This article does not show a convincing argument that the state can redefine anything. There are certain principles that the state abides by, like not making anyone do something to someone else that would harm them. The Golden Rule. So because they live by certain rules they would not redfine anything

All of Reno's worries appear to be rooted in his overly simplistic distinctions.

For Reno, marriage is either a pre-political metaphysical reality, or it is merely a "legal artifact created by the modern liberal state." Also for Reno, the liberal must ground "social reality" in either "the individual will or the will of the majority as reflected in the decisions of a democratic state."

Into these simplistic divisions how is Reno to fit ideal observer theories, any version of Kantian constructivism, or any moral realist view that arrive at authoritative moral or political constraints on marriage practice/legislation not through any claim to have discovered marriage in the platonic realm or in God's mind, nor in terms of either any actual "individual will" or "the will of the majority," but rather in terms of more general moral and political norms? If Reno wants to criticize contemporary liberalism, he really ought to read up on it a bit more.

I do not understand why conservatives cannot describe their interests in terms that liberals can understand.

For instance, if liberals are interested only in individual interests, why can't conservatives frame their own interests in individual terms? If I want a strong family that honors traditional obligations linked to kinship roles, is it not my right as an individual to prefer and enter into that sort of arrangement? When conservative preferences are stated in the same individual rights-based language that liberals themselves use and prefer, the actual conflict becomes obvious and clearly stated: they want a world where all individuals can have X, while we want a world where some individuals can prefer Y.

It seems to me that the gay marriage debate includes many individual freedoms that are lost. For instance, conservatives lose the right to recognize and define certain things as sacred - such as the difference between conjugal vs. recreational sex, the difference between bonds of family kinship vs. bonds of affection, etc. Is it actually necessary that gay "equality" come at the expense of religious freedom? What if gay couples invented their own institution - one that matches their definition of what a life partnership is and should look like, and arguing separately for what benefits it should be entitled to? Wouldn't that lead to a more legitimate sort of equality?

But of course this is the real root of the problem: what they want in terms of "gay rights" is not the right to marry, but the right to have their marriage viewed as "the same as" a conjugal relationship - in other words, they are the ones who are trying to take rights away, instead of just "adding" the right to do what they need to do in order to live their lives freely: they want to to take away our right to believe that there is a difference in kind between a conjugal and kinship-based family unit, vs. a unit that is neither conjugal nor kinship-based, but is merely a bunch of people who view themselves as a family because they're all fond of each other and have made a commitment to stay together.

Their arguments actually rely on various forms of conflation: the right to be who you are slips in the right to do what you need to do, and the right to determine what rightfully falls into "what you need to do" is slipped in, so that the right to be who you are (the basis of civil rights) includes a blank check to behave in any way deemed "necessary" - no scrutiny allowed.

In other words, the short answer to both their problem and ours can only be solved by looking past unsubstantiated claims about what anyone is "entitled to" and looking instead at what each group really needs - and why.

David Hart one time told me that in modern times the divine right of kings had been transferred to the divine right of the individual, leaving nothing to mediate between it and the state. Seemed like an appropriate insight in light of Reno's comments.

It's easy, Jeff. The point of the article is that all the state has to do is re-define the Golden Rule.

Many evils were "pre-political institutions." Slavery comes to mind. Human sacrifice. Jesus Christ was also a "pre-political institution." The existence of a social construct (and marriage, from a non-establishmentarian state's point of view, is only that) as a "pre-political institution" has no correlation with its present value.

Commenter "Blake" says: "They [whoever they are] want to to take away our right to believe that there is a difference in kind between a conjugal and kinship-based family unit, vs. a unit that is neither conjugal nor kinship-based, but is merely a bunch of people who view themselves as a family because they're all fond of each other and have made a commitment to stay together."

I'm an adoptive father. Adoption may or may not be a "pre-political institution," but it is not "conjugal or kinship based," but the state assigns me every right and duty of fatherhood, right down to putting my name on the birth certificate. My fatherhood is a spiritual reality but a state fiction. The superiority of "conjugal or kinship based" relationships to the other kind is far from clear (and adoption is clearly valued by conservatives) and may well be arbitrary.

"Pre-political institutions" that are "conjugal or kinship based" have no obvious, and in some cases, no apparent, value. But their posited inherent superiority is the basis of Dr. Reno's article. Meanwhile, in the United States we have to determine what "Equal protection under the laws" means.

Reno dodges the questions he raises: which institutions between the individual and the state does he want to recognize, and why should the modern liberal state defer to them?

He lists four institutions: marriage, “old guild prerogatives, inherited social castes, racial segregation.” He then comments “Some of these liberal refusals to recognize inherited forms of life and the determined efforts to use to power of the state create anew have undoubtedly been for the best.”

So I want to know: was the modern liberal state wrong to dismantle racial segregation, social castes, and old guilds? All of these changes seem like great accomplishments to me. As he says, modern liberalism recognized that all three were “unjust mechanisms for one group to dominate another group.”

Which leaves us with marriage.

With the help of some varieties of feminism, the modern liberal state has done a good job of squeezing out the injustices within marriage that allowed husbands to abuse wives and that allowed parents to abuse children. “Me and my wife have a license to fight,” Hank Williams was once able to sing but, happily, no more. And there’s even been some progress in re-righting injustices toward men within new marriage laws.

So modern liberalism has strengthened marriage in these ways, can it strengthen marriage by opening it to gay couples? Yes, of course it will.

Reno wisely observes that “the practice of marriage has varied a great deal throughout human history,” and so he opts for a minimal definition of marriage as “the union of men and women for the purposes of forming a family unit.” That definition is not significantly different from the modern liberal definition of marriage as “the union of two adults for the purposes of forming a family unit.” Gay couples have proven that they can form families every bit as healthy as straight couples can. Modern liberalism is correcting an injustice by opening marriage to gays.

Although modern liberalism is great at finding state solutions to various forms of injustice, it is fatally unable to teach us how to love and fear God. Only Christianity can fully do that, which means that only Christianity can teach couples how to marry and parent fully, whether those couples are gay or straight.

This piece nails it, for those with eyes willing to see. I, for one, highly doubt the State is going to subject itself to any abiding principles, least of which is Jesus' Gold Rule. Seen American foreign policy lately?

Burke was right. The whole idea of liberalism is that you change things when you decide they are outmoded so that individuals get more of what they want. Every wave of change goes only so far, usually tempered by whatever mores are generally accepted at the time, and liberals scoff at the idea of them going any further. They have decided what they want and what they don't want and they assume that no one with any sense would want what they don't want, so why worry about it? Then the next wave comes along and the last great victory for individualism is now outmoded -- people have decided that the old (actually new) order is not fair and they want something else. But that thing will only go so far, and they scoff at the idea of it going further. Liberalism has delivered some wonderful things, but then so has conservatism. Liberalism must be balanced by principles. A liberalism that does not believe there are any inherent principles is dangerous indeed, because it just makes up new principles as it pleases.

Sir Herbert Maine summed up the liberal view, when he sad that the movement of the progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.

Now, marriage intersects the two. No doubt, marriage can be viewed as an agreement between the spouses, but there is nothing contractual about the obligation for a (solvent) mother-in-law to support her unemployed son-in-law It is an obligation imposed by Article 206 of the Civil Code, based on the mere fact of marriage and nothing else. She may detest the man and she may have opposed the marriage, but her duty arises from the mere fact of hisr status, as her son-in-law, a member of her family.

Now this obligation ceases, if her daughter is dead and there are no children of the marriage alive. Why? Because he is no longer a part of the family, extending through time. The same, of course, holds true of the reciprocal obligation of the son-in-law to aliment his mother-in-law.

Advocates of same-sex marriage might like to discuss this. Should Article 206 be amended and, if so, what becomes of the claim that SSM will not affect opposite-sex marriage?

Blake,

The history of the institution of marriage shows that its status has changed many times. Sometimes it existed outside either church or state, sometimes only within one or the other, and sometimes within both.

Martin Luther was the first to say that the state should be in charge of marriage, and the Council of Trent was the first time that the Roman Catholic Church required that couples be married within the church. Before that, states had no say in marriage, and the blessing of the church was not required. From these two relatively recent decisions, much has flowed.

Today, in the US, marriage is a state institution. Recognition by the church is optional. And it has been that way since the founding of the republic.

So it is incorrect to say that gay marriage means that “conservatives lose the right to recognize and define certain things as sacred.” Marriage in the United States has always had both a necessary legal and an optional sacred meaning. Some churches believe that the marriages blessed by other churches are not sacred, and some churches believe that a marriage must be blessed by a church to be sacred.

As far as conjugal and kinship rights go, kinship is made within marriage as spouses become one. That’s no different in gay marriage. In gay marriages, children are often biologically related to one parent. A family has been created. Kinship and conjugality has been created.

Bravo! What terrifies me more than anything else i can think of related to this debate is the real possibility that one day the State will declare that I have no instrinsic value and that for me to insist that i do and that i have more of it than say a rhinoceros is in fact discriminatory, based on nothing but perversions of the mind, and therefore without concrete basis and in fact a mere social construct. Accordiing to your Declaration of Independance the rights that people have are not granted but endowed, in other words they are untouchable, if you like. But run-away liberalism which is in many ways radical scepticism, is doing away with that truth, that connection between the real and healthy relationship between individual liberty and the State. Radical scepticism is a formidable enemy for it is unpredictable and hysterical but always maintains an inner logical order that it defends with efficient brutality. I am not a trained philosopher so I am probably getting ahead of myself but if the state can redefine the proper and natural and most successful unit for receiving new human beings into the world what's to say that tomorrow it won't reorder sexual reproduction itself? It may sound alarmist but I can not see how it can rationally defend redefining marriage and not say the legal rights that biological parents have to their offspring or maybe even their own biological material. Again, not trained but logically the thing doesn't compute. How about this scenario (i don't see anything fantastic about it): government run adoption agencies declare that because same sex people can not have children of their own 20% of all children will have to be place with them first, to be fair and equitable and to give them the same benefits that accrue to opposite sex people through their ability to have children. Many people will attack this possibility as outrageous or even hateful, but why should it be any more irrational than the redefinition of marriage? The article is right about many things but what it is perhaps most correct about is this idea that redefining marriage is not at all about compassion or equality or tolerance but about the proper role of the State and whether truth is invented or discovered.

Gail F,

Of course, liberalism believes there are inherent principles: the individual, liberty, tolerance, rights, consent, property, etc.

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Michael PS,

I don’t see how gay marriage affects this code. Gay families still create mothers-in-law and sons-in-law.

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The Moz,

Yes, you are being alarmist, creating bogeymen. Remember that the liberal state relies on the consent of the governed.

It's quite simple, marriage existed before the establishment of a state or even a society. As such, marriage cannot be a legal or societal construction. As such, the state cannot redefine marriage.

I think what confuses honest liberals is that there is some regulation of marriage (e.g. polygamy, incest, etc) which is based on law and society (although it can be justified by natural law as well). But that regulation is a restriction of the possibilities of marriage, not a broadening of the definition of marriage.

"The result of this two-source theory has been the slow erosion of the independent legitimacy of social institutions that fall in between the individual and the state."

