Roger Scruton takes to the pages of the London Times with a circumspect, but terribly cutting, treatment of the push for gay marriage (sub req):
If we ask ourselves how it is that the advocacy of gay marriage has become an orthodoxy to which all our political leaders subscribe, we must surely acknowledge that intimidation has some part to play in the matter. Express the slightest hesitation on this score and someone will accuse you of “homophobia”, while others will organise to ensure that, even if nothing else is known about your views, this at least will be notorious. Only someone with nothing to lose can venture to discuss the issue with the measure of circumspection that it invites, and politicians do not figure among the class of people with nothing to lose.
Yet it is unlikely that the ordinary conscience will find itself entirely at ease with a change that overthrows social norms on which people have depended throughout recorded history. In this, as in so many things, people of conservative temperament look around for the person who will speak for them and find only an embarrassed silence. Strident minorities, acting on the growing disposition to censor their opponents, ensure that the deeper the question, the more likely it is to be settled by shallow arguments.
He criticizes those who argue that marriage is an ordinance of the City of God that should not concern us overmuch as denizens of the City of Man (Paul Griffiths is the most eloquent, though I think not finally convincing, advocate for this position):
One Christian response is to say simply that the State can define marriage as it will, can confer whatever legal privileges on whatever couples it should single out for its protection, but that this has no bearing on the reality, which is a matter of metaphysics, not convention. Marriage, on this view, is a sacrament, and can be neither made nor unmade by the State. Nothing, therefore, is changed by the new legal order.
That response is understandable, but also short-sighted. In our secular society the State has perforce assumed many of the functions of religion. Moreover, you don’t need to regard marriage as a sacrament and a vow before God in order to adhere to the traditional view of it. In every society of which records exist marriage is seen as a bond between man and woman in which the whole of society has an interest. Marriage is the way in which families begin, and the obligations undertaken by the partners reach far beyond any contract between them.
Until now we have acquiesced in the idea that the State can solemnise marriages and secure them through legal privileges. And we have accepted that the State can use the criminal law to retain some version of the Judaeo-Christian conception of the marriage vow. Thus our laws against incest, bigamy and child marriage reflect the belief that marriage, as defined by the State, is to be judged in terms of another and higher standard. But as marriage is rewritten as a contract between partners in which future generations have no voice, those laws lose their underlying rationale.
Scruton is not terribly alarmed by our increasing acceptance of homosexuality. Yet he fears that those who see themselves fighting unjustified discrimination are really failing to make necessary distinctions:
Our generation has evolved in the matter of homosexual relations, accepting that way of life and the right of the State to endorse it through civil partnerships. But always we have had in the back of our mind that the bond between husband and wife, like that between parent and child, has a moral nature that transcends the sphere of contract. We resonate to the old rites of passage, and wonder what business it is of the State finally to set them aside, with no obvious reason, and with no clear mandate for doing so.
He concludes with a criticism of our overstretched notions of equality:
And some of us are troubled by the shallow reasoning that has dominated the political discussions surrounding this move, as though the threadbare idea of equality were enough to settle every question concerning the long-term destiny of mankind and as though the writings of the anthropologists (not to mention the poets, the philosophers, the theologians, the novelists, the sociologists) counted for nothing beside the slogans of Stonewall. Are we entirely wrong in this?
Marriage has gone through many changes over centuries and across societies but has been notably stable in one respect: its heterosexual character. To suppose that this basic element of human nature can be rewritten at will—and further to assume as a matter of course that such rewriting must be a good thing—requires a great indifference to history and a very high regard for present assumptions.
In his historical blindness and moral excitability, today’s same-sex marriage advocate resembles no one so much as the temperance woman who, one century ago, encouraged a social change contrary to good sense and human nature. American social movements, it seems, remain immutably Puritan no matter what commonsense fact (the goodness of beer, the heterosexual character of marriage) they are directed against.
December 16th, 2012 | 1:37 pm
The gay movement (the homosexualist movement) is a quasi-religion that is today at the height of its influence and self-confidence. Quasi-religions are bound to arise in a world in which Christianity, a genuine religion, is in decline. Today same-sex marriage seems to be the wave of the future. But not too many decades ago communism (another quasi-religion) seemed to be the wave of the future; and fascism (yet another quasi-religion) was another wave of the future. If we can stave off SSM for another decade or two, the homosexualist “religion” will fizzle out, as quasi-religions always do; and the SSM wave won’t break.
December 16th, 2012 | 2:23 pm
“a great indifference to history” — and to biology, sociology, anthropology, and a lot of other ologies. But that does not seem to bother proponents, because their arguments are based on emotion.
December 16th, 2012 | 4:24 pm
. . . . we must surely acknowledge that intimidation has some part to play in the matter. Express the slightest hesitation on this score and someone will accuse you of “homophobia”, while others will organise to ensure that, even if nothing else is known about your views, this at least will be notorious. Only someone with nothing to lose can venture to discuss the issue with the measure of circumspection that it invites . . . .
It is getting tiresome for opponents of same-sex marriage to whine about being an oppressed minority.
December 16th, 2012 | 5:21 pm
Personally, I don’t think Roger Scruton’s required any additional commentary. Powerfully stated.
December 16th, 2012 | 7:02 pm
Yes, this is a move away from a God fearing society. Which can never be a good thing for the individual or the group.
The benefits to society as a whole of heterosexual marriage are well outlined above. The main problem with homosexual “marriage” is that it goes against God’s law and, when we go against natural law, so many other things begin to fall apart. For the individual and those around them. Sometimes what we really need to ask is why are these people so inclined. Scientists will give a scientific reason. But perhaps we should ask what is the spiritual cause and can it be addressed. Of course all who acknowledge Jesus’ death and resurection would agree that this inclination can be overcome and healing is possible.
December 16th, 2012 | 7:07 pm
“Marriage in its origin is a contract of natural law; it may exist between two individuals of different sexes although no third person existed in the world, as happened in the case of the common ancestors of mankind. . . .
Michael PS,
I have quoted this a number of times, but I will quote it again. John L. McKenzie, in Dictionary of the Bible says:
Let’s remember that in Old Testament times, a man could divorce his wife for any reason merely by writing a “bill of divorcement.” It is an odd kind of contract that one party (the husband) can abrogate merely by writing something on a piece of paper, but the other party (the wife) has no way of getting out of. It hardly amounts to a contract at all. The status of women was such in the Old Testament that it makes little sense to think of a man and woman entering into a contract together. Women had no legal standing to enter into contracts.
December 16th, 2012 | 7:14 pm
Of course marriage has always been heterosexual – homosexuals have been a heinously persecuted minority for thousands of years. Why would a social construct cater to a demographic so hated by society?
Scruton’s article is specious. He insists marriage is vital mainly as an inter-generational unit, but doesn’t explain why infertile people shouldn’t be barred from the institution. If it’s about breeding, then a sterile couple is about as useful as a gay couple.
December 16th, 2012 | 7:24 pm
“If we ask ourselves how it is that the advocacy of gay marriage has become an orthodoxy to which all our political leaders subscribe, we must surely acknowledge that intimidation has some part to play in the matter. Express the slightest hesitation on this score and someone will accuse you of “homophobia”, while others will organise to ensure that, even if nothing else is known about your views, this at least will be notorious. ”
No Mr Scruton, intimidation is what homosexuals suffers in their lifes, when they live in fear of being rejected and beaten by school mates and family members for their sexual preference. And this argument is as silly as, I am sure, as if people who opposed equall rights for blacks said they were “intimidated” for being called racists.
December 16th, 2012 | 8:12 pm
David Nickol remains absolutely incredulous at the suggestion that opposing the redefinition of marriage could adversely effect one’s career (say a university professor up for tenure, a Hollywood actor up for a part, a reporter hoping to land a job at the Washington Post, the New York Times, etc., an employee at a major woman’s magazine, etc., etc. etc.).
