Do Rawlsian principles of “political liberalism” demand the legal recognition of same-sex romantic partnerhips as marriages? I suspect that many of Rawls’s conservative critics, as well as his liberal supporters, would suppose that the answer must be yes. (For the conservative critics, that would be one more count against Rawls’s general theory of justice and political morality.) But now comes my former student, Matthew O’Brien, who in a brilliant article just out in the British Journal of American Legal Studies argues that the answer is actually no. In fact, he maintains that Rawlsian principles, rigorously and consistently applied, forbid the re-definition of civil marriage to include same-sex partnerships. The article, titled “Why Liberal Neutrality Prohibits Same-Sex Marriage: Rawls, Political Liberalism, and the Family,” is available online here.
Friday, August 24, 2012, 8:42 AM
August 24th, 2012 | 11:10 am
I’ve read the first few pages, and the word ‘morality’ stands out. But isn’t it important to distinguish an assertion of morality from what is actually moral? If one didn’t, that would open a huge can of worms – allowing arbitrary tyranny that no one would support. For example, what would the Muslim Brotherhood or the Nour Party assert is moral and immoral? Should they be allowed to make laws, simply on their say-so that something is moral or immoral?
August 24th, 2012 | 1:46 pm
No-one will deny that the state has a clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable. It is central to its concern for the upbringing and welfare of the child, for protecting rights and enforcing obligations between family members and to the orderly succession to property.
Marriage meets this need through the provision that the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father.
To date, no better, simpler, less intrusive means have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide.
Opposite-sex unions are, as a class, capable of raising the question of filiation; same-sex unions are not.
August 24th, 2012 | 2:56 pm
And again the child-rearing argument bears its head.
Marriage has been detached from child-rearing for decades in American society. Procreation /=/ marriage. I find this argument wholly uncompelling, and wonder just how aware you can be of society anymore if you bring it up.
Is marriage itself even a necessity in a legal sense for Rawlsians? I actually have a hard time rationalizing opposition to it in Rawlsian thought, because if people were without bias, there is essentially no reason to not have it be legally-recognized. All else that there is seems to be the pseudo-sociological procreation ‘argument’.
August 24th, 2012 | 4:54 pm
Yeah, Adam, again with the kids! How boring and old fashioned is that?
I mean here we’ve had “DECADES” to demonstrate that, contra several-millenias’ worth of a near-universal global practice, society has zero interest in promoting stable procreational families.
And our new insight into sex being all about the adults and nothing about the kids has all turned out so well in these past few decades, that I guess we can leave it at that. All that pseudo-mumbo jumbo about kids and marriage is so yesterday’s news.
Next!!
August 24th, 2012 | 5:03 pm
Thanks to Robert George for pointing out this welcome new article. I fear that Justice Anthony Kennedy will be especially prone to the blandishments of Rawls’s “political liberalism,” which is the generally hidden basis of most same-sex marriage arguments. In skimming the article, I noticed that the author of the article discusses Ralph Wedgwood’s argument for same-sex marriage, which is largely Rawlsian. Last year, when I sent Wedgwood something I wrote in criticism of same-sex marriage, he courteously replied (unlike most academics, including philosophers at supposedly Christian colleges) to my argument. However, I couldn’t figure out from his rather cryptic remarks why he thought the historical association of procreation with marriage was “entirely irrelevant,” as he put it. Was it because of the naturalistic fallacy? I believe so, and I think it is an illegitimate line of reasoning. In the same-sex marriage debate, liberals tacitly resort to the naturalistic fallacy, and rely on its supposed authority, whenever they say–as they do all the time–that what marriage is historically is not what marriage ought to be ideally or as a matter of justice.
The naturalistic fallacy says you can’t derive an “ought” from an “is,” or a norm from a fact. In the marriage-debate context, this is taken to mean that just because procreation historically is deeply connected with the institution of marriage, it is not an ought-to-be-connected feature of marriage. Procreation is not, in this view, a normative part of the institution of marriage. According to the naturalistic fallacy procreation cannot be part of the norm, or essence, of marriage. (Never mind that Philippa Foot’s highly regarded book *Natural Goodness* shows the philosophical trend away from the whole idea of a naturalistic fallacy.) Supporters of traditional marriage can grant this, at least for the sake of argument, without losing any ground. For while procreation arguably is not the norm of marriage insofar as it is a value (illegitimately) derived from the historical and sociological facts concerning marriage, it can still be the norm of marriage in a constitutive sense, or in a non-derived sense of being internal to marriage.
This sense is closer to what the supporters of traditional marriage believe. They believe not so much in the idea that marriage *implies* procreation. Here the naturalistic fallacy kicks in, for how does marriage imply procreation other than by a leap from fact to value? The defenders of traditional marriage believe, rather, that marriage just is a procreative institution–not for any supposedly naive reason such as that “is” implies “ought,” but for the reason that the origin of a thing is the nature of the thing in certain cases, such as with marriage and procreation. Marriage as an institution originated in response to the need for ordered procreation. In that sense procreation is internal to marriage, and is the “norm” of marriage.
Anything wrong with that? The naturalistic fallacy, as I believe I have just shown, is totally irrelevant. The genetic fallacy–which says that the origin of a thing is not *necessarily* the nature of the thing–is relevant, but is not an objection to traditional marriage. In the case of marriage as an institution, the question is, What sort of things made procreation internal to marriage in the beginning, and are those thing still applicable?
What made procreation internal to marriage at the origin of marriage was a specific congeries of human nature (involving the potential messiness of procreation) as well as the necessities of social order (the need for channeling procreation). The problem for pro-same-sex marriage folks is that human nature and the demands of social order have not changed in any fundamental way over time (five thousand years–a mere blip on the liberal radar screen of progress, to be sure), and thus there is no justification for changing the procreation-internal institution of marriage to a fundamentally different, and procreation-neutral, institution. “No justification” is a polite way of saying that same-sex marriage, as a conception of marriage, is radically incoherent.
The distinction between these two ultimate objections to traditional marriage–the naturalistic fallacy and the genetic fallacy–incidentally shows why it is wrong to say that supporters of traditional marriage are guilty of “reducing” marriage to procreation (everyone agrees that reductionism of any kind is generally bad). If procreation is internal to marriage by its very nature–unlike if procreation is a “value” derived from the “facts” about marriage–then it is pointless, and false, to say that procreation-internal marriage is reductionist. Procreation is not a mere value to which marriage is “reduced.” Procreation is a constitutive element of marriage, by nature and definition alike, and to call that a reduction of marriage is like calling an ant a moron. By their nature, ants are not rational creatures, and so cannot have defects of rationality. Ants cannot be morons, and procreational marriage cannot be reductionist.
Same-sex marriage is supposedly inevitable because it is a sign of “progress.” Some of us are silly enough, and benighted enough, and maybe even bigoted enough, to believe that what liberals think is progress is really the height of folly, at least this one time (irony alert). We believe same-sex marriage is inevitable in the same way it was inevitable that the Baltimore Colts would destroy the New York Jets back in the day when the AFL, the league the Jets belonged to, was widely regarded as the junior varsity of pro football. How did that turn out?
August 24th, 2012 | 6:32 pm
Michael PS –
And that’s why we have DNA tests.
August 24th, 2012 | 7:51 pm
If the child rearing argument were an actual argument than why are same-sex couples allowed to adopt? and why are couples allowed to remarry after a divorce or marry after the age of 40?
Would it not make more sense to provide the benefits of marriage to a same-sex couple that has adopted 2 children rather than to a 70yr old couple getting married that will never have children?
The point is that argument has no real basis, there is so much more to marriage. And there is absolutely no argument against providing it to same-sex couples
August 25th, 2012 | 2:13 am
Well folks, as sympathetic as I am to opponents of gay “marriage,” let’s get real. The subject never would have come up if the institution of marriage weren’t already so degraded that the idea that two people of the same sex can be married would have been plausible to anyone in the first place. Gay marriage, polygamous marriage, inter-species marriage, hey, it’s all about how you feel. It’s part and parcel of the cultural entropy we’ve been undergoing since 1968. If you want to see America’s future, look at Detroit. And, frankly, it’s a future we deserve.
August 25th, 2012 | 4:04 am
Ray Ingles
Are you suggesting universal DNA testing, at least where the putative father is alive, within the jurisdiction and his whereabouts known?
Moreover, if such a test is to render the filiation incontestable, once recorded (on the birth certificate, perhaps) it would have to be final and conclusive Otherwise, we abandon the principle, the investigation of paternity is forbidden.
If filiation can be imposed, in the absence of marriage or acknowledgement, what becomes of the rule that no one can have an heir born to him, without his consent?
That is why I still say, “no better, simpler, less intrusive means have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide” than marriage.
August 25th, 2012 | 1:25 pm
This is a great article, and it deserves a serious hearing and thoughtful engagment. Drawing attention to the relevance of Rawls’ treatment of the family is very appreciated, and as a “Rawlsian liberal” and proponent of SSM, I commend O’Brian’s even handed and rigorous analysis. What follows is a bare sketch of how I’m inclined to respond.
Typical of a Rawlsian approach, the paper’s argument is pretty abstract and in this case that’s a problem. In particular, I think we need to attend to the actual cultural and legal context of the SSM debate, and to the features of homosexual relationships that would distinguish them from what are here called “domestic dependency partnerships.”