Liberalism doesn't reject the legitimacy of these institution. It does insist that participation in them be voluntary, and that the hierarchies they support should carry no political or legal weight. Nor should they be allowed to be instruments of unjust discrimination. All this is necessary both to protect the rights of individualism and to lend the institutions the dignity that comes from being freely chosen rather than coerced. What's the alternative to this view?

a very perceptive essay. probably at the root of the issue is whether there are any truths "greater than ourselves."

i once asked richard john neuhaus after a talk at the yale law school what he thought of "self-evident" truths. i don't quite recall his answer. in any case, it seems trying to invent new definitions for "marriage" is like trying to invent a new color -- ontologically impossible.

"So I want to know: was the modern liberal state wrong to dismantle racial segregation, social castes, and old guilds? All of these changes seem like great accomplishments to me. As he says, modern liberalism recognized that all three were “unjust mechanisms for one group to dominate another group.”"

What I would like to know is why are guilds considered to be in the same category as racial segregation and social castes?

And why can't the modern liberal state be an "unjust mechanism for one group to dominate another", especially with nothing in between it and the individual?

"was the modern liberal state wrong to dismantle racial segregation, social castes, and old guilds?"

The replacement for guilds was the modern system in which labor is a commodity. Either way one group dominates another.

JGY, there is a reason why ideal observer theory is not popular in academic circles. It fails because it is impossible to neutrally hypothesize a neutral observer. The Kantian constructivism popularized by John Rawls was in vogue decades ago and has been since then been rejected on similar grounds by postmodern philosophers because "justice as fairness" does not give us neutral grounds for understanding what is deserved. As for your hypothetical "moral realist" views, well it depends on the particular view.

The point is: we're way past Rawls and his heirs now. I can't help but suspect it is you who have not kept up with the decisive developments in moral and political philosophy in the last 30 years, especially the postmodern critiques of moral philosophy in the Enlightenment genealogy. Ideal observer theory? Come on.

I am just as excited as The Moz about Reno's article and what it signifies: an intellectual understanding of the debate concerning gay marriage that goes to the heart of the matter; in The Moz's words, "The article is right about many things but what it is perhaps most correct about is this idea that redefining marriage is not at all about compassion or equality or tolerance but about the proper role of the State and whether truth is invented or discovered."

Not being an intellectual, I've been stabbing in the dark on this debate with common sense and experience, waiting for an intellectual engagement like Reno's here, and here it is, and it is obvious that other intellectuals like Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson, although getting a late start (sex liberationists, the vanguards in the push for unlimited freedom for the individual absent responsibility founded in truth, have been at their sleight-of-hand gambling for a very long time) have come out of the gate with rigorous intellectual depth, armed with the truth that will set us free from our descent into disintegration and darkness—an ever-widening black hole in our time-proven, truth-oriented social constructs, a dark abyss that we as a culture began being sucked into with great force beginning in the '60s.

Also, Reno makes clear that liberalism does have value, but is becoming its own worst enemy in abandoning truth, oblivious to the fact that only truth, not rabid individualism, can set the individual truly free in all the dimensions of uniquely human freedom, not just a singular focus on ever-escalating needy demands that lead us deeper and deeper into what ultimately remains insatiable desire, ironically elaborated on best by a gay artist, Marcel Proust in “Remembrance of Things Past”.

Liberalism’s chosen Goliath warrior, the State, especially its legal arm, will in the end become the Grand Inquisitor who will only be able to hear a pathetic, infantile plea, represented best by Bill Murray in the film “What about Bob?”: “I want!, I want!, I need!, I need!” And it will be then that state functionaries, goose-stepping to their leader’s vision, will lose all respect for the people, and feel justified in subjecting them to anything; if for no other reason, to just stop the whimpering.

Reno's thoughts generally center on the conflict between continuity without change, evolution of institutions, and sudden change or reform. He is concerned with losing a quality of life such as a religious practice or an institution like marriage if one slowly makes changes that ultimately lead to an unrecognizable form of that event. (Does the change from Latin to English mass qualify?) Arguments both for keeping the status quo and for reform have validity and value.

Are there, however, any institutions, practices, customs or even laws that over the centuries have not undergone changes, either abrupt or gradual? Many examples were pointed out in the comments above, such as slavery or the wife as property. Marriage itself has served different functions in different cultures - often economic, often political (uniting the conquerors and the conquered), often religious.

The balance between status quo and change will itself change at different times and places; this balance, or attempt at balance, is the constant. There is no absolute argument for no change or change.

Excellent article. The furor over SSM is rooted in two opposing, rational, views of the world. The opposing views encompass more than just sex or religious beliefs. This article points that out, if anyone cares to read carefully.

Or, I suppose one could just ignore it and start shouting insults....

The Science of Anthropology 1) notes there are hundreds of marriage and "kinship systems" in human culture. And surprisingly, 2) the Bible itself - which the Church is sworn to obey - contained any number of non-traditional marriages and relationships. Many of which are evidently approved of, by God.

For example, a) Abraham himself, had a child, a son, by a servant woman. Then too b) Solomon, said to be "wise" in the Bible, by God, had hundreds of wives, and hundreds of concubines.

But especially, c) Jesus himself told us that there are neither men nor women or marriages, in heaven, more or less. While d) the Church suggested that nuns and possibly e) priests, are "married to" Jesus. While finally and most importantly, d) Jesus referred in Rev. 21, to the marriage of Heaven, with earth, as the more important marriage.

God therefore, did not stress man-and-woman marriage, nearly as much as conservative Catholics do. Specifically, Heaven coming down to earth, as a "bride prepared for" her bachelor (Rev. 21), is perhaps the most important marriage advocated by the Bible, and by God - and it is a non-traditional, non-conservative marriage. In fact in part, that marriage was interpreted, as a rather male God - God the "Father" - coming to join a - partially male - Church on earth, one day. So that the Bible, God, presents a crucial "marriage" between ... a male, and males. As possibly, moreover, the main marriage model, in the Bible.

So is God the REAL source, of the whole conservative "Catholic" idea, of a man and woman marriage? Actually, God is not the source of that idea as much as it is really, in large part, not from the Bible. Rather it is to some degree from ... middle class bourgeois, conventions. The notion of a man-woman marriage as definitional, is just another Middle Class opinion, falsely read out to us as the word of God. By conservatives; who are always eager to present their own simple, conventional opinions, their own fallible "traditions of men," as if they were the pronouncements of the Church, and of God.

Conservative Catholics, as usual, confuse their own mere social, political opinions, with the actual words of God. Conservative Catholics, as usual in effect, presenting their own opinions, as God.

While in contrast to conservative Catholics, the Bible and God, appear far, far more liberal, on this matter.

Sherry Miller,

You claim, "There is no absolute argument for no change or change." I disagree.

In Orwell's "1984" State functionary scientists are working on destroying the unifying effects of the biological union between man and woman (a union that cannot occur between a man and a man or a woman and a woman) because it is in the minds of the functionaries an absolute (procreative biological union) relationship that defies most effectively an absolute union with the State, Big Brother, what the functionaries view as the only means to absolute equality, all being one and the same in union with Big Brother (Orwell would have made a more convincing and dramatic case for Big Brother if he had access to the programs and goals of modern eugenics).

For a man or woman to be free in all they can be as complementary others in procreative biological union, with all the unique psychological rippling effects that union can accomplish, especially when a child arrives to complete the biological triad, who will benefit enormously from the complementary union of his parents, is something we should not change, absolutely, for it would be the denial of an important configuration that grants to a human person a developing of his/her full potential as a human person that cannot be replicated in any other configuration. In my mind the greatest novelist of the 20th century was Franz Kaka, and he viewed the most terrible deprivation of his life the inability to wed, to be in a procreative complementary relationship with a woman. And the second greatest writer of that century was Marcel Proust, a gay man who saw all relationships outside of a procreative life commitment to a complementary other as the imprisonment to cyclical and futile desire imprisoned in power dynamics, what he described as salon life.

The economic system of slavery that is close to being universally dismantled, a dismantling that was initiated most profoundly by Paul in his letter to Philemon (8-21), is a change that is an absolute change for the good.

Joe Human,

It's strange that you are attempting to make a religious argument against traditional marriage in opposition to Reno's secular view of affirming traditional marriage.

The State requires the consent of the electorate. Hmm. The electorate in California has spoken and yet the State (the Judiciary) is ignoring it. As for the supposed parallel between ssmarriage and racial discrimination, it simply doesn't exist; however it is a very powerful talking point and can seem difficult to address, but in actuality it isn't. Without appearing to trivialize the real and legitimate concerns of people who experience ssattractions I want to draw a distinction that I think clears up the confusion. Race is unchangeable, it is maybe even not, in the strict sense of the word, a real category. One of my professors once said that that is more difference within a racial group than there is among them. On the other hand "gay" men say, have been able to marry and many did, only they married women, but some people will point out rightly that that solution doesn't address the emotional needs of the man and is fake. I agree but only partly. Yes, a real marriage, has to be consummated. I think the State got out of the business of ensuring compliance with that requirement sometime ago but most Churches I think have not. But that still leaves the emotional emptiness that the man would experience. And well to make this short that's the point. Ssmarriage is not about children, not about recognizing legally and making adjustments to, a naturally occuring and necessary institution for not only the survival but the health of the most basic building block of civilization and society (an incidentally for those very same people who suffer from ssattractions). So the issue is not about marriage per se; I want to repeat that many "gay" men have married women and led extremely productive and good lives. They are ofcourse underrepresented or ignored, even the mere suggestion is ridiculed but it is a fact. As a side not many professors of sexuality believe and I think the evidence is clear that human sexuality can ocilate for lack of a better term. Many, perhaps up to 20% of young boys (not sure why it's always boys but it appears that women are just more mentally balanced then men) believe themselves to be either "gay" or unsure some studies have suggested. But fast forward 10 years and of those 20% only about 3% self-identify as "gay". And this is from places where tolerance is the new religion. The issue is about power and a profound belief in the ability of the State to make something that is clearly disordered (I mean this in the strict sense) and has almost no evolutionary basis for existence, into something that is not. At this point I have to stop and wonder at just how much perhaps more faith in the seemingly impossible some "gay" rights radicals have compared to some of us. Anyway this is classic social engineering. It's been tried before and with disastorous consequences. I could go on but suffice it to say that as long as we have free will, unless the activists want to take that away from themselves too(which would incidentally make their work impossible), the comparison between sexual preference and race is a bad one and confuses things and personally I think is offensive to people who have had to suffer because of the color of their skin. There are many other arguments that could be made about why recognizing and most importantly equating ssmarriage with real marriage is a very bad idea but they have more to do with the fact that the people who most often end up paying for our experiments are the poor and the weak. Ok I can't resist. In Obama's book the Odyssey of Hope as my wife likes to call it, something struck me towards the end that i think is related to this issue. He says that inspite of all of the liberal pronouncements about how life would become better for people once divorce laws were relaxed the simple fact is that it hasn't and that the group that has been hardest hit by the breakdown of the traditional family and the group that is in need of it most is the black family. I remember reading that and then thinking that this summed it all up for me. I thought why of course, I'll be ok, I am white and relatively well off and educated and no matter what the State dreams up I know what is important because I read the Catechism of the Church and attend mass regularly and went to College and have time to read all that. But what about the people working 60 hours a week making 16,000 dollars a year? How will they manage? Well Obama said it himself. Anyway ssmarriage is in some respects Christian morality on steriods, run amok and come untethered from the other virtues (I got that from Chesterton) so in that respect I appreciate its heroism. But fortunatley I also see that it is mostly plain and strong pride and unfortunately that is its real weakness and ultimate downfall.