I don’t know if David Nickol believes Roger Scruton is outright lying, or David thinks Roger Scruton suffers from paranoia about an issue which neither Mr. Scruton nor any of his colleagues could possibly have any direct knowledge.
Or does David Nickol accept that perhaps Mr. Scruton may know of what he speaks, but that losing one’s career is, nevertheless, just more “whining?”
December 16th, 2012 | 8:12 pm
SSM advocates look at our moral landscape the way the stereotypical greedy property developer looks at a swamp. Instead of a thriving ecosystem they see only mud, and imagine that it will look much nicer once it has been concreted over.
December 16th, 2012 | 8:44 pm
David: you can’t be serious can you? Part of Scruton’s point is that same-sex marriage is being pushed by a small but very powerful minority, which is then being acquiesced to by the passive majority. Indeed, by your reckoning, Christians in Soviet Russia were being silly, whining bores when complaining about religious persecution – because, by golly, the Soviet constitution of 1936 guarenteed religious freedom! While things in 2012 in the USA are not nearly as bad as they were in 1936 Russia, I should say that your pooh-poohing the well-founded concern that many have towards the constant attacks on religious freedom in our country are getting tiresome. When will “Dr. Pangloss” Nickol wake up to the fact that ssm marriage is a wedge issue that is being used to discredit, marginalize and ultimately intimidate into silence committed Christians!
December 16th, 2012 | 9:43 pm
Brian: If it’s about breeding, then a sterile couple is about as useful as a gay couple.
There is always the possibility that a heterosexual couple could be cured. There is never that possibility with a homosexual couple.
The comparison with racial equality does not bear water. Race and sex life are fundamentally different. It is impossible to change your genetic make-up or skin color. It is possible to suppress or regulate your desires. All of us have inclinations or preferences that are involuntary, and therefore not sinful per se, yet can be destructive if we indulge them. Some are tempted by drinking too much, some by greed for money or power, or others by sex.
That isn’t to say that people who are tempted by same-sex sexual attraction should be persecuted. Indeed it is true that too often they have been made scapegoats, where other sins like alcoholism or greed have been overlooked.
But it does not follow, from the fact of scapegoating of homosexuals, that homosexuality needs to be approved. As Christians, we need to find some middle ground between scapegoating and persecution, on the one hand, and enabling flattery, on the other. Something like the attitude we usually adopt toward alcoholics would, I think, be appropriate: that it is sinful and self-destructive, yes, but also remembering that it is caused by powerful involuntary urges, rather than done out of premeditated malice.
A couple of other thoughts: first, it is one thing for secular people who make no claim to be Christians to support homosexuality. As Christians we need to debate with them on the level of natural law. With fellow Christians, however, the matter is put into sharper relief. The corruption of the youth is, I believe, one of the graver sins. “For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh.”
Finally, it is entirely possible, is it not? that in certain social circles, homosexuals may rationally fear exposure, while in others, supporters of traditional marriage also may fear it?
December 16th, 2012 | 10:29 pm
Indeed, by your reckoning, Christians in Soviet Russia were being silly, whining bores when complaining about religious persecution . . . .
Heraclitus,
I said absolutely nothing about Christians in Russia in 1936. Don’t try to put words in my mouth.
When will “Dr. Pangloss” Nickol wake up to the fact that ssm marriage is a wedge issue that is being used to discredit, marginalize and ultimately intimidate into silence committed Christians!
I see no shortage of “committed Christians” opposing same-sex marriage. Both in the UK and in the United States, there are large, well funded, vocal groups opposed to same-sex marriage. And whoever in the entire history of Christianity ever said there was a guarantee that standing up for what you believed in was supposed to be easy?
December 16th, 2012 | 10:50 pm
For all the magnificent words of the tremendously articulate Roger Scruton, his argument comes down to the curious conviction that gay marriages somehow lessen or destroy the institution of marriage as a whole served with a generous dose of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Now I understand the motivations behind most contempt for gay folk like myself and I’ve long accepted that anti-gay feeling is not necessarily indicative of a bad character. Yet this hostility and subsequent action are nonetheless irrational, hurtful, and bigoted. Now Mr. Scruton will easily dismiss such a statement for the sheer inability to identify or connect with its meaning. It describes another view from a different people who Mr. Scruton believes warrant casual disregard. I sincerely hope with all my heart that we, as a people, prove better.
December 16th, 2012 | 11:09 pm
@Brian If it’s about breeding, then a sterile couple is about as useful as a gay couple.
A sterile couple of opposite sex is useful
in upholding the social ideal that one man stays faithful to one woman.
This ideal literally (by food and by shelter) supports the child born to one woman who had (heterosexual) sex with one man,
by shaming the man for falling short of the social ideal,
if he tries to leave the woman and the child unsupported.
The child and the woman need the support of the man, as a biological fact of their unique vulnerability… until or unless we are all wards of the State. God forbid.
Until reproductive technology takes us elsewhere at great cost, it is in the interest of the State to assign responsibility for the one child to the one man and the one woman who contributed to the one child’s arrival on this earth.
December 16th, 2012 | 11:53 pm
I understand the widespread appeal to procreation as an explanation for the heterosexual character of marriage among Christians. However, another aspect of the Biblical concept of marriage I don’t think is emphasized enough has to do with the difference between men and women. There’s a deep truth to the fact that in Genesis 2, when God proclaims, “It is not good for man to be alone,” he creates a woman, not another man. The fact that procreation is possible only between a man and a woman is evidence that male and female nature are complementary, but there’s also an inherent dimension to the Male + Female relationship that no homosexual relationship can capture. This is why there are relevant differences between an infertile marriage and a homosexual pairing.
December 17th, 2012 | 3:33 am
One of the reasons that Lord Stowell describes it as a contract of Natural Law is, precisely, “it is not unworthy of remark that amidst the manifold ritual provisions made by the Divine Lawgiver of the Jews for various offices and transactions of life there is no Ceremony prescribed for the celebration of marriage.”
It belongs, not to the Mosaic law butto the ius gentium
December 17th, 2012 | 3:44 am
Scruton wrote: “If we ask ourselves how it is that the advocacy of gay marriage has become an orthodoxy to which all our political leaders subscribe, we must surely acknowledge that intimidation has some part to play in the matter. Express the slightest hesitation on this score and someone will accuse you of “homophobia”, while others will organise to ensure that, even if nothing else is known about your views, this at least will be notorious. ”
Sergio Méndez wrote: No Mr Scruton, intimidation is what homosexuals suffers in their lifes, when they live in fear of being rejected and beaten by school mates and family members for their sexual preference.
============
How odd that Sergio says homosexuals live in fear of “school mates,” supposedly the “mates” who do not normalize all the formers’ dysfunctional homosexuality psychological dynamics.
Because it’s not these “mates” that spread deadly and serious diseases to homosexuals – it’s homosexuals themselves.
Not only that, there are millions of cases of LGBT individuals doing criminal harm to other LGBT individuals (sexual assault and exploitation, physical assault, spread of serious STDs, murder, etc.) compared to a small number of any straight individual doing criminal harm to homosexuals (see “hate” crime stats).
Yet Sergio makes no mention of how much violence LGBT individuals do to other LGBT people or others. Why aren’t LGBT individuals living in fear of such a high number of violent and destructive LGBT individuals?
Is it because if the individual committing the violence has normalized homosexuality or has a homosexuality problem themselves, then they can’t be painted as being a perpetrator, as a horrible person? Must this fact must be lied about or covered up in every case where it’s clear that’s what they are?
If homosexuals weren’t such frauds in their complaints about violence, they would acknowledge that the people who do the greatest harm to them are members of their own dysfunctional group – and most of whom have all normalized homosexuality. The difference is in terms of millions of LGBT perpetrators compared to a few thousand of straight perpetrators.