O’Brian makes a compelling Rawlsian case that a liberal state can support and encourage traditional marriage and child rearing without violating political liberal standards. What doesn’t follow from this is that current marriage laws are significantly oriented towards this, or that denying legal recognition of SSM on the basis of those laws as currently understood would either work against the state interest or be prejudicial against other kinds of parental partnerships. This would need a lot of fleshing out, but the argument would go something like this. First, the separation of marriage and child bearing and rearing has already happened both legally and culturally. Secondly, the currently legally and culturally recognized basis for marriage is romantic attachment and sexual exclusivity. And finally, gay relationships resemble heterosexual relationships in this regard much more than either resemble the kind of widower/bachelor brother relationships considered by O’Brian. Looking at the issue with these facts mind, it seems the argument for SSM based on equality before the law is valid.
August 25th, 2012 | 9:51 pm
Michael PS –
No-one will deny that the state has a clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable.
And that’s why we have DNA tests.
When gay adults are so sensitive and fragile that even asking a question that violates the taboos they’ve constructed around themselves is enough to violate their precious rights – and the kids are “all right”, and anyone who even questions this truth is attacking the very core of what it means for gays to be human – what good does it do to have DNA tests?
What, to prove that the lesbian is lying when she claims to be the parent of her spouse’s child?
We already know she’s lying. That’s the whole point. Gays are demanding that their right to lie and take other peoples’ children is far more important than silly things like “truth” or “the well-being of children” or who that child’s parents really are.
The child’s legally recognized right to a relationship with, and the right to be supported by, both biological parents, is in direct conflict with “gay marriage”, where gays demand nothing less than the right to make custody transferable – not in limited ‘child’s best interest” cases, but even when it is obviously not in the child’s best interest.
Whose rights matter more, the “right” to pretend to be something or not, or the right to have a relationship with your own real family, to not be used, to not be exploited, and to not have to live with the knowledge that your mother was a prostitute who sold you and your dad doesn’t care how you feel about who and what you are, as long as you support his political agenda.
No child should be told how to feel about being motherless. It’s always a loss. Always. Lying about it doesn’t make it go away. If gays have any right at all to marry, then whether or not marriage is or is not procreative, it should be recognized that their marriage is not procreative. Their “need” to pass for a real family is not more important than a child’s real need for both a mother and a father.
Time to expect parents to be the grownups for a change.
Incidentally, I don’t care if gays are allowed to “marry”, as long as they understand that their marriage is not procreative, not family-forming, and therefore not equal to real marriage – or entitled to that which rightfully supports procreative activity.
August 25th, 2012 | 10:55 pm
“Should Rawlsians oppose same-sex marriage?”
I wouldn’t want to be a child raised under such circumstance.
Barring the presence of “issues” (such as “daddy issues” or “mommy issues” or even all-around rage at authority issues – of the sort that makes people support anything that opposes, undermines, or annoys the authority figure in their life), I can’t imagine any child would prefer to be raised motherless or fatherless, nor can I imagine any child would be happy about having his or her own life reduced to a secondary consideration, below and behind and “in the shadow of” the parents’ ego needs, political needs, emotional needs, or sexual needs.
Really, outside of cognitive dissonance, I don’t see how anyone can support the argument that gay marriage is reasonable “because marriage isn’t procreative”, when it’s so clear that gays are hoping to actively exploit, not ignore, the procreative family-making functions and benefits of marriage.
August 26th, 2012 | 6:09 am
Tristian
I believe we should focus on the fact that mandatory civil marriage is a comparatively recent legal institution, first introduced in France on 9 November 1791. The question, therefore is to ascertain the intention of the legislator.
The civil code offers no formal definition of marriage, leaving this to be inferred from its legal effects and by comparing it with other modes of life open to couples, such as unregulated cohabitation and civil unions.
Jurists have always found such a functional definition in the provision that “The child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father,” which mirrors the doctrine of the Roman jurist, Paulus, “.pater vero is est, quem nuptiae demonstrant.” (Marriage points out the father) [Dig. 2, 4, 5; 1].
This was the opinion of the four most authoritative commentators on the Civil Code, Demolombe (1804–1887), Guillouard (1845-1925). Gaudemet (1908-2001) and Carbonnier (1908–2003), covering the period from the introduction of mandatory civil marriage down to our own day and long before the question of same-sex marriage was agitated.
The determination of civil status is plainly a legitimate state interest. Note that this is not, necessarily, to encourage procreation, but, rather, to address its consequences when it occurs. Opposite-sex marriage is plainly relevant to this purpose; same-sex marriage is not. To determine, in advance, which opposite-sex couples will reproduce is by no means easy. To establish a screening process would be burdensome, expensive, intrusive and litigious, especially given possible advances in reproductive medicine and assisted reproduction.
Laws are enacted for the general case and anomalies are the price that legislators pay for simplicity and certainty. The presumption that opposite-sex couples are potentially fertile and same-sex couples are not is a reasonable working compromise and one that is well within the legislator’s margin of appreciation.
In my submission, this argument is eminently “Rawlsian.”
August 26th, 2012 | 8:51 am
Michael PS – Different jurisdictions have widely different standards for establishing paternity and when it’s contestable – and for assigning rights of heirs. (http://www.metnews.com/articles/2007/jame062007.htm or http://www.floridaprobatetrustlaw.com/2010/01/articles/probate-litigation/paternity-in-probate-litigation/ )
I personally would say that DNA tests would only be required if paternity is being contested; but at that time, they should be considered definitive.
August 26th, 2012 | 7:49 pm
Regarding the assumptions of same-sex marriage’s supporters, I’d like add a few points, especially about the genetic fallacy (as contrasted with the naturalistic fallacy), since it is unfamiliar to many people who are generally familiar with the naturalistic fallacy. My claim is that while the naturalistic fallacy is wrongly appealed to by liberal supporters of same-sex marriage (wrongly because it aims at a straw man), the genetic fallacy is relevant but is not a problem for the defenders of traditional marriage.
From the beginning, procreation had a deep and unbreakable bond with the practice and institution of marriage. Procreation was universally understood to be internal to marriage. People who got married (as couples) were always people who had an intrinsic procreative capacity. This capacity was not (and is not) always exercisable, however, just as I have the capacity to speak French but I cannot in actuality speak French. Still, I have a real capacity to speak French, which can be referred to as an *intrinsic* capacity comparable to the capacity of, say, a sterile opposite-sex couple to procreate.
My capacity to speak French might also be called an ideal capacity as opposed to an actual capacity, since I might ideally have been born in France and thus would be able to speak French, or I might ideally have had a parent who taught French for a living, and thus I might have picked up the language by a process of benign parental coercion. The point is that, in talking about the general fact of procreation as it bears on the meaning of marriage, we are always talking about the intrinsic–the actual *or* ideal–capacity to procreate. It is this capacity which the institution of marriage presupposes (not implies).
Is procreation still, even today, internal to marriage? If the naturalistic fallacy is right, it may be doubted whether procreation is truly internal to marriage–whether procreation is internal to marriage or not will be up for grabs as conflicting beliefs in the society are pushed into a wrestling match over the meaning of marriage. I would argue, though, that the naturalistic fallacy is simply not applicable to the procreation-and-marriage case. Properly speaking, procreation is not an external “value” derived from any internal “facts” about marriage (such as the fact that marriage is a good way to raise kids and provide stability). Marriage is not valuable *because* of procreation. Where’s the “ought” that is supposedly derived from the “is” in traditional marriage? IMO, there isn’t any. The naturalistic fallacy is irrelevant as a basis for refuting traditional marriage.
The genetic fallacy, by contrast, is clearly relevant. It has a direct bearing on the alleged close connection between marriage and procreation. Unfortunately for the supporters of same-sex marriage, traditional marriage has a perfectly good answer to the genetic fallacy’s question of how the origin of a thing (the institution of marriage, in this case) can indicate or determine the true nature of the thing. I suggested what that answer is in my previous comment (and in comments more than a year ago at this blog).
The origin/nature distinction–and relatedly the cause/reason distinction–helps to spotlight the significance of defining marriage as procreational. Causes are not the same as reasons, just as the origin of a thing does not necessarily explain the nature of that thing. Nothing in this prevents us from sometimes being able to identify the reasons for something (e.g., procreation as the reason for the institution of marriage) by an examination of its causes (e.g., the general fact of procreation as the cause of the institution of marriage). Similarly, origins may be a decisive clue to a thing’s nature. Marriage originated with procreation, and that very fact tells us something important about the nature of marriage. The procreational nature of marriage is not just a social convention but an ontological truth (a truth about the definition of marriage), and informal logic attests to this truth.
And by the way, the genetic fallacy doesn’t mean the origin of a thing never indicates the nature of the thing. If it meant that, it would be saying reductionism is impossible–and even if you don’t like reductionism, you can’t say that it’s impossible. What the genetic fallacy says is that the origin of a thing is not *necessarily* the nature (or an indication of the nature) of the thing.
The contrast with the naturalistic fallacy is stark. The naturalistic fallacy makes “is” and “ought” mutually exclusive, while the genetic fallacy does not make origin and nature mutually exclusive. This shows the great advantage to defenders of traditional marriage in being able to view criticism of the procreation-marriage nexus in terms of the genetic fallacy rather than the relatively gay-friendly (so to speak) naturalistic fallacy.
Honestly, I think this is tilted-playing-field territory. Defenders of traditional marriage can tilt the playing field by insisting the connection between marriage and procreation be seen through the prism of the genetic fallacy rather than the naturalistic fallacy. They will be ready with a poleaxe whenever liberal supporters of same-sex marriage say, “Maybe historically procreation was normative to marriage, but it doesn’t have to be going forward.” It does have to be–if reality means anything and if everything is not socially constructed.