Amos,

If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that marriage pre-exists both state and society, and that all regulations of it have been restrictions rather than expansions.

The flaw in this argument regards race, nationality, and class. Various societies have restricted marriage to same class, same nationality, and/or same class. Those restrictions have been expanded over the last two centuries. So expansions do occur.

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Jason Taylor,

The problem with medieval and early modern guilds is that they restricted free trade. Acting as trade cartels, they accrued social and political advantages to themselves, virtually running some cities. Although guilds built wealth, Adam Smith, among other liberals, correctly believed that eradicating guilds and the privileged they enjoyed would build wealth more widely.

When you say that guilds were replaced by labor as a commodity, you’re mixing apples and oranges. Guilds were more about who could own businesses, not who would work for them. The eradication of guilds opened more opportunities for others to get into the business. Changes in labor flowed from this and other changes.

And, yes, of course, the modern liberal state can be an “unjust mechanism,” but as the saying goes, as lousy as democracy is, all of the alternatives are worse. The liberal state was unjust when it believed the “consent of the governed” permitted segregation. Happily, liberal notions like the consent of the governed and individual rights allow the liberal state to correct its mistakes.

Right now, liberal states are looking at marriage more seriously and concluding that the definition of marriage has been too restrictive.

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Joe Human,

You’re right that the institution of marriage has changed dramatically over the course of the three thousand years of Judeo-Christian history. These changes have mostly been in response to changing economic structures. But two things have remained constant: First, as Reno points out, marriage has always been about forming a family unit. Second, marriage and the family have always been dedicated to the service of God.

Thus, when you say that “notion of a man-woman marriage” is “just another Middle Class opinion, falsely read out to us as the word of God,” you’re only partially right. The notion of man-woman marriage is much older than the middle class. Both Jesus and Paul are clear that marriage means one man and one woman, so you’re wrong there. But Paul certainly doesn’t have in mind the kind of companionate marriage that arose with the growth of the middle class in the late eighteenth century, and so you’re right that both social conservatives and social liberals share a fairly recent ideal of a companionate marriage that post-dates the bible.

Regardless of how marriage has changed, however, the most important thing for Christians is to ensure that the institution remains dedicated to God. Christians are struggling to understand how marriage can be dedicated to God if it includes gay couples, but that struggle is genuine and beautiful and not to be mocked because all Christians who are engaged in it, whether conservative like Reno or liberal like myself, are prayerfully trying to understand the mind and heart of God, something larger than ourselves and older far than any state, modern or ancient.

Jeff, Totalitarianisms have existed and been in the redefinition business since time immemorial. JGY, you are erudite but unpersuasive because your erudition has made you unintelligible to everyone except perhaps Albert, and no one gets him, either. Rick, how does the insistence upon the traditional definition of marriage (ie., to exclude homosexual, incestual, or bestial relationships) threaten anyone's protection under the law? Michael, are you willing to be consistent and allow the State an unrestricted power to redefine whatever it chooses, so long as it can muster 51% of the vote? And do you really believe that the State should intervene in very domestic squabble, or don't you really mean that Hank Williams shouldn't beat his wife (in which case, I completely agree)? Sherry Miller, do you really see a moral equivalence in having Mass said in the vernacular and completely subverting the whole human moral tradition? And finally, Joe Human: the Bible is not primarily a book of illustrative morality tales, so I wouldn't too much stock in the behavior of even it's most celebrated heroes.

As someone has observed above (far more eloquently than I), Reno has highly dualistic thinking in which people EITHER see marriage as a pre-political institution or an artificial creation of the state - the former must support marriage as it traditionally is, and the latter must oppose it.

I have two questions:

1) What about the thousands of religious believers who believe in the sanctity of marriage as a commitment in recognition of two people's love for one another - whatever their gender? Or does this middle group not exist? Are people either secularist liberals or conservative Christians?

2) How exactly will it harm you if gay people are allowed to commit to one another? Are they going to suddenly ban heterosexual marriage? Or is it that you see your role as a judge in place of God?

Back to the point of the article...

"If marriage can be reshaped to accommodate same-sex couples, then there is nothing that the modern liberal state cannot redefine to serve its own purposes."

This is the troubling truth Prof. Reno is correct to point out. For supposed "free" individuals to turn over so much control to the state is ironically appalling. Yet, for a whole host of reasons, this is what has been happening for a long time in so many, many aspects of life. The pace seems to be accelerating, if only because we have reached the point where real situations, which would have been used for reductio ad absurdum arguments, not long ago are now greeted with a shrug. The absurd is now commonplace. We’re all either participants or observers in the Antonin Artaud show, brought to you by...GE!

The Sturm und Drang over SSM is merely the latest incarnation of the disease. Next year it will be something else. The whole thing is patent nonsense. That is, unless you think the state defines reality. If so...then get some judges together and make me a pony! No...no...a Viking! Yeah, a Viking. With one of those cool ships and a helmet!

If the anti-same-sex marriage viewpoint is *true*, as I believe it is, it's not surprising that the critics of that view don't quite make their case. But does that mean that George, et. al. have framed the anti-arguments the right way--in a way that will be convincing to judges? I'm inclined to think not. I suspect many admirers of the Geroge et. al. argument are taken in by the point about the "two-in-one-flesh union." But that point has no analytical purchase; philosophically it is neither here nor there. It has force as biblical doctrine: "the two [man and wife] shall become one flesh." But the Bible cannot be used to bolster a secular philosophical argument.

What does have analytical purchase is the idea of "acts of a generative kind." Unfortunately, this key notion is ambiguous. Does it refer to a kind of act that is (potentially) generative, or does it refer to a generative kind of act? If the former is what is meant, then it is inconsistent to allow aged and sterile heterosexual couple to marry. If the latter is what is meant, it prejudices the case against homosexual couples by fiat.

The Moz,

You said, “The State requires the consent of the electorate. Hmm. The electorate in California has spoken and yet the State (the Judiciary) is ignoring it.”

The judiciary is not supposed to respond to the electorate. Its job is to interpret the law and the constitution. If the electorate doesn’t like the interpretations made by the judiciary, then it elects legislators who will change the law or amend the constitution. It’s a pretty good system.

Some gay couples have children, and some straight couples don’t. In both cases, unions are made and families created.

You said, “The issue is about power and a profound belief in the ability of the State to make something that is clearly disordered (I mean this in the strict sense) and has almost no evolutionary basis for existence, into something that is not.”

You’re speaking too abstractly here, so let’s be clear. The state doesn’t “create” rights; it “recognizes” or “gives” them. Women, blacks, and un-propertied men “gained” the right to vote; the state didn’t “create” their rights to vote. Similarly, blacks and whites “gained” the right to intermarry; the state didn’t “create” that right. Gay people want the state to recognize the unity they have formed as a couple and the families they have formed. This recognition will afford them the same property, domestic, health, and custody rights that straight couples have. The next question is whether the church should bless those marriages.

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Billy Bean,

Your definition of totalitarian is either idiosyncratic or merely hyperbolic. The debate over gay marriage has been carried out through a democratic process, just like civil rights and prohibition. I think civil rights was a good idea, and prohibition a bad one. Both changes were so significant that they required constitutional amendments, and when the second change was seen as a failure, the constitution was amended again. It’s a pretty good system.

If you’re not following the conversation between JGY and Albert, that’s your fault, not theirs. Just gracefully bow out. I follow about half of it, which is why I’m not saying anything!

Rick probably has a better answer to your question than I do, but I’d say that gay couples and families seek the same property, domestic, health, and custody rights that straight couples have. Those are the rights that need equal protection because right now those rights are only being recognized in straight couples and families.

As for your questions for me, no, a majority vote doesn’t give the state an unrestricted power. The state must adhere to the constitution. Furthermore, regardless of what the state says, Christians are required to obey God first. If obedience to God requires disobeying the law, then so be it.

You misunderstand: I didn’t say the “State should intervene in very domestic squabble.” What I said was that feminists helped the state recognize that domestic violence is a serious crime. Before the 1980s, men could beat their wives and not have to worry too much about the police. And in the 1990s, it became increasingly harder for women to beat their husbands. At the same time, feminists helped us recognize that spouses could rape each other and therefore have committed crimes. Before the 1980s, raping your wife wasn’t a crime. Astonishing in hindsight.

If you read back issues of newspapers and magazines of the day, you’ll see that lots of conservative and some liberal commentators believed that, in encouraging these laws, feminists were destroying marriage and/or creating a nanny state. They weren’t. They were improving the institution of marriage, making it more humane. They could not make the institution more Godly, however; only the church can do that.

As usual Prof Reno makes a powerful argument, with which I mostly agree. The State cannot legitimately redefine marriage, especially not against the wishes of the vast majority. But just as interesting is that so many posters on this largely Catholic and certainly religious website experience deep trouble with what Prof Reno says. So many today want to be both Catholic and secular and try to reduce the separation, but it won't work in the long run. Marriage is between a man and a woman because God made it that way and that's why virtually every society has "submitted." So sorry. Some of us want to think we can do it better, but we are deluded.

Michael breezily makes assertions in his response to Reno that have gone unremarked.

Let's begin with his assertion that "the modern liberal state has done a good job of squeezing out the injustices within marriage that allowed husbands to abuse wives and that allowed parents to abuse children."

How? By codifying intra-relationship assault policies? Is familial abuse on the decline? If yes, is this the result of the modern liberal state's policies to "strengthen marriage" or the result of loosening it through, for instance, no-fault divorce laws? Is it possible that injustices and abuses are simply being funneled to other familial or demographic categories?

The claim that the modern liberal state has strengthened marriage fails to take seriously divorce and co-habitation trends and the affect that the primacy of a contractual view of marriage has had on said trends. Even if we were to concede that certain policies of the modern liberal state did strengthen aspects of marriage (and suggesting that the modern liberal state has succeeded in reducing the amount of bad men who beat their wives is ambitious, to say the least), what are policies of that same modern liberal state doing to the status of marriage as a whole? If marriages really are healthier (or less unjust), or even partially healthier (or partially just), let's get an accounting of what policies specifically that the modern liberal state is responsible for that are to be credited with this worthwhile achievement so that we might replicate them across the land.

The faith in the modern liberal state to correct injustices is odd. PJ O’Rourke once responded to the claim of ecologists that destroying the rain forest might cause us to inadvertently destroy species that could cure cancer by noting that those same species might just as well cause cancer. So too with the modern liberal state, which gives, certainly, and also takes away. Evidence for the success of the penultimate American exercise in the modern liberal state, the Great Society, can be found in Detroit or West Baltimore. My own country uses it’s efficient, equitable health care system to routinely abort children at taxpayer expense.

Then there's this: "That definition is not significantly different from the modern liberal definition of marriage as “the union of two adults for the purposes of forming a family unit.”

Maybe this depends on what the definition of "significant" is. As a function of grammar and sentence structure, it's certainly correct. As a function of social institutions, child development, legal precedent, religious freedom and spiritual consequence then I think we might want to reconsider the meaning of the word "significant". Saying "I like to sleep with my wife, with whom I share a residence" and "I like to sleep with my sister, with whom I share a residence" are not significantly different either (biologically less, even, than your definition), and yet, there is a difference, isn't there? Is the modern liberal state going to navigate that difference by simply saying that it's not much of a difference at all?