How profoundly disingenuous does one have to be to then present straights who do not normalize homosexuality as the only kind or the major kind of person who persecutes homosexuals, when among people with a homosexuality problem is where we find a mass of criminal individuals?
And who we must say, perpetrate violence and harm mostly with impunity, since LGBT people seem to favor screeching about any case where they are attacked by a “school mate,” but they keep silent about how often and how widespread violence by other LGBT individuals is in society.
December 17th, 2012 | 4:03 am
Same-sex couples are infertile by definition.
A given opposite-sex couple may be infertile for a variety of reasons: they may be suffering from any one of a range of pathologies, they may be too old, or it may be simply a question of volition. Some of these conditions may appear to be irremediable, whereas others are plainly not. Besides, some conditions that, in the past, were irremediable are now treatable and it would be a bold legislator who attempted to anticipate such advances. To attempt to discover, in advance, which opposite-sex couples will prove to be infertile would be burdensome, expensive, intrusive and litigious.
Morevoer, an opposite-sex couple can make as if they have procreated through adoption. They present to the child, and to the wider community, the model of the natural (procreative) family, which, some experts assert, makes the establishment of the parental bond between the adopters and the adopted child easier and spares adopted children the additional difficulty of having to integrate into a “non-standard” family, however loving.
Laws are made for the general case.
December 17th, 2012 | 9:00 am
The confusion here is the loaded word “marriage.” Let’s substitute “government-subsidized sexual relationship.” Now the question is: which sexual relationships should the government subsidize? Presumably those that are believed to be beneficial to the entire society.
One clear answer would be “any which produces biological children,” in which case childless couples would be excluded. (They could still be married in church, if they belonged to a church which agreed to do it.) Another clear answer would be “any in which the participants professed to feel ‘love’ for each other.”
But the present answer is “any composed of two consenting adult members of the human species and of opposite sex who are not already committed to anybody else.”
So the questions that need to be answered are: Why two? Why adult? Why human? Why male and female? And why exclusive? If a relationship can not be shown to be beneficial to society, it should not be subsidized.
American society is becoming more diverse. The question of polygamy is right around the corner. The question of legitimate age of consent is eventually going to come up too. Whatever precedents are established in the current court decisions will have to be applied later too.
December 17th, 2012 | 9:07 am
Douglas Johnson -
So could expressing a racist opinion, no?
The Westboro Baptist Church has both law and the courts – up to the Supreme Court – on their side. They’re allowed to put forth their message pretty much everywhere except actually within a private funeral. Where, exactly, do you think they don’t go far enough?
December 17th, 2012 | 9:36 am
Edward Travani
“his argument comes down to the curious conviction that gay marriages somehow lessen or destroy the institution of marriage”
I have to confess, that “curious conviction” seems completely obvious to me, if the statement is sufficiently qualified.
Namely, that the words “gay marriage” do not refer to a specific piece of legislation, but rather to the overarching notion of “marriage” implicit in the formula “gay marriage” (that marriage is purely a legal-social construct by which the state blesses and rewards people’s sexual-romantic relationships).
Of course this idea is much older than gay marriage, and has already done untold damage to our society: gay marriage is only its perfectly consistent endpoint. But there is nothing wrong in using the words “gay marriage” to denote the whole socio-cultural trend that is culminating in “gay marriage” and has, indeed, destroyed the institution of marriage.
December 17th, 2012 | 9:40 am
Heraclitus says:
“David: you can’t be serious can you? Part of Scruton’s point is that same-sex marriage is being pushed by a small but very powerful minority, which is then being acquiesced to by the passive majority.”
Is funny you say that, since the polls in favor of gay marriage have been growing in many countries, including the US. For example, according to a November Gallup poll, 53 of Americans support gay marriage, just to put an example, an many state have passed legislation (which of course doesn´t stop conservative nonsense talk of “judicial activism”) in favor of gay rights etc. So excuse me if I don´t buy your “small but powerful minority” pushing for gay marriage against the “passive majority” discourse.
Patrick says:
“The comparison with racial equality does not bear water. Race and sex life are fundamentally different. It is impossible to change your genetic make-up or skin color. It is possible to suppress or regulate your desires. All of us have inclinations or preferences that are involuntary, and therefore not sinful per se, yet can be destructive if we indulge them. Some are tempted by drinking too much, some by greed for money or power, or others by sex.”
Let me get this right…lets imagine you can actually develop some medical treatment to change “race” (I guess you mean skin pigmentation). So, if that was the case, being black would be wrong? Is that what you are saying? I hope you realize how wrong your argument is. The point is that there is nothing wrong with being gay, REGARDLESS if it is a choice or some genetic trait. And there is nothing wrong with gays forming couples and calling it marriage. And until you give us some really good argument that shows why being gay and marrying is wrong, we don´t have any reason to treat anti gay people the same why we treat racists or others forms of bigotry.
Heather:
“Not only that, there are millions of cases of LGBT individuals doing criminal harm to other LGBT individuals (sexual assault and exploitation, physical assault, spread of serious STDs, murder, etc.) compared to a small number of any straight individual doing criminal harm to homosexuals (see “hate” crime stats).”
You don´t mind showing us some sources…because, to say it in simple terms, I don´t take your word on this.
“If homosexuals weren’t such frauds in their complaints about violence, they would acknowledge that the people who do the greatest harm to them are members of their own dysfunctional group – and most of whom have all normalized homosexuality. The difference is in terms of millions of LGBT perpetrators compared to a few thousand of straight perpetrators.”
Again, source s´il vous plait. Because you saying that homosexuals are such “fraud” doesn´t make it so.
December 17th, 2012 | 9:41 am
Ah, about the polls regarding gay marriage, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States
December 17th, 2012 | 9:41 am
Ray Ingles,
You just made Roger Scruton’s point. As RR Reno wrote recently:
December 17th, 2012 | 9:46 am
But always we have had in the back of our mind that the bond between husband and wife, like that between parent and child, has a moral nature that transcends the sphere of contract. We resonate to the old rites of passage, and wonder what business it is of the State finally to set them aside, with no obvious reason, and with no clear mandate for doing so.
The State provides medical care when one is ill; the State provides food if one is hungry; the State provides income if one is disabled; the State educates one’s children.
Clearly the State can assume the role of mother, or father, or spouse. Civil partnerships have not been so much voted in as marriage roles have been legislated away.
December 17th, 2012 | 9:59 am
Heather wrote: “If homosexuals weren’t such frauds in their complaints about violence, they would acknowledge that the people who do the greatest harm to them are members of their own dysfunctional group – and most of whom have all normalized homosexuality. The difference is in terms of millions of LGBT perpetrators compared to a few thousand of straight perpetrators.”
Sergio wrote: “Again, source s´il vous plait. Because you saying that homosexuals are such “fraud” doesn´t make it so.”
I have no problem about posting any kind of source here (for like the fifth time). But before I do, I would like to ask you what sources you have that contradict anything I posted.
Which sources do you have that prove anything I posted isn’t true? In other words, based on what sources do you question anything I posted?
December 17th, 2012 | 10:05 am
“The confusion here is the loaded word “marriage.” Let’s substitute “government-subsidized sexual relationship.” Now the question is: which sexual relationships should the government subsidize? Presumably those that are believed to be beneficial to the entire society.”
If that is your definition of marriage, then the answer to your question is very simple: The goverment should not subsidize ANY sexual relation, period.
December 17th, 2012 | 10:34 am
What about children adopted by SSM couples?
Those willing to use children like laboratory guinea pigs by subjecting them to the radical social experiment that SSM with adoption rights truly is, obviously do not have sufficient regard for children to be fit parents for them. They do not possess the “ordinary conscience” that does not find itself “entirely at ease with a change that overthrows social norms on which people have depended throughout recorded history.”