A rational society–even one that is gravely afflicted with judicial supremacy–will not run roughshod over the truth in mad pursuit of liberal jabberwockies such as “marriage equality.” (Mea maxima culpa politicus incorrectus.)
August 26th, 2012 | 9:12 pm
As is clear in the reading the comments here, gay marriage is just common sense, and Americans believe in common sense. A duck is a duck because it quacks, and gay people are married when they act just like your neighbor, taking out the trash on Monday, mowing the lawn regularly, behaving politely in public, working with the neighborhood on neighborhood issues, and holding hands when it’s appropriate.
Bachelor brothers are not ducks. They don’t empathize when you explain how you still have a crush on your wife or when you confess that you’ve been tempted to stray. They don’t have any real advice about how to keep it fresh.
When one of the bachelors dies and the survivor fights with the mother about the disposition of property, you understand it as a family fight and side more with the mother. But when a member of a gay couple dies, and the survivor fights with his partner’s mother, your sympathy is with the survivor. The spouse always trumps the parent.
When my friend Ken asks me to swallow a dictionary so that he can persuade me to deny gays marriage, I know that he’s already lost the argument. When Blake has to stomp his feet again and claim that he doesn’t “care if gays are allowed to “marry” when it’s clear that he really, really does care, then I know he’s already lost the argument.
The question before Americans is not whether to redefine marriage. It’s whether to recognize the marriages already among us. It’s a matter of common sense.
August 27th, 2012 | 7:10 am
Michael wrote
“The spouse always trumps the parent.”
Not according to the Civil Code:-
“Art. 757-1
Where, in the absence of children or descendants, a deceased leaves his father and mother, the surviving spouse shall take one half of the property. The other half devolves for one quarter to the father and for one quarter to the mother.
Where the father or the mother is predeceased, the share which he would have taken devolves to the surviving spouse.”
The rights of parents even over-ride a will, to the extent of half the estate.
“Art. 914
(Act no 72-3 of 3 Jan. 1972)
Gratuitous transfers, either by inter vivos acts or by will, may not exceed half of the property where, failing children, a deceased leaves one or several ascendants in each of the lines, paternal and maternal, and three-fourths where he leaves ascendants only in one line.”
August 27th, 2012 | 12:34 pm
Michael PS,
Your example confirms my point that French law recognizes that the rights of your spouse are more important than the rights of the family you were born into. The spouse gets the greater portion of your inheritance.
In recognizing the spouse over the birth family, French law follows Genesis in understanding that the distinctiveness of marriage lies in the way that it causes a man to leave his family and shift his primary loyalty from his birth family to his spouse.
Gay marriage recognizes that a similar shift in primary loyalty has occurred when gays start a lifelong relationship.
That shift in loyalty doesn’t occur, however, when bachelor brothers live together.
August 27th, 2012 | 3:12 pm
Michael,
I don’t think I’m asking you to swallow a dictionary. (I assume you’re referring to my mention of “ontological truth,” in particular.) I just want you, and your ideological allies, to take seriously the idea that there is more to this debate than sociological and psychological effervescences and trends. Even if it’s true that Americans are coming around to a more gay-friendly way of thinking, that does not tell us *in a dispositive way* what to think of same-sex marriage. IMO it doesn’t even provide a real clue what to think because it is possible for a culture to slide backwards and for people to be self-deceived. Is it not? Cf. Germany (my ancestral country) in the 1920s through the 1940s. Previously the epitome of civilization in philosophy, music, and efficient warfare (the Prussian tradition), Germany descended into a remarkable barbarism. I’m not saying same-sex marriage is like Nazism! I’m just saying it is possible for a society to go backwards.
The following point is not as tangential to your concerns as you might think, because it removes a main source of *unconscious* liberal bias in the debate about same-sex marriage. I intended to make the point even before I saw your comment.
Before liberalism can tell us what liberties should be allowed, such as the liberty to join with someone of the same sex in socially sanctioned (civil) marriage, the liberal must show why opponents of the liberty in question must be restrained from giving effect to their beliefs by disallowing the liberty. The only way to do this is to have a theory of toleration that shows why the liberty should be allowed. Liberals have no such theory.
Contrary to a popular cultural myth, the No-Harm Principle is not that theory. What counts as a harm depends on beliefs about the good. The No-Harm Principle is illegitimately front-loaded in favor of liberalism (it would be illegitimately front-loaded even if it did not privilege the right over the good). The No-Harm Principle is unable to tell us anything useful about toleration because it improperly assumes the truth, or the moral priority, of secular liberal beliefs. The No-Harm Principle is an unreliable guide to what liberties should be allowed.
John Gray failed to bite this bullet in *Two Faces of Liberalism*. He pulled the rug out from under the feet of liberalism, but then left the No-Harm Principle standing. That makes no sense.
August 28th, 2012 | 8:03 am
Michael wrote “The spouse gets the greater portion of your inheritance.”
No, if both parents are alive, it is divided equally between the spouse and the parents – Spouse takes half and each parent takes a quarter each.
Moreover, Article 757-3 gives a preference to the brothers and sisters and their descendents, to the extent of half the family property « Biens de famille » – “in case of predecease of the father and mother and in absence of descendants, the property that the deceased received from them by succession or gift and that is found in kind in the succession devolves for one half to the brothers and sisters of the deceased or to their descendants, themselves descending from the predeceased parent or parents from whom the devolution originates.”
So, if the deceased inherited a farm from his father, half goes to the brothers and sisters and half to the spouse. Once again, the rights of the spouse and the rights of the birth family are equal.
August 28th, 2012 | 10:10 am
It was always clear to me that elemental family formation was within a Rawlsian sphere of “public reason” – to say otherwise is untenable in the end, because it (at the very least) would mean that ANY limitations on what people would call “marriage” would be impermissible in a “liberal democratic order”.
August 28th, 2012 | 11:52 am
Ken,
It’s not any particular term you use; your whole approach is philosophical, which means that it is incomprehensible to most people. Most people don’t have a “theory” of toleration. They tolerate what is tolerable.
While we’ve certainly seen societies slide backwards, we’ve also seen them move forward. You have no idea whether gay marriage is merely a trend or is here to stay. You hope that it will disappear, but I don’t see how you can make it disappear without pushing homosexuality back into the closet. And I don’t want to contemplate how one would go about putting it back in the closet.
August 28th, 2012 | 11:57 am
Michael PS,
The spouse gets more than the father (one half to one quarter).
The question is this: why does the law presume that a spouse who is not kin by birth is so very valuable when you literally owe so much more to those who raised you?
That is the mystery that Genesis ponders.
August 28th, 2012 | 4:00 pm
Fitzgerald
You are right and it would make the fact that the state claims a monopoly of marriage – the rule that only its officers can solemnise and record a marriage – equally incomprehensible.
Jurists constantly repeat the mantra that “mandatory civil marriage is a pillar of the lay republic.” Not just marriage, but mandatory civil marriage. This suggests, at the very least that it is a part of the “liberal democratic order.”
The reasons are worth exploring.
August 28th, 2012 | 4:19 pm
Michael,
“[Most people] tolerate the tolerable.”
You’re right about that, so far as it goes–which I fear is not very far. You seem to be denying that behind accepted ideas of toleration, or behind almost any kind of “ideological” social convention, is some theory or other, and behind that is a philosophical viewpoint of some degree of persuasiveness or other. If you are denying that, you might want to consider that in America today what is considered ”tolerable” is pretty much what John Stuart Mill considered it to be. Was Mill right about what toleration is? You, and liberals generally–and plenty of non-liberals–assume that he was. I deny that he was right. (Mill’s theory of toleration is usually called the Harm Principle. I’m calling the No-Harm Principle to make its upshot clearer.)
Advocates of SSM are always saying, “What’s the harm of allowing same-sex couples to get married? After all, the putative harm to children is speculative, especially since they suffer greater harm by not being adopted at all [in the case of adoptive same-sex couples].” IMO, this way of talking about SSM ignores the harm to the institution of marriage, and to society, that will come from embracing a truncated form of marriage, which (if my dictionary-swallowing discussion of ontology is correct) is what SSM is.
One reason I look at SSM this way–as a truncated form of marriage–is that I believe the No-Harm Principle isn’t much help in defining the boundaries of toleration, or in explaining what kind of legal coercion of the “intolerant” (i.e., the religious) is permissible. Liberalism front-loads the harm equation by defining the harmful as harm to individuals only, while ignoring harm to the community or society. More generally, liberals misunderstand human nature in believing that individual character is fundamentally malleable and that individuals’ desires are socially constructed. This leads to a distorted conception of harm. Whatever merits the No-Harm Principle has in theory–limited merits, I must add, because of the dependence of conceptions of harm on rival and therefore non-neutral conceptions of the good–is wrecked in practice, IMHO, by the liberal’s false picture of human nature.
Enough philosophizing, my friend! Here’s a down-to-earth and entirely non-philosophical tidbit that might be of great interest to you.
The other day–courtesy of the glorious event known within Western civilization as Yale Sex Week, and courtesy of the weird propaganda ensuing therefrom–I learned to my genuine shock (and I’m not easy to shock) of something notably perverse called “double anal penetration,” in which two males do that to one woman at the same time. What kind of guys would do this? (What kind of drug-addled or libertarianism-addled woman would allow it?) Two kinds of men, it seems to me, might do this sort of thing: either bisexual men, or men who have sex with men (that is, men who identify as “straight” but occasionally have sex with other men).
