox churches, etc. can be orthodox in their approach or not. Their parishioners can stay or go. But when a church or any organization decides to make room for heterodox thinking and practices it is no longer orthodox by definition. And heterodoxy by definition can tolerate anything…except orthodoxy.
I hope that helps.
July 12th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
Michael,
Total victory means to stand by the teachings of my church faithfully until I die. Politically, it means to never surrender on the idea that the government cannot redefine the very natural rights it was created to protect.
I hope that helps.
July 12th, 2012 | 2:20 pm
jlw
One needs to examine the rationale of public education. Jules Ferry, the architect of public education in France, was being more candid than most politicians, when he said its purpose was to cast the nation’s youth in the same mould and to stamp them, like the coinage, with the image of the Republic – « la frapper, comme une monnaie, à l’effigie de la République »
Do not imagine that Ferry was a liberal; quite the contrary. He was the minister of Thiers during the liquidation of the Paris commune in 1871and the theoretician of colonialism in Algeria. He was a ferocious bouffeur de curé.
July 12th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
To David Nickol:
Of course modern secularism is paganism. The fundamental lie of the modern left is that the laws by which they intend to rule the rest of us are “religiously neutral.” That is the lie.
July 12th, 2012 | 2:48 pm
By your reckoning, no matter what the government does Christians should surrender their guard because that’s the Christian way.
Douglas Johnson,
I did not say anything remotely resembling that. But neither you nor anyone else in these debates ever attempts to seriously deal with all of the teachings of Jesus (and Paul) such as Matthew 5:38–5:42, Luke 6:27–31, Romans 12:20, and so on. Jesus said to turn the other cheek, but all you seem to be able to say is, “The fight is the thing.”
July 12th, 2012 | 2:53 pm
The fundamental lie of the modern left is that the laws by which they intend to rule the rest of us are “religiously neutral.”
jlw,
So, as I understand it, your proposal is that Christians should rule and people of all other religions (or no religion) should cope under Christian rule as best they can. Is that correct? Put public schools back in Protestant hands and make this a Christian country again?
July 12th, 2012 | 2:57 pm
Douglas,
“But when a church or any organization decides to make room for heterodox thinking and practices it is no longer orthodox by definition. And heterodoxy by definition can tolerate anything…except orthodoxy”
Thanks for this explanation. It seems to me that you have changed the context of the quotation. Your explanation states that what must be fought is the introduction of heterodoxy in churches, but when you used the quote above, the context was whether the state should permit gays to marry.
From a Roman perspective, the state has always been heterodox in allowing to marry people who do not conform to Church teachings.
July 12th, 2012 | 3:02 pm
Douglas,
“Total victory means to stand by the teachings of my church faithfully until I die.”
Like Fitzgibbons, you seem to have trouble understanding what Forster and Nickol mean by imagining what total victory looks like.
Please reread Nickol’s answer and explain how gays would live, what unions they would form, if any, and whether they would be allowed to raise children, live together, etc.
July 12th, 2012 | 3:43 pm
David N.
Curiously, you seem to have forgotten what I earlier wrote. You also seem not to recognize that tens of millions of Christians in this country regard the American public school system as the enemy of their faith. Since, to you, is obviously not their enemy, their opposition to that system is to you irrelevant.
Its a good thing you don’t have a religious orthodoxy that you are trying to impose on other people.
I favor freedom. That means that if you want to corrupt children according to your corrupt religious understanding you should be free to do so. But you shouldn’t be able to tax me to do it.
Even now, I would expect that, in any honest competition, in which people get to choose their own schools, their own public welfare systems, etc., that secular and religious liberalism (i.e. American paganism) would crumble overnight. The public’s exodus from your systems, once your religion was disestablished, would be quite rapid.
Which is why, of course, you require coercion to enforce your “religious neutrality.”
July 12th, 2012 | 3:59 pm
“It is thus impossible for me, to read Greg Forster’s statement that we should not treat the enemies of Christ in American society as if they actually were not the enemies of Christ as anything other than the spiritual nonsense that it is.”
I want to respond to this statement in jlw’s first comment, because to me, it seems to be at the crux of this disagreement. If you really want to name the enemies of Christ for who they are, the answer is that they are Satan and his demons, whether you believe such manifestation of evil to be actual or metaphorical.
Those human people who jlw seems to regard as the enemies of Christ are in fact creatures of God broken by sin, in need of the grace of Christ. Indeed, they may even openly claim to be the enemies of Christ, but they are wrong. They are the victims of a spiritual deception from an origin outside of themselves.
This may sound like “spiritual nonsense,” but unless you have faith that God can change hearts then there will be no “victory.” jlw talks as if God can be defeated by the world because we seem to be seeing American Christianity in decline. I say that if American Christianity takes on the tactics of animosity and and antogonism of it’s ideological opponents and forgets the message of the Gospel, then it deserves to be in decline because it’s message has become hollow.
July 12th, 2012 | 4:31 pm
I think that we could end this problem by having a country wide contest like the French do regarding proper grammar. It would be a contest that would continue until someone came up with a definition of marriage that say 75% of the population agreed with. It would have rules of course, it could not contain mutually exclusive elements, it would have to include provisions for the raising of children, adoption, property rights, inheritance, benefits and tax issues and most importantly who was eligible and who was not and lastly it would address whether marriage was a right as determined by positive law or natural law. We could make it like a game show with theme music, a host and the winner would have the new law named after him/her.
July 12th, 2012 | 4:54 pm
David, your agreement with the lesbian couple is chilling. Follow the logic of my argument, please. By the logic of the argument, you will be the first in line to put in chains the Catholic Church and all institutions which see same-sex marriage as morally offensive for children.
How do I see victory if my side wins?
It is so simple. All persons including those with same-sex attraction receive true human rights (fair wage, housing, dignity). But no marriage. That is the line in the sand. Why? Because marriage is not about what people want. It is and always has been one and only one thing: it allows man and woman to create and protect children in a stable situation.
Your brave new world is inconsistent, morally chaotic, bigoted against faith- based institutions with which you disagree, and ultimately takes away rights, those of the children.
You agree with the lesbian couple against the photographers and then talk of peaceful, tolerant mutual existence and do not even see your own inconsistency. Chilling, and this is why society must get used to the uncomfortable word “no.” No, David, I will not accept your brave new world where moral outrage is seen as moral good. The children’s human rights are too large a price to pay for my silence and cowardly acquiescence. “No.” It is my hope for the children that more people now join me in saying that.
July 12th, 2012 | 5:30 pm
jlw,
You make this country sound like Sodom and Gomorrah. As I have remarked before, in the 1960s it was conservatives who said to liberals, “America—love it or leave it.” They were also fond of saying, “My country, right or wrong.” How times (and conservatives) have changed.
July 12th, 2012 | 5:30 pm
Nathan:
Yours is a very subtle spiritual treason.
So long as your own children get out of the public school system, or so long as you think that you have armed them to survive in it, then rest of America’s children can be corrupted in good conscience. Christ requires this of you, because to stand against public education and call it what it is, or to call the people who corrupted it what they are, is not to live up to “Jesus meek and mild.”
Abortion is an even better example. In 1776, one key reason Americans revolted was because their ministers told them, from the pulpit, that Christ’s command was to obey Caesar, and that law was Caesar, thus Christ was commanding them to resist illegal tyranny.
Today, conservative Christians know that the Supreme Court decision on abortion has nothing to do with constitutional interpretation, but was an act of judicial tyranny. They also know that the abortion regime that has been established in America has made us a horror before the nations.
Yet most of our Christian leaders say that, because Christ commands that we obey Caesar, what this means is that we are to obey is, get ready for this, the Supreme Court.
I expect that’s your position, too. But then, whether American pagans are spiritually or physically destroying children is, to you, something that is immaterial. What really matters spiritually is that we not offend pagans. What really matters is that we remember that we are sinners too.
Yours is the voice of spiritual suicide.
July 12th, 2012 | 5:49 pm
It is so simple. All persons including those with same-sex attraction receive true human rights (fair wage, housing, dignity). But no marriage.
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
Actually, it can’t be that simple. The lesbian couple and the wedding photographer, still battling it out in higher and higher courts, live in New Mexico. The lesbian couple were having a commitment ceremony, since same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships don’t exist in New Mexico. So besides having no same-sex marriage, I can only assume you want to abolish laws that prohibit discrimination against gays and lesbians.
Gay people (and straight people) do not need legal marriage to have children. I don’t see how prohibiting gay marriage protects children at all. I don’t see how your idea of total victory can be limited to no same-sex marriage. Do you have a problem with civil unions? Domestic partnerships? Adoption by single individuals (heterosexual or homosexual)? Adoption by unmarried couples (heterosexual or homosexual)? Lesbian couples having their own children by artificial insemination? I can understand why you are opposed to same-sex marriage, but I can’t understand why you would consider it total victory merely to have no same-sex marriage in the United States.
July 12th, 2012 | 7:25 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“All persons including those with same-sex attraction receive true human rights (fair wage, housing, dignity).”
Thanks for this picture of what you think victory would look like. Can you please clarify some of it? You seem to think the photographer was within his rights to refuse to take pictures of a lesbian couple.
Would victory also mean that a hospital could refuse to hire a nurse if they knew she was part of a lesbian couple? Could a landlord refuse to rent to a lesbian couple? Could a realtor refuse to sell to them? If a lesbian dies without a will living with her partner for twenty years, who gets to dispose of her property—her surviving parents or her partner?
July 12th, 2012 | 8:47 pm
OK, let’s grant that there exist deep chasms between citizens’ views on issues like same-sex marriage, disagreements so profound they cannot be ignored or hand-waved away into some private realm. Advocates of one side or another will work through political and cultural processes to make government policy reflect their views. “Victory” for one side necessarily means a degree of legislative or cultural defeat for the other side.
The issue I’m see playing out in Greg Forster’s post isn’t whether conflict exists (it does) or whether Christians should participate (they should). The question involves how Christians should engage in such struggles. How ought we view those who believe and work for agendas with which we passionately disagree?
Must we consider those who stand on the other side of theological and ideological gaps as mortal enemies? Is a warfare mentality really the only viable option for Christians confronting deep disagreement? Does such a view flow from the example of Lord Jesus when He faced adversaries who called for his death?
I say no. I cannot see how a rhetoric of culture war (i.e., winner take all, fight to the death, compromise is treason) harmonizes with the commandment to love my enemy. Does this mean I surrender, hide my beliefs, or stop working for my vision of the just-good-beautiful society? No. But it does mean I have to check my tendency to cast those who disagree with me as arch-foes to be vanquished.
July 12th, 2012 | 8:55 pm
David,
Marriage is what I have already stated. Total victory is all states recognizing this and the right of children to a relationship with a mother and a father.
Truth can be very simple.
July 12th, 2012 | 9:35 pm
A couple of points …
First, way back in 1998, Deborah Tannen of Georgetown wrote a book entitled The Argument Culture. It talked about how “war metaphors pervade our talk and shape our thinking, urging us to approach anything we need to accomplish as a fight between two opposing sides.” She said that language matters, because it shapes what we see, about both issues and people. She described how Americans default to martial language and allow it to become the norm, even when we know it is counter-productive. She’s just a linguistics professor, but her words are certainly prophetic. One of my favorite quotes from the book is “smashing heads does not open minds.”
