I wanted to respond to you before you gave up on this thread. I started writing a long response to all this this morning but I ran out of time.

I wrote a pretty average-length comment recently but FT didn’t post it. As I am a donor, I called FT and asked them why they didn’t post the comment. I was told it was too long, but then they later posted it.

Anyway, the comment I started to write is longer yet so to ensure you actually see it, would you mind checking this discussion board over the next day or two. I just started this thing so there are no members yet. When I finish my comment I’ll put up a thread with your name on it. Thanks!

So far as I am concerned, the primary purpose of civil marriage is to establish the juridical bond between father and child (filiation) and its functional definition is to be found in the rule that “the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father.” Accordingly, marriage is irrelevant to same-sex couples.

There are a number of Michael’s on First Things, some of which are diametrically opposed to one another but I can never remember who is who and so when a Michael starts writing I am afraid I often just skip the comments because it’s too much work for me to remember where he’s coming from.

So if you can please help me out, are you one of the Michaels that believes the redefinition of marriage is a good, or at least indifferent thing, or are you the Michael(s?) that regards it as catastrophic in nature?

I think it is really a question of language and meaning.

The word “marriage” used to refer to an institution that was more or less the same throughout Christendom and it was taken for granted that those couples who were married anywhere would be treated as married everywhere.

The word “marriage” was also used to describe analogous unions, such as polygamous marriages, so widespread in other cultures.

Where SSM has been introduced, the social context in which the word “marriage” will change and the word’s meaning will inevitably change with it.

Note how we now have the new verb « Pacser » meaning to enter into a PACS or civil union.

If the United States only thought it had the legal institution of slavery, but in reality no such thing as legal slavery existed…

I’ve tried twice to post a comment on this and the FT intern/censors would not post it, for what reason I have no idea. I’m not going to give this one much thought because it’s no longer worth the time.

Suffice it to say that your argument is premised on your belief that I had no idea that slavery was ever legal in the United States.

I noted in one of my previous attempts that last week when I said your comments take up 80% of the bandwidth on First Things, you replied that it would not be possible for you to take up 80% of the bandwidth even if you wrote 80% of the actual comments. I’m realizing now how revealing that comment of yours truly was.

Apparently you are allowed to say certain things like this but no one is actually allowed to respond to the things you say. I assume this one will be censored as well. Who knows.

“The state would be saying that they have their own definition of what “born on” means that is different from the meaning in most other states. Fine. They still aren’t Martians”

We already have laws quite similar to this in adoption. Some states replace the child’s birth certificate with a new one that declares the adoptive parents to be the real parents. The original birth certificate is locked away as if it did not exist.

As you would put it, everyone “knows” that the child is not the parents’, but everyone acts if the child is.

I’m trying to understand what you see as the difference between what you are saying and what I am saying.

Perhaps another analogy I brought up recently will help to clarify. I said that New York State could pass a law declaring that all NY residents were legally recognized as being born on Mars. They could use whatever means they wish to enforce that legally recognition. It would get so much publicity that everyone in the nation would know the state of NY regards all legal residents as Martians. All that squares with what you are saying. But they aren’t really Martians.

The state would be saying that they have their own definition of what “born on” means that is different from the meaning in most other states. Fine. They still aren’t Martians.

If the United States only thought it had the legal institution of slavery, but in reality no such thing as legal slavery existed, then why did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation and why did congress pass the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery? How can you prohibit something that doesn’t exist? By your thinking, congress should just have issued a clarification that there was no such thing as slavery, that government had no powers to make laws supporting and regulating slavery, and there had never been any slaves, since people cannot really be owned.

My point is that the United States had legal slavery prior to the Civil War. Clearly the government considered itself (and the citizens considered the government) to have the authority to make laws regulating slavery, to permit slavery in some new territories, to prohibit it in others, and so on. When the anti-slavery side won, they passed laws against slavery. You don’t pass laws against things that don’t exist.

In such a context, to say, “That man is not a slave, but a free and equal citizen,” would have appeared, even to an abolitionist, as incoherent

Bit of a side note, but John Calhoun believed that Jefferson thought slavery wrong. Jefferson Davis said Jefferson was not anti-slavery and Davis argued that “community independence” was synonymous with “all men created equal.” Alexander Stephens (and Taney) argued that Jefferson and the founders believed “all men” referred to “all men,” but since the time of the founding science had made clear that such was not the case.