Not, in other words, normal heterosexual males like you and me. IMHO, this perversity cubed and squared is a nice reason why society should refuse to normalize or legitimize sexual aberration (while *sometimes* tolerating its relatively mild forms). Sexual nihilism is a slippery slope of ever-increasing degradation. I’m wondering, however, what you think of this particular perversion and my “unenlightened” view of it. It might be a kind of stand-in for our disagreement about same-sex marriage. Wouldn’t you agree?
August 29th, 2012 | 10:42 am
Ken,
“You seem to be denying that behind accepted ideas of toleration, or behind almost any kind of “ideological” social convention, is some theory or other”
I’m not denying theory at all. I’m saying that once one has to defend the old ways in more than a few sentences the battle is lost. I’m saying that people care more about the pastoral and immediate than the theoretical.
The fight against abortion is winning because killing is immediate, visceral, and repulsive. People understand that. The fight against homosexuality is losing because sex is immediate, visceral, and delightful. People understand that. Homosexual sex can only remain repulsive as long as conservative activists focus on anal sex. The oral sex that gay men and women enjoy is also enjoyed by heterosexuals. It’s hard to get alarmed by lesbians, which is why they are almost never mentioned in these forums.
“IMO, this way of talking about SSM ignores the harm to the institution of marriage, and to society, that will come from embracing a truncated form of marriage, which (if my dictionary-swallowing discussion of ontology is correct) is what SSM is”
Once you start talking about the damage to institutions, you’re starting to get abstract in a way that will lose people. You’re also in danger of putting abstract things above people. Paterno and the bishops, after all, worried about the danger to their institutions, and because they placed these abstract things above people, children got hurt.
That said, there has been real damage done to the institution of marriage by a divorce rate that is dividing more and more families. This is the number one priority for fixing marriage. Compared to it, homosexuality is a side show. People know that. Fix straight marriage first.
“More generally, liberals misunderstand human nature in believing that individual character is fundamentally malleable and that individuals’ desires are socially constructed.”
You’re painting with a pretty broad brush here, mixing postmodern ideas into a pot that includes lots of other kinds of liberals. Why caricature the opposition? Why make into opponents people who otherwise share a lot of your values and causes?
“I’m wondering, however, what you think of this particular perversion and my “unenlightened” view of it. It might be a kind of stand-in for our disagreement about same-sex marriage. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I hope you’ll understand why I find this question insulting. As you know, my discussion of the issue of gay marriage is driven by the reconciling congregation to which I belong. We take our faith and our relationships seriously, and asking me about Yale’s sex week is like asking you about Berlusconi. Yes, Berlusconi is in Italy, and so is the Vatican, but what do they have to do with each other? They are as related as Yale sex week and my congregation.
The gay couples in my congregation have been in relationships for as many as thirty years, and some of them have raised children. They are active in and outside of the church, working on social issues from poverty and human trafficking to drug abuse and a cause you favor, environmentalism. Inside the church, they serve on the worship committee, teach Sunday school, and participate in Advent and Lenten devotions. Some join me in the uphill battle of pushing the congregation into taking a tougher stand against abortion.
In the meantime, I have a former employee that I keep up with. A troubled girl in her late twenties, she has a lot of issues she’s working through—grief over the death of her mother, alienation from her father, depression, etc. Happily, she’s stayed away from drugs, though alcohol has more than a share in her troubles. She’s into the kind of sport sex you describe. In it, she’s expressing nothing about her sexuality. She’s using it to say something about what she thinks is her courage and her self-abasement. Interestingly, whenever she gets close enough to a man to date him, she becomes faithful to him alone. Part of my struggle with her is that she was raised unchurched, and so there’s no value system, no vocabulary, that I can appeal to that makes sense to her. Progress for her is coming slowly, but I feel like it’s coming.
August 29th, 2012 | 2:32 pm
Michael,
“I’m saying that people care more about the pastoral and immediate than the theoretical.”
Yes, but sometimes people see the necessity of digging a little deeper. Large numbers of Americans think something like the following, whether or not they know and like gays personally.
Marriage has something vital to do with sexual intercourse, and same-sex couples can’t have real sexual intercourse. They can’t unite their bodies except in a superficial way, and they can’t even look into each others eyes–talk about intimate communion–during the act of sexual intercourse. (Lesbians can, but only via the bizarrely artificial–because opposite gender-imitating–device of a strap-on.)
In other words, same-sex couples lack sexual complementarity. Complementarity is more than teamwork or cooperation in some activity. It’s not like an orchestra or a violin duet. Sexual complementarity involves the uniting of two diverse individuals in a biologically functional way.
Your testimony of homosexual individuals and their lives is deeply felt by many people but it’s ultimately un-compelling. Morally speaking, it’s the social counterpart of the political principle that might makes right. Popularity makes legitimate consensus–I hope that’s not what you’re saying, but it’s what I hear.
“You have no idea whether gay marriage is merely a trend or is here to stay. You hope that it will disappear, but I don’t see how you can make it disappear without pushing homosexuality back into the closet.”
Whatever the evolving status of homosexuals in society, same-sex marriage should not be one of the avenues of “progress” for the basic reason that same-sex couples cannot affirm or give witness to what makes marriage marriage–the essential procreative goods of marriage. Marriage is not just a highfaluting form of cohabitation. In cohabitation, unlike in marriage, there is no predicate of procreation. Only couples who have an intrinsic capacity to procreate are able to experience the essential goods of marriage. (“Predicate of procreation”–gotta remember that phrase.)
“When my friend Ken asks me to swallow a dictionary so that he can persuade me to deny gays marriage, I know that he’s already lost the argument.”
I’m not worried. Consider the most immediate facts on the ground before me. Here in my home state of Washington, where a referendum is on the ballot to overturn pro-SSM legislation, the governor who signed the legislation (and who was the Grand Marshal at the most recent Gay Pride parade) is missing in action. (She’s not running for reelection, but I don’t see how that matters.) I assume the Obama campaign wants it that way. They’re afraid of backlash, and fear of backlash is incompatible with confidence about the “inevitability” of SSM–especially since the inevitability is supposed to be due to the justice of the cause!
As for Yale Sex Week, I’m inclined to think a person has to have a proper sense of the wisdom of Edmund Burke’s *Reflections on the Revolution in France* to know why Yale Sex Week is relevant to same-sex marriage. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that book, but I suspect that if you did read it you thought Burke was just pontificating. That’s the way liberals are. They still don’t get how significant it is that Burke *knew* the French Revolution would be a disaster.
August 29th, 2012 | 5:12 pm
“[The divorce rate] is the number one priority for fixing marriage. . . . .People know that. Fix straight marriage first.”
Conservatives agree. That’s why they want to put same-sex marriage on hold. Fix marriage first, then try to figure out what innovations it can bear without endangering the institution. In that sense, same-sex marriage is not a “sideshow” but a distraction. A healthy society, dealing with the problems faced by the institution of marriage, would not be talking about abolishing civil marriage or instituting same-sex marriage. A healthy society would be debating whether no-fault divorce is a good idea, and about how to minimize the worst effects of no-fault divorce, including the economic disadvantage it inevitably creates for women.
IMO the ultimate problem is not the spouses (especially husbands) and their quest for romantic gratification. That’s a perennial temptation. The problem is lousy parenting. It’s Britney Spears’ parents and the millions of parents like them, who have failed to pass on the moral sobriety that their own parents had. It can be argued that WWII caused this moral failure.
August 29th, 2012 | 11:45 pm
Ken,
“They can’t unite their bodies except in a superficial way, and they can’t even look into each others eyes–talk about intimate communion–during the act of sexual intercourse.”
Tell me, when you have talked to gay couples who have been together 10, 20, or 30 years, what did they say when you asked them whether their sex was superficial? What did they say when you asked whether they felt intimate communion during sex?
“same-sex couples cannot affirm or give witness to what makes marriage marriage”
What do you call a couple that has been together thirty years and raised two children? Are they not parents? Are they not helpmeets? Are they not cure of each other’s loneliness? Have they not found the person for whom they have left mother and father so they might cleave?
“I suspect that if you did read it you thought Burke was just pontificating. That’s the way liberals are.”
What makes you think that I believe he is pontificating? Do all liberals believe the same thing? Why do people on this site believe they have to insult liberals rather than have a conversation with them? I hope you notice that not once have you had to respond to me by saying that I have mischaracterized your position, but I have had to tell you repeatedly that you have mischaracterized mine. I don’t make insulting generalizations about conservatives, but you, like so many others here, are compelled to insult liberals. It’s tiresome and counter-productive.
“A healthy society would be debating whether no-fault divorce is a good idea, and about how to minimize the worst effects of no-fault divorce, including the economic disadvantage it inevitably creates for women”
Where are these debates on First Things? Why are conservatives here reacting rather than leading?
“IMO the ultimate problem is not the spouses (especially husbands) and their quest for romantic gratification. That’s a perennial temptation. The problem is lousy parenting. It can be argued that WWII caused this moral failure”
There are a lot of reasons marriage is in decline, but what if gay marriage is part of the solution rather than part of the problem? Why are the marriages—both straight and gay—so strong in my congregation?
August 30th, 2012 | 12:41 pm
Michael,
“I hope you’ll understand why I find this question insulting.”
In his book on the French Revolution, Burke shows how dangerous it is to regard “the decent drapery of life” with utopian disregard and to try to impose extreme schemes of enlightenment in the name of abstract theories about justice or equality or some other transcendent political ideal. Today’s liberals have forgotten Burke’s lesson. I must admit that I see you as one of those liberals.