Second, the so-called “culture wars” demonstrate exactly why Jesus told us to love our enemies. He was not encouraging capitulation or weakness. He was trying to free us from the cycle of violence and hatred. The more we give in to the “Argument Culture,” the deeper it burrows into our hearts and minds, until we are left seeing those who disagree with us as barbarians at the gate. This is how enmity becomes institutionalized. There are very few barbarians in this country. There are, however, a lot of men and women trying to do the right thing for themselves, their loved ones, and their faiths, who allow themselves to get caught up in the anger and hostility of the moment. It’s time to let that go.
OK, you may now proceed to slander and denigrate me. (But I hope you’ll refrain.)
July 12th, 2012 | 9:37 pm
Michael,
As long as marriage is what it is and is not twisted for the sake of “wants,” let us see what the people have to say in the future about the issues you raise.
We should never use complex scenarios to then twist marriage into something it is not.
July 12th, 2012 | 11:35 pm
Nathan, Fletcher, and Bidwell,
Thanks for filling out various aspects of the problem. Voices like yours give me hope.
July 12th, 2012 | 11:42 pm
I’d love to hear what total victory means to those who oppose gay marriage
It would look like a recognition that any traditional religion (or non-religious traditional lifestyle) is as valid as secular humanism, with secular humanists ceasing and desisting in their attempt to use the state and its power to achieve a monopoly for their own personal beliefs and values.
It would look like the recognition that we all have equally the (Constitutionally guaranteed!) right to freedom of religious belief, and that your own personal (humanist) beliefs about the role and purpose of sexuality, family, marriage, etc. are no more compelling, no more worthy of respect and protection – and no less faith-based – than anyone elses’ beliefs.
Humanists believe they have “the truth”. They believe that religion is old-fashioned, superstitious, wrong, and evil. Their beliefs are the only acceptable beliefs. That makes “war” one of only two choices: either there is war, or there is unilateral surrender.
Humanists think the Constitution, being a “living” document, can be re-interpreted so that the “right” to make Catholics pay for your birth control is a basic human right, while the Catholic has no right to object making this payment. They see this as reasonable and fair, because they do not care about anyone except themselves; they see anyone who does not share their beliefs as Other and unworthy of equality or respect.
Humanists think their beliefs on what marriage is constitutes the only valid belief, which is why they can say – straight-faced – that anyone who does not agree is “bigoted” (with the possibility of any legitimate motive taboo). They have been writing fantasy novels for decades with the same basic plot pattern, and this plot pattern is how I have come to see humanists. It goes like this:
In every way – in fiction, in film, in music, in politics, even in the public schools (by abusing the authority given them for legitimate purposes) – secular humanists are attacking the rights of those who hold traditional beliefs and will not stop until all non-humanist thought is either completely driven from the public square, or until someone musters enough force to fight back.
July 13th, 2012 | 12:16 am
Fitzgibbons,
“As long as marriage is what it is and is not twisted for the sake of “wants,” let us see what the people have to say in the future about the issues you raise”
But the future is now. You are upset that a photographer is being sued for refusing to photograph a commitment ceremony because it was lesbian couple. For you, this is a religious liberty issue, but for the couple, their dignity was not recognized. You have said that gays should receive “true human rights,” including dignity. And so in this case, you have decided that the liberty of the photographer is more important than the dignity of the couple. Would you defend the religious liberty of a photographer who refused to photograph a Catholic wedding because he believed the Pope is the anti-Christ or because he was atheist?
July 13th, 2012 | 6:54 am
To Joe Bidwell:
Deborah Tannen is, of course, an advanced liberal (read:pagan) thinker whose purpose is to demonstrate scientifically (but of course!) that resistance is futile and we will be assimilated.
Enjoy your assimilation.
July 13th, 2012 | 9:44 am
Re: The post from Michael and his question to Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons:
I cannot (obviously) answer for Dr. Fitzgibbons. This question however does address one of the fundamental questions under discussion here.
“Would you defend the religious liberty of a photographer who refused to photograph a Catholic wedding because he believed that the Pope is the Anti-christ … .”
I would not only defend him, I would congratulate and admire him for having the courage of his convictions. I could find another photographer; he could not find another conscience.
July 13th, 2012 | 9:50 am
There are two sides here. Side A says we should fight the redefinition of marriage and Side B says we shouldn’t.
Side A explains WHY we think we should fight the redefinition of marriage and Side B says Side A shouldn’t use words like “fight.” Side B says Jesus’s love would lead him to sit down and redefine the one flesh union between a man and a woman.
Yeah, okay, got it.
July 13th, 2012 | 9:57 am
Regarding the many questions raised by David Nichol:
I agree with Dr. Fitzgibbons and do believe that children have basic human rights. They have a right to be cared for by those whose union resulted in their birth. If separated from their mother and father by tragedy, they have a right to know who their parents were. Their rights demand that every possible effort be made to provide a mother (a woman) and a father (a man) if their natural parents cannot take responsibility for their well being.
I believe that mothers and fathers do not have a right to sell or give away their life-giving biological substance. I do believe that mothers and fathers have a most serious responsibility to care for the children who are conceived from their bodies.
Our lives are often affected and distorted by tragedy, by catastrophic events, by our personal weaknesses. These things should not be the basis for law making. They can and should be dealt with as singular cases. These kinds of situations should never be freely chosen or caused. When they occur, they should be viewed with compassion and understanding of human fraility, case by case, by those closest to the situation.
Children have a right to and deserve these protections.
July 13th, 2012 | 10:28 am
Douglas Johnson,
I don’t understand why Side A concedes that marriage can be “redefined.” To the Catholic Church, marriage is indissoluble, and certainly the Church has fought against civil divorce. But every country in the world except the Philippines now has civil divorce, and the Catholic Church has not conceded that marriage has been “redefined” as not being indissoluble. It just puzzles me that Side A seems to believe that changes in civil laws governing civil marriage can “redefine” marriage itself. There are numerous ways in which civil marriages in various states do not reflect even the most “traditional traditions” of traditional marriage. For example, most states consider a couple married at the end of the marriage ceremony. Traditionally, a marriage must be consummated to be a true marriage.
This does not, of course, mean that Side A cannot have many reasons to fight against same-sex marriage. But the talk of “redefining” marriage makes no sense to me.
July 13th, 2012 | 10:30 am
Joe Bidwell,
This is HI-LARIOUS!:
My favorite part is “…urging us to approach anything we need to accomplish…” Now let me guess…the stuff “we need to accomplish” is the stuff that Deborah Tannen wants to do, which is what the other side doesn’t want to do. So we can rewrite that sentence this way: “war metaphors pervade our talk and shape our thinking, urging us to approach anything I want to do as a fight between me and those who don’t want to do what I want to do.”
Second favorite part was “She said that language matters…” Brilliant! What an insight, especially in this battle over the redefinition of marriage!
“She described how Americans default to martial language…” I’m one of those Americans that Ms. Tannen would see as a problem, and she can identify me as a problem because she has the ability to evaluate me from a great, unbiased remove up there in the clouds. My fighting is evidence that I lack that Ms. Tannen’s remove. However, if my language was stripped of any strong opposition to what Ms. Tannen wants to do then it would prove that I too had elevated myself to a higher plane where I would share her erudite and unbiased remove.
On a totally unrelated note, did anyone see that Paul Thomas Anderson has a new movie coming out about Scientology?
July 13th, 2012 | 10:32 am
Side B says Jesus’s love would lead him to sit down and redefine the one flesh union between a man and a woman.
Douglas Johnson,
Civill marriage in the United States is not controlled in any way by Jesus. Why in the world should non-Christians accept as an argument for marriage in the United States what Genesis said or what Jesus said? And for those who accept what Jesus said, why do they accept divorce?
July 13th, 2012 | 10:40 am
Regarding the question from Michael regarding other adult relationships that do not involve conception of new life:
Here is where, in my opinion, the right to privacy is evident. As, for instance, I do not think others want to know about my religious commitments or doctrinal beliefs, so I neither need nor feel entitled to nor wish to have imposed upon me knowledge of others sexual orientation or arrangements.
Protection of the privacy of others extends to their legal arrangements for disposition of their property after death and for medical visitation and access to records. If there are tax benefits associated with a dual residence, these should be extended to all of those persons who have such an arrangement.
Hiring should be based on the qualifications of the applicant. A nurse presents her qualifications based on education and experience. She should be hired or not on the basis of those qualifications. Her right to privacy should not require that she disclose the details of her personal life. (This is true, needless to say, for men as well.)
A landlord who resides in the residence to be rented should have a right to privacy. Large facilities are not in this category and should be open to all. But there is no need to impose private information on a landlord. It has not until now been a issue if two women or two men desire to rent a house or apartment. The privacy of their personal arrangements should be vigorously protected.
Children have certain human rights. They should be protected. Adults have a right to privacy in their personal arrangements.
July 13th, 2012 | 10:49 am
Blake,
“It would look like a recognition that any traditional religion (or non-religious traditional lifestyle) is as valid as secular humanism…”
Thanks for this answer, but it’s not answering the question that Forster asked. Look at Nickol’s answer again. He’s quite specific about what he thinks a state with both religious liberty and gay marriage would look like.
What Forster is asking and I’d love to hear is what you think a world without gay marriage should look like.
To get you started, here are some possible worlds:
1. Gays return to the closet.
2. Gays enter therapy and emerge as functioning heterosexuals.
3. Gays embrace chastity.
4. Gays can live openly but businesses and private schools and hospitals are free to refuse to serve them or sell them goods or services. Unmarried single people are allowed to adopt children, but gay couples are not, nor are gay singles.
5. Gays can enter civil unions but cannot adopt children, and businesses, schools, and hospitals are free to refuse them.
These are just a sampling. There are lots of other possible worlds in which your side has won. So what does your victory world look like?
July 13th, 2012 | 10:52 am
Victory, surely means for the Church, in Belloc’s words, “to take in men’s minds even more than the place taken by patriotism; to influence the whole of society, not a part of it, and to influence it even more thoroughly than a common language”
July 13th, 2012 | 11:01 am
Linda,
“I would not only defend him, I would congratulate and admire him for having the courage of his convictions. I could find another photographer; he could not find another conscience”
I’m from a town small enough that there were only a few photographers, and small towns tend to create a kind of conformity. Once one person refuses another service, the rest tend to go along. It used to be quite hard in my town for Catholics, who clustered together and had their own businesses that served their own kind, and we only had one Jewish family.
Perhaps the US was a better kind of place back then when we clustered in ethnic and religious enclaves, but I don’t think so.
I wonder whether I should start refusing to serve Catholics. I wonder whether how they would respond, and I wonder what kind of recourse my boss should have.
July 13th, 2012 | 11:03 am
Douglas,
“Side A explains WHY we think we should fight the redefinition of marriage and Side B says Side A shouldn’t use words like “fight.””
Forster is on Side A and thinks Side A shouldn’t use words like fight.
July 13th, 2012 | 11:06 am
David Nickol,
In the past, you’ve noted with frustration that I often ignore your comments. Let me give you an example of why I often find it unproductive respond (or often even read) what you write.
In this thread you wrote the following to me:
I responded to this comment and others like it, and then you replied with this (after first quoting me):
Get it?
July 13th, 2012 | 11:13 am
Got to agree here with Olaf’s first point. All the extended conversation ignores the unpleasant realities.