While there are heroic, virtuous people who make single parent homes work out just fine for children, we also have prisons filled with the adult children of fatherless homes. How will things work out for a generation of children raised by two moms or two dads? Or for the children of SSM divorce? Or for the children of SSM divorce followed by a parent of one gender and their multiple partners of the same gender raising the child, analogous to kids raised by mom and one live-in boyfriend after another? Those with “ordinary consciences” aren’t willing to risk finding out that all this results in a societal disaster as well as a devastating personal disaster for many of these children.
December 17th, 2012 | 10:42 am
Douglas Johnson – Ah, but you missed my point. People are still certainly allowed to have – and more to the point, freely express – racist opinions, are they not? Quite possibly many people will lose respect for those who maintain such opinions, true. But the right to do so is aggressively enforced.
Yet I don’t recall anyone arguing for a Constitutional right to have one’s opinions respected; not even in the ‘penumbra’ of the Ninth Amendment. Not even the famously litigious Westboro Baptists have pursued such a claim.
So far as I can see, your (and Scruton’s) complaint boils down to, “My opinion isn’t popular anymore!” Is there a further distinction I’m missing? What redress do you propose for this wrong being done to you?
December 17th, 2012 | 11:03 am
[...] Roger Scruton’s quarrel with Paul Griffiths about the relation of marriage to the state, Lord Stowell’s analysis in Dalrymple v Dalrymple [...]
December 17th, 2012 | 11:10 am
SteveP
The Pécresse Commission on the Family and the Rights of Children (2006) had this to say of the modern family: “its social usefulness has also greatly diminished in recent centuries, particularly under the pressure of social demands. As André Burguière explained to the Mission, “The main social functions of the family were gradually transferred to the state. Justice, production and consumption, education, health, which in the Middle Ages were almost entirely the responsibility of the family unit, were henceforth entrusted to the public authorities… “
December 17th, 2012 | 11:49 am
Sergio:
“The goverment should not subsidize ANY sexual relation, period.”
not even when they produce expensive-to-raise offspring who benefit from having a father and a mother?
December 17th, 2012 | 12:09 pm
Carlo:
When we say that the goverment subsidizes anything, what we are really saying is that people is subdizing other people, by force. Why should I subsidize, I mean being forced to pay thru taxes, people who want to have kids? And who said, anyways, the only way to raise a kid is by having them a couple of parent of different sexes?
December 17th, 2012 | 12:12 pm
Heather:
Excuse me, you are the one making the claim that homosexuals are “frauds” without any evidence. The burden of proof is on you. And given your history of hysterical rants against homosexuals, is not simply that, is also that I do not find you particulary trustworthy in this topic of discusion.
December 17th, 2012 | 1:30 pm
Sergio:
I dunno, maybe when you get old it will in your best interest to have firefighters, police, soldiers etc? You know, it’s hard for society to function without… people. But perhaps you want to go and live in a cave by yourself somewhere?
As for the advantages of having a father and of a mother, when possible, it is obviously the superior solution. Who says so? I do! Men and women are very different and it’s just wonderful to have parents of both sexes.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:15 pm
It is instructive to note the sophisticated nature of most of the comments posted here. Few of us, if any, are uncivilized people without a thorough secondary education. Yet we have recreated the general debate regarding the personal and societal value of homosexuals to both extremes with alarming ease. As a gay man, I always hope for better yet always find people at their worst. What can I say but what I see as my personal truth:
– I am not a fraud.
– I am not a pervert.
– I am not dysfunctional.
– I do not spread disease.
– I believe in God, his Son, and Holy Spirit.
– I love my partner.
– I am true to my partner.
– I love our family.
– I am not offended by heterosexual affection.
– I understand the value, rarity, and responsibility of love.
– I am not a threat to any marriage.
– I am not a threat to our society.
What more to say when so many are completely convinced that I can only lie on every point?
December 17th, 2012 | 2:21 pm
@Brian If it’s about breeding, then a sterile couple is about as useful as a gay couple.
A number of commenters have made some good points in response to this, but none of them are air-tight arguments that explain why sterile couples are allowed to marry: they are ALLOWED to reproduce, whether they are able to or not. Same-sex couples should not be allowed to reproduce offspring, it is unethical and should be ruled out.
Do not separate the question of whether to allow the couple to conceive offspring together from whether ro allow them to marry. Marriage is what affirms and protects the couple’s right to have children. Marriage is only for couples that are allowed to reproduce offspring together, it should never be given to siblings or father-daughter couples, because it should continue to approve and allow the conception of offspring. No married couples should ever be prohibited from procreating offspring together using their own genes. Marriage should always approve and allow the conception of offspring. People should not be allowed to reproduce offspring with someone of the same sex, it is unethical and not a right. No same-sex couple should ever be approved or allowed to conceive offspring together.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:29 pm
As for the advantages of having a father and of a mother, when possible, it is obviously the superior solution. Who says so? I do! Men and women are very different and it’s just wonderful to have parents of both sexes.
Carlo,
Let’s grant, for the purposes of argument, that the ideal environment to raise children is in a home with their biological mother and father. Given that, what is society (presumably through law) willing to do to secure, as much as it reasonably can, the “right” for children to be raised by their married, biological parents?
What would the United States be willing to to, by law, to discourage out-of-wedlock births or make divorce significantly difficult for married couples with children? Should adoption agencies be forbidden to place children with single parents? (Even the Catholic Charities that gave up providing adoption services had placed adoptive children with single parents.)
It strikes me as hypocritical to oppose same-sex marriage on the grounds of children’s rights to be raised by their biological parents if virtually nothing else is done to try to secure those rights for children.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
Let me get this right…lets imagine you can actually develop some medical treatment to change “race” (I guess you mean skin pigmentation). So, if that was the case, being black would be wrong? Is that what you are saying?
No, I never even thought of anything so absurd. My point was that since race is involuntary, it has no moral status. Therefore, racism is irrational because it judges people on the basis of something they have no control over. Sexual activity is voluntary, and therefore can be moral or immoral.
There is nothing immoral about homosexual inclinations, although they are disordered. The fact that they are disordered is not a medieval Catholic dogma but something that is plainly obvious from the biological study of human reproduction.
Again, I attempted to draw a distinction between being against homosexual activity and being against homosexual people. Like many “progressives” and supporters of state modification of marriage, you apparently either are unable to understand this distinction or refuse to admit that it can be made.
If you are willing to treat racism and traditional sexual mores equally, are you also prepared to, say, ban the Bible from public school libraries?
So far as I can see, your (and Scruton’s) complaint boils down to, “My opinion isn’t popular anymore!” Is there a further distinction I’m missing? What redress do you propose for this wrong being done to you?
Is it in fact unpopular? Scruton is primarily referring to the SSM push in the UK, which is being led by the “Conservative” party and which does not appear to command a great deal of public support.
Moreover, popularity is not a sufficient reason to enact incoherent law. Let us imagine perhaps that people without college degrees feel slighted by this fact, and wage a popular campaign for a law declaring that the government will issue a “college degree” to every American citizen. “Degree equality!” they shout. “You shouldn’t have to go to college to get a college degree!” “Lazy and stupid people are people too!” Etc.
Even though the “opinion” that this law is very misguided may be unpopular, nevertheless, in this case we should probably preserve the tradition rather than pander to the masses.
December 17th, 2012 | 2:59 pm
R Edward Travani
I have much sympathy with what you say; nevertheless, I would invite you to consider the following argument.
If we are talking about civil marriage, formal legal definitions of marriage are hard to come by, but, since civil marriage was introduced a little over two hundred years ago, the rule that “The child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father” has been treated as a functional definition by jurists, including the three most authoritative commentators on the Civil Code, Demolombe (1804–1887), Guillouard (1845-1925) and Gaudemet (1908-2001), long before the question of same-sex marriage was agitated. This is understandable, in that it was introduced by the same Revolutionary Assembly that had just turned ten million landless peasants into heritable proprietors.