Liberalism is the common element in both the push for same-sex marriage and the vulgar propaganda of Yale Sex Week. (No prominent liberal thinker or writer has criticized Yale Sex Week for its cartoonish moral relativism, its sexual nihilism, and its crude proselytizing. Pretty darned revealing.) In the not-so-wonderfully wacky world of contemporary liberalism, traditional marriage (fifteen centuries old) is regarded as bigotry while repulsively aberrant sexual practices–practices which you unintentionally dignify with the appellation “sport sex”–are considered to be tolerable and even commendable. Yale Sex Week is of a piece with the push for same-sex marriage. The same unreasoned, doctrinaire, and culturally suicidal liberalism is behind both of them.
“The fight against homosexuality is losing because sex is immediate, visceral, and delightful. People understand that. Homosexual sex can only remain repulsive as long as conservative activists focus on anal sex. The oral sex that gay men and women enjoy is also enjoyed by heterosexuals.”
You are shrewdly but subtly (and eloquently) challenging opponents of same-sex marriage to show how they can possibly overcome the influence of post-1960s heterosexual practices. Fair enough. In attempting to meet your challenge, I’ll use an acronym for convenience–FR/PSI. It stands for “[bears a] family resemblance to paradigmatic sexual intercourse.” As you will guess, paradigmatic sexual intercourse is the kind of act for which the classic description is “the missionary position.” In PSI, babies are made. As for family resemblance, think of the functions of the mouth, the reproductive organs, and the anus. Connect the dots regarding the family resemblance of these with paradigmatic sexual intercourse.
FR/PSI shows what kinds of sex acts are proper or normal. It doesn’t show when such acts are properly engaged in–before marriage or after marriage. FR/PSI can be added to an account of sexual morality that shows when the acts are properly engaged in.
FR/PSI shows why oral sex is morally licit for opposite-sex couples but not same-sex couples–it’s because the latter lack the requisite family resemblance. To avoid apparent arbitrariness on this very point I must reject body-person or body-soul dualism and agree with Aquinas that I *am* my body. No problem. (Maybe a moderate or weak body-person dualism would be compatible with my understanding of FR/PSI, but not a strong version.) FR/PSI also shows why anal sex is illicit for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples–again, think of functions and connect the dots. This being a family oriented website, I don’t want to connect the dots with explicit descriptions.
The FR/PSI depends on the idea of functions. I understand functions as being both descriptive and prescriptive. The naturalistic fallacy is unable to rebuke beliefs about functions being norms. Consider the example of a clock. A clock can be used as a bookend (just as the sex organs are capable of being used in various ways) but that is not its function. Its function, which is to tell the time, is both an “is” and an “ought.” A clock ought to tell the time. This sense of ought is an impersonal (and nonmoral) sense, in which the clock is seen to fulfill the goals inherent to it, just as I ought to use my reproductive organs in conjunction with women, and women only, to fulfill the goals inherent to me as an embodied soul.
Opponents of same-sex marriage have the happy choice of either stick ing with an older sexual morality or adopting something like FR/PSI in conjunction with a compatible general sexual morality. They can go either way. The advantage of the latter is that it removes the “everybody does it” objection to so-called heteronormativity, including opposition to same-sex marriage. In other words, the FR/PSI undermines the belief that homosexuality must be regarded as basically normal if oral sex is regarded as normal. In short, it doesn’t follow from the widespread acceptance of heterosexual oral sex that homosexual sex should likewise be casually accepted as “what we do around here.”
(This is not a spur of the moment invention. I worked it out five years ago and have been sitting on it since then. Thanks for forcing me to do something with it.)
August 30th, 2012 | 1:56 pm
Ken,
“Liberalism is the common element in both the push for same-sex marriage and the vulgar propaganda of Yale Sex Week.”
Have I said anything that suggests to you that I would approve of Yale sex week? I’ve talked about the marital fidelity of the gay and straight members of my congregation, and you come back with a question about sex week. The question remains insulting.
Your explanation that liberalism is common to both proponents of gay marriage and sex weeks is both illogical and wrong.
Your logic is lacking in this way: conservatism is the common element to both opponents of gay marriage and the bigotry of those who murder gays. How would you feel if I asked you for your opinion of Westboro and Aaron McKinney and presumed that you favor both?
Your explanation is wrong because there’s much, much more than liberalism at work. Many if not most in the fringe that puts on activities like sex week scoff at the term liberal and call themselves revolutionaries, anarchists, or even libertarians.
You’re using a meat cleaver when a pair of scissors is the more appropriate tool.
“family resemblance to paradigmatic sexual intercourse”
Take out your dictionary. We’re going for another ride!
August 30th, 2012 | 4:50 pm
Michael,
Ludwig Wittgenstein (the great philosopher–and homosexual–who made “family resemblances” part of the conceptual vocabulary): “Don’t think, just look and see.”
Cryptic. But to me he meant one should not be reluctant to look at reality straight, without flinching or denying what is apparent. If liberalism is as you say it is, name one modern writer who expresses that vision of liberalism, and be sure you can say why he or she would support same-sex marriage.
Opponents of same-sex marriage routinely condemn people who criminally attack gays (I was pleased, to put it mildly, when Matthew Shepard’s killers were executed.) Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but trying to find a liberal academic or opinion leader who condemns the sexual nihilism coming out of New Haven at the beginning of every academic year is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Your conservatism analogy fails miserably. It is worthy of Paul Krugman, but not you.
August 30th, 2012 | 10:55 pm
Ken,
“If liberalism is as you say it is, name one modern writer who expresses that vision of liberalism, and be sure you can say why he or she would support same-sex marriage”
Your question is too vague. Which vision of liberalism are you talking about? What exactly have I said liberalism is? I’m not even sure why you are asking me to defend liberalism. I didn’t introduce the term into the discussion, and I’ve already made it abundantly clear that I think you are using the term too broadly to name things you don’t like.
“Opponents of same-sex marriage routinely condemn people who criminally attack gays”
But conservatives don’t routinely condemn non-violent attacks on gays. You’ve read some of the ugly things claimed about gays even here on First Things, which tends to be restrained, but I don’t remember you speaking against those slurs. Why not?
“trying to find a liberal academic or opinion leader who condemns the sexual nihilism coming out of New Haven at the beginning of every academic year is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
How many liberal Christians celebrate Yale’s sex week? Didn’t the Yale administration just cancel the event? I don’t suppose the administration suddenly went conservative Catholic all of a sudden. I remember when conservatives were making fun of the liberals who were making the Antioch rules and who were anti-pornography feminists. You might remember Tipper Gore’s campaign for profanity ratings on music.
The truth is that there are plenty of liberals and liberal Christians who don’t like sexual or any other kind of nihilism, but there are people who like to play the culture war. Culture warriors on the left claim that liberal Christians, anti-pornography feminists, etc., are playing into the hands of evil fundamentalists, and culture warriors on the right claim that liberal Christians are fundamentally dishonest. Either way, culture warriors get the truth fundamentally wrong.
“Your conservatism analogy fails miserably.”
The terms of my analogy remain true. Conservatives oppose gay marriage. Conservatives murder gays. You only object to these statements because you know that not ALL conservatives murder or even approve of the murder of gays, but you’re somehow unwilling to be generous to liberals in the same way. (Shh. There are also conservatives—even prominent conservatives—who support gay marriage, but let’s not talk about that.)
My analogy was intended to prove a point. You’ve tried to smear me by comparing me to people I don’t approve of, and I’ve pointed out that I wouldn’t think of doing the same to you. You have too much of the culture warrior in you, Ken. Too often you try to score points by painting too broadly or playing guilt by association. Being Christian and pro-life makes me conservative and being pro-gay and pro-big government makes me liberal, and I’m tired of the degraded religious and political environment that seeks to flatten every discussion into a simple opposition of good guys and bad guys.
We were having a serious conversation about how to approach the issue of gay marriage, when you turned the conversation into a discussion of Yale sex week. Why you made that turn continues to escape me.
August 31st, 2012 | 2:54 pm
Michael,
I continue to believe that the same illusional ideal of sexuality, which has its roots in liberal myth-making, is common to same-sex marriage and Yale Sex Week. But I’ll be happy to forget about all things Yale if you give me your opinion of the fact that the liberal pundits and academics who are so eager to moralize about the “bigotry” of opponents of same-sex marriage are unanimously unwilling to moralize about Yale Sex Week. What are they afraid of? That a porn star–a silly, morally blighted porn star–will denounce them?
Same-sex marriage is the current incarnation of the culture war. Of course I’m a culture warrior; I have a dim view of same-sex marriage. You need to understand that my culture-warrior indignation is caused largely by the fact that a cheating game is going on. Overwhelmingly, the legalization of same-sex marriage is the result of judicial diktat, not the democratic process. This November, we’ll see if that pattern changes, but even if it does, and if same-sex marriage starts to be advanced legislatively rather than judicially, it will be largely owing to the foolish Supreme Court opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, and so the cheating won’t entirely go away.
It angers me to see judges dictating the outcome of matters of reasonable disagreement like same-sex marriage. Yeah, it’s about the “rights” of gays, liberals say, so judicial intervention is proper. Does it occur to these them that someone might reasonably disagree with that? Obviously not. Maybe this will help you to see why I don’t think much of liberalism. I think liberals live in cocoons of the like-minded, insulated from viewpoints that are alien to liberal assumptions. Liberals know such viewpoints exist, but they tend to think those viewpoints are a sign of ignorance or bias, not reasonable pluralism.
Do you agree with your fellow liberals who think that opposition to same-sex marriage is inherently unreasonable–that any properly informed and unbiased person will favor same-sex marriage?