July 13th, 2012 | 11:14 am
Their rights demand that every possible effort be made to provide a mother (a woman) and a father (a man) if their natural parents cannot take responsibility for their well being. . . .
Children have a right to and deserve these protections.
Linda Wolpert Smith,
I don’t quite see how preventing same-sex marriage will do much to protect these alleged rights of children, and for those who are seriously committed to guaranteeing such rights, it seems to me same-sex marriage is a minor threat amidst a sea of huge problems.
Let me quote for about the tenth time my favorite recent statistic: Of women with two or more children, 28% of them conceived the children with two or more fathers. Over 40% of births in the United States are out of wedlock, and the rate is 72% among blacks. And yet you are worried about the rights of potential children of same-sex couples!
Now, let me be clear. Although I do not fully agree with the concerns you state about children, I certainly do not dismiss them out of hand. I think there are good arguments in favor of them. But I would have to say that given all the ways in which these rights are brushed aside routinely among heterosexuals, with the numbers of children affected being in the many millions, it makes me wonder if suddenly discovering these rights and citing them as a reason to oppose same-sex marriage is credible. There are virtually no controls on heterosexual reproduction in the United States. If a woman wants to provide an egg, buy sperm from the internet, and have a surrogate mother bear the child, there’s nothing stopping it. Nothing prevented “Octomom” from conceiving 14 children through in vitro fertilization, including one set of octuplets. Nothing prevents people going to fertility clinics and creating embryos, most of which will be discarded. Nothing prevents single-parent adoption, or single women adopting babies from foreign countries. I saw an inheritance case recently where children conceived from frozen sperm after their father’s death were ruled to be his legitimate heirs. Reformers intent on enforcing the rights you claim for children couldn’t hope to make more than a dent in the problems we already have. And yet these alleged rights of children are cited to oppose same-sex marriage. And as I pointed out before, there is no childbearing ability conferred on same-sex couples that they don’t already have without marriage.
I too would like to see children raised in stable homes and might even concede—all other things being equal—that the best circumstances under which to raise a child is in a stable home with a married mother and father. (Of course, all other things are never equal, which is why single parents and same-sex couples should be considered as adoptive parents.) However, I see virtually nothing being done to attempt to guarantee that for heterosexual couples, and consequently I find it difficult to accept it as a reason to oppose same-sex marriage.
July 13th, 2012 | 11:29 am
In the past, you’ve noted with frustration that I often ignore your comments.
Douglas Johnson,
I have??? I urge people who do not like my comments not even to read them?
Get it?
No, if you want me to understand, you’ll have to spell it out. Perhaps you are thinking it is inconsistent for me to (1) question you, as a professed Christian, on what appear to me possible inconsistencies in how you apply Christian principles in your “fights,” and then turn around and (2) point out that we have separation of Church and state in this country, and our marriage laws have to be secular and apply not just to Christians, but to Jews, Muslims, atheists, and so on. If that strikes you as an inconsistency, I don’t see how. I am trying to figure out how you, as a Christian, incorporate the teachings of Jesus into your fight against same-sex marriage. If you were not fighting a Christian fight, and particularly if you were not even a Christian, it would be unwarranted to attempt to make you reconcile your position with Christianity.
July 13th, 2012 | 11:37 am
Michael,
You write (after quoting me):
Read Forster again. He advocates that Side A should prepare to “compromise,” not fight. But his compromise comes with no line in the sand where the other side actually has to compromise anything–it’s a one-way compromise which is commonly known as “surrender.”
And let me also add that this is a common posture taken by folks all the time on any number of issues. In political debate it usually starts out with “I’m a Republican, but…” It’s why David Brooks has a column in the New York Times.
Jake Tapper wrote a scathing (sorry, there’s that combative language again) review of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO television series “The Newsroom” that is perfectly apt here:
July 13th, 2012 | 11:52 am
Michael, you are steeped in details and so you miss my important point. If photographers in the present age are brought to court now, then in David’s brave new world, so too will faith-based institutions that say the gay and lesbian life-style is a sin. Your attention to one detail is missing this point. David painted a pristine portrait of the future-with-no-conflict and your and my dialogue is a foretaste of that future. Unlike David’s illusion, that all will be harmonious, look at what we have instead. We have tension in the details, disagreement, an attempt to persuade, and we still have the court battle.
My point in mentioning the dire situation for the innocent photographers, who were only following their faith (which in David’s brave new world will be possible without persecution), is this: Those who dare to disagree with the gay and lesbian lifestyle will be persecuted.
Regarding your question about the photographer who thinks wrongly about the Pope and refuses to photograph a Catholic wedding, I would not take him to court. And there is where the difference lies between my side and yours. You will try to get your way no matter what. Sorry, Michael and David, that is one brave new world I refuse to enter. Save traditional marriage, and preserve the human and psychological rights of children.
July 13th, 2012 | 12:40 pm
Linda,
“Here is where, in my opinion, the right to privacy is evident. As, for instance, I do not think others want to know about my religious commitments or doctrinal beliefs, so I neither need nor feel entitled to nor wish to have imposed upon me knowledge of others sexual orientation or arrangements”
Thanks for this answer. It clarifies still more of the picture.
Let me see if I have this right. You would agree with the photographer who doesn’t want to take wedding pictures of the lesbian couple because he’s against gay marriage. Am I right in thinking that you would say that he would have to take photographs of a lesbian couple that had asked him to take some *family* photographs? They might be sisters or cousins, after all. Even if he happens to know that they are sexual partners, the photographs are not *about* their union in the way that wedding photographs are.
July 13th, 2012 | 12:58 pm
Joe,
Thanks for reminding me to go back and re-read olaf’s point. It’s well put.
I don’t know if this was already stated, but as someone once said, there are no victories or defeats in politics. The battle always goes on, and if people aren’t fighting about an issue it’s because no one cares about the issue, at which point the issue is no longer an issue.
Greg Forster writes:
If twenty years ago someone had asked Maggie Gallagher if she would join their fight against this neologism called “gay marriage” she would have laughed at them. Why? Because there are all kinds of bad ideas out there, but most of them aren’t worth our notice because no one regards them as important enough to do anything about it.
But the activists who invented this new idea marketed it well and started making progress in having the government actually redefine one of the very natural rights it was created to protect. At that point Maggie decided that this was important and she had to do something about it.
Politicians, in passing legislation, must horse trade all the time. Compromise occurs when they give up on something they don’t particularly care about in exchange for something they care about more.
But why would someone (especially someone who is not a politician) compromise on an idea she holds as very important? Greg Forster says Maggie Gallagher is his hero, but that she should start laying the ground work for a “compromise.” What does that mean? He doesn’t point out any logical mistakes she has made that might lead her to change course. So what does compromise mean in this context? It seems to me it’s just another way of saying “this isn’t as important as something else; let’s prioritize something else.”
That’s the real argument Greg Forster needs to make–that fighting the redefinition of marriage isn’t as important as something else. I don’t think Greg Forster was being intentionally sly here, but I think he’s really trying to have it both ways. He says Maggie is his hero and she changed his life and he’s all with her on the whole marriage thing, but in the end, he’s turns around and says this isn’t all that important. It’s not as important as something else.
I can’t imagine I’ll agree with Greg Forster but he needs to put aside the hero stuff and tell us why he thinks marriage is not that important and be specific about what is more important in this fight.
July 13th, 2012 | 1:01 pm
Douglas,
“He advocates that Side A should prepare to “compromise,” not fight.”
He, in fact, asks people not to “rule out compromise.”
There’s a difference.
The fact is that Forster thinks of himself as a fighter.
In his third sentence, Forster says, “I still supported the FIGHT against the deinstitutionalization of marriage.”
He later says, “I believe this normative use of martial language has actually become the key obstacle to VICTORY in our fight for life, marriage and even religious liberty.”
He also say, “So I’m NOT asking advocates to stop talking about “VICTORY” for marriage, etc. I’m asking them to stop framing victory for marriage as victory for our side in a culture war”
He doesn’t know whether a compromise will be necessary or not. He says, “It is possible that marriage is an issue on which America will find no stable ground to compromise,” which is to say, that he might decide not to compromise a single thing.
I think about conversation in much the same way as Forster does, and when I see him being beaten up by his own side simply for wanting to dial down the rhetoric, I think about how far conservatism has strayed since I was a kid. It’s become vicious and ugly. At least for some.
July 13th, 2012 | 1:13 pm
Michael,
You write:
Now go back and read that excerpt in my comment from Jake Tapper’s review of Sorkin’s The Newsroom.
July 13th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“David painted a pristine portrait of the future-with-no-conflict”
Of course, he did. That was the point of the exercise—to imagine what victory for your side would look like, a world in which everyone agreed with your view. If David’s view looks bad to you, perhaps it looks better than the world some others envision in which no one ever married.
“If photographers in the present age are brought to court now, then in David’s brave new world, so too will faith-based institutions that say the gay and lesbian life-style is a sin.”
Here again you miss the point of exercise. In David’s world, faith-based institutions would be brought to court only in some circumstances. (You, of course, would bring them to court in different circumstances. The classic examples are female genital mutilation and polygamy.)
“My point in mentioning the dire situation for the innocent photographers, who were only following their faith”
I understand why you think of it that way, but do you understand that today innocent lesbians and gays are being placed in dire situations for following their conscience and their faith?
“Regarding your question about the photographer who thinks wrongly about the Pope and refuses to photograph a Catholic wedding, I would not take him to court. And there is where the difference lies between my side and yours.”
Maybe not in that situation, but in plenty of others, Catholics have fought institutional and cultural discrimination against them.
“You will try to get your way no matter what.”
Don’t pretend to know me better than you do. This statement shows the kind of presumption that Forster is trying to fight.
July 13th, 2012 | 1:55 pm
@ Douglas Johnson–
Forgive me for a naive question, but there actually are more important things for Christians than the debate about same-sex marriage, right?
I have strong feelings about this issue–about a lot of cultural issues, actually. But as a Christian, I have to recognize that even the causes I believe in and advocate for fiercely must take a back seat to divine imperatives like loving God, loving neighbors, loving enemies, and being a witness for Christ. This holds true even and especially when those on the other side of an issue seem not to be fighting fair. Cutthroat behavior on their part does not excuse me from loving witness.
Is it so very clear that fighting for marriage matches Jesus’s core commandments exactly? Again, it’s not a matter of rolling over and just giving up. It’s a matter of asking at what point the drive for culture war victory might interfere with our living out the Great Commission. Does such a consideration come into play for you? If so, how?
For what it’s worth, I’m not posing these questions rhetorically. I really would like to know your response. Thanks.
July 13th, 2012 | 2:12 pm
To David Nichol: I am painfully familiar with the situation regarding children as described by you. I have spoken out so firmly (as have you) because the times require us to take a stand and attempt, with respect and civility, to defend it.
Having gone terribly wrong, as I believe and agree that we have, does not mean that we must resign ourselves to the outcome you describe. Arguments should be made, if ever, now,in support of the basic human rights of children.
It seems to me that you are correct about marriage. The seriousness of marriage vows and the solemn responsibilities of parents were undermined (if I am accurately informed) long before there was any mention of homosexual marriage. I acknowledge with great sadness that children can now be treated in all the ways that you describe.