This rule rests on the obligation of fidelity between spouses and reflects the commitment made by the husband during the celebration of marriage, to raise the couple’s children. Many people regard this rule, which makes the paternity of the child clear, certain and incontestable, as lying at the heart of marriage and they believe that it cannot be questioned without losing for this institution its meaning and value. Indeed, the great French jurist and author of the leading modern commentary on the Code Civil, le doyen Jean Carbonnier (1908–2003) famously declared, “The heart of marriage is not the couple, but the presumption of paternity.”
Thus, many jurists, whilst fully supporting Civil Solidarity Pacts, for same-sex and opposite-sex couples, nevertheless maintain (1) Mandatory civil marriage, makes the institution a pillar of the secular Republic, standing clear of the religious sacrament (2) The institution of republican marriage is inconceivable, absent the idea of filiation, enshrined, not in Church dogma, but in the Civil Code (3) The sex difference is central to filiation.
You may not find this argument convincing, but, to those who accept it (as I do), marriage, so defined, is irrelevant to same-sex couples. You will note that it implies nothing about “the personal and societal value of homosexuals” and I would hope that a question of jurisprudence could be discussed without rancour.
December 17th, 2012 | 3:43 pm
Sergio Méndez wrote: “Excuse me, you are the one making the claim that homosexuals are “frauds” without any evidence. The burden of proof is on you. And given your history of hysterical rants against homosexuals, is not simply that, is also that I do not find you particularly trustworthy in this topic of discussion.”
I simply haven’s posted all the evidence for the fifth or tenth time. Because I was wondering what kind of evidence you have about the kind of violence homosexuals perpetrate or suffer.
Since you say the burden of proof is on me, I would like to ask you why you do not need to prove anything you state, nor why you don’t think anyone else you blindly believe in needs to prove anything either. If you didn’t believe in people blindly, you would have evidence, you see. And yet…
Furthermore, how are you be able to evaluate what is a hysterical rant if you, yourself, have no evidence on the topic?
While, in your view, I “rant,” it appears that you have no evidence whatsoever. Isn’t your comment the perfect example of a rant then?
December 17th, 2012 | 3:47 pm
Patrick – My reply was to Douglas Johnson, who was complaining about career opportunities, not same-sex marriage law.
Scruton was talking about politics, but in this there is nothing new, either. If there’s a political movement out there that hasn’t worked to make their opponents notorious, I haven’t heard of it. Can you provide an example?
December 17th, 2012 | 4:27 pm
Would it be alright to just disregard the state’s ‘contract for marriage’ if it has become meaningless? Homosexual marriage is not the only infringement on the institution of marriage. The state routinely interferes with the responsibilities of parents by promoting contraception, abortion, quicky no fault divorce, financial inticements to woo a mother to live on her own, etc…
If I were going to start a business, and the state had set up so many anti-business laws, then I simply would either not start the business or move elsewhere.
Being a recipient of the State of New Hampshire’s anti-family laws, my family is fractured. Had I known in 1992 how family law was going to change, I would have sought a priest to witness our marriage without reporting it to the state.
December 17th, 2012 | 5:54 pm
“what is society (presumably through law) willing to do to secure, as much as it reasonably can, the “right” for children to be raised by their married, biological parents?”
@David Nickol, I would support a federal law prohibiting the intentional conception of children except by married couples using their own unmodified sperm and egg. That would shut down sperm and egg banks and intentional conception through unmarried sex (unintentional conception by unmarried couples would not be a federal crime but would probably be reduced by the law). And I would support reminding people that the right to conceive offspring exists only in marriage by enacting a federal law that sets the effect of marriage as approving and allowing the conception of offspring.
I don’t expect that we could enact that first law, though, because too many people know someone who has used an egg donor or think they might want to use one themselves, and people are too self-righteous to admit that some things they or their friends might want to do is wrong. That’s why I instead am pushing for a law that only stops things no one has done yet: creating genetically modified children and reproducing with someone of the same sex. I think we can pass that law, as well as the law that affirms marriage approves and allows the conception of offspring, and those would have a positive effect leading to more people marrying before having children and staying married after.
December 17th, 2012 | 6:27 pm
This article speaks to British politics, but I think it is safe to say that in a US context while it is strongly reasoned and well written, it is also utterly irrelevant in that the powers that will ultimately decide SSM have already rejected his arguments in toto.
December 17th, 2012 | 6:50 pm
Many commenters seem to be appealing to natural law and biological common sense in their defence of their anti-gay stance. I wonder how many of these people also accept evolution as fact?
December 17th, 2012 | 7:42 pm
It is specious to claim that marriage should be defined by the existence of infertile couples when obviously marriage would not exist without the existence of fertile couples and for many infertile couples the infertility is experienced as a real loss and a lack of completion in their union. The push for gay marriage proceeds along this kind of reasoning: because infertile couples get married fertility is not of the essence of marriage. Therefore, since gay men are infertile what’s the big deal? Thus by redefining marriage speciously, fertility is written out and so the biological nexus of marriage to children is written out. Children become an option, more or less frowned upon and their biological connection to their parents becomes trivialized in law. It seems the main struggle to me is between homosexual adults and children and of course children are more vulnerable and defenseless than adult homosexuals. To suit homosexual adults, marriage’s biological nexus to children is excluded from the popular, working definition of marriage. Marriage is no longer essentially about or for children. That to me seems a selfish and narcissistic demand by homosexual adults with potential for harm far greater than any gains from creating a forced equality of marriage by erasing children.
December 17th, 2012 | 8:55 pm
Marriage is no longer essentially about or for children.
David Alexander,
But gay people didn’t create this situation. To quote a recent Ross Douthat column:
That to me seems a selfish and narcissistic demand by homosexual adults with potential for harm far greater than any gains from creating a forced equality of marriage by erasing children.
What if married same-sex couples want children? They are damned if the do, and damned if they don’t. By the way, what do you mean by “erasing children”? Same-sex marriage will not interfere with the heterosexual production of children. Same-sex marriage will not cause opposite-sex married couples to have fewer children, will it? I can’t imagine how.
December 17th, 2012 | 9:08 pm
Forgive me, sir but I’ll remind you that we are not debating an abstract topic. We are debating peoples’ lives and mine for a start. Consider the related history and one might argue that rancor is only appropriate. Why pretend, for instance, that we drive this topic for our devotion to a philosophically pure concept of marriage? This argument arose only when it became necessary to remind society of the inferior and disordered nature of homosexual relationships. For all the sympathy and tolerance proclaimed by those opposed to gays marrying, I am curious why there is never mention of the beauty of a gay couple blessed enough to have found mutual love. Pardon my cynicism, but I doubt I would ever hear these arguments from anyone who could see that beauty, that blessing, that holy gift.
December 18th, 2012 | 12:02 am
Carlo:
1. People have been born before subsidizes were invented, and will be born without subsidizes. I still fail to see why you want us to be forced to pay for other people sons and daughters.
2. So, you say so. That is very…conforting.
December 18th, 2012 | 4:01 am
R Edward Travani wrote
“This argument arose only when it became necessary to remind society of the inferior and disordered nature of homosexual relationships.”
But this is unsupported by the facts. As I pointed out, the argument that the unique and primary legal rôle of marriage is to establish the juridical bond of father and child was asserted by Demolombe (1804–1887), who was born in the year the Code Napoléon was enacted, by Guillouard (1845-1925), who died fifty years and more before the question of same-sex marriage was even raised and by Gaudemet (1908-2001), whose major works, the fruit of years of study, were published in the 1950s.
Carbonnier (1908–2003) was the draughtsman of the family law reforms of the early 1970s and it was in that context that he made his famous remark about filiation being “the heart of marriage” and he is the only one of the jurists I cited to discuss the question of same-sex marriage.