I asked you this question over a year ago; as I recall it, your answer was rather vague, which gave me the impression that, at the end of the day, you are unwilling to credit the opponents of same-sex marriage with having good reasons. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Same-sex marriage promotes an illusion. It finds sexual complementarity where there is none. It misconceives sexual union as sexual contact. True sexual union requires physical–physiological and biological–unity as the bedrock of intimacy and communion. The unity of bodies can only be achieved in paradigmatic sexual intercourse (and true sexual communion, it may be, in any family resemblance thereto).
To pursue illusions is human, but society should be careful about acquiescing in the pursuit of illusions. In the task of protecting marriage from hideously misguided reformist schemes, I see political urgency.
August 31st, 2012 | 7:02 pm
Ken,
“the same illusional ideal of sexuality, which has its roots in liberal myth-making”
You might consider that there are several roots and several ideals of sexuality, each with their own proposals about how to understand and control sexuality. Just to use figures easy at hand, Tipper Gore’s ideal is far from Yale Sex Week’s. Obama and even Bill Clinton seem to understand sexuality better than either Newt Gingrich or Mark Sanford.
“give me your opinion of the fact that the liberal pundits and academics who are so eager to moralize about the “bigotry” of opponents of same-sex marriage are unanimously unwilling to moralize about Yale Sex Week”
It’s a silly question because you’re asking me to defend an idea I don’t support. If I were a pundit or an academic, I would moralize about both issues. And you’re ignoring all of the issues that conservative pundits and academics refuse to moralize about. Where is the condemnation, for example, of the loud bigotry against homosexuals? You haven’t complained when bigoted comments have been made by fellow conservatives on this site, and you said nothing when I raised this point earlier. Why not? Why should I answer your questions when you won’t answer mine? In fact, you’ve skipped a number of my questions.
The short answer is that I would guess that most liberals don’t think that the activities of sex week are worth bothering about. Kids experiment with sex and grow up and settle down, especially privileged kids who are on the fast track. Liberals tend to worry more about sex and especially violence in entertainment and popular culture, especially kids’ entertainment.
“What are they afraid of? That a porn star–a silly, morally blighted porn star–will denounce them?”
Your contempt of liberals doesn’t reflect well on you. I wish your imagination were larger, more willing to believe that people you don’t agree with nonetheless take stands out of well-reasoned principle. The mark of the culture warrior is that he thinks his opponents are dishonest fools.
“Of course I’m a culture warrior; I have a dim view of same-sex marriage.”
You can have a dim view of gay marriage without thinking its proponents are dishonest fools.
“You need to understand that my culture-warrior indignation is caused largely by the fact that a cheating game is going on. Overwhelmingly, the legalization of same-sex marriage is the result of judicial diktat, not the democratic process.”
The courts are part of the democratic process and exist in part to protect minority rights, and there are few minorities as slim as gays, which make up a scant 3% of the population. Speaking of diktat, civil rights for blacks are rooted in the Reconstruction amendments which were supported by a grotesque act of tyranny. When Southern states voted against ratification, the North dissolved their governments and instituted martial law until the states elected legislatures that would vote the way the Republican Party wanted them to. Hardly an example of the glories of the democratic process.
“I think liberals live in cocoons of the like-minded, insulated from viewpoints that are alien to liberal assumptions. Liberals know such viewpoints exist, but they tend to think those viewpoints are a sign of ignorance or bias, not reasonable pluralism”
Ah, yes, the old assumption that the other guys are blinkered, and your side is not. There are plenty of conservatives who live in a bubble, and the evidence is all around you. I’m skeptical of all claims that one group is more reasonable than another.
“I asked you this question over a year ago; as I recall it, your answer was rather vague, which gave me the impression that, at the end of the day, you are unwilling to credit the opponents of same-sex marriage with having good reasons. Please correct me if I’m wrong”
You’ve asked this question a couple of times, and I’ve given a similar answer each time. I think there are reasonable arguments against gay marriage, and I think there are bigoted arguments for it. I don’t think any side has an exclusive access to reason, and I don’t think any side is exclusively bigoted. I think a lot of conservatives are bigoted against gays. I think others have reasoned and principled stands against gay marriage.
As far as I can tell, you are not bigoted toward gays and have carefully reasoned and logically consistent principles that you apply to gay marriage. I think you might be bigoted toward liberals, but that’s another subject. Is that clear enough?
“Same-sex marriage promotes an illusion.”
You’re wrong. It recognizes the truth that some gay couples have achieved the kinds of union that some straight couples have. Anyone who knows a gay couple that has been together through thick and thin for decades knows that gay unions can be great examples of true love and caring. The long-term relationships and families in my congregation are no illusion. They’re real thing. They might not be recognized as marriages by the state or by the Roman Church, but they’re marriages nonetheless.
September 1st, 2012 | 4:49 pm
Michael,
I haven’t commented on the anti-homosexual comments that you say are on this blog because you and David Nickol are the only SSM commenters I bother to read. In general I do not read stuff that I agree with. I spend vastly more time reading liberal journals than conservative journals. Also, I would not equate even visceral dislike of homosexuality with hatred for homosexuals–”Love the sinner and hate the sin.”
Civil rights for blacks can’t be compared to same-sex marriage in one sense that I think liberals should agree with: As of the 1950s, at least, no one could reasonably disagree about what rights blacks have as citizens and individuals, but one can reasonably disagree about, say, giving a right to marry to people who have no capacity to fulfill the procreative goods of marriage.
The illusion behind same-sex marriage is that sexual union is mere sexual contact. This is the liberal view. (See Paul Weithman’s article in the Martha Nussbaum-edited book–I don’t have the title). The author claims he has refuted John Finnis’ idea of sexual complementarity, but his entire argument is based on the plainly mistaken idea that sexual contact can be considered a “union” of the partners, with sexual complementarity existing whenever there is such a “union.” Crazy stuff, but it confirms my beliefs about the intellectual tendencies of all too many liberals.
Here’s an idea. We’re going in circles. Why don’t we argue about the Finnis-Nussbaum contretemps, in which Nussbaum testified to a court in Colorado (in a case that the Supreme Court later decided–Romer v. Evans) that Plato accepted homosexuality, and Finnis strongly disputed that characerization. My impression is that Nussbaum was mendacious and Finnis was telling it like it is. Would that be a good proxy for our disagreement?
Maybe later, though–read up on it in the meantime and inject that conversation into a future SSM post.
September 3rd, 2012 | 11:56 pm
Ken,
“As of the 1950s, at least, no one could reasonably disagree about what rights blacks have as citizens and individuals”
I’m sorry to say this, Ken, but you Yankees can be so naïve. My father and uncle were all very reasonable and well-respected, but they knew full well the so-called limitations of blacks. They learned to be more circumspect about their opinions later in the century, but in the right company they felt comfortable to hold forth.
The change in their conversation about blacks reminds me of the changes made in the catechism, which no longer implies that gays need to marry women but suggests instead that gays should remain chaste forever. Where do you stand on this question? How do you recommend that gays spend their lives—praying the gay away or learning chastity?
“Also, I would not equate even visceral dislike of homosexuality with hatred for homosexuals–”Love the sinner and hate the sin.”
Up the road in Dallas, Hank Jr. explained to an audience this weekend that “We’ve got a Muslim for a President who hates cowboys, hates cowgirls, hates fishing, hates farming, loves gays, and we hate him.”
Would you call this sentiment a “visceral dislike” or just old-fashioned bigotry? In fact, I’m no curious to know whether you think there is such a thing as bigotry toward homosexuals.
“The illusion behind same-sex marriage is that sexual union is mere sexual contact. This is the liberal view.”
One weakness in your arguments, Ken, is that you often distort the views of your opposition. I wouldn’t say that “sexual union is mere sexual contact.” Because I believe sex is much more than that, I’m deeply opposed to premarital sex. I think most liberals agree that sex is never “mere” contact.
“We’re going in circles.”
I don’t think we are going in circles, Ken. I think you drop arguments and shift to others. For example, in this thread, we started by discussing the changing nature of common sense, but you quickly shifted the conversation into a discussion of Yale, which continues to revolve around your overly broad definition of liberalism.
In my last post, I raised several serious issues that you could have discussed, but you chose to focus on lesser issues instead. The serious issues were these:
- The several roots and ideals of sexuality
- The attitude of liberal pundits toward sex week
- The role of the courts in a democracy
- The role of reason in these arguments
- The purported differences between long-term straight and gay relationships
You picked up the role of reason, but I wonder whether you will stick with it.
“Would that be a good proxy for our disagreement?”
This is the second time you have asked for a proxy. I don’t understand why you want me to defend ideas I may or may not hold. Why not just argue what is in front of us?
September 4th, 2012 | 3:57 pm
Michael,
As to blacks, I get your point. Lincoln was a racist by today’s terms. In his day, there was reasonable disagreement about slavery–the Civil War was a theological crisis. But those arguments for slavery were rooted in the Old Testament. The New Testament tolerates slavery the way Jefferson Davis did–it is regrettable but it is here, and getting rid of it is not really high on the agenda–but in due course it would be better not to have it. (Jefferson Davis, like my hero Stonewall Jackson, was an exemplary Christian.) Anyway, you insult me by calling me a Yankee. Yankees are the northeastern liberals who persecuted the South during Reconstruction, thereby gravely damaging race relations for generations to come. They are, of course, the very same people leading the way for same-sex marriage and trying to steamroll the “bigoted” opposition.