You have explained, again and again, that, given the utter disregard of children’s human rights in law or in the culture in general, there can be no legitimate debate regarding marriage for persons with a homosexual orientation. About the widespread disregard of children’s human rights, you are certainly correct. I hope that this will encourage rather than discourage passionate debate on the subject.
You believe that legal standing for marriage between two men or two women can do no further damage to an institution that is already damaged beyond repair. If the human rights of children and the solemn responsibilities of parenthood were not in question, I would have no argument to offer. But I do believe that, for those reasons, we must make every possible effort to understand exactly what consequences will inevitably follow if all (as you have argued, all) the threats to natural parenthood are allowed to have their way.
July 13th, 2012 | 2:20 pm
Compromise occurs when they give up on something they don’t particularly care about in exchange for something they care about more.
Douglas Johnson,
I am not sure I would define compromise in exactly that way, but it’s good enough for the moment. Let me give an example of reasonable compromise. When New York’s same-sex marriage legislation was being worked out, there were opponents whose concern was that religious groups would be forced to participate in same-sex marriage, so safeguards for religious groups were written directly into the bill. If your sole, or major, objection to same-sex marriage is not the very fact of same-sex marriage itself, but rather a belief that same-sex marriage puts you on a slippery slope to something you fear, then it seems to me a perfectly reasonable compromise to say, “Okay, we will accept same-sex marriage, but we want provisions in the legislation that will definitely prevent X, Y, and Z from ever happening.”
July 13th, 2012 | 3:00 pm
I can’t imagine I’ll agree with Greg Forster but he needs to put aside the hero stuff and tell us why he thinks marriage is not that important and be specific about what is more important in this fight.
Maybe he believes that strengthening opposite-sex marriage, if significant progress can be made, is much more important and a much higher priority than preventing same-sex marriage. Or maybe he believes an all-out fight against same-sex marriage would harm more than help traditional marriage. I know some people even believe same-sex marriage is a passing fad, and if it is achieved, it will not long after wither and fall into disuse.
The opponents same-sex marriage here strike me as extraordinarily pessimistic about heterosexual marriage and the future prospects for religion. American is among the most free and most religious countries in the world, and yet many opponents of same-sex marriage seem to see religion and freedom as close to being wiped out. It amazes me how grim and pessimistic some people here are. And how much—or so it seems to me—they loath America.
Here’s an interesting note on the “pagan” public schools I ran across. It’s kind of like Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average. In a Gallup Poll of a couple of years ago, only 18% of Americans rated the country’s schools B or higher. Yet 77% of parents with children in public schools rated their own children’s school B or A.
July 13th, 2012 | 3:08 pm
Re: Question posted by Michael: “Am I right in thinking that you would say he would have to take photographs of a lesbian couple that had asked him to take some family photographs. They might be sisters or cousins, after all.”
I have been attempting to support a right to privacy when children’s human rights are not the issue.
If a family makes arrangements for a family photograph, there would be no need to provide personal information about any existing sexual arrangements among the various members of the group.
July 13th, 2012 | 3:37 pm
You write:
A back seat? Hmm. I would say that if you love God, love neighbors, love enemies then that would impel you to advocate for against those things that would hurt them. The following video about hateful Catholics does a good job explaining this, I think. Someone just sent this to me earlier today.
Here is a video of a woman who was called to fight the abortion battle. I think after watching it no one would suggest she should put her fight in the back seat. In fact I would say her love of God and neighbor shines with every swing of her sword.
Then you write:
Yes, it is so very clear. If you haven’t watched the Gianna Jessen video yet, give it a look. That’s what it looks like when a Christian proceeds into the culture war arm in arm with Christ. I doubt I’ll ever deliver a performance like that, but I would say that speech serves as a great example of the goal of Christian living, just as Mother Theresa serves in India, or as St. Therese of Lisieux did while secluded from the world in her convent.
July 13th, 2012 | 4:15 pm
Douglas,
“Now go back and read that excerpt in my comment from Jake Tapper’s review of Sorkin’s The Newsroom”
Ok. I’ve reread it. I assume that I’m supposed to recognize myself as the kind of person who is committed to a purely partisan solution.
With Forster, I’ve been asking people to describe what kind of victory they are fighting for, and yet you construe that as somehow being partisan. How, I don’t know.
I don’t know what it is like to grow up liberal. I grew up conservative, Catholic, and Texan. Not only were liberals hard to find, it remains hard to find one. All I can tell you is that conservatives in Texas have gotten increasingly bitter and divisive. If your experience is different, then maybe it’s your experience and not my supposed partisanship that is to blame.
July 13th, 2012 | 4:17 pm
John Fletcher,
Thanks for this contribution. I couldn’t agree more.
July 13th, 2012 | 4:27 pm
Michael, the “you” attributed to me in your final paragraph was the generic “you” of your group, not you personally. No need to fight me on this one. I was pretending nothing, as you and David are doing in your pretend future world. The exercise is too fantastic for me because it shifts the discussion to a pretend world and therefore will not solve the serious problems facing us now. I have been showing you that the present realities of hauling into court innocent photographers because of their faith is a microcosm of what Christians will face if you ( again, the generic ” you” of your group) get your way. It is a world of attack on faith, on secular tradition, and ultimately on the human rights of children. David’s future portrait is sheer fantasy intent on lulling people into a false sense of security for children and for the continued expression of traditional faith.
Gays and lesbians have their human rights protected, and where this is not the case, I hope that changes as soon as possible. So that I am not misunderstood, same-sex “marriage” is not a basic human right for anyone and everyone and so it does not fall within the idea of this paragraph. Why do I say this? Because marriage always has been the union of man and woman for their happiness and for the creation and protection of children. A number of studies demonstrate the danger to children in same sex unions.
July 13th, 2012 | 4:30 pm
Greg Forster says we must prepare for compromise. If we compromise, then what?
I’m reminded of this excerpt from Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech when he answered identical calls for compromise. Read the whole thing, but especially the third paragraph:
Let me emphasize these two sentences: “These natural and apparently adequate means all hailing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right.”
July 13th, 2012 | 4:45 pm
Linda,
“If a family makes arrangements for a family photograph, there would be no need to provide personal information about any existing sexual arrangements among the various members of the group”
Thanks. The picture is even clearer now.
I think the virtue of the kind of approach that Forster is urging can be seen in where our conversation is going. Right now, I feel like my conversations with Douglas and Fitzgibbons are going nowhere because they are not answering in any kind of detail. By not descending into detail, they can stay in attack mode. But by going into detail, you and I can determine the extent to which we are on opposite sides and the extent to which we are on the same side.
So let me get more detailed myself. I’m not terribly bothered by the photographer story. I’m much more bothered by realtors, landlords, hotels, restaurants, etc. I can’t abide those kinds of refused service.
And so we share common ground there, and I learned that we share common ground in just a few exchanges. On the other hand, I’ve had several exchanges with Douglas, and I have no idea how much ground I share with him. It’s all attack and dodge. I might share more than he thinks possible, but how would he ever know?
The fact that you and I have found some common ground and Douglas and I have not illustrates Forster’s point. But not treating each other as an untrustworthy enemy, we have grown in understanding, and neither one of us have had to compromise or be any less committed to our respective causes.
Why can’t more conversations on this subject be like ours?
July 13th, 2012 | 6:59 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“Michael, the “you” attributed to me in your final paragraph was the generic “you” of your group, not you personally.”
But the point of the exercise and of Forster’s article is the danger of talking to the group you think I belong to rather than to the actual human being who is talking to you.
Do you not see a problem with approaching as if they were merely part of a group?
July 13th, 2012 | 7:11 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“The exercise is too fantastic for me because it shifts the discussion to a pretend world and therefore will not solve the serious problems facing us now. I have been showing you that the present realities of hauling into court innocent photographers”
Let’s be clear here about the “seriousness” of these problems. Your photographers were being paid to take photographs, and they were sued for refusing to take money.
Gays are denied housing, discriminated against in jobs, harassed at work and in schoolyards, rejected by schools, are denied visitation rights in hospitals, and have their final wishes ignored.
Those are the “present realities” that you personally are ignoring in this conversation.
July 13th, 2012 | 7:32 pm
Douglas,
“I’m reminded of this excerpt from Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech when he answered identical calls for compromise.”
You understand, I hope, that Lincoln was considered by radical abolitionists as too moderate, too much a compromiser?
Radical abolitionists attacked Lincon’s belief that the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed, and they insisted that slavery must be immediately ended everywhere in the nation. One of these more radical abolitionists—William Lloyd Garrison—had to defend Lincoln’s record on slavery in May of 1864, more than a year after the Emancipation Proclamation.
July 13th, 2012 | 11:00 pm
@Douglas Johnson
Did you read the material at the link I provided for Tannen’s book? It included an article she wrote for the Washington Post. If not, here are both links again:
The Argument Culture
For Argument’s Sake; Why Do We Feel Compelled to Fight About Everything?
I ask because your assumptions about the content of the book are incorrect. Tannen is not pushing a partisan agenda. She is pointing out a behavior that she observed within American culture. She does not advocate that strong language never be used. She acknowledges that some situations demand it. What she questions is the “knee-jerk nature of approaching almost any issue, problem or public person in an adversarial way.” She is concerned about this behavior because it produces an “ethic of aggression” where winning the fight becomes more important than truth or people. Her purpose in writing the book is to encourage us to explore other ways of talking about issues and resolving problems.
Forster’s main point in this article seems to be that for the issue of same-sex marriage, the “culture war” language is not appropriate or necessary, and in fact is counter-productive for adherents on all sides of the issue. I agree with him. As I said above, most people with an opinion on this matter are simply trying to do the right thing for themselves, their loved ones, and their faiths. They are not homophobes trying to enshrine discrimination or throw people back into the closet, nor are they pagans trying to overthrow religion or establish a gay police state. Perhaps if we took off the warrior persona, we would see that we are more neighbors than enemies.
July 13th, 2012 | 11:19 pm
(Of course, all other things are never equal, which is why single parents and same-sex couples should be considered as adoptive parents.)
That makes no sense.
If they want to be adoptive parents, but they don’t have an appropriate spouse, they should make arrangements for a coparent.
There’s nothing at all inappropriate or unreasonable about expecting people to make themselves ready to care for a child’s needs before they apply to adopt.
On the contrary: what’s unreasonable is to argue that a person who isn’t willing to do this should be considered a good parent. Isn’t the very definition of a good parent someone who is both willing and able to take care of the child’s needs?
This isn’t a question of being a particular race or ethnicity. This is a behavioral choice – one that is directly related to the child’s well-being. If they’re not willing to do what it takes to provide for the child, in what sense can they call themselves equal to parents who are?
July 13th, 2012 | 11:28 pm
So let me get more detailed myself. I’m not terribly bothered by the photographer story. I’m much more bothered by realtors, landlords, hotels, restaurants, etc. I can’t abide those kinds of refused service.
I grew up in a world where people have the right to refuse service to anyone. For any reason.
The alternative is slavery. If I am forced to serve you against my will – because it is “discriminatory” for me to object to your behavior or your morals – then your freedom comes at the expense of mine; your “right to not be discriminated against” comes at the expense of my basic human rights.
It is not clear to me why your rights are worth more than mine, why the desire to exhibit one’s sexuality is more worthy of social protection than the rights of religious conscience, or indeed why the faith-based beliefs of atheists, humanists, and Unitarian Universalists outrank the beliefs of other religions.