When, In 1998, a colloquium of 154 Professors of Civil Law, including Philippe Malaurie, Alain Sériaux, and Catherine Labrusse-Riou unanimously endorsed this interpretation of the Civil Code, the result was the introduction of civil unions (PACS) for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples in the following year. No one suggested that these should be restricted on the grounds of gender.
It is significant that, in a country so committed to the principle of laïcité as France, no one has suggested that the views of these jurists, are the result of religious convictions or an attempt to import them into their interpretation of the Code.
December 18th, 2012 | 8:28 am
R. Edward Travani writes: . . . I am curious why there is never mention of the beauty of a gay couple blessed enough to have found mutual love. Pardon my cynicism, but I doubt I would ever hear these arguments from anyone who could see that beauty, that blessing, that holy gift.
Much has been written of the love between men. I have been unworthily blessed to have been in company of those who truly believe and acted upon: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” May God rest those souls.
The love between men, which can be holy, is not marriage.
December 18th, 2012 | 1:36 pm
@David Nickol: “Same-sex marriage will not interfere with the heterosexual production of children. ”
Yes it will: It will mean that married couples can be prohibited from using their own genes to conceive offspring, or it will allow genetic engineering and using modified genes to conceive offspring which will eventually pressure people to eschew their own genes and choose better genes. You can’t give equal conception rights to couples that publicly require genetic engineering or third-party gametes without saying that those things are equal to natural reproduction and fulfill conception rights. The only way to preserve equality and human dignity is to prohibit creating people by any means other than joining a man and a woman’s unmodified gametes and affirming everyone’s right to marry and marriage’s right to conceive offspring using their own unmodified genes. And that is inconsistent with same-sex marriage. Equating the rights of a same-sex couple to a married man and woman disrespects and denigrates everyone’s natural reproductive rights. They are not equal. Same-sex conception is not a right.
December 18th, 2012 | 3:57 pm
John Howard –
Just out of curiosity… how would you define ‘modified’? For example, would pre-selection of gametes be allowed? (One could, for example, detect trisomy nondestructively…)
December 18th, 2012 | 4:47 pm
Well, modify means “to change in form or character; alter.” I think that a single gamete is unmodified if it could have been produced by the body, but if there was no way that the body could have produced that gamete without a lab doing something in order to produce it, then it is “modified.”
You are right that pre-selecting gametes does change the form and character of gamete in that gametes are randomly chosen as part of their form and character, so removing the randomness to pass on only the best of grandma’s and grandpa’s genes and rejecting gametes that had a bad gene would indeed be modifying the gametes form and character. But since that gamete’s combination of genes could have been provided by the person randomly, it is not “modified” in itself. So it could be argued either way, and needn’t get in the way of agreeing that creating a sperm from a woman’s body is certainly modifying her gametes, since her body could never produce a sperm or male-imprinted gamete naturally.
December 18th, 2012 | 5:52 pm
The conversation has taken a convoluted turn that goes well beyond the reasonable scope of the topic. A debate regarding the status of gay relationships has turned to speculating on the potential disposition of gametes. Marriage was not adopted as a practice with reference to gametes. The issue is whether or not our society will honor and value a gay couple’s love and commitment to one another with the status of marriage. I doubt anyone here is in a position to reflect accurately on the reproductive decisions of future prospective parents nor should we feel ourselves so wise or empowered to guide such decisions. The issue is, quite pointedly, one of justice. Given the legacy of injustice towards gays and lesbians and the continued efforts by some to suppress progress in this area, one might pause for a moment to reflect on one’s motivation before taking a position.
December 18th, 2012 | 11:26 pm
A gay couple’s love and commitment to one another should not be honored with the status of marriage. The push for gay marriage further entrenches a weaker, unsustainable view of marriage and further practically cuts the nexus of marriage to children out. Marriage law should continue to be based upon coitus and all its implications. The good of preserving and strengthening a conjugal view of marriage outweighs the good that homosexual adults may perceive from being awarded a forced status of equality at the expense of children, which is accomplished by dissipating the meaning of marriage into a broader, unmoored and more vacuous definition which implies not only marriage equality for homosexuals but polyamory, etc. Homosexual adults should rather value marriage as uniquely suited for childbearing and rearing and a vital, indispensible contribution to society and recognize that they are not equal to the purpose of conjugal marriage rather than having conjugal marriage dissolved at the expense of children to be replaced by a more tenuous, ghost-like view of marriage. Consider the following:
(Speaking of common law) “If marriage were regarded as merely a legal tool for keeping parents together for their children, clear evidence of infertility (like old age) would have been a ground for legally voiding a marriage. Or if the law were just targeting homosexual relationships for exclusion, it would have counted any sexual act between a man and a woman as adequate to consummate marriage. (To press the point, how could animus against men attracted to men have motivated the legal norm that fellatio between a man and a woman could not consummate a marriage, and indeed that a man’s impotence was a ground for annulment?) Only one explanation will do: The law reflected the rational judgment that unions consummated by coitus were valuable in themselves, and different in kind from other bonds. In short, the conjugal view.”
-From What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, (2012), pg. 50.
December 18th, 2012 | 11:37 pm
States that have long financially supported, unmarried co-habitation are suddenly pushing for the right to marry.
There is a clear attempt to create new values, not based on law or ethic, but on some emotional concept of hurt.
December 18th, 2012 | 11:41 pm
R. Edward Travani,
I oppose all bullying and attacks on everybody, but it seems like the persecuted are now becoming the persecutors.
Psychological angst affects the entire human population. It’s not unique or special. It’s life.
Forced acceptance of gay marriage, or sex will not resolve internal struggles.
The arguments being made are highly emotional.
December 19th, 2012 | 12:26 am
“Forced acceptance of gay marriage, or sex will not resolve internal struggles.
The arguments being made are highly emotional.”
Indeed the arguments made against the dignity, honor, and value of gay marriages are highly emotional as well as those stated in defense. Furthermore, as this conversation demonstrates very well, these arguments are the product of entrenched individuals. While I see no reason to believe these “internal struggles” will resolve anytime soon I see no reason to delay justice for gay couples seeking marriage. If that means turning to the law and the force of gov’t as the most effective option then so be it. It’s only appropriate, after all, that those who promote prejudice, injustice, and slander against gay folk be persecuted accordingly. If a person of conscience feels himself persecuted in this regard, perhaps he might first ask himself if he deserves it.
December 19th, 2012 | 12:37 am
“There is a clear attempt to create new values, not based on law or ethic, but on some emotional concept of hurt.”
Or perhaps these new values are the product of a higher standard of justice, which I believe is regarded as rather a strong ethic. I see no inconsistency in people of conscience responding with emotional righteous indignation to the injustices perpetrated against gay couples in civil society.
December 19th, 2012 | 3:50 am
“The issue is whether or not our society will honor and value a gay couple’s love and commitment to one another with the status of marriage. ”
No, the issue is: what are the underlying psychological, social, and cultural factors that make an individual develop a homosexual problem – so that they are unable to establish a heterosexual relationship leading to marriage?
What kind of a society tells individuals that they are not responsible for their psychological problems related to sexuality and should pursue any dysfunctional dynamic that pops up in their mind?
What kind of a blog censors these questions just about every time they are asked?
December 19th, 2012 | 8:37 am
R. Edward Travani: Please accept my apology for misformatting an excerpt from one of your comments and, thus, appearing to put words in your mouth as it were.
To reiterate: the love two men may have for each other is not marriage. Please understand that “no” means no.
If you want support in challenging taxation or intestate inheritance or assignable pension survivor benefits, we can speak of it.
December 19th, 2012 | 10:52 am
“To reiterate: the love two men may have for each other is not marriage. Please understand that “no” means no.”
Thank the grace of God that our society, in pursuing the better angels of its nature, isn’t taking “no” for an answer. While fair treatment of homosexuals and recognition of gay couples may be a novel concept, it is no less valid, fair, or consistent with our growing moral awareness. Part of that new awareness, I must reiterate, is showing respect for all benign citizens even when we cannot personally identify with them. So, when it comes to continued injustice, prejudice, and unwarranted humiliation, I say no … and it does indeed mean no.