Hank Jr. was being hyperbolic and witty, as indicated by the fact that he knows perfectly well that Obama is no Muslim. (At least I hope he knows that!) There must be a rarified liberal kind of humor that tickles your funny bone, but clearly conservative irony does not do it. There is obviously such a thing as bigotry towards homosexuals. In my view, though, if a person is not “gay-friendly,” that person should not be presumed to be a bigot. As an analogy, take someone like me who is very prejudiced against fat women–the more corpulent they are, the more prejudiced I am. And yet I’m perfectly friendly to the fat women I know. So bigotry is a mixed bag in any case.
My point about sexual union as sexual contact was that this is the only way that liberals can make same-sex couples fall under the rubric of sexual complementarity. Do you think these couples are sexually complementary? In what way? How is their joining together physically a “one flesh” union?
Liberal pundits ignore Sex Week because they buy into the Sexual Revolution plus the Harm Principle (“if no one is harmed by it, it’s no business of mine”). They may not want sexual libertinism for their families, but they don’t like making laws to keep sex from becoming destructive. Conservatives do. (It might comfort you to know that I think libertarians–except on the matter of centralized government–are even more foolish than liberals.)
The role of courts–why do you not oppose judicial supremacy in cases of reasonable disagreement? What justifies judicial supremacy in such cases, such as same-sex marriage? Are your beliefs consistent on this point? For the record, I believe the best-known case of conservative judicial supremacy–in affirmative action cases–is not nearly as bad as liberal judicial supremacy in abortion and same-sex marriage. Affirmative action does involves reasonable disagreement, but only about the means to the end (equality is the end). Abortion and same-sex marriage involve reasonable disagreement about the end, not just the means to the end.
Judicially dictating abortion and same-sex marriage is therefore much worse than dictating limits to–or even the end of–affirmative action. Ends are more morally significant than means–that’s why liberal judicial supremacy as we know it is worse than conservative judicial supremacy as we know it. I oppose both kinds.
On the differences between gays and straights. Romans 1:26-27 says that same-sex sexual sins are of a special sort. St. Paul is saying both that homosexuality reflects an unusual degree of estrangement from the created order (“male and female made He them”) and that this estrangement is characterized fundamentally by an illusion (an illusion which extends to revisionist–i.e., liberal–interpretations of Romans 1:26-27).
Would you be satisfied with civil unions instead of same-sex marriage? I don’t favor civil unions. I do think that opponents of SSM would benefit from having an argument about SSM that does not necessarily reject civil unions, or have the implication that they should be rejected. It seems to me–but I could be wrong–that the most prominent anti-SSM argument does incline to reject civil unions. I think this popular argument can be supplemented, not modified, to steer it away from necessarily rejecting civil unions. But the great thing about it is that it would enable us to say about a potent pro-SSM point: “That’s an argument for civil unions at best.” To be able to say that sort of thing forcefully, you don’t want your anti-SSM argument to *inevitably* oppose civil unions.
Michael, I have one big problem with you. You disparage philosophy–you think it’s relatively unimportant. It’s not. What real marriage is depends on being able to think about marriage with some philosophical nuance. It’s not all a matter of “Hey, here’s Tom! He’s gay and he’s been with his partner for 30 years. Isn’t that great!”
Don’t take umbrage. Try to understand that this way of putting it is (1) funny, and (2) true.
September 4th, 2012 | 11:21 pm
Ken,
“Lincoln was a racist by today’s terms.”
You seem to have shifted to the 1850s. I thought we were talking about the reasonableness of racism in the 1950s.
“Yankees are the northeastern liberals who persecuted the South during Reconstruction, thereby gravely damaging race relations for generations to come. They are, of course, the very same people leading the way for same-sex marriage and trying to steamroll the “bigoted” opposition”
First, Texans mean something quite different when we talk about Yankees. Second, this is an odd way to describe the Reconstruction. I don’t know how you can differentiate the abolitionists whose cause I presume you support from the Republicans who oversaw Reconstruction and passed the Reconstruction Amendments and who you disparage here.
“Hank Jr. was being hyperbolic and witty, as indicated by the fact that he knows perfectly well that Obama is no Muslim. (At least I hope he knows that!)”
What makes you think he was being witty? How well do you know his music?
“In my view, though, if a person is not “gay-friendly,” that person should not be presumed to be a bigot.”
I agree.
“My point about sexual union as sexual contact was that this is the only way that liberals can make same-sex couples fall under the rubric of sexual complementarity. Do you think these couples are sexually complementary? In what way? How is their joining together physically a “one flesh” union?”
First a general point. There’s rarely an “only way” to understand something.
The idea of complementarity has always seemed like a dodge to me. It seems to offer a vague sense that the sexes are different, and I only hear it being used as a defense against homosexuality.
The union as one flesh is clearly metaphorical and mysterious in Genesis. Women were not literally created out of the rib of the men they will marry. But when you’re with the right person, you feel as if you were finally with your own flesh again. Gay couples can feel that.
“Liberal pundits ignore Sex Week because they buy into the Sexual Revolution plus the Harm Principle”
Some probably follow this logic. Others probably follow the logic I described. I don’t see the purpose of a single, large generalization that you can use to describe all liberals as bad.
“they don’t like making laws to keep sex from becoming destructive”
What specific laws do you want to pass that will prevent sex from becoming destructive? This question gets to something important.
“The role of courts–why do you not oppose judicial supremacy in cases of reasonable disagreement?”
This series of questions rests on a distinction I either don’t buy or don’t understand. Don’t all cases involve “reasonable disagreement”? Why would something become a case if reasonable people didn’t disagree? In other words, can you name a case where one party was unreasonable?
“Romans 1:26-27 says that same-sex sexual sins are of a special sort.”
As you might remember, I don’t think Paul should be reinterpreted to mean anything other than what he plainly meant, which is that he found homosexuality unnatural. I also think Paul was wrong on that score, and you can see that in 1 Corinthians 6 and the Roman catechism: “the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, the self-indulgent, sodomites, thieves, misers, drunkards, slanderers and swindlers”
Paul places sodomites in a list of sins that with one exception is accepted universally by societies everywhere. Every society condemns thieves and swindlers, and most societies either reject or place significant restrictions on drunkenness and sexual immorality. Only monotheists, however, condemn idolatry.
Now here’s my question. Every sin except idolatry has clear, demonstrable harms that break other boundaries. The thief will eventually steal from those he loves. The drunkard will eventually hurt others beside himself. The idolater, however, can live a perfectly upright life but still not know the one God.
When gays were kept in the closet, they seemed like drunkards, the kind of people whose sin eventually eats up their whole lives. But now that gays are accepted and live openly, they seem more like idolaters, people who can live perfectly upright lives. As is clear in the revised catechism, even the Roman Church doesn’t see homosexuality as Paul did, as something that has this-worldly harmful effects.
“Would you be satisfied with civil unions instead of same-sex marriage?”
Civil unions are separate but equal, but that hasn’t worked in the past nor in the present.
“You disparage philosophy–you think it’s relatively unimportant.”
I think you put that fairly. Jesus was no philosopher, nor was Paul for that matter. Philosophy can help us understand what has happened or is happening, but I don’t think it creates change. And as a practical matter, I don’t think most people think philosophically. They look not for coherence, reason, or principle; they look for justice and fairness. Most of what Jesus preached and lived is contradictory, but it is sublimely fair and just.
““Hey, here’s Tom! He’s gay and he’s been with his partner for 30 years. Isn’t that great!”
Except I’m not talking about Tom, who is a philosophical abstraction. I’m talking about Gary and Don, who are not measured only by length of their love and faithfulness to one another, but by the consistency of their Christian practice. Remember that we are Methodists, which means that worship is only the beginning of our time together. We participate in devotionals together, we examine the state of our souls together, we work in the community together, we witness together in multiple ways. And this is not one singular couple but one of several. When we talk to other reconciling congregations, they report similar experiences.
The good news was not a philosophical argument; it was the witness of changed lives made possible by grace.
September 5th, 2012 | 2:18 pm
Michael,
Shifting from the 1950s to the 1860s: You brought up Reconstruction and Yankees.
“Odd way to describe Reconstruction”: As carried out, Reconstruction was Carpetbaggery, not a fair public policy. I don’t care for the Republican Party of the 1860s. It was imperious and self-righteous.
Hank Jr’s wit: I don’t know anything about his beliefs, but I know the words of his that you quoted are inherently funny, at least to non-liberals. Btw, no one should miss slats grobnick’s hilarious August 24 comment. Now that’s how to make fun of liberals!
Legislation that conservatives would like to pass to keep sex from becoming a destructive force in society: Against condoms in public secondary schools; against marriage-undermining same-sex marriage; against hard-core pornography (Hustler, not Playboy), against bathhouses; against no-fault divorce, etc.
Sexual complementarity: What about someone who says the function of the male and female sex organs is a clear sign of the order of creation as instituted by God? Or someone who says this in a more secularized natural-law way? Or who says having complementary sex organs is a necessary condition of sexual complementarity? Can you show they are wrong?
Reasonable disagreement: It refers to moral disagreement, or to conflicts of value–disagreements that implicate worldviews or basic moral beliefs. There is reasonable disagreement in this sense about abortion but not about federalism or gun control.
St. Paul on homosexuality: Robert Gagnon’s 500-page *The Bible and Homosexual Practice* is definitive–and magisterial.
Civil Unions: We have separate but equal for Native Americans on their reservations, and (tendentiously but undeniably) for gender-segregated bathrooms. Separate but equal is a problem for liberals whose arguments for SSM can be considered by opponents of SSM as arguments for civil unions at best–e.g., the argument that socially sanctioned gay sex will be good for the whole society. (The idea behind “at best” being that same-sex couples aren’t properly qualified for marriage, but civil unions might be morally okay.)