If a member of the KKK or a member of Fred Phelps’ church wanted to rent the apartment under your house – and made no secret that he intended to use that space for purposes you find morally repugnant – I bet you wouldn’t like being forced to rent that place against your will. It’s your house, and quite frankly nobody else has a “right” to that space.
July 14th, 2012 | 7:20 am
Blake
There is nothing new about laws requiring those who carry on certain trades to provide services to all-comers, without special contract. The Roman Law that has been adopted in most civilised countries did not allow innkeepers, shippers or livery stables to refuse overcharge travellers, who might otherwise be seen as easy pickings. Cab drivers, plying for hire cannot refuse a fare, a rule that has applied to ferrymen, ship’s pilots, stevedores and wharfingers, time out of mind.
The cab-rank rule applies to advocates, who cannot refuse a brief, unless otherwise engaged. In Scotland, the rule, enshrined in Acts of 1537 and 1587 was justified by an Nineteenth century judge, on the grounds that the public should not be at the mercy of their indolence or capriciousness, as their high fees dispose many to idleness, faction or arrogance. (I am myself an advocate and I have never felt a slave)
Why should a photographer be differently situated?
July 14th, 2012 | 9:37 am
Michael, you used the words “attack mode.” Those are explosive words that must be defended. You have not defended them because they are not true. David asked for a future vision and I gave a very explicit one: fundamental human rights are preserved and there is no marriage for those who do not and never have fit into the classification of what the term “marriage” means. Then you went into details that will take us far from my vision, one invited by David, and then you toss in an ad hominem attack on me when I do not go in your chosen direction.
The excessive expression of anger at those who attempt to protect children from being severely traumatized by being deliberately deprived of a father or a mother by the redefinition of marriage is to be expected.
July 14th, 2012 | 9:41 am
Blake,
“I grew up in a world where people have the right to refuse service to anyone. For any reason”
No Irish Need Apply – those were the good old days alright.
Life was sweet when Harvard didn’t have to apologize for accepting no Jewish students.
“If I am forced to serve you against my will – because it is “discriminatory” for me to object to your behavior or your morals”
In the good old days, Protestants objected strongly to the behavior and morals of the Irish and the Jews. All three objected to the behavior and morals of blacks.
July 14th, 2012 | 10:38 am
Hopefully, Greg Forster and others can come to recognize that there can be no compromise in regard to protecting children from being harmed seriously by the deliberate deprivation of a father or a mother so well documented by secure attachment relationship and other research.
July 14th, 2012 | 2:13 pm
“I grew up in a world where people have the right to refuse service to anyone. For any reason”
No Irish Need Apply – those were the good old days alright.
And yet an Irishman managed to become President of the United States.
And today, the Irish are fully assimilated. That is not despite but because the government did not go around moralizing at everyone about how they ought to share their belongings with the Irish.
It is not legitimately the government’s role to (mis)use its coercive authority to force people to “be nice” to each other. If it were, it would have to use that authority equally to force all citizens to be nice to each other, and the gay man would be as obliged to be nice to the Puritan as vice versa.
Because, when you think of it in more grown-up terms – that is, you recognize the claims of a thing called reciprocity – you begin to see that being nice to each other cuts both ways. Trying to move into an apartment owned by a Puritan – when you know you are going to engage in behaviors that offend Puritans – is not a nice thing to do. It’s a mean, ugly thing to do. You should let the nice Puritan lady have her Puritan place if you want. Who are you to judge her lifestyle?
July 14th, 2012 | 2:14 pm
You should let the nice Puritan lady have her Puritan place if you want.
Meant “if she wants”.
Sorry for the error.
July 14th, 2012 | 2:39 pm
There is nothing new about laws requiring those who carry on certain trades to provide services to all-comers, without special contract.
Some trades? What are the rules governing which trades? Why not all trades?
I could see it being a problem if bankers refuse to service prostitutes. But that doesn’t mean a hotel owners or a landlord should be obliged to rent to a prostitute.
Of course, there’s also a distinction that could and probably should be made between a chain of hotels vs. the six-bedroom bed & breakfast. Likewise, the property management company with three hundred units is in a different position from the landlord renting the granny flat under his house.
But I know someone who just bounced a tenant for marijuana use. It’s in the lease. Does it matter whether marijuana is legal in this person’s state or not?
If my landlord wishes to put it right into their lease that his property is vegetarian or kosher or free of trans-fats or whatever, why should my right to eat bacon double cheeseburgers outrank his right to establish a certain atmosphere?
It is not clear to me why the right to indulge in something in peace ought to be protected under the law, but not equally the right to abstain in peace.
I never once begrudged a kosher Jew for thinking my dietary rules were wrong (even though it implies judgement). I would never try to bring a side of beef onto the property of a zealot vegetarian. Why are those who abstain not worth every bit as much respect?
July 15th, 2012 | 6:21 am
Blake
I would have thought that the rationale of the old laws was clear enough from the list I gave.
The innkeeper, the livery stable and the ferryman serve travellers, who are often strangers in need of shelter and can easily be exploited. The same is true of the harbour pilot, the wharfinger and stevedore. who often serve foreign vessels.
The cab driver is licensed to serve the public. He enjoys a species of monopoly and accepting all comers is the condition of his enjoying it. The same is true of advocates.
Similar considerations would apply to “natural monopolies” such as utility companies and railways.
Here in Scotland, professional bodies, such as the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons have long required their members to treat all who tender their proper fee on a first come, first served basis. It is the price they pay for their charter of privileges.
So, why not a photographer?
July 15th, 2012 | 7:12 am
Fitzgibbons,
“Michael, you used the words “attack mode.” Those are explosive words that must be defended. You have not defended them because they are not true.”
I have not defended my words because no one has asked me to do so until now. But I am happy to explain why I described your response in this way now that you have asked. My description of your approach to discussion was based on comments like the following:
“It is a world of ATTACK on faith, on secular tradition, and ultimately on the human rights of children. David’s future portrait is sheer fantasy INTENT ON LULLING PEOPLE into a false sense of security for children and for the continued expression of traditional faith”
I don’t believe that I am “attacking” (your word) faith, secular tradition, or human rights. I believe that you understand the exercise of faith, secular tradition, and human rights differently than I do, which is to say that every time a photographer exercises his faith by refusing to photograph a lesbian couple I believe that the couple has lost some of their human dignity while you do not.
Even though you and I believe define human dignity differently here, I would not say that your position is an “attack on human dignity.” I would say that when faith and dignity clash there’s always a difficult judgment to be made about which value to prioritize. A civil society will try to figure out together which value should be prioritized in any given situation. An uncivil society will draw lines in the sand, ask people to choose sides, accuse the other side of acting in bad faith, etc. In short, all of the tactics we’ve seen by partisans in the culture war.
You employ one of those tactics in the next sentence when you accuse David of “intending to lull people into a false sense of security for children.” David’s words might have that effect, but it is uncharitable for you to accuse him of “intending” to lull. The difference is that you imply that he desires to hurt children. This kind of implication of bad faith is common in culture warriors, and it is why I encourage people to break free of the culture war mentality. It is also why I was so pleased to see Forster’s article.
“David asked for a future vision and I gave a very explicit one: fundamental human rights are preserved and there is no marriage for those who do not and never have fit into the classification of what the term “marriage” means.”
I don’t find your vision explicit at all. In fact, it’s fairly vague. You described your vision as this: “All persons including those with same-sex attraction receive true human rights (fair wage, housing, dignity). But no marriage.”
What does it mean, for example, to say that gays will receive true human rights in housing? Two people on “your side” have spoken on this issue. Linda has said that human dignity includes the right of privacy, which means that a lesbian couple should be able to buy a house or rent an apartment with no questions asked. Blake, meanwhile, believes that human dignity includes the value of reciprocity and that anyone should feel free to deny someone housing because they don’t share their morality, whether that morality is expressed in their sexuality, religion, or skin color.
So, where do you stand? Do you agree with Linda, Blake, or take some other position? Your answer will help explain what exactly you mean by human dignity.
“you toss in an ad hominem attack on me when I do not go in your chosen direction”
I don’t see that I’ve made an ad hominem attack in any of my comments to you. if you can show me where I have, I’ll be happy to apologize.
“The excessive expression of anger at those who attempt to protect children from being severely traumatized by being deliberately deprived of a father or a mother by the redefinition of marriage is to be expected”
Instead of discussing ideas on their merits, you’ve decided to psychoanalyze me. This is a typical culture warrior approach to disagreement. Instead of engaging in conversation, the other side is described as pathological.
July 15th, 2012 | 4:20 pm
Blake,
“Because, when you think of it in more grown-up terms – that is, you recognize the claims of a thing called reciprocity – you begin to see that being nice to each other cuts both ways.”
Indeed it does, Blake, being nice to one another is a fine gift to give.
Linda thinks of reciprocity being the gift of privacy. She won’t ask about what you’re doing in the house you buy, the apartment you rent, after you go home from work, or who exactly is in your family photographs.
Michael PS thinks of reciprocity as the ancient gift of hospitality. Treat all travelers the same, and treat all as travelers. When you travel, others will treat you the same.
You seem to think of reciprocity as mutual distance. I won’t move into your neighborhood, and you won’t move into mine.
Why you think your form of reciprocity is more “grown-up” and “nice” than the others remains puzzling.
July 15th, 2012 | 5:04 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“deliberately deprived of a father or a mother by the redefinition of marriage is to be expected”
The idea that gay marriage deliberately deprives children of a mother or father mistakes one situation for all cases.
Children enter gay families in one of three ways. Sometimes, someone will marry, have children, and then divorce and start a gay relationship. These children are not deprived of either a mother or father any more than any child who parents have divorced.
Other times, gay couples will adopt. If you want to stop gay couples from adopting, then you’ll have to win two arguments. You’ll have to explain first why you have tolerated singles adopting children for so many decades and second why requiring adoptive parents to be of opposite sexes is more important than so many other qualities adoptive parents are NOT required to have.
Finally, gay couples will employ a surrogate of some kind. Only in this third situation can you plausibly claim that gay marriage deprives children of a mother or father since adoption by singles has been allowed for decades. If you want to stop gay couples from employing surrogates, then you’ll have to explain why straight couples are allowed to or you’ll have to discontinue the practice for all. Me, I’d prefer that no one use a surrogate of any kind.
July 15th, 2012 | 10:23 pm
Other times, gay couples will adopt. If you want to stop gay couples from adopting, then you’ll have to win two arguments.
I don’t want to stop anyone from adopting.
I only want gays to recognize the child’s needs as being as important as their own.
Since they themselves argue that relationships are important, why do they deny the child’s relationships as important?
And since they themselves argue that marriage is not procreative, why do more of them insist on trying to adopt with another person of the same sex, while only a minority choose a coparenting arrangement with a member of the opposite sex?
If marriage were genuinely not procreative, there could be nothing threatening about loving one person while recognizing someone else as your child’s father or mother. But instead, they choose lies and cruelty. WHY?
July 15th, 2012 | 10:57 pm
You seem to think of reciprocity as mutual distance. I won’t move into your neighborhood, and you won’t move into mine.
I think of reciprocity as the Golden Rule.
I’ll recognize your right to indulge if you’ll recognize my right to abstain.