More importantly, a family isn't only - or even primarily - the relationship between generic adults and children, as if you need only swap out who the adults are to keep the concept of family coherent. Who the adults are matters (refer to your own family experience if you doubt this). And that’s why defining a marriage as “the union of two adults” is the point.

“Gay couples have proven that they can form families every bit as healthy as straight couples can. ”

Really? Where is this “proof”? Has enough time passed that we can assess cross-generational impacts? Are we using a concept of “healthy” provided by the modern liberal state?

Finally there's this: "Only Christianity can teach couples how to marry and parent fully, whether those couples are gay or straight."

But, of course, Christianity continues to do what it has been doing for centuries: teaching couples how to marry and parent fully.

Gay Marriage is exceptable in a society that wishes to define itself as absolutely equal. If everything evolved into various shapes, no shape is essentially unequal with any other shape--a pig is a dog is a boy is a tree. Therefore, a society that bases its ethics on the "moral absolute" physical equality, will obviously recognize the moral right of Gay marriage, multi-partner marriage, beastiality and a lot of other fun stuff.

Thanks Dr. Reno for a stimulating and insightful essay.

One distinction I would draw is between classical liberalism and modern progressivism. Classical liberalism is arguably a secularization of Christianity. Progressivism is quite different, as it has a Marxist, totalitarian, specifically anti-Christian and collectivist character based on a system of rights mediated in the context of class struggles. With that in my mind I would re-interpret your comment on how liberalism has redefined social roles as:


Classical Liberalism has tended to define our social roles in terms of individual choices and liberty that are protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Modern Progressivism is redefining our social roles in terms of collectivized rights granted and protected by a pro-active judiciary.


This leads in my opinion to a kind of moral Ponzi scheme, by which new rights are granted to new claimants paid for by prior rights holders. A recent example and symptom of trickle-down progressivism is that it no longer seeks to remove only the manger and other Christian religious symbols of Christmas, in Minnesota the director of a Head Start program banned the quite non-religious Santa Claus based on a complaint from a Muslim family. This incident illustrates the mindset.

Not only will liberal theory re-write marriage, more alarmingly it is entirely capable of re-writing sexual relations in general in a form that would be barely recognizable to us today. This is an entirely possible consequence of a moral system that has no trouble viewing children as the victims of outmoded taboos and traditional family structures, headed by that dread Lakoffian father figure, who are denied freedom and autonomy in sexual choice. It is probably capable of turning age discrimination laws on its head as well. You can start researching this possibility with a reading of Camille Paglia and move on to leading-edge progressivist thinking on children’s rights. Unless you are already convinced by how privacy rights keep a child’s abortion secret from you, the parent. Who knows what you will find at the activist organizations...I don’t go there, but I don’t have to, as the susceptibility of the progressive to the rights activist is all too apparent and instructive enough.

At one time liberals scoffed at conservative concerns that gay rights would lead to gay marriage, yet here we are.

As you so astutely observe, there is no inherent limit to the progressivist agenda.

Oh, one more thing. If the law fails to advance the progressivist agenda, other avenues will be sought. A guest editorial to that effect has already appeared in the Washington Post.

An argument can be made that an imperial liberalism may soon be underwriting a lot more than the mere redefinition of parenthood and reproduction.

It may be proposed that for the sake of "equality", or some other "ideal", individuals should not be entitled to their own conscience, convictions, feelings, or preferences. The individual free will may be required to submit itself to the collective will (as divined and expressed by the vanguard of the masses, of course). Such level of control is sometimes difficult to imagine, but it certainly was tried in the recent past - an attempt at total inside possession of each subject.

Our "mediating institutions", such as they are, may not be currently up to the task of forming a shield around free individuals. These institutions are balkanized into thousands, and far too many seem oblivious to the reality closing in on them. Thankfully, there are a few that are willing to set aside past squabbles and start reversing this deplorable balkanization. A true, healthy, and muscular non-political mediating institution would be most welcome.

Michael states above: "The state doesn’t “create” rights; it “recognizes” or “gives” them."

He insists that this is less abstract than a reference to "creating" rights. But of course, as Alasdair McIntyre and others have pointed out, rights are themselves an abstraction and it's actually less of an abstraction to say that rights are created (that is, codified and legislated) than they already exist in some sort of ambiguous state waiting to be "recognized."

Let's *really* cease being abstract: in the absence of a common philosophical foundation the "recognition" of pre-existing rights will never be defined in terms of virtue (or telos). Recognition of "rights" will always, in the modern liberal state, be a question of power. This is especially the case as long as rights are waiting to be "recognized" over time.

The modern liberal state might be admired for it's ability to facilitate relatively smooth power shifts, just as a slide might be admired for it's smooth, slippery surface.

Michael:

I appreciate the moderate tone in which you have participated in this discussion. Nonetheless, it seems to me that your answers often beg the fundamental questions, rather than answer them. I offer a more specific illustrations below; I would be interested to learn your thinking on these topics.

"Amos... you’re saying that marriage pre-exists both state and society, and that all regulations of it have been restrictions rather than expansions... Various societies have restricted marriage... Those restrictions have been expanded over the last two centuries. So expansions do occur."

Perhaps this is quibbling, but Amos might have thought that a state relaxing a restriction that another state, or a societal custom, had earlier imposed doesn't change the idea that "all regulations have been restrictions" from the hypothesized pre-state, pre-societal marriage.

"Gay couples have proven that they can form families every bit as healthy as straight couples can."

This is an assertion well open to question. How have they proven so, and by what definition of health? To whom have they proven it?

"...kinship is made within marriage as spouses become one. That’s no different in gay marriage. "

Isn't the metaphorical phrase "become one" being asked to bear too much here? If we mean that they become a state-sanctioned and legally united entity, then yes, if the state were to define such a legal entity in such a way, that legal entity would be "no different." If we are talking about the physical acts by which "spouses become one," then they are clearly quite different. If we are talking about the mental, emotional, or spiritual union, your assertion is that the nature of this "becom[ing] one" is "no different," in which case I await your argument in favor of that assertion. As you are no doubt aware, there are many counter-arguments which are, at least, logically consistent.

"Gay families still create mothers-in-law and sons-in-law."

As in the above, if by in-laws, we mean those as defined by the state -- as we probably have always done, given the plain meaning of the phrase -- then yes. Again, the real argument to be made is that a phrase such as "gay family" is not analogically similar to "polka-dotted silence."

"Christians are struggling to understand how marriage can be dedicated to God if it includes gay couples..."

Some are; I presume that you are one such. Other Christians believe that homosexual couples cannot "marry" in a religiously meaningful sense, and that if such a couple asserts that they are "married" based on state sanctions, or based on their own religious understandings, others are, at least, not required to endorse such an assertion.

"Some gay couples have children, and some straight couples don’t. In both cases, unions are made and families created."

The term "have children" is quite elastic in this sentence. Most heterosexual couples have children as the consequence of their sexual union. There are heterosexual couples who deliberately choose not to have children by artifice; in the Catholic Church, such a prior intention is grounds for invalidation and annulment, as there is considered to be no true marriage. There are heterosexual couples who fail to have children due to a physical defect, through no intention of theirs. They may adopt children, in which case they are imitating the possible consequences of sexual union, were their defect remedied. In contrast, the nature of a homosexual couple precludes the production of offspring. Such a couple might care for children, but those are the natural product only of some other couple's sexual union. If this is a family, what is a family, as distinct from a household, or is there no distinction? Some would argue that adoption by a homosexual couple is equivalent to adoption by a barren couple, as in both cases, the "mental, emotional, or spiritual union" (as above) is "no different," but again, I await an argument in favor of that assertion. I would offer the analogy of prosthetic limbs: is there no difference between an amputee's use of a pegleg, and a biologically whole person's grating of a third, artificial arm to his breastbone? Is there anything wrong or unhealthy about the second prostheses? Must others endorse it?

"Gay people want the state to recognize the unity they have formed as a couple and the families they have formed. This recognition will afford them the same property, domestic, health, and custody rights that straight couples have. The next question is whether the church should bless those marriages."

At the risk of repetition, this begs the question of whether any morally meaningful "unity" or "family" has been formed. Such a moral meaning is what gives rise to the special status of marriage in the law, whether this is acknowledged or not. If it were not so, marriage -- in law -- would be only a technical term for a particular type of contract, with infinitely flexible terms. Some of your arguements seem to imply that this is the case. If so, how does the state morally impose any constraints on the terms of a marriage contract, providing both (or all) parties competently consent to them? Why not polyamorous "marriages?" Or why not polygynous ones, which certainly have far more historical evidence for their compatibility with an enduring civilization than homosexual ones do? And here we approach the questions that follow more directly below.

"The debate over gay marriage has been carried out through a democratic process, just like civil rights and prohibition. I think civil rights was a good idea, and prohibition a bad one. Both changes were so significant that they required constitutional amendments, and when the second change was seen as a failure, the constitution was amended again. It’s a pretty good system."

Passing over the issue of how democratic the process actually has been, let us ask whether this is morally significant. "Good idea" and "bad idea" are pragmatic terms; they evaluate the efficacy of a course of action for the achievement of a particular end, but eschew evaluation of its morality. I would assert that civil rights was not only a good idea, but a morally required one, and that Prohibition was not only a bad idea, because ineffective, but also immoral, for neither individuals nor the state may morally employ coercive violence (or the threat thereof) to prevent individuals from manufacturing, trading in, or consuming alcoholic beverages (in the absence of other factors). I assert the truth of the latter statement against contrary decisions made by others, be they a majority in a particular society, or not. The arguments made in favor of regard for a democratic process are (a) it is the one most likely to most consistently achieve the most moral results, eventually, (b) it is a process which, by encouraging articulated debate and propaganda in search of the endorsement of the majority of voters, reduces the threat and use of intrasocial political violence, and (c) because of this, one should be patient and wait for these moral results to be achieved democratically, since the loss of this system would be far worse than the loss incurred by its delay in reaching moral results. In light of the history of the 19th and 20th centuries, I would ask: is (a) true? If we consider that state expropriation of property is a form of political violence, is (b) true? What about (c), then? Of course, we could fall back on that old chestnut about democracy being the worst, except for all the other systems, but that is also an assertion, not an argument.

"As for your questions for me, no, a majority vote doesn’t give the state an unrestricted power. The state must adhere to the constitution. Furthermore, regardless of what the state says, Christians are required to obey God first. If obedience to God requires disobeying the law, then so be it. "

Well, a majority can change the constitution (or the state can blatantly ignore it, but let us pass by that), so the question remains. Returning specifically to state-sanctioned homosexual "marriage," the issue at hand is, does obedience to God require disobeying this law? Given that it is not yet law, what is required of Christians who, as voters or officials, wield political power in the liberal-democratic state?

"...liberalism believes there are inherent principles: the individual, liberty, tolerance, rights, consent, property..."

An analysis of liberalism is probably a bridge too far in such a forum, but in passing, as alluded to above, it is far from clear that a solely liberal, egalitarian, democratic state is founded on a political philosophy which is even internally consistent.