People look for justice and fairness, not philosophical reasons: Is justice and fairness what you say it is? Aren’t you assuming that it is, in fact, what you say it is?
The Good News: The Bible says homosexuality is “against nature.” You don’t agree, but I’d like to know how your side responds to the book I recommended above. It’s slightly philosophical, though–the subtitle is *Texts and Hermeneutics*. Dictionary!
Judicial Review of Legislation: Unfair, in matters of reasonable disagreement, because judges are unaccountable to the people and because their decisions are constitutionally entrenched, making reversal difficult, and sometimes practically impossible. (I favor reversing Roe v. Wade because precedent is weak in the face of reasonable disagreement.)
Proxy for our disagreement: Suppose Martha Nussbaum was indeed lying. Would Justice Kennedy, if he knew she was lying in her testimony, have characterized the Colorado legislation as driven by “animus,” a characterization that helped pave the way for Lawrence v. Texas and thus for same-sex marriage? Maybe not–I think probably not. With this down-to-earth (non-philosophical) proxy, we would have a reasonable chance of agreeing whether a cheating game was going on here, and how this affected the prospects of same-sex marriage. But if you are reluctant to do the necessary reading, I confess that I am too.
Generally: I like high school football even though I’m concerned about concussions to young players, when they are most vulnerable to the longterm damage it can cause. Despite this danger, I defend high school football. I value it highly and would not want to abandon it for flag football, despite the tragedy of concussions (which can be minimized by, for example, abolishing the three-point stance, and other rule changes). Similarly, I defend traditional marriage despite the tragedy for same-sex couples of not being able to have civil marriages. I value traditional marriage, and seek to protect it from being effectively abolished, despite this tragic aspect–just like with high school football. (Btw, that was my old high school that beat your Texas powerhouse school, Euless, last week.)
September 6th, 2012 | 12:16 am
Ken,
“You brought up Reconstruction and Yankees”
I think you’ve lost the context of the reference. You complained that the “legalization of same-sex marriage is the result of judicial diktat, not the democratic process.” Usually, when conservatives complain about judicial activism, they point to the civil rights acts of the 1960s as examples of good legislative process. Conservatives typically argue that judicial actions on civil rights were at least based on sound legislation as manifested in the Reconstruction Acts.
My point is that the Reconstruction Acts were the result of a grotesque act of tyranny, with martial law replacing the democratic process. I think today that conservatives and liberals alike celebrate the victory over segregation. But when conservatives argue that this victory shows the proper use of the legislative and judicial branches, they seriously distort history. Like blacks once were, gays are a despised minority. It will take a combination of legislation and judicial action to secure gay rights, just as it took a combination to secure civil rights for blacks.
“I don’t care for the Republican Party of the 1860s. It was imperious and self-righteous”
On the other hand, they passed the Reconstruction Acts. Nobody is perfect. If they hadn’t passed those acts, what would the civil rights acts been based on?
“I know the words of his that you quoted are inherently funny, at least to non-liberals.”
Do I really need to look up the poll data on how many Americans believe Obama is Muslim? I’d like you to ask a conservative Muslim whether he finds Hank’s words funny. How many conservative gays are laughing? How about the columnists who have written on First Things about their same-sex attraction? Do they find Hank funny? I wonder how much imagination it takes to see that the world isn’t divided between liberal and non-liberal.
“Against condoms in public secondary schools; against marriage-undermining same-sex marriage; against hard-core pornography (Hustler, not Playboy), against bathhouses; against no-fault divorce, etc”
I think you can find plenty of liberals joining conservatives on one or more of these issues. Lots of liberals like the v-chip and parental controls. Many liberals would support more light forms of censorship if they could be sure conservatives would restrain themselves. No more banning 1984 and Catcher in the Rye, etc. The other problem, of course, is the polarization that depicts all liberals as one way and all conservatives as another. It’s hard to draw precise lines around issues of censorship and community standards when people are running around talking about wars on Christmas and wars on women.
“Or who says having complementary sex organs is a necessary condition of sexual complementarity? Can you show they are wrong?”
As I say, I don’t know what complementarity means except that gay sex is wrong. The term is not used in any other context, and it is so vague that all it really means is that only one kind of sex act is allowed or considered central. It is hard to take seriously a concept whose sole purpose is to act as a trump card. It makes the argument circular. It boils down to saying gay sex is wrong because it isn’t straight sex.
“It refers to moral disagreement, or to conflicts of value–disagreements that implicate worldviews or basic moral beliefs. There is reasonable disagreement in this sense about abortion but not about federalism or gun control”
Ok. This sounds like jargon to me. Why is this distinction important to you?
“Robert Gagnon’s 500-page *The Bible and Homosexual Practice* is definitive–and magisterial”
Ok. Why is his book relevant? Does he agree with me that Paul was resolutely opposed homosexuality? Does he believe that homosexuality is more like drunkenness or idolatry?
“We have separate but equal for Native Americans on their reservations”
And that’s a good thing?
I probably would have been ok with civil unions, but the possibility didn’t stay alive for long. It’s strange to have a form of union where the only distinguishing feature is what kind of sex the couple has.
“Is justice and fairness what you say it is? Aren’t you assuming that it is, in fact, what you say it is?”
That’s not the point. My point is that people—real people, not philosophers—consult their guts, not abstract principles. In the old days, a lot of people in my congregation were against homosexuality, and they hewed to principle. Then they got to know real gay Christians, and they understood their principles differently. Some of the most powerful witnesses to our history as a congregation are by those who talk about how bigoted they once were.
“You don’t agree, but I’d like to know how your side responds to the book I recommended above.”
I can’t speak for anyone but myself. I think the full Christian tradition is very clearly against homosexuality. Thus, I’m likely to agree with Gagnon. My agreement means that any change has to be taken slowly and prayerfully. I think we’re there.
“Unfair, in matters of reasonable disagreement, because judges are unaccountable to the people”
It seems to me that conservatives in the 1850s would have argued that slavery is a matter of reasonable disagreement, so I just don’t know how the distinction is useful.
“we would have a reasonable chance of agreeing whether a cheating game was going on here, and how this affected the prospects of same-sex marriage.”
Let’s assume that I read the accounts and decided that Nussbaum was lying, why would I change my mind about gay marriage? My opinion on the question doesn’t hinge on what either Nussbaum or Kennedy thinks. My fellow congregants would still be who they are.
“Similarly, I defend traditional marriage despite the tragedy for same-sex couples of not being able to have civil marriages.”
Why do you think it is “tragic” that gays can’t marry? Why don’t you think it is just?
“Btw, that was my old high school that beat your Texas powerhouse school, Euless, last week”
Sorry. I don’t follow Dallas ball.
September 6th, 2012 | 2:58 pm
Michael,
I won’t address all your points. Reconstruction? Doesn’t matter. Reasonable disagreement? You don’t see the difference, I’m not willing to show it to you. It’s not central except to the question of who should decide SSM–the legislature or the judiciary.
Fairness and sexual complementarity are more on-point. Take the second of these first. Discomplementarity (meaning, self-evidently, physiological and biological discomplementarity) is how St. Paul describes the wrongness of homosexual acts. You are denying that bodily complementarity has any functional or natural purpose or point. You seem committed to denying that the perpetuation of the human race is natural to the created order–as opposed to being just a matter of God’s will–in which case you are embracing an extreme form of theistic voluntarism. (Do you also believe that God could, if He chose, make square circles?)
Couldn’t God have built into creation the command to perpetuate the human race? Yes, and most Christians believe He did. But you don’t. If you did believe that, you would recognize that sexual complementarity has a moral and anthropological purpose.
And if, as you say, complementarity is not a generally applied idea, so what? Neither is “let there be light.” Sexuality, like the creation, has a strong element of singularity. It’s unique. That’s why complementarity has special force in this one context and not so much elsewhere.
Tragedy and justice: I think it is tragic but not unjust for same-sex couples not to be able to get married in civil law. Society has a duty to ameliorate some tragedies (the tragedy of drug addiction) but not all (the tragedy of bad luck). Same-sex couples are more like the latter. It is just their bad luck that their desires make them unfitted for real marriage, just as it’s my bad luck that, unlike my father, I could never be a pilot, due to deafness. I don’t see the injustice of society saying to me: “No, Ken, we don’t want you flying commercial airliners.” It’s tragic, but not unjust–just as it’s tragic but not unjust that same-sex couples, who are as unfitted for marriage as I am for flying commercial airplanes, cannot enjoy civil marriage. Maybe I can be allowed to fly small private aircraft under certain conditions, but same-sex couple are similarly allowed to marry under certain conditions–in religious ceremonies recognized by a church.
Speaking of football, same-sex marriage is like saying, “from now on, football shall be *flag* football” so that people who are physically incapable of playing traditional football can enjoy this socially approved sport and bask in its glory. If flag football replaced helmet-and-pads football, it would be fair to say that it abolished football by abandoning *real* football, just as same-sex marriage abolishes real marriage.
The passage you mentioned in your previous comment (in I Cor. 6) should be interpreted in light of Romans 1:26-27, not in opposition to it. I’m not enough of a Bible expert to know how to interpret the passage you cited, but I do know this basic rule of interpretation: Reconcile seemingly conflicting passages if that is possible, and if it’s not, try to decide which passage is more important in light of the whole. Since you evidently think the two passages are irreconcilable, why do you think the passage from I Cor. 6 matters more than Romans 1:26-27? Especially since the former’s teaching about homosexuality is vague, while the latter’s teaching is not.
Why, incidentally, do you think it’s good that homosexuality be perceived to be like idolatry? I don’t get that.
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