December 19th, 2012 | 10:57 am
R. Edward Travani: If you aren’t interested in official state and social approval to conceive offspring by combining your gametes with another man, then you aren’t interested in marriage. Did you know that the word “gamete” is based on “games” the Greek word for marriage, as in “monogamy” and “polygamy”? Marriage has always meant that the couple is allowed to join their gametes and make offspring together and it always should mean that, conception rights should not be stripped from marriage and made into a separate question. You seem to realize that it is too soon to be demanding conception rights for same-sex couples, but that is what you are doing when you demand equal marriage rights. If you give up the demand for equal conception rights of marriage, we could compromise with civil unions defined as “marriage minus conception rights” so that marriage continues to approve and allow conception of offspring.
December 19th, 2012 | 11:04 am
Oops, should be “gamos” not “games”
And while I am here, I should point out that attempting to conceive with another person of the same sex will never be ethical or good public policy to allow and is not a right, and it is not too soon to prohibit it with a federal law that limits creation of human beings to joining a man and a woman’s unmodified gametes. Every day without that law is another day kids are confused and cruelly toyed with, kids should know they will never be able to reproduce with someone of the same sex or as the other sex.
December 19th, 2012 | 12:04 pm
“If you aren’t interested in official state and social approval to conceive offspring by combining your gametes with another man, then you aren’t interested in marriage.”
In the cause of fairness, it is fortunate that John Howard is not in a position to dictate the definition of marriage which, as a time-honored institution, has meant many things in many cultures throughout the ages of humankind. As stewards of our age, we are discussing what marriage means today.
December 19th, 2012 | 2:04 pm
R. Edward Travani,
in order for marriage to be time-honored it, though it has taken many shapes and forms, there must be some kind of continuity. Marriage is not endlessly malleable and therefore it can be correctly called time-honored. This continuity is expressed well as follows: “Marriage has an objective core, fixed by our nature as embodied, sexually reproductive (hence complementary) beings; and to deviate from it is to miss a crucial part of this basic human good.” (From What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense).
December 19th, 2012 | 2:09 pm
That is still what it means today, R. Edward. Even Justice Kennedy confirmed in Lawrence that marriage “is about the right to have sexual intercourse.” And that means the right to conceive offspring together.
But, because it seems you are promoting the view that marriage should no longer give state and social approval to conceive offspring with the couple’s own genes, we need to act so that marriage is not stripped of conception rights. Congress should enact a general law that confirms the effect of state marriage acts as approving and allowing the couple to conceive offspring together from their own genes, as the Full Faith and Credit clause instructs Congress to do.
December 19th, 2012 | 4:02 pm
“That is still what it means today, R. Edward. Even Justice Kennedy confirmed in Lawrence that marriage “is about the right to have sexual intercourse.” And that means the right to conceive offspring together.”
I find these arguments contrived and constructed, not to defend marriage, but only allow you to continue institutional discrimination against gay couples. I have qualified hope that our society as a whole has moved past such injustices, even if the force of law is required to oversee and ensure a smooth and consistent practice.
December 19th, 2012 | 5:17 pm
“Part of that new awareness, I must reiterate, is showing respect for all benign citizens even when we cannot personally identify with them. ”
One of the gravest problems we have, however, is how citizens who are doing harm in the area of sexuality and relationships are shown respect, tolerance, when not outright given endorsement and empowerment by people with liberal views. Many of the people displaying these attitudes are in favor of normalizing homosexuality, even come to be fervent about it.
So, when it comes to continued injustice, because all these people doing so much harm are never held accountable for what they do; prejudice, because of the virulence they display towards anyone who questions their dysfunctional liberal views on sexuality; and unwarranted persecution of social conservatives, I say no … and it does indeed mean no.
December 19th, 2012 | 9:52 pm
David Alexander,
“in order for marriage to be time-honored it, though it has taken many shapes and forms, there must be some kind of continuity. Marriage is not endlessly malleable and therefore it can be correctly called time-honored”
You’re absolutely right that there should be some continuity, but I think even Michael PS would quote some Wittgenstein at you. Once you start looking at other societies and other times and places finding continuity becomes very hard. It becomes even harder if you start looking at how actual marriages operated.
Which marriage, after all, would you want to participate in:
Abraham got his slave pregnant so his wife could raise the child as her own;
Women have tolerated their husband’s affairs;
Men have married and yet have remained cold to their wives while pouring their affections on the young men who they have really been attracted to.
I prefer our situation today. There are gay couples in my church who have been together for decades, and some have raised children. They are already married in all but name.
December 20th, 2012 | 12:16 am
The important continuity has been that marriage always allowed the couple to conceive offspring together. I read both Blankenhorn and Coontz’s histories of marriage, and through all the changes, there were never any marriages that were prohibited from conceiving offspring together. In fact, they identified marriages as couples that had society’s approval to have sex and procreate.
It’s not convoluted Edward, it’s very straightforward and simple. It’s OK to discriminate against couples when there is a supportable basis, when it is unethical for that type of relationship to procreate together. I suggest you give up demanding equal marriage rights and accept that people don’t have a right to reproduce with someone of the same sex, and instead compromise on Civil Unions that give all the other benefits and protections but don’t give conception rights. That would help actual couples that need legal recognition right now.
December 20th, 2012 | 12:23 am
Michael PS, I didn’t say that there should be continuity but that there is. I was making the simple point that you can’t call something time-honored unless it has stood the test of time and that there is in fact such a continuity. There are of course derivative principles of what makes a marriage good and most noble and most loving-kind beyond its core principles but I do not prefer our time in which half of marriages and more are dissolving and even the very core principles of time-honored marriage are being legally challenged and uprooted. The children pay the lion’s share of the bill.
December 20th, 2012 | 12:41 am
Michael (not Michael PS),
to clarify, I understand that marriages have taken on many different forms, many of them awful, many of them repugnant to modern sensibilities but perhaps not so awful as the shaped affections would lead one to believe. But when I talk about basic principles, I mean that marriage is almost universally (I say almost, not knowing of an exception other than modern notions) legally based on coitus and the potential it is fraught with. When people say that marriage has taken on many shapes and forms in order to to refute a basis of marriage in coitus it seems to me they are possessed by a modern phantasm because marriage and they same goes when they say that it does not imply children, an anachronistic projection of our situation of modern contraceptives on all of past history.
December 20th, 2012 | 4:38 am
Michael wrote, “You’re absolutely right that there should be some continuity, but I think even Michael PS would quote some Wittgenstein at you.”
Well, actually I shall quote Archbishop of Paris André Vingt-Trois’s evidence to the Pécresse Commission in 2006. He said, “Even though it has not taken the modern form familiar in our civil legislation, there has always been a means of handing things down from generation to generation, which is the very basis of continuity and stability in a society. This transmission between generations is primarily effected by the family. It is the legal framework of family life that structures the transmission of life and shapes the future of society.” This certainly comports with Wittgenstein’s approach.
Abraham got his slave pregnant, not “so his wife could raise the child as her own,” as you suggest but to produce an heir. Again, one might wish to consider Leverite marriage – the practice of marrying the widow of one’s childless brother to maintain his line; very different, one may think from “the modern form familiar in our civil legislation.” Then, of course, polygamous marriage is a common feature of many cultures.
The “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein would call it, between all of them is, precisely, their focus on the vertical dimension, the relationship of ancestor and heir. That is why le doyen Carbonnier could say, “The heart of marriage is not the couple; it is the presumption of paternity.”