Michael: Marriage is NOT about visitation rights, etc. etc. and insisting that it is is self-defeating, it is logical quick sand, your argument is quickly and easily swallowed whole. Brothers for example can through powers of attorney and other legal inventions have many of the rights to which you refer or elude. For the State to recognize the intrinsic love that exists between sscouples is a noble and indeed perhaps a desirable goal, but stay with me for a second here. If what is desired is recognition of love then your barking up the wrong tree. Marriage, if you reduce it to merely love, either suggests that have not reflected enough on what real marriage is truly about or supposed to be or you have already mentally made a huge logical leap that is arbitrary. Of course, you are correct, if we as a society want to redefine marriage to mean recogniftion of love then I would suggest that we should at the very least extend it to polygamists, cousins, siblings, and friends. I can't get into this too deeply but keep in mind that if you move children away from opposite sex marriage you not only redefine marriage you redefine the relationship between adults and children and parents and offspring. That is a very big step to make to appease some people's hurt feelings. But of course please be honest about what redefining the legal definition means: it doesn't stop there, because it can't. It will mean redefining education, church state relations, community service, and everything else. I didn't want to get into this but have you read the CDC 2010 report on HIV among msm? You should. But that's another argument that we could get into. Wether you want to admit this simple fact or not is irrelevant the fact remains that the very act that defines ssmarriage in your opinion is beyond doubt a very risky and dangerous physical act. One of my "gay" friends 2 years ago told me that he'd been diagnosed with anal cancer. He is 30 years old. But you'll either tell me that that is entirely the result of discrimination or that the same thing could be said about some segments of the "straight community". The first is not true and you know it but the second is true although irrelevant to the argument. In fact it supports the case for not redefining marriage but it's late and I can't get into that right now. If the issue remains only about emotion the battle is lost; if it can become about what is healthy and good for all people we have hope and most importantly the "gay" community will have real hope. Alittle preachy towards the end but having an HIV rate 50 times the average is more than reason enough to invoke the healing power of well the gospel of Christ.

Max,

Look at contradiction in the sentence you quote from Reno. He thinks the modern liberal state is trying to serve “its own purposes.” What are those purposes exactly? Well, the first half of the sentence argues that marriage is being “reshaped to accommodate same-sex couples.” So what that means is that gay couples want something from the state and the state is then “reshaping” the definition of marriage so it can give them those things. In other words, the state is not serving “its own purposes”; it is serving the purposes of gay couples. That’s where Reno is contradicting himself. He needs to decide whether he thinks the state is serving its own purposes or the purposes of gay people.

In the past, the modern liberal state served the purposes of segregationists when it declared intermarriage among the races to be illegal. Later, in 1967, which was fairly recently, it served the purposes of mixed race couples when it legalized miscegenation.

So the modern liberal state doesn’t have its own purposes. It does what its citizens tell it to do. And right now, a growing number of citizens think extending marriage rights to gay couples is a good idea.

You say that these citizens, these “supposed "free" individuals,” are turning over “control to the state.” But they’re not giving the state control. They are making their needs and desires known to the state, which is how democracy works.

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Woodson,

You ask, “How? By codifying intra-relationship assault policies? Is familial abuse on the decline? If yes, is this the result of the modern liberal state's policies to "strengthen marriage" or the result of loosening it through, for instance, no-fault divorce laws? Is it possible that injustices and abuses are simply being funneled to other familial or demographic categories?”

I think you’re proposing that the decline in domestic abuse may be caused not by tougher abuse laws but by looser divorce laws. If that’s the case, then we need to decide whether the institution of marriage is stronger when spouses are forced to stay in abusive relationships or when couples can get divorced more easily. I don’t like either option much.

You say, “The claim that the modern liberal state has strengthened marriage fails to take seriously divorce and co-habitation trends and the affect that the primacy of a contractual view of marriage has had on said trends.”

Well, there’re a lot of pieces to this. The state isn’t the only actor here. The changing nature of employment, the disappearing family wage, the erosion of the middle class, the creation of a near-permanent underclass, our slow recovery from the sexual excesses of the boomer generation are all factors in here. I’ve focused on the state because I’ve tried to stay on the subject Reno introduced.

You say, “The faith in the modern liberal state to correct injustices is odd.” Again, I’ve tried to stick with the subject Reno introduced. It’s not the only or even the best solution for some injustices.

As for the success of the Great Society, my siblings have been grateful for the Medicare my Depression-era parents depended on in their last days.

You say, “As a function of social institutions, child development, legal precedent, religious freedom and spiritual consequence then I think we might want to reconsider the meaning of the word "significant".”

I’ll take them one at a time but out of order. Legal precedent is inconsequential. Religious freedom is left untouched. No church would be forced to bless a marriage it didn’t want to. Child development seems to be unaffected. Having two, stable, loving parents appears to be more important than their sex. Some studies suggest that lesbians have greater success in child rearing than straight couples. You’ll have to define which social institutions you have in mind and what spiritual consequences you’re imagining.

You ask, “Really? Where is this “proof”? Has enough time passed that we can assess cross-generational impacts? Are we using a concept of “healthy” provided by the modern liberal state?”

Well, any number of studies have confirmed that kids raised by gay parents turn out just fine and that best behaved of all are the children of lesbian parents. Beyond that is my own experience. I know a lot of gay couples with children, and they’re doing a fine job. Serious, loving, stable parents raise serious, loving, stable children.

And yes, I’m using “healthy” as the modern liberal state and as professions like psychology and sociology define healthy. That is, these kids function more or less well in this society.

But I also distinguished between healthy and the aim of Christianity, which is to raise people who love and fear God. My children are still young, but I won’t be happy if they merely grow up to be healthy and well-adjusted. If they don’t love and serve God, then I’ll have failed.

You say, “it's actually less of an abstraction to say that rights are created (that is, codified and legislated).”

If that is true, then would you say that Christianity has codified and legislated and thus created its changing definitions of marriage over the centuries?

You say, “Recognition of "rights" will always, in the modern liberal state, be a question of power.” I’m happy un-propertied men, Catholic and Jewish immigrants, women, blacks, and now gays have been able to assert power through peaceful, democratic means and create better lives for themselves by “creating” rights for themselves where before there were none. The great virtue of democracy is that, in the U.S. at least, all of these groups persuaded at least some of those who had power over them to relinquish their unique privileges and share those privileges with others. In all of those movements, some Christians have asserted their power for those changes, while others asserted their power against change. I’d like to think that I would have been on the right side of those assertions of power, and by right side, I mean the side most pleasing to God.

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Thanks for the kind words, Paul. I appreciate them.

You might be right about Amos. Let’s see what he says.

I’ve answered some of your questions above to Woodson, but I’ll take a stab at the others.

Gay couples become one the same way straight couples do—through sexual, mental, emotional, and spiritual union. As straight couples know, those four kinds of union may be analytically distinct, but they are experienced together in different mixes. When couples become one in this way, they build families, neighborhoods, communities, congregations, etc.

But couples also recognize that this one other person has a greater say than anyone else about their health, welfare, property, and children. When straight couples marry, their spouses and not their parents or anyone else get to make decisions about their health, welfare, property, and children. The union is recognized as the basis of the spouse’s privilege to make these decisions. Gay couples want straight couples to legally recognize this connection between the sexual, emotional, mental, and spiritual union on the one hand and the decisions about health, welfare, property, and children on the other.

When I say that Christians are struggling to understand how marriage can be dedicated to God, I mean the kinds of honest exchanges people like you and me are having right now. I realize that some Christians have made up their minds and are not actively thinking about the matter anymore. I’m ok with that. I’m not actively thinking about the cases being made for incest or multiple spouses. My mind is closed to those subjects. I’m against them.

I’m half of a “barren couple” that adopted in imitation of “the possible consequences of sexual union.” Some of my gay couple friends have children. Some don’t. Some have adopted children, some have children through sperm donors, and some have children from a previous marriage made back when they had convinced themselves that they were straight. I don’t see much difference among all of these kids and families. The adopted kids all have adoption issues. The biological kids all have biological issues. The kids of gay couples have had to deal with some teasing, but otherwise they’re all normal, straight kids. I only know one gay kid from a gay family.

You ask about polyamorous marriages. The historical examples and the clandestine ones in Utah suggest that polygamy ends up in abuse of various kinds. Jealousy seems to be the fatal flaw in most experiments of this kind. I haven’t read any accounts of long-term success, and I personally don’t know of any. The one couple I know that lived in a free-love commune back in 1970s doesn’t have any good stories.

I’m not sure what you’re asking in the long paragraph about the democratic process. Billy Bean was arguing that the redefinition of marriage was an act of totalitarianism, and I was explaining that we live in a democratic society, not a totalitarian one.

Gay marriage is the law in some states, and Christians already have to decide. I’m happy with the law, so I’m fine with it, and I hope more states adopt it. I’d hate to see the courts make the decision. For the most part, the law doesn’t affect the church. Some churches will bless these marriages, some won’t. That part is easy. The difficult parts, as always, involve the details. Do religious institutions have to pay spousal health care if the couple is gay, and so on? That’s where the ugly battles will be. There aren’t simple answers to those battles, though lots of people will want simple answers.

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Moz,

I think you’ll see above that I think marriage is about more than love, but I’m interested in hearing what your definition is.

Please explain what you mean when you say, “if you move children away from opposite sex marriage you not only redefine marriage you redefine the relationship between adults and children and parents and offspring.”

And explain what you mean by saying that gay marriage entails a redefinition of “education, church state relations, community service, and everything else.”

I want to keep focused on the marriage issues Reno raised, so I don’t want to get deep into gay sexuality itself. I will say two things. One is that gay men need to get a lot smarter about their sexual practices, and other countries are doing a better job of educating their gay men than we are. Second, gay Christians must serve God in marriage just as straight Christians do, namely, by being faithful, monogamous, loving, and open to child-rearing.

Jeff Martin: if we lived by the Golden Rule, then gay parents would extend to their children the same justice they demand for themselves: the right to not be deprived of important relationships (with "important" being defined as what our society, as individuals and as a collective group, find valuable).

JGY: I have a challenge for you.

Can you name the cultures that did NOT believe that marriage:

- is related to procreation, and involves a presumption of paternity;

- begins when a man signals a woman (or in some cases women) as the mate (or mates) he intends to make children with;

- includes requirements spelling out the division of labor that is necessary for procreative couples (which would be unnecessary if the biology of procreation allowed a fifty-fifty split in duties, instead of preferring efficiency over "fairness");

- has laws or rules criminalizing behavior that endangers the transmission of accurate family tree and paternity data, to the extent that the culture values keeping records of such information;

- recognizes behaviors that endanger a man’s ability to know with certainty that the child of the union as “his”, as grounds for dissolving the marriage

If all cultures believe these basic facts about marriage, then it is reasonable to assume that there is, in fact, certain things about marriage that are common and therefore probably justified aspects of marriage.

Especially when combined with more recent social science research demonstrating the link between "breaks" in family trees & poverty/social ills.

Michael, to simply minimize adoption issues by saying yes, we know there are such things as adoption issues, but biological kids have issues too, so they're all even - do you imagine gays would like their problems to be minimized away like this, by saying, "well straights have issues too, so therefore it's all even"? Obviously the logical flaw in this is saying, "X is a problem, the world is full of problems, so therefore X is irrelevant" - which makes no sense.