I see by your answer that you’re not prepared to recognize any such thing as a “right to abstain”.
You’ll just ignore the fact that what you want and what I want don’t match. I should just forget what I want and pretend I want what you want.
The problem with that is, it’s not “equality”. Equality requires that you show as much respect to my feelings as you expect me to show to yours. Why do you grudge me this?
We can live together if we both want the same things. But if what you want is in direct conflict with what I want, I do not consider “okay, so I’ll let you do things my way” an acceptable compromise.
It should be noted that I personally don’t care about gay sex. What bothers me is the use of aggression, the in-your-face disrespect of boundaries.
If gays would restrict what they do to the bedroom, there would be no problem because nobody would know what they do, but gay rights activists tell us that is not enough for them, so it’s sort of telling that that people continue to cling to the myth that any conflict in the “culture wars” occurs because Puritans are barging into gay bedrooms. Consider the gay pride parade: what fun would it be if there were nothing controversial about wearing inappropriate or “kinky” clothes in public? The ability to appropriate public space – and violate the peoples’ sexual boundaries of anyone who challenges you – is the whole point. It’s sort of like an Orangeman’s parade manned by men of the sort that used to be found wearing trenchcoats: either you let my kids see my body like this or I’m going to show them anyway. Really, the aggressive nature of it is far more disturbing IMO than anything.
Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church excepted, gays are the ones justifying tactical uses of violation and emotional abuse to get their way.
July 15th, 2012 | 11:10 pm
Why should a photographer be differently situated?
There are at least three differences in the situation between doctors & cabbies vs. photographers:
1. Crucial (life sustaining) services – if a doctor or a cab driver turns you away, it could result in real harm – it could even result in someone’s death.
2. Urgency – Doctors and cabs both provide services that are time sensitive. Photographers are traditionally booked well in advance.
3. Public support – doctors rely on public funds in many ways (just one example: hospital admitting privileges include a number of state-funded services, even if it’s a private hospital). Cab drivers rely on public roads.
Discrimination involving public funding is different in kind. The act of accepting public funding – or a license that allows the licensee access to publicly funded privileges – is what gives the government the right to set conditions that are not necessarily fair or reasonable in a private contract context.
With all that said, we are supposed to have the right to freedom of association, so the burden of proof should be the other way around. I can see why doctors should be forced to serve all comers, but I have yet to hear a good argument why that should apply to private contracts involving services that aren’t life sustaining, time sensitive, or publicly supported?
July 16th, 2012 | 9:21 am
Thank you, Michael, for the spirited debate over the past days. Regarding your most recent post in which you challenge my view that same-sex “marriage” deprives children of a mother and a father, I want to make one crucial point. You describe a number of situations in which children grow up without a mother and a father. It is true that children grow up in a number of unfortunate situations, and in each case that you describe, when a child grows up without a mother and a father in a stable family context, it indeed is very unfortunate for the child. Why? Because each child has a right to both a mother and a father and when this is deliberately taken away from a child, it is unjust. By the word “deliberately,” I mean that the mother or father or both, through their self-chosen will, decide that the child will not be raised by both of them.
Marriage by its very definition preserves this intact status of being raised by a mother and a father. It is only when the marriage is broken by the will of the parents that the child experiences injustice. (The natural death of one or both parents is not an injustice because the deprivation of one of the parents is not willed by them).
Because marriage by its very definition preserves the intact status of being raised by a mother and a father, every–every–situation in which it is willed that the child grow up without one of the parents is a failure for the child(ren). It is a failure of the marriage and it is a failure to achieve justice for the children.
Here now is my crucial point: You and others now want to define marriage so that it deliberately includes a failure: a willed separation of the child from one of the parents and therefore a willed injustice and serious psychological harm for the child.
Readers, please take note: same-sex “marriage” is a situation in which society wills to deprive a child of the essential need for and right a mother or a father. It is a willed failure of what marriage is and a willed failure to uphold justice for children. Is this what you want as your legacy, to have created a social structure in which marriage, as part of what it is at its core, deliberately and willfully harms children by depriving them of a mother and a father and then calls it good? This is David’s brave new world that Michael is defending with every ounce of his being.
July 16th, 2012 | 9:40 am
I can see why doctors should be forced to serve all comers, but I have yet to hear a good argument why that should apply to private contracts involving services that aren’t life sustaining, time sensitive, or publicly supported?
I don’t see why blacks can’t ride in the back of the bus. They get to their destination just as fast as white people riding in the front of the bus. And as for the movies, lots of people like to sit in balconies. And as long as there are enough drinking fountains for blacks, why should they care whether they get to drink from drinking fountains for whites? Nobody black person ever died of thirst from walking a few paces farther to their own drinking fountain.
Cab drivers rely on public roads.
Whereas, of course, wedding photographers use transporters to beam from their studios to wedding locations.
Actually, the standard for deciding whether anti-discrimination laws apply is not whether a service is essential, or life-saving, or uses public roads, but whether it is a “public accommodation.”
July 16th, 2012 | 10:19 am
David, why are you equating same-sex “marriage” with the fight for African-American civil rights? You will have to defend the indefensible for anyone to take this rhetoric seriously. Even the African-American community is aghast that gays and lesbians are trying to equate same-sex “marriage” with the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. No one is contesting the right of gays and lesbians to fair wages and standard housing. These are fundamental human rights. The right to marriage is reserved for people of a certain age and for one man and one woman. You are introducing into this equation a deliberate, willed failure: the legislation of a social structure that willfully deprives a child of his biological mother and father. This is not a right, but instead is the antithesis of children’s rights. Therefore, please do not bring in the legitimate right of African-Americans for common human decency into your quest to deliberately create injustice for children.
July 16th, 2012 | 10:30 am
I am saddened to read the sarcasm posted by David Nichol, especially in the context of knowing that he has read all of the comments posted here and cannot have failed to notice that several posts represent a struggle to develop some distinction between public and private services. As surely he must well know, developing a position takes time and deserves a civil response.
Mockery that compares protection of privacy protection with those who would condemn certain people to inferior, degrading practices (such as those that were in place against persons of African ancestry in our nation) that are unworthy of any civilized society seems unnecessary and unworthy of a serious person.
This is especially jarring in that it follows a careful explanation of issues affecting children and their best good posted by Dr. Rick Fitzgerald.
Before reading that last post, I had intended to post a comment on the fact that David Nichol, Michael, and some others have, so to speak, held up a mirror to the culture that in currently on offer in our society. It is not possible to dismiss the importance of the reflection they allow all to see. That reflection shows clearly what our society has become with implications for all people of all good will but especially those who purport to hold to Catholic teaching. Their subject is, for one thing, the destructive effect of divorce. They “hold up a mirror” to a group of people who hold that marriage between a man and a woman is life-giving; a great gift and a solemn responsibility. They observe that this standard has virtually disappeared among people of all faiths and all political philosophies. They do not say, in so many words, that they do not believe we understand what Catholics, in particular, profess to believe, but that is, in my opinion, the irresistible conclusion for those who read their writings. And it is a sobering conclusion.
July 16th, 2012 | 10:59 am
This is David’s brave new world that Michael is defending with every ounce of his being.
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
Here’s the problem I see with your position. While you see heterosexual marriage as it exists in the United States today as a safe haven for children, there are no restraints on what heterosexuals can do regarding children outside of marriage and no guarantees of children’s rights within marriage.
Forty-one percent of children are conceived outside of wedlock. Is anybody willing to put any constraints on heterosexuals to in any way try to guarantee opposite-sex, two parent families? Of course not.
With all 50 states having now adopted no-fault divorce, heterosexuals have given themselves the freedom to abandon a marriage whenever they feel like it, with no protections for the children. Is anyone willing to limit the freedom of married heterosexuals to divorce in circumstances when it would put children at risk? No, of course not.
With the reproductive technologies available today, married couples (along with anyone else) may create babies an almost infinite number of ways. A wife can be artificially inseminated with sperm from a sperm bank, or with frozen sperm from her own husband after he is deceased. A married couple can obtain donated sperm, a donated egg, and have a surrogate bear the child.
Readers, please take note: same-sex “marriage” is a situation in which society wills to deprive a child of the essential need for and right a mother or a father.
Actually, marriage and childbearing are two separate (although closely related) issued. Same-sex couples no more need legal marriage to adopt a child or arrange for the conception of a child any more than opposite-sex couples or single individuals (particularly single women). There is absolutely nothing that stands in the way of, say, black women bearing the majority of their children out of wedlock.
For better or for worse, America is a free country, and one of the ways in which it is free is that the government doesn’t tell people how they may and may not reproduce. Given the fact that there are virtually no restrictions on what opposite-sex couples (married or not) can do, it seems to me simply discrimination to oppose same-sex marriage on the grounds that it somehow protects children. Children of heterosexuals, married are not, have no protected “right” to a mother and a father. On the other hand, legalizing same-sex marriage is not legalizing the creating or raising of children by same-sex couples.
Also, there is simply no proof that children raised in stable homes headed by same-sex couples are at a disadvantage. There simply is not enough data to say. Some might argue that decisions about same-sex marriage should be delayed until all the evidence is in from the social sciences, but was there any significant movement to delay no-fault divorce before it could be thoroughly studied? This is not China. We do not have policies on who may have children, how many, and how they should be raised. We also do not do studies and regulate interfaith marriages, interracial marriages, or any other kind of marriages bases on their impact on the children.
July 16th, 2012 | 11:37 am
David, why are you equating same-sex “marriage” with the fight for African-American civil rights? You will have to defend the indefensible for anyone to take this rhetoric seriously.
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
I said absolutely nothing in my post about equating same-sex marriage with the fight for African-American civil rights. My point was that Blake’s criteria for what should and should not be covered by anti-discrimination laws was a retreat from the civil-rights movement and from a standard that we established over four decades ago. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 offered much broader protections than Blake’s criteria would result in.
As I have pointed out previously, same-sex marriage is not at issue in the lawsuit involving the wedding photographer and the lesbian couple in New Mexico. There is no same-sex marriage in New Mexico. There are no civil unions or domestic partnerships in New Mexico. The couple was having a commitment ceremony. Same-sex marriage has nothing at all to do with it.
July 16th, 2012 | 11:46 am
I am saddened to read the sarcasm posted by David Nichol, especially in the context of knowing that he has read all of the comments posted here and cannot have failed to notice that several posts represent a struggle to develop some distinction between public and private services. As surely he must well know, developing a position takes time and deserves a civil response.
Linda Wolpert Smith,
I do my best to avoid sarcasm, because I usually regret it, but so far I am not regretting my post to Blake. As I said to Dr. Fitzgibbons, my comments to Blake had nothing to do with same-sex marriage. They have nothing to do with the rights of children. I was pointing out, with some exasperation, that what anti-discrimination laws have covered for decades are public accommodations. Unless you believe we need to rethink over four decades of law and litigation over what anti-discrimination laws rightfully protect, you will reject Blake’s attempt to come up with a new set of criteria. Now, it would be quite another matter if someone had argued that anti-discrimination laws shouldn’t cover gays and lesbians (which is the position of the Catholic Church). I wouldn’t agree with that either, but at least it wouldn’t be an argument that rolled back the clock to the 1950s.
July 16th, 2012 | 12:42 pm
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
I think the following is very strong, but I want to see if I can flesh it out a bit.