As far as our own society is concerned, I believe the Pécresse Commission was right, when it said that “in this country, the model has long been the peasant family, structured around a patriarch and
expanding from hearth to hearth.” [et s'élargissant par foyers]
December 20th, 2012 | 9:25 am
John Howard
The Levirate marriage is certainly about begetting an heir, but not the husband’s heir, but his brother’s.
In other words, the presumption of paternity is displaced from the existing to the previous husband.
It still satisfies the definition of “marriage” because it is still centred on the continuity of the family and on ” handing things down from generation to generation.”
December 20th, 2012 | 12:26 pm
So in a Levirate marriage, the first born child of the new marriage is treated as the child of the deceased brother, not the living brother that was obliged to marry the widow. That upends “paternity” doesn’t it? But it shows that the marriage approves and allows the couple to have sex and conceive offspring together, which is the essential meaning of marriage. There is no right to parent the resulting children or claim ownership of them, but there is a right to conceive them with the spouse.
December 20th, 2012 | 1:09 pm
Michael PS,
“The “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein would call it, between all of them is, precisely, their focus on the vertical dimension, the relationship of ancestor and heir.”
The vertical dimension you describe is complicated by the split that occurs within the family as the adult child transfers primary authority and responsibility from parent to spouse. Even as the adult child remains heir to the parent, the parent’s authority over the adult child is lessened by the primary duty to the spouse, and adult child’s responsibility to the parent is lessened by the primary responsibility for the spouse.
Gay marriages “resemble” straight marriages in precisely this sense. By marrying, the gay couple, like the straight couple, acknowledges that their birth families no longer have the authority and responsibility the birth families once did. The primary duty now lies with the spouse.
December 20th, 2012 | 9:55 pm
I see I butchered even my attempt to clarify my response to Michael but John Howard makes the point. I would put it maybe even a little more starkly: Throughout history in virtually all it’s shapes and forms marriage has implied coitus and coitus has implied child-bearing, so much so that this may be taken as a basic principle of marriage. Even in coitus of sterile couples though there is the basic formation of complementarity, but in other sexual acts there is no basis for consummation of marriage. I get the sense that some would like to regard marriage throughout history as somehow discriminating against homosexuals by it’s most basic constitutive principles. But marriage is too important most especially for children for it’s mosaic constitutive principles to be tampered with in this way.
December 21st, 2012 | 12:06 am
David Alexander,
“Throughout history in virtually all it’s shapes and forms marriage has implied coitus and coitus has implied child-bearing, so much so that this may be taken as a basic principle of marriage.”
What you say is largely true. In most places and times, marriage as defined by law has attempted to regulate the responsibility for raising children and apportioning of inheritance. In that sense, marriage has been, as you put it, about coitus and child-rearing, although it has been accompanied by a whole lot of winking.
B y winking, I mean that, for most of human history, the need to support women, acknowledge children, and maintain inherited wealth has been accompanied by a lot of compromise. Abraham was allowed to have a child by a slave so that he could have an heir, women were willing to turn a blind eye toward the adultery of their husbands as long as their children remained favored and acknowledged, and men could indulge their passion for other men as long as they remained discreet. Women who loved women, of course, hardly mattered.
Most of the commentary I’ve seen on First Things has blamed the sexual revolution for the growing acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage, but I think the changing expectations of marriage and especially of women have more to do with the shift. Over the last four centuries, Westerners have increasingly expected greater emotional and spiritual intimacy with our spouses. We are no longer willing to countenance spouses who stray or don’t fully love us. People still want to have children, but they also want a spouse who fully love them.
That desire has led to greater divorce but also more intimate marriages. It is also leading to gay marriage.
December 21st, 2012 | 12:08 pm
“Most of the commentary I’ve seen on First Things has blamed the sexual revolution for the growing acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage…”
“That desire has led to greater divorce but also more intimate marriages. It is also leading to gay marriage.”
I believe you summed up the origin of said commentary nicely with the word “blame”. I will further credit you for being among the few to consider the impact on gay individuals at all. The attitudes expressed by Mr. Scruton and “most of the commentary” appear to intuit the assumption that gay relationships represent a negative turn.
For all the intellectual calisthenics we’ve witnessed during this discussion, it appears that certain individuals will drive an argument against equal status or regard for gay relationships no matter how far or absurd they need to stretch. I believe accusations of bigotry and prejudice are appropriate in response. Let me be very clear about what I see. From within the gay community the push for gay marriage is about honoring our families and societal recognition that we and our families constitute a positive rather than a decadence. That base debate underlies all others. Outside of the gay community, the motivation is split. Our straight allies seem driven by a desire for justice and equality. Our opposition, as this discussion demonstrates with shocking clarity, falls along a spectrum from casual disregard for gay individuals to blind contempt. Flowery language, for all its art, does not obscure black-hearted animus and any suggestion of “Separate but Equal” is interpreted as such.
December 21st, 2012 | 12:36 pm
Michael, marriage is a legal status, it joins the couple to each other and it approves and allows the couple to conceive offspring together. Don’t strip that approval from marriage, it is what is religiously and emotionally significant about it. You still haven’t acknowledged that people do not have a right to conceive offspring with someone of the same sex, and that allowing people to attempt that would be bad public policy and unethical and should not be allowed. Clinging to a right to attempt something that is not possible today and might never be possible is harming progress, there are thousands of gay families that need recognition and protections but you are insisting they need equal conception rights more. That’s crazy and harmful on so many fronts.
December 21st, 2012 | 6:53 pm
John,
“marriage is a legal status, it joins the couple to each other and it approves and allows the couple to conceive offspring together.”
Yes, marriage is a legal status, but you neglect one of its central functions, which is to shift the priority of authority and responsibility from the birth family to the spouse.
If my single brother ends up in the hospital, my parents are called in as next of kin to make any decisions. But if I end up in the hospital, my wife is called in. She has the authority and responsibility my parents once had.
That authority and responsibility derives from her intimacy with me. We’ve made a life together and have cemented our bond through sex. The same is true of any gay couple that has entered a committed relationship. Like any infertile couple, they can create a family through adoption.
December 22nd, 2012 | 2:31 am
Right you are referring to coverture, the legal joining of a man and woman into one person, which still exists in some vestigial effects, though it has been eviscerated in many ways, to the point where marriage isn’t really marriage any more. But in some ways it remains. Spouses aren’t “next of kin,” kin refers to blood relatives. Spouses are the same legal person, each spouse is an equal part of the marriage. So if you are sick, your wife is called in because she IS you, because you both are the marriage, neither one of you is the individual you were before you got married, that person is gone and only the one flesh exists now. Spouses don’t inherit when their spouse dies, they continue to own what they already owned before.
Being one flesh derives from the right to join together to create offspring together. A man doesn’t become one flesh with a woman through rape, because there is no right to join together with someone un-consensually. It does not derive from shameful consensual intimacy, though that is a tight bond, like thieves share when they commit their crimes together.
“Creating a family” though adoption is not a right of marriage, and does not fulfill the right of marriage to conceive children together. Adoption is a legal lie, a falsehood, and undermines family and marriage. Adoptees are fighting to change the laws to stop the lies.
December 22nd, 2012 | 12:06 pm
“Adoption is a legal lie, a falsehood, and undermines family and marriage.”
I adopted my children, thank you, and I think we have a real family and a real marriage.
December 22nd, 2012 | 4:28 pm
Who doesn’t?
December 22nd, 2012 | 4:55 pm
Real marriages have a right to conceive children together with each other that are their natural biological offspring, they do not have a right to adopt children. Adopting or acquiring or parenting children is not a right of marriage, and not a right at all actually, people can be denied by the state to do any of those things, whether they are married or not. Though marriage may certainly be a factor in finding the best home for children that need parents, it doesn’t give the right to acquire a child to raise and leave your inheritance to. But it does give a right to conceive offspring together, using their own genes. The state can take their child away as soon as it is born, as it does for women giving birth in prison, but can’t stop a married couple from conceiving more children (except by incarceration).
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