Adopted kids are not all equal in their issues. I have known many adopted kids and it seems quite clear to me that the biggest problem with "adoption issues" is linked to cognitive dissonance. The child whose parents incorporate her native India into their lives, celebrating Indian holidays alongside American ones, has a much easier time adjusting than the black child forced to sit through Jewish holidays, while everyone pretends ancestry is not part of Jewish culture.

Adopted children need to be able to grieve for their loss. This is impossible if they are living in a culture that is heavily invested in a (dishonest) narrative that insists there is no loss to grieve.

Adopted children need to know that the adoptive parents are more trustworthy, reliable, and loving, than the parent who abandoned them. How is this possible if the adoptive parent is the one who arranged for the abandonment to occur?

It seems to me that the single biggest issue adopted kids complain about, is not being able to talk about their issues, for fear of "hurting" their parents. This is the opposite of a healthy relationship, where the parents should make sure the children are not hurt, instead of the children worrying about emotionally fragile parents.

I read somewhere - I sure wish I could find it, now - that a study had shown that, contrary to prior expectations, children adopted into secure and healthy families were more likely, not less likely, to search out their biological parents. If this is true, then the more gays protest that their children don't have issues, the more likely it is that this protestation itself IS an issue.

Billy Bean,

'JGY, you are erudite but unpersuasive because your erudition has made you unintelligible to everyone except perhaps Albert, and no one gets him, either.'

Half true. I couldn't figure out what JGY was getting at, other than throwing a mishmash of impressive sounding phrases out there, until Albert took the time to show that JGY was just making a shoddy effort at sounding impressive.

So thank you, Albert.

You must know by now, your piece goes to the core of the issue. Your lucidity leaves me wanting to know more. Just so you know, i will forthwith grab your feed to keep up to date with your site. Saying thanks is simply my little way of saying great job for a marvelous resource. Take On my dearest wishes for your incoming article.

Michael says:

"Some gay couples have children, and some straight couples don’t. In both cases, unions are made and families created. "

This glosses over important real world differences between homosexual amd heterosexual congress. Birds and Bees 101: no matter where/how one male couples with another male, or how one female "joins" with another, children cannot be created.

Marriage results in the creation of children from the coupling of most men and women of child-bearing age, ceteris paribus. "Wedlock" in that case ensures that a child produced by the female partner is the man's child. And the law for hundreds of years has had a presumption of legitimacy for any children born of a woman in wedlock. that presumption is one of the keystones on which a stable civilization has arisen. That presumption makes no sense if two homosexuals "marry," however.

If two males in a purported "gay marriage" seek to have natural children, the siring spouse must either depart from sexual fidelity to his "spouse" and couple with a female or somehow artificially export his genetic material and have it introduced into a woman's embryo outside the bounds of the purported wedlock. So, if the law is going to enter into any presumption with respect to the children of one homosexual spouse, it necessarily would be that the other spouse is NOT the other parent. So: for heterosexual marriages there needs to be a presumption of legitimacy while for homosexual marriages, there needs to be a presumption of illegitimacy.

MORAL? Despite the machinations of the courts and doubletalking politicians (such as Joe Biden), one cannot make a silk purse....

Listen, I am not saying that the US has consistently held up the Golden Rule, any more than Christians have held it up. What I am saying is that ultimately things come back to that rule among the political process.

Many of these 'liberal' rulings should not have required a rocket scientist to predict they were coming because of this very principle at work in the US

"You ask about polyamorous marriages. The historical examples and the clandestine ones in Utah suggest that polygamy ends up in abuse of various kinds. Jealousy seems to be the fatal flaw in most experiments of this kind."

And the difference between this and straight marriages is... ?

"What I am saying is that ultimately things come back to that rule among the political process."

You seriously believe this? Politics is about power and what you can get away with, not the Golden Rule. Neither the U.S. nor any other nation has ever operated according to it. The closest it gets to the Golden Rule is "You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours." Not the same thing.

Michael:

So as to continue the conversation, I offer the following.

Concerning the relative quality of child-rearing in households built on homosexual couples, the dispute here is one concerning the quality and validity of evidence, and is thus unlikely to be resolved in a forum such as this.

Regarding different types of marriage, I also know of no civilization, or even sub-culture, which successfully practiced polyamorous marriage in the long term. However, a large portion of civilizations throughout history have permitted or practiced some degree of polygynous marriage (a more precise term than polygamy, in that it excludes polyandry and polyamory), whether through formally equivalent marriages or through some form of concubinage. I suggest a study of the relevant history of the ancient Near East, classical civilization, China, India, and Islam for more in this area.

To my question as to whether adoption and the foundation of families by (philosophically) accidentally infertile heterosexual couples is meaningfully equivalent to the same for naturally infertile homosexual couples, you write, "I don’t see much difference among all of these kids and families." I'll take that as a yes, but why? Is the physical nature of the human race also completely meaningless and inconsequential? Or only aspects or parts of this nature? If so, which parts and aspects, and how do we make this identification? You state that you have made up your mind against incestuous or polygynous marriages, but on what grounds philosophically consistent with an affirmation of homosexual marriages have you done this?

It may well be true that some appreciate the transfer payments they receive as a result of the implementation of the modern welfare state, whether the Medicare program or some other of its features. Is this dispositive as to the overall efficicacy of this action in terms of its stated goals, or its morality? Under what circumstances, and for what purposes, may the state moreally employ force or the threat thereof to prohibit, compel, expropriate, or harm? I ask this question not in search of an answer here, but rather to assert that it actually is a question which must be considered and answered in a philosophically consistent way. One may not postulate that the typical practices of the postwar liberal-democratic welfare states are morally normative.

In your response to Max, you reject the idea that the liberal state has its own purposes, or that it acts to serve them. Rather, you characterize the liberal state as serving the purposes of members of its society. In a case in which members of the society are at cross purposes, which does it serve? Let us ignore procedural answers for a moment, however practically significant, and consider the question: are there not purposes more in accord with liberal ideology than others? Is the liberal state not more likely to act to serve those purposes, or to propagandize on their behalf? Does it not, in fact, do so in many different cases?

Is "making [one's] needs and desires known to the state" practically different from "turning over control to the state?" Perhaps in the bare phrases, but if one's need and desire is that the state take control of some sphere of human affairs and implement some course of action in that sphere, then not in actuality.

Leaving aside "a lot of pieces," have the actions of the liberal state in regard to divorce and cohabitation in themselves been significant to the relative strength of the previously existing institution of marriage in recent decades? That is, is there no part of any recent change in this strength which may be attributed to the actions of the state toward easing and encouraging divorce and affirming the acceptability of cohabitation?

"Legal precedent is inconsequential." This is quite an assertion. Perhaps it is not completely and independently dispositive, but inconsequential? Such is the belief of a true modern, but what is its basis? Do historical customs, traditions, institutions, and schools of thought lack any consequence? If not, why is legal precedent an exception?

In the long paragraph about the democratic process, I am questioning what appears to be your uncritical assumption that this process (a) is the one most likely to most consistently achieve the most moral results, eventually, (b) reduces the threat and use of intrasocial political violence, and (c) therefore deserves our affirmation and acceptance of its results, since its loss would be worse than the loss incurred by its delay in achieving morality. My question is, in a society in which individualist, relativist, egalitarian, and statist ideas are dominant (and while I recognize the contradictions among these terms, the society itself does not), is there any truth to (a), (b), or (c)? If so, how much?

Regarding the effects of the laws made by the liberal state establishing homosexual marriage, you say, "There aren’t simple answers to those battles, though lots of people will want simple answers." Would it not be more accurate to say that there are simple resolutions to these issues, but they require one to abandon, or drastically modify, or hypocritically affirm the self-image of the liberal state? What are the "rights" that cannot be violated? What are the expropriations that cannot be allowed? What are the actions that cannot be prohibited or compelled? Is it not likely that freedom of religion in the 2020s and beyond will go the way of private property in the 1930s and after? If not, why not?

State-mandated homosexualization of public school sex-education curricula is a consequence of the self-serving putsch of the 'proud' libertines.

That's not liberal. It's evil.

I must say that the level of intelligent discourse on this thread is heartening. That sleeping lion of faith has obviously awakened. Thank God.

Joe Human says:
God therefore, did not stress man-and-woman marriage, nearly as much as conservative Catholics do. Specifically, Heaven coming down to earth, as a "bride prepared for" her bachelor (Rev. 21), is perhaps the most important marriage advocated by the Bible, and by God - and it is a non-traditional, non-conservative marriage. In fact in part, that marriage was interpreted, as a rather male God - God the "Father" - coming to join a - partially male - Church on earth, one day. So that the Bible, God, presents a crucial "marriage" between ... a male, and males. As possibly, moreover, the main marriage model, in the Bible.

Talk about taking the Bible literally! While I hardly know the mind of God I have always believed God chose to use the groom-bride-marriage metaphor so often in the New Testament precisely because it was the best human example of devoted love, a word-picture easily accessible to our imaginations and one which every one would be intimately familiar. Married themselves or not, they were raised in a family in which their parents were..

Because Christ is male and many members of His body (the Church, His Bride..see how metaphors get mixed?) are male does not mean that the marriage feast will be some wort of bi-sexual polygamy.

My apologies to those who found my comment obscure. Here's the gist.

Reno's concerns are based upon two dubious divisions. They are dubious because they do not represent liberal thinking. Highly influential liberal positions cannot be categorized into Reno's simplistic categories. To appreciate this requires both an understanding of Reno's categories as well as an understanding of liberal scholarship. That's difficult already because of the terms Reno himself introduces: "fundamental metaphysical questions" (what is it for a question to be metaphysical?), "social realities" (are these just facts about society? What exactly does it mean to "absorb" them into "two domains"?), the distinction between "recognizing" and "creating" (can't we recognize that which is created, and, more relevantly: can't the creation of something be constrained by non-created moral/political standards that we recognize as authoritative?). While I understand the distinctions that Reno is trying to make, they're the sorts of distinctions that are only going to prepare him for a few confused battles against straw men.

In responding to my criticism, Albert cannot deny my point that Reno's simplistic divisions will not accommodate the viewpoints I named. Albert's contention is rather that the viewpoints I named have already been rejected. By who? Albert names "postmodern philosophers"? Now, at this point, please understand this. In the contexts in which these topics are seriously taught or debated by specialists, Albert would here be interpreted as making a joke (a parallel case: at Westminster Theological Seminary, someone asserts that we don't have to take the atonement seriously because a young "theologian" of the emergent church movement has just proven that "we're way past that now"). But don't just take my word for it. Have a glance at few recent course syllabi on contemporary political philosophy from any of our major research institutions.

Sorry for this I posted this by mistake in another topic, my apologies to the admin.
Please allow me to post this again where it belongs.

Hi Joe, as the saying goes, "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" But
levity aside the bible which you pretend to interpret is replete with no-no's aginst
male to male sexual relations. You can try to interpret these according to your
preferrences, good luck!

Lev 18:22-23 "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination." Lev 20:13 "If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death." 1 Cor 6:9 "Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals" 1 Tim 1:9-10 "realizing the fact that (civil) law is not made for a righteous man, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and immoral men and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers" Rom 1:26-27 "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error."