Those who want to redefine marriage will point out that these couples can’t produce a child so it doesn’t willfully deprive a child of anything. But rather, it produces more potential parenting relationships that might be able to give an orphan a home who might otherwise not have one (however, no one on the redefinition side is talking about restricting who they can adopt only children that truly no one else wants).
I use a similar argument as you do when I say that they want to redefine marriage so that it has nothing in particular to do with a man and a woman and the creation of new life. And for the consequences of that, I often use Maggie Gallagher’s story about the kid on the plane.
Both your argument and mine adhere to the inarguable point that marriage only came into existence because it takes a man and a woman to create new life. No need to repeat the arguments they use to dance around that; everyone has them memorized at this point.
I THINK both of our arguments demand that we start with that basic point. My argument states that point, and immediately establishes that we ARE talking about the redefinition of marriage and we cannot possibly be talking about including homosexuals in this thing called marriage. But my argument still leaves plenty of room in the early stages for someone to say “okay, we’re redefining marriage…so?” So at that point I have to enter more extended arguments.
Your argument immediately hits upon a serious problem of redefining marriage, but a listener unschooled in what you are saying won’t be able to connect the dots. The best you can hope for is an invitation to explain yourself.
Maybe you have a better argument; I don’t know. Or maybe the even better way to restate your argument goes something like this: “If we decide to redefine marriage, the only idea that redefinition can’t tolerate–however we redefine it–is the idea that it is in a child’s best interests to be raised by his natural parents in an intact family.”
Now that statement would still get a reaction along the lines of “What?! How would two gay guys that want the government to acknowledge there relationship as a marriage have anything to do with that?!” To which I would respond that marriage only exists because a man and a woman can create new life, and therefore whether or not offspring are produced that is the overriding purpose of marriage. I would note that Illinois band Catholic Charities from performing state adoption services the day after our civil unions bill passed because suddenly they were deemed not to be in the best interests of children. I would say that action was necessary and inevitable even if no gay couple in Illinois ever adopts.
Sorry for the long stream of conscious reply…I just wanted to see if I could flesh out what you are saying a little better.
July 16th, 2012 | 1:05 pm
David, you realize, do you not, that you are trying to make your own case out of chaos. You are arguing this way: Some traditional marriages are in disarray, so why not include one more chaotic situation in which children are denied the right to one mother and one father in a stable situation?
To say that marriage and child-bearing are not intimately connected is to misunderstand marriage. Marriage without children is the exception, not the rule. It is 100% the rule in same-sex “marriages” that children will be deprived of one mother and one father.
Proof and rights are not the same, as you know. The children’s rights are being violated with or without the science. And, as you say, the science has not yet been done. Given that we do not know from a scientific standpoint, then why press your point for the kind of “marriage” that cannot actually exist because marriage is and always has been an institution in which man and woman can mutually support one another in the raising of their biological offspring.
The exceptions do not make the case. Depriving children of their basic rights and, thereby, exposing them to serious psychological harm does not make the case.
July 16th, 2012 | 2:23 pm
David, you realize, do you not, that you are trying to make your own case out of chaos. You are arguing this way: Some traditional marriages are in disarray, so why not include one more chaotic situation in which children are denied the right to one mother and one father in a stable situation?
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
No, that is actually not my argument. I am not saying that things are so bad, why not make them just a little bit worse. I am saying there are no controls over how heterosexuals may produce and raise children, and there aren’t going to be any controls over how heterosexuals produce and raise children. Anything a same-sex couple might do to conceive or adopt a child can be done by any opposite-sex couple, married or unmarred. I am saying we have a government in this country that allows the maximum amount of freedom to parents and would-be parents. If there are things you consider harmful to children, then by all means try to restrict those things. But it strikes me as discriminatory (and unjust) to use as an argument against same-sex marriage the pure conjecture that the things you object to might increase if same-sex marriage were permitted. If you oppose reproductive technologies involving egg and sperm donation or in vitro fertilization, oppose them directly. Don’t oppose same-sex marriage, which may or may not increase the use of those technologies. As I understand your position, you would oppose a woman (even a married woman) conceiving by artificial insemination using sperm from a sperm bank, because the child could never know, let alone be raised by, its natural father. Yet instead of going after that practice directly, you argue that a lesbian married couple might use that technique to have children. Therefore, you have one reason to oppose same-sex marriage. There was a report in the New York Times awhile ago of one sperm donor who had fathered 150 children. Instead of focusing on an issue like that, it seems to me you are saying a lesbian couple might have a child from such a donor, therefore we must oppose same-sex marriage. (And of course any lesbian couple or lesbian individual could do the same thing without legal marriage, so it is not even same-sex marriage that is a precondition.) You would deny same-sex marriage to gay or lesbian couples who never intend to have children, who already have children through a previous (heterosexual) marriage, or who could adopt (were they not in a relationship) as single parents.
A third of adoptions from foster care in the United States are by single parents, and yet you argue against same-sex marriage on the grounds that a same-sex couple might adopt. Single-parent adoption “deprives” a child of the alleged right to be raised by his own biological parents and the alleged right to be raised by both a man and a woman. You would oppose same-sex marriage on the grounds that a same-sex married couple might adopt a child who would then be deprived of those two alleged rights, but you presumably don’t oppose single-parent adoption, at least in cases where it’s a choice between a child having an adoptive parent or staying in foster care. So why would a same-sex couple be objectionable as an alternative to single-parent adoption? I can only presume the reason is that you don’t want children raised by gay people.
I am not at all opposed to protecting the rights of children, and I sincerely wish that every child could be brought up in a stable home. But it seems to me that preventing or allowing same-sex marriage will make no difference as to how children are conceived and raised.
So I am not arguing that things are so bad now that it’s no big deal not to let them get worse. I am arguing that preventing same-sex marriage will do nothing to protect children, but there are many, many things that actually could be done to protect children, and it makes no sense to me to focus energies against same-sex marriage rather than directly in favor of protecting children.
Why not make it a law, for example, that no reproductive technologies may be used to help unmarried people conceive children? This would have prevented “Octomom” from conceiving 14 children (including octuplets) as an unmarried woman. Why not forbid single-parent adoption? Why not make it more difficult for married couples to give up their children for adoption, or more difficult for married couples with children to divorce? Why not prevent sterile heterosexual couples from marrying, since they are likely to want to adopt? There are many measures that could be taken to prevent the kinds of things that you see as potential problems arising from same-sex marriage, but most of them would be seen as such terrible intrusions on the freedom of (heterosexual) people to run their lives as they see fit that they have little or not chance of being taken seriously. And yet you argue against same-sex marriage because some same-sex couples might do what heterosexual couples or single individuals would never be prevented from doing.
July 16th, 2012 | 2:35 pm
Blake,
“I don’t want to stop anyone from adopting. I only want gays to recognize the child’s needs as being as important as their own”
Please clarify. You are against gay marriage, but you are ok with gay couples adopting children.
“I see by your answer that you’re not prepared to recognize any such thing as a “right to abstain”
I don’t see that in my answer.
“Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church excepted, gays are the ones justifying tactical uses of violation and emotional abuse to get their way”
This is a culture war tactic. You refuse to generalize about “your side” and make Westboro an exception, but you are happy to generalize about the “other side.” The fact is that there are extremists on both sides who cross the line of acceptable behavior and distract conversation from the issues. Why can’t you simply discuss the issues?
July 16th, 2012 | 2:47 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“By the word “deliberately,” I mean that the mother or father or both, through their self-chosen will, decide that the child will not be raised by both of them”
I’m glad to see that you’ve placed the “deliberate” nature of gay family formation with the birth parents and not with the gay couple themselves.
(1) What do you recommend for the gay family formed by remarriage? What should the person who has discovered that she is gay do? Should she stay in the marriage, or divorce and remarry a lesbian?
(2) The gay couple who adopts is blameless of the “deliberately” broken family, and sometimes, of course, no one is to blame for the broken family if death has intervened. How do you justify preventing them from adopting when you allow single people to adopt?
(3) As for surrogacy, I’m against that for all.
July 16th, 2012 | 4:28 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“Readers, please take note: same-sex “marriage” is a situation in which society wills to deprive a child of the essential need for and right a mother or a father.”
I think you need to qualify what you mean by an “essential need.” “Essential” implies basics like food and water. I think two parents are usually far better than one, and I think a mother and father are, on average, better than same-sex parents. But I also believe that on average means little in human life. There’s a large gap between the optimal conditions for children and the particular conditions for any given child or family.
The day that society has enough evidence to prevent certain straight couples from raising children is the day that society can prevent all gay couples from raising children.
July 16th, 2012 | 4:37 pm
Fitzgibbons,
“Is this what you want as your legacy, to have created a social structure in which marriage, as part of what it is at its core, deliberately and willfully harms children by depriving them of a mother and a father and then calls it good? This is David’s brave new world that Michael is defending with every ounce of his being”
I’m disappointed to see this comment because it is pure culture war rhetoric. Both David and I have asked questions and made statements based on your ideas, but you’re indulging in the kind of institutionalization of enmity that Forster is describing, casting us as the bad guy.
Did you fail to notice David’s desire to reduce the number of out-of-wedlock births? Did you fail to notice my desire to end surrogate arrangements?
One of the problems with culture war rhetoric is that it turns away allies on some issues for the sake of righteous pronouncements on a single, prized issue.
July 16th, 2012 | 4:42 pm
Linda,
“Before reading that last post, I had intended to post a comment on the fact that David Nichol, Michael, and some others have, so to speak, held up a mirror to the culture that in currently on offer in our society.”
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say in the paragraph that begins with this sentence. Can you explain further? I can’t tell whether you are trying to criticize us, praise us, or say something else.
July 16th, 2012 | 5:02 pm
Douglas,
“Both your argument and mine adhere to the inarguable point that marriage only came into existence because it takes a man and a woman to create new life. No need to repeat the arguments they use to dance around that; everyone has them memorized at this point”
I hope you hear the contradiction in what you are saying. Logically, you can’t claim that something is “inarguable” and then claim that some people have argued against it.
Rhetorically, practically, and politically, however, the word “inarguable” means that you have decided not to pay any attention to people making to a particular argument.
For example, I believe that Al Qaeda’s responsibility for 9/11 is inarguable. Someone can argue until they’re blue that Israel or Bush was behind the attack, but I’m not listening.
But when it comes to deeper political debates, it is a culture war tactic to depict the “other side” as dancing around inarguable points.
Until you rewrite Genesis to say that God created man and woman in order to create new life, I’ll continue to believe that women were created because “it is not good that the man should be alone.” Marriage came into existence because people are driven to find someone outside their birth family to be a helper and end their loneliness.
July 16th, 2012 | 5:12 pm
David,
Your 2:23 p.m. post is the best and fullest explanation I’ve seen you give of the contradictions made by people who make this set of arguments against gay marriage.
July 16th, 2012 | 5:42 pm
Re: Question from Michael: I was indeed trying to praise your willingness to confront serious believers especially Roman Catholics with the fact that our behavior is not measuring up to our beliefs – that this failure on our part has harmed others who might otherwise support marriage as both a partnership and a life-giving union with solemn responsibilities. Having the courage to confront others with the truth was a difficult task assigned to the Hebrew prophets.
July 17th, 2012 | 7:04 am
Linda,
Thanks. I wish I understood a little better what you’re seeing, but I feel I should clarify that I’m a “serious believer” myself. Raised Roman Catholic, I’m now a member of the United Methodist Church and attend a reconciling congregation, which is a network of churches that have accepted gays as full members of the congregation. These men and women worship every week with us, participate in all the various devotional and service work we do, and have contributed to every aspect of our communal life. Those who have children have raised them along with us.
The gay families I am close to have supported my wife and children as we have them. One thing that has brought us especially close to one couple is that we have both adopted. We talk about the normal things that all couples discuss—how to grow in our faith, how to grow in our relationships, how to raise children.
One especially refreshing aspect of our conversation is that they steer us away from gender stereotypes. With straight friends, someone is bound to say something like “you know how women are,” but phrases like that don’t come up in our conversations. We tend to see our spouses as individuals who behave in ways that are their own.
Some people describe gay marriage as an innovation, but these couples are clearly already married in all but name. In the meantime, they have to live without the privileges that state-sanctioned marriage gives my family.
July 17th, 2012 | 7:28 am
David, you have de-coupled marriage and the vital tasks of child-bearing and child-rearing. Thus, we are now talking past each other. My question, which might help us talk with each other, is this: What is the purpose of same-sex marriage? What is its end-point?
July 17th, 2012 | 10:02 am
David, you have de-coupled marriage and the vital tasks of child-bearing and child-rearing.
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
No, I think marriage is extremely important to childbearing and child rearing. See the new post Families and Inequalities, which is about a story in the New York Times contrasting two families, one with a mother and father, the other a single-parent family headed by only a mother. It should be required reading for anyone who pretends to care about the state of America today.
My question, which might help us talk with each other, is this: What is the purpose of same-sex marriage? What is its end-point?
The purpose of same-sex marriage is to allow same-sex couples who already have relationships that are economically and emotionally very similar to those of opposite-sex couples to form stable households that are good for both the couples involved and for society in general. Our society and our laws do not distinguish between heterosexual married couples who can and/or do have children and those who can’t and/or don’t when it comes to marriage. Procreation and child rearing are extremely important aspects of marriage, but they are by no means the only important aspects.
I will say tentatively, reserving the right to change my mind at any point, that I am not absolutely convinced it is necessary for same-sex marriage to be called marriage or to be exactly identical to existing marriage. However, it seems to me that simply opening marriage to same-sex couples is preferable to creating a new marriage-like institution for same-sex couples. So I am quite willing to defend and advocate same-sex marriage.
July 17th, 2012 | 11:06 pm
Thank you, David, for the clarification of the purpose of same-sex marriage. You state the following:
“The purpose of same-sex marriage is to allow same-sex couples who already have relationships that are economically and emotionally very similar to those of opposite-sex couples to form stable households…”
Let us now see if that sentence still works when we include those who currently practice polyamory (as many men and women as they like being part of the “couple.”)
“The purpose of polyamorous marriage is to allow the members of the polyamorous group who already have relationships that are economically and emotionally very similar to those of opposite-sex couples to form stable households…”
A rebuttal to my position is that this will not equal two and only two people and so it will not look exactly like marriage between heterosexual couples. A rejoinder to the rebuttal is this: You, David, expressly state that same-sex “marriage” will not look exactly like heterosexual marriage and that is fine with you. Polyamorous “marriage” will not look exactly like same-sex “marriage,” but so what? It will be similar in many ways: love, commitment, the call for marital rights, the need for economic stability among the members of the group, the right to raise children, the right to respect in the community. These are all fine-looking purposes on the superficial surface, but none of these purposes are what marriage actually is: one man and one woman mutually supporting one another in the bearing and raising of children.
Of course, when we substitute polyamory for David’s words regarding same-sex “marriage” we unambiguously are talking the slippery slope here, in which “marriage” then degenerates into whoever loves whomever else. Vice President Biden very clearly stated that, right? “Who do you love?,” Mr. Biden said. He is no philosopher.
Readers, please see what is happening here. “Marriage” between two men (or two women) is being encourage for two reasons: 1) the two love each other (and this is a sufficient purpose for “marriage,” along with economic stability), and 2) many heterosexual couples fail in the marriage and so the children are not being raised by their biological parents anyway.
In the case of point 1, the slippery slope is logically present. In the case of point 2, because marriage between one man and one woman does not always remain stable and the children sometimes are left without a mother or a father, why not extend this failure for the child’s rights to other failures (by “failure” I mean not insuring the child’s rights), such as same-sex “marriage” in which 100% of the children will be without one mother and one father. By David’s wording, there is now absolutely nothing wrong with polyamorous “marriage,” which, if we follow the logic of this, may be better than same-sex “marriage” in that the biological mother and father may be part of the polyamorous living arrangement.
Here is the bottom line: Marriage is one and only one thing: Man and woman in a stable bond for the purpose of sharing love and comfort and bearing and raising children for the good of society. When the essence of what marriage is then is altered, the definition breaks down and the slippery slope happens, further usurping the children’s basic rights.
For the sake of the rights of children, we must stand firm regarding what the essence of marriage is. My post here is to warn you that alterations to this essence will result in the slippery slope, opening up polyamorous marriages (the logic of this is precise and correct, especially based on David’s own words), and it will result in the basic human rights of children being violated (which is a matter, not of logic, but of mathematics) in that 100% of the children in a same-sex couple arrangement will be left without either the mother or the father.
July 18th, 2012 | 11:31 am
Dr. Rick Fitzgibbons,
You seem now to be saying that same-sex marriage must be opposed because it creates a slippery slope to polygamy. Perhaps you could explain why you oppose polygamy. I don’t see how it can possibly be denied that polygamy is marriage. Even the old online Catholic Encyclopedia recognizes polygamous marriage:
If you search through the online Catholic Encyclopedia, you will find that it argues polygamy is not against natural law. For example
Polygamy in no way violates your insistence that children must be raised by their biological fathers and mothers.
Please explain what your objection to polygamy is.
100% of the children in a same-sex couple arrangement will be left without either the mother or the father.
If you are talking about biological parents, then of course it is also true that 100% of the children in opposite-sex marriages in which one of the spouses is sterile will necessarily be without either a biological father, mother, or both. It would be discrimination to prevent same-sex couples from marrying and having children unless infertile heterosexual couples were also prevented from marrying and having children as well. Your objection is not to same-sex marriage, per se. It is to children being raised by people who are not their biological parents. If you really want a campaign against that, it is going to affect far more heterosexual couples and single individuals than will ever be affected by a mere ban on same-sex marriage, since the percentage of gays and lesbians in the population is so small, and since it is unlikely (it seems so far) that gays and lesbians will enter into legal marriages at the same rate as heterosexuals. You have given no grounds on which you could object to a same-sex marriage by a couple who did not intend to raise children. Your objection is that if same-sex marriage is allowed, it can be assumed that some same-sex couples will adopt or have their own children. But since being legally married is not necessary to adopt or conceive children, there is no way to be sure that preventing same-sex marriage will do anything at all to prevent children from being raised by same-sex couples or others who are not their biological parents.
July 18th, 2012 | 6:46 pm
Thank you, David, for your challenges to my earlier post. I appreciate the civility in which this discussion is taking place. You cite the Catholic Encyclopedia, but I must remind you that you took your statements out of context. Farther down the page you will read this, which puts to rest any notion that the Catholic Church approves of polygamy, polyandry, or any form of marriage other than the monogamous union between one man and one woman. Now for the quotation, very important for our discussion:
“The experience of the race, particularly in its movement toward and its progress in civilization, has approved monogamy for the simple reason that monogamy is in harmony with the essential and immutable elements of human nature. Taking the word natural in its full sense, we may unhesitatingly affirm that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage.”
The Catholic Church’s stance, confirmed by studying historical trends, is this: Monogamy between one man and one woman is a sign of the development of humankind toward greater good, greater altruism. All other forms of union are, well, more developmentally stunted than this.
Regarding your other issues, I must reiterate that you are trying to draw rules from exceptions, which you have done repeatedly. You argue as follows: There is a failure in the monogamous union in this and that way, therefore society needs to make one more exception with the failure—yes, failure—of providing one mother and one father to the child by allowing same-sex “marriage.” David, this kind of argument just will not work because you cannot make a rule out of an exception. You cannot justify various forms of “marriage” other than heterosexual monogamy by saying that even in heterosexual monogamy some children are raised without a mother or a father.
I will reiterate: Marriage is what? Marriage is and can only be this: Man and woman in a stable union with the purpose of mutual support as they bear and raise children. Whenever this definition is altered then the purpose of marriage is altered. When the purpose of marriage is altered, then “marriage” is opened to all kinds of unions which share the purpose of love and economic stability and the like, without the key issue of one mother and one father bearing and raising children. It opens the door for a return to polygamy and polyandry (which civilized societies are leaving behind, right? You cited the Catholic Encyclopedia as definitive evidence of your views. Thus, I presume you will accept the rest of that article that clearly states that polygamy and polyandry are developmentally inferior forms of union).
It opens the door to slide down the slippery slope of man-boy love. After all, not allowing boys to marry could be seen as age discrimination in an uncivilized world, don’t you think? And as a final note, David: The purpose of marriage for a 41-year-old man and a 10-year-old boy could be exactly—exactly—the same purpose as you have outlined for same-sex “marriage.”
Readers, where do you stand, in the civilized world or more primitive, undeveloped world that ignores the basic human rights of children in favor of adults “wants”? It is time to decide and to act.
July 19th, 2012 | 6:34 am
Fitzgibbons,
“it will result in the basic human rights of children being violated (which is a matter, not of logic, but of mathematics) in that 100% of the children in a same-sex couple arrangement will be left without either the mother or the father”
There is an error in your logic. It is a fact that 100% of children will be raised without either a biological mother or father in the home, but gay marriage is not the cause of this lack. You know that gay marriage doesn’t cause the gender imbalance. You correctly observed that “the mother or father or both, through their self-chosen will, decide that the child will not be raised by both of them.” So why do you blame gay couples for the failures of the biological parents?
Let’s examine the three types of gay families again.
When exactly did the lesbian who is raising the child produced from a previous marriage violate the rights of her child? How exactly is her situation different from any straight person who remarries? How can you ban one and not the other?
When exactly did the gay couple violate the rights of the children that they adopted? Why do you allow singles to adopt children but not gay couples? How long must a child wait to be adopted before it is better for him to be adopted by a gay couple than languish in an orphanage or foster care?
One gay couple who worships in my congregation adopted children when both boys were five. How much longer should those boys have bounced from one foster family to another? Who recognized the rights and needs of those two boys before my friends did? Their biological mothers abandoned them, and only one grandmother tepidly helped. No straight woman offered them her love. And yet you argue that the gay couple who has raised them in the church and sent them to college have somehow “ignored the basic human rights of children in favor of adults “wants.” How does your logic make any sense in this situation?
Every child produced by surrogacy is denied at least one of its biological parents? Why do you condone this practice by straight and gay couples but prevent gay couples from marrying and thus bolstering the stability of their home?
If you’re going to stay at all logically consistent in your principles, you’re going to have to (1) ban remarriage for all couples who produce children, (2) prevent adoption by all except straight, married couples, and (3) ban all surrogate arrangements for straight as well as gay couples.
Are you willing to do all that?