Please send me scriptural quotes to the contrary.

Blake,

My bad. My wording suggested something I didn’t intend to, namely, the equivalence of issues that adopted kids deal with and those that biological kids do. I adopted two kids, and your descriptions are spot on. Well done.

I was, in fact, trying to argue the opposite, namely, that, despite the significant differences between adoption issues and biological ones, the kids I know turned out roughly the same. The same is true for the children of gay couples I know. They have their own issues but turn out just fine.

As for your comment to Jeff Martin concerning the extension of the Golden Rule to the children of gay couples so that they are “not deprived of important relationships,” I’d say this: I respect my father and adore my mother, but I know several children who’ve had better guidance, nurture, support, correction, and faith-building relationships with their gay parents. I’ve also known some who have had worse. I no longer try to predict how well people will parent based on their sexuality. Some couples make better parents than others.

---

Sean,

I wouldn’t agree with someone’s logic just because you agree with their conclusion. If you don’t understand the terms of the debate between JGY and Albert, then learn the terms or bow out of the conversation. It’s weak praise to Albert to say that you didn’t understand what he was saying but like the fact that he agrees with you.

---

Patricksarsfield,

One of the tenets of theological anthropology is the fight against reductive approaches to the human, and I think you are reducing marriage to procreation. Procreation is an important but not the only part of marriage.

Marriage creates a new family unit, one that springs from and remains related to the originating family units of the spouses but is distinct, autonomous. In this new family, the spouses provide each other financial, emotional, moral and physical support. When they have sex, they can experience an intimacy that binds them closer together. They will sustain and nurture the children born from their sex.

To focus on whether the couple has children or how they acquire children is to reduce the complete reality of marriage to only one aspect. Gay couples can do everything listed in my description except bear children from their union. That difference is small when compared to the complete picture.

As for your specific concerns, I know many gay couples who have formed faithful, loving, and supportive families, some with children and some without. The male couples have adopted. Some of the female couples have adopted, some have biological children from a previous straight marriage, and some have relied on sperm donors. Of the latter, two of the three I know have included the father in the child’s life. All of the children but one in the gay families I know have grown up well, and all but one have grown up straight. Most of the couples I’ve described I know through my church, which gives them the love, support, and moral guidance one expects to find in a Christian congregation.

---

Sean,

The difference between straight marriages and polygamous ones is sexual fidelity. Sexual jealousy is a strong force. One reason monogamous marriages insist on fidelity is to control jealousy. But by their structure, polygamous marriages require a (nightly!) restraint of jealousy. Lasting polygamous marriages only occur in societies that provide women few rights. Polygamy is thus inherently abusive.

---

Paul,

Here’s a link to an article about the success of children raised by lesbians. (http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1994480,00.html)

You’re right that there are always questions surrounding the quality and validity of evidence of any study. Still, the report converges with others. A third issue is whether we can bring ourselves to accept evidence counter to our positions, something I assume you struggle with as much as I.

On different types of marriage, I’d say the world hasn’t seen a civilization like ours before. A large liberal state, capitalism, and mass culture has afforded individuals and classes an autonomy never seen as widely or deeply, and sanitation, medicine, and the welfare state has made poverty far less desperate in developed countries than ever seen before. These differences have made it possible for gays to live openly and to form communities never seen as extensively as before.

The rest of your post asks more questions than I can answer briefly, so I’ll go for the big ones. Some I’ve already answered.

Concerning the welfare state, I’ve read enough about the lives of common people to know that the lives of Americans during the “Great Compression” of 1945-1985 were as sweet as it gets in terms of prosperity and opportunity. The modern liberal state helped make those years possible. I’d love to hear your candidate for a better time and place as well as a better political, economic, and social welfare system.

Your point about my answer to Max is well taken. So I’d answer yes, there are purposes more in accord with liberal ideology than others. I can’t think of a purpose, however, that makes me want to ditch the system for something better or that makes me think that the liberal state has become as “imperial” as Reno does. I think he’s sounding an unwarranted alarm.

You said, “In the long paragraph about the democratic process, I am questioning what appears to be your uncritical assumption that this process…deserves our affirmation and acceptance.”

Hmm. I thought I was being “critical” and not relying on “assumption.” I’ve looked at the alternatives, and I think it’s the best. You?

You asked, “Would it not be more accurate to say that there are simple resolutions to these issues, but they require one to abandon, or drastically modify, or hypocritically affirm the self-image of the liberal state?”

Please give me an example, and explain why you think your language is more accurate.

I don’t foresee the disappearance of the freedom of religion. I guess you do. What specific freedoms do you believe you have lost, and what happened to private property in the 1930s?

Michael,

From what we know about children who are raised motherless or fatherless, they do not as a group appear to turn out "just fine".

We know very little about the children of gays, but it certainly appears that there is reason to be concerned at how their rights are routinely dismissed as irrelevant, their needs minimized as unimportant, their mental health glossed over with phrases about how fine they look - even though it is quite clear that the decision ("they are fine") was determined before they were born.

Clearly there is nobody who is even interested in looking out for these kids. When evidence pops up that these kids are "more well-adjusted" or "more mature" than normal kids, this is touted as proof that gays "make better parents" - even though the same types of evidence in other contexts are viewed as evidence of problems such as parentification (since "growing up too fast" is a known consequence of emotional neglect).

Of course, seeing as how these are human beings, not products, the question is not - or should not be - whether they are 'damaged' or not, but rather whether their rights as people are violated.

There is no logical, ethical way to argue that relationships are important for the parents, but not for the child. If relationships matter, then the experience of having a mother is not something one can just choose to take away from a child just because the grownup's desires are in conflict.

Bo:

Note that in fact, the people that many would say, are the most dedicated to the Bible and Christ - priests, nuns - do no engage in conventional marriage. Instead, they follow the formula of a "marriage" to the Church.

In such a case, even if the 1) "marriage"of priests and nuns to God, is a metaphor (which I do not fully concede), still, 2) the conventional marriage they reject however, is not. Priests and nuns, are rejecting conventional, man/woman marriages, for themselves. And they firmly reject it. For those who truly follow God.

Then too, aside from the fact that priests do not marry ... 3) what about those Biblical statements that angels, people in the kingdom of heaven, are not male or female, and do not marry?

They suggest in point of fact, a rather bi-sexual, or a-sexual, or androgynous kingdom. In which again, there is no marriage.

Strange, but true.

How mixed are the metaphors? Perhaps not so much: God and his kingdom coming down from earth, are a "bride"; coming down to the Church, it is said, or to believers, who are their "grooms." Though to be sure again, we have a largely male "bride" it seems.

Blake,

You said, “From what we know about children who are raised motherless or fatherless, they do not as a group appear to turn out "just fine".”

Single-parenthood is a different subject. The question here concerns gay marriage and child-rearing.

You said, “We know very little about the children of gays, but it certainly appears that there is reason to be concerned at how their rights are routinely dismissed as irrelevant, their needs minimized as unimportant, their mental health glossed over with phrases about how fine they look - even though it is quite clear that the decision ("they are fine") was determined before they were born.”

No one is just looking at these kids and saying they are fine. The study I cited doesn’t, and I didn’t when I listed the people I know. In fact, I pointed out that one kid I know hasn’t turned out well at all. If I knew him or his mothers better, I could tell you why, but I didn’t know either very well.

You said, “Clearly there is nobody who is even interested in looking out for these kids.” Untrue. You are trying to look out for these kids. So are their teachers, neighbors, etc. And so am I.

You said, “When evidence pops up that these kids are "more well-adjusted" or "more mature" than normal kids, this is touted as proof that gays "make better parents" - even though the same types of evidence in other contexts are viewed as evidence of problems such as parentification (since "growing up too fast" is a known consequence of emotional neglect).”

You didn’t read the study. It doesn’t claim these kids are better adjusted, mature, or are growing up too fast. The kids had better “self-esteem and confidence, did better academically and were less likely to have behavioral problems, such as rule-breaking and aggression.”

And why did lesbian parents excel in these categories? The authors suggest that “They are very involved in their children's lives. And that is a great recipe for healthy outcomes for children. Being present, having good communication, being there in their schools, finding out what is going on in their schools and various aspects of the children's lives is very, very important." Although active involvement isn't unique to lesbian households, Gartrell notes that same-sex mothers tend to make that kind of parenting more of a priority.”

You said, “If relationships matter, then the experience of having a mother is not something one can just choose to take away from a child just because the grownup's desires are in conflict.”

I understand that you are arguing that maternal and paternal relationships are a right, but I don’t think anyone else does. What children need are stable, loving families. And even then, the state is reluctant to enter much more deeply. We have laws preventing child abuse and requiring education and some health care, but otherwise, the state and the church for that matter allows parents to raise children in all kinds of horrible ways.

When I look at those ways, I’m tempted to pass all kinds of laws preventing parents from doing, saying, and teaching all kinds of things to their children. As we all have probably said at some point, it’s bizarre that you have to have a license to drive a car, but any lout is allowed to raise children. Our society allows louts to raise children because our experience of more invasive societies has been horrible.

In both gay and straight marriages, two adults pledge to create a stable, loving home for each other and for any children they have. The state is there to intervene if that pledge is broken to such an extent that gross abuse occurs, and the church is there to teach us how to commit our marriages, families, and children to God.

Pierre Lévy-Soussan, Professor of Psychiatry, a psychoanalyst and an adviser to the French Government on Adoption, wrote: “It is in the child’s best interests to join a nuclear family that is already socially accepted so that he or she does not have to take on the additional task, following a history of abandonment, of adapting to a family that is, for whatever reason, ‘non-standard’.” He believes that in order to be successful, adoption must lead to a psychological filiation that “allows for a nexus of the three elements that are basic to any society: the biological, the social and the subjective dimensions specific to human beings. The psychological strength of this construction exceeds the purely biological connection of filiation and provides it with security. The security and ‘truth’ of this filiation are based on childbirth, on a potential or actual procreative relationship between a man and a woman, allowing the fictional filiation through the encounter with the other sex, alive and of the same generation. The fictional filiation can then be experienced as true, consistent and reasonable.” The difference in sex between the two members of the parental couple thus seems to him indispensable, if the adoption “graft” is to take.

The assumption that a thing may be presumed safe until and unless it is specifically proven harmful is appropriate if the goal is the acquisition of knowledge, as in science.

However, it is not an appropriate assumption when we are essentially experimenting on a live population of children. In this case, children deserve the more cautious assumptions appropriate to ethics.

We should not make controversial, counterintuitive assumptions - for instance, that male and female parents, same-sex and opposite-sex parents, may be treated as interchangeable - until and unless a generation of damaged children provides needed evidence of harm.

The best interest of the child in question is not hard to know in most cases, and is not hard to define at all as an abstract ideal: children do best when they are raised by their own parents, and there is no evidence at all to support the supposition that having a stepmother in any way makes a child any less fatherless, or having a stepfather makes a child any less motherless.

Nor is there any evidence to support the idea that forcing a child to call her stepmother a "second mother" will actually accomplish anything other than guaranteeing that the child in question understands the seriousness of the taboos that prohibit any discussion of the absent father.

There is no way for gay marriage advocates to make their case that does not start with the act of shifting the perspective AWAY from the "best interest of the child" standard, to instead a standard of proof that assumes that gays should be allowed to do what they want unless real proof of actual, severe harm to the child is provided.

And it's quite clear that even if evidence of actual, severe harm were provided, the gay community has already developed a host of stock responses designed to dismiss all concerns, even as flawed studies are held up as if they met scientific standards - and the body of evidence openly misrepresented to make a highly questionable claim appear to be well established when it is in fact anything but.

You say "all" children need are stable, loving homes, but that is precisely the point: a loving, stable home is one that takes care of its children. There is no way to invoke the idea of a "loving" home - or a "stable" one - AS JUSTIFICATION for neglecting a child's needs.

If the parent were loving, how could he or she be so casual about dismissing the child's well-being?

Who is using "the power of the state" here to maintain or create a status quo? Liberals who want to allow people to live in an union and call it marriage or conservatives who actually deny (by the power of the state) this right to a certain group of people (namely, homosexuals)? Is using the power of the state allowing people to live up to their convictions and recognize unions by the law, or conservative seeking to protect their own predilect form of those unions, as they did in the past (you know, when women were considered not personns, subjected to the husband, which is as traditional as the heterosexual component of marriage?) I am just courious.

Michael PS,

I couldn’t find the words you cited. Is Levy-Soussan speaking theoretically or out of his experience with children who have been adopted by gay parents? The children I know, who are teenagers or are college students, claim that adoption was the best thing that happened to them. They know their birth parents, so they know what their lives would have been like.

These children have grown up in a community that does what Levy-Soussan suggests, namely, joining a “nuclear family that is already socially accepted.” These children have received loads of social acceptance from their grandparents, from their church, from their schools, and from their neighbors. The graft has taken quite well.

---

Blake,

You said, “The assumption that a thing may be presumed safe until and unless it is specifically proven harmful is … not an appropriate assumption when we are essentially experimenting on a live population of children.”

In general you are right. But the experiment has already occurred, and it is succeeding. These children are thriving, and your assumptions about what children need are being proven wrong.

I get the feeling that you are speaking from your armchair and haven’t gone out into this world and gotten to know, really know, the people you’re talking about. Meet some adult children of gay families and talk to them, get to know them well. Talk to the people that know them well.

You said, “And it's quite clear that even if evidence of actual, severe harm were provided, the gay community has already developed a host of stock responses designed to dismiss all concerns.”

And if you are looking at evidence of actual health, what stock response will you offer?

Sergio Mendez, do you equally agree that it is bigoted for the state to prohibit blind people from driving?

Equality under the law suggests that nobody has the right to prevent anyone from driving a car.

Your argument suggests that there is something abusive about the idea of government restricting licenses only to those who are qualified to engage in the activity regulated/benefits granted by the license.

Blake:

In order for me to accept your analogy, you have to explain how homosexual people are crippled to form unions and raise families in the same way a blind person is crippled to drive. Do they lack the hability to care and love each other? Do they lack the hability to share their material belongings? Do they lack the hability to care for children and raise them to be decent and productive members of a society, just for the fact they are homosexual? And of course, you will have to explain to me how homosexual peeple marying threaten anybody´s life, in the same way a blind people thereteans other driver´s life.

To conclude, I want to note I haven´t used the word "bigoted" or "bigot" so I wonder why you use it in your response to me (are you implying that I think all people who oppose homosexual rights is a bigots?). In any case I was just pointing this entry is conceptually confused, since it is not liberals trying to use the power of the state, but conservatives that actually do when they oppose gay marriage. You seem to think they are right to do so, although I fail to see your reasons as I exposed before, but that is different discusion.

On a lighter note, I think that for both pro-gay and anti-gay marriage advocates,
I think the better if not the best fit next to heterosexual mariages would be a
marriage between a homosexual and a lesbian, who by some stroke of timing are in love with each other....

Michael, the existing studies on the children of gays does not prove they are not harmed. It does not come anywhere close to that.

And even the existing evidence is obviously being interpreted in biased ways. See what I wrote above, about how existing evidence suggesting that these children are "more well adjusted" and "more mature" is being interpreted as proof of good parenting, when another, equally legitimate (IMO more legitimate) response would be to see the data as warranting further investigation, as "more mature" and "more well adjusted" suggests emotional neglect, and the specifics of the circumstances suggest a specific form of neglect known as parentification - the inversion of the roles or 'boundaries' between parent and child, so that it is not clear who is the caretaker and who is the one being cared for.





Sergio Mendez, marriage is between men and women because marriage includes procreative benefits.

I will not dispute granting gays all the benefits due to life-long partnerships. But it is not clear at all to me why gays think they need, deserve, or are entitled to procreative benefits.

What is it about being gay that makes you feel you need an exemption from the normal obligation a father or mother has, to honor your child's other parent?

Do you believe that just because you will not enjoy honoring your child's other parent, that therefore that is adequate to give you a "right" to take the child you've made with that person and give the child to someone else?

Children are not commodities. They are not put on this Earth to be used, but rather to be taken care of.

Blake:

You say:

"Sergio Mendez, marriage is between men and women because marriage includes procreative benefits.

I will not dispute granting gays all the benefits due to life-long partnerships. But it is not clear at all to me why gays think they need, deserve, or are entitled to procreative benefits"

Is your whole argument is that gays can´t procreate and thus should not be allowed to marry? So can I conclude, based on your premise, that sterile hetersexual couples should not be allowed to marry?

"What is it about being gay that makes you feel you need an exemption from the normal obligation a father or mother has, to honor your child's other parent?"

I am not following you here. What this has to do with homosexuals not "honoring your child´s other parent"? How do homosexual not accomplish that?

"[...] that therefore that is adequate to give you a "right" to take the child you've made with that person and give the child to someone else?"

You mean adoption? But don´t hetersexual (sterile) couples adopt children too? What is the difference here? Why homosexual can´t and heteresexual can?

"Children are not commodities. They are not put on this Earth to be used, but rather to be taken care of."

Sure, but then I fail to see again why homosexuals can´t take care of children just like any heterosexual will do.

Sergio Méndez asks: “Is your whole argument is that gays can´t procreate and thus should not be allowed to marry? So can I conclude, based on your premise, that sterile hetersexual couples should not be allowed to marry?”

The public purpose of marriage is the founding of a family; in the interests of simplicity, certainty and universality - vital republican principles - the law deems all, and only, opposite-sex couples to be potentially fertile. to establish a screening process would be burdensome, expensive, intrusive and litigious, especially given current 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.

Marriage is the ordinary means of establishing the juridical bond of father and child - "Pater est is quae nuptiae demonstrant." All the other legal incidents peculiar to marriage flow from this principle. It enlists the couple in a parental alliance and affords the child an indivisible filiation. This special nature of marriage is the basis for the existence of rules governing its conditions, its effects and its dissolution.

Same-sex couples are, accordingly, not concerned with this institution.

First of all, the argument you cite is not "my whole argument".

It is one argument, and one I'd like to know the answers to, if you actually have any.

I understand why gay couples wish to be recognized as a couple.

I do not understand why they think they have the right to be recognized as a procreative couple.

Gay couples are not procreative. There is no way to make them so that does not involve lies and fraud. The lies and the fraud are not harmless, not irrelevant, not insignificant.

Nobody is saying gays shouldn't be allowed to take care of children. The question is whether gays have a fundamental right to use children in coercive ways - starting with a right to falsify paternity status, legal documents, and family trees - in ways that are not about the best interests of the child, are in fact at the expense of the best interest of the child.

The question is whether gay rights ought to be prioritized over the rights of children - the right to be free from exploitation, the right to have and possess themselves the same basic human rights that gays say are so important (such as the right to engage in valuable relationships, or the right to "not be forced to live a lie").

A legitimate adoption is one that is ruled, start to finish, by the child's best interest. What gays want to do is cause a change to the standards, so that the rights of gays who wish to have a certain type of experience, is prioritized over the consideration of the child's welfare.

There is no way to demonstrate that gay parents are better or even as good for a child as having a mother and a father. The experience of having a mother-relationship or a father-relationship is not less important than the experience of having a lover or a spouse.

The gay rights argument hinges upon the idea that the right to have your spouse recognized as your life-partner AND YOUR PROCREATIVE PARTNER is so important that it justifies taking away a child's right to have a mother-relationship or a father-relationship. What is not clear to me is twofold:

1. It is not clear to me that having a spouse is MORE important than a child's having the right to a mother-relationship or father-relationship. It seem to me that if relationships are inherently valuable, then both relationships would be equally important. Being an adult does not automatically make one's rights matter more: just because our society tolerates people misusing the concept of "guardianship" in ways that exploits that which one is supposed to "guard", does not mean that it SHOULD be so.

2. It is not clear to me why, whether or not having a spouse is inherently valuable, gays are entitled to the right to have their spouse recognized as "the same in kind" as a conjugal relationship, when the two relationships are not in fact the same in kind.

Since gay unions do not produce children or participate in the activities that make family trees, it is not clear to me why they think they are entitled to things that are meant specifically for those activities.

Gays are fond of comparing this to infertile or childless couples, but the difference is significant: infertile or childless couples are not asking to use a benefit they are not entitled to, they are merely choosing (or being forced) not to use a benefit they would be entitled to.

Gays could argue honestly that they are entitled to accommodations in recognition of the fact that the person they are life partners with cannot by definition be the mother or father of their child. But it is not clear to me why the accommodations have to include fraudulent measures based on the gay person's desire to avoid obligations to his child's other real parent. Divorced and never-wed parents are not allowed to avoid obligations to their child's other real parent - whether they do or do not feel affection, indifference, or pure hatred for their parent is not adequate as an excuse for avoiding one's responsibilities to one's child, because hetero relationships are not prioritized over the child's welfare standard. So why should gays be allowed to a different standard?

Michael

Pierre Lévy-Soussan's views are based on psychoanalytical theory, as developed in the light of clinical practice by Freud, Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. He was a student of the latter.

Blake,

You said, “evidence suggesting that these children are "more well adjusted" and "more mature" is being interpreted as proof of good parenting, when another, equally legitimate (IMO more legitimate) response would be to see the data as warranting further investigation, as "more mature" and "more well adjusted" suggests emotional neglect.”

All you do here is repeat what you said earlier without answering my response. I’ll repeat it here: You didn’t read the study. It doesn’t claim these kids are better adjusted, mature, or are growing up too fast. The kids had better “self-esteem and confidence, did better academically and were less likely to have behavioral problems, such as rule-breaking and aggression.”

Are you saying that self-esteem, confidence, academic success, better behavior, following rules, and lack of aggression are evidence of “emotional neglect”?

You said, “The question is whether gays have a fundamental right to use children in coercive ways - starting with a right to falsify paternity status, legal documents, and family trees - in ways that are not about the best interests of the child, are in fact at the expense of the best interest of the child.”

You both raise an interesting question here and a false alarm. The false alarm is that, with the exceptions I’ll mention in a moment, I can’t think of a child in a gay family who doesn’t know the identity of their biological parents. So I’m not sure why you’re worried about falsified paternity status, etc.

The interesting question involves the exceptions, which are all adoptions. Adopted children experience a legal fiction as their birth certificates are altered to show their parents to be the adoptive and not the biological parents. Up until recently, most adoptions were closed, hiding the identities of the biological parents. But times are changing, and more adoption agencies and adoptees are urging the revelation of the identities of biological parents. This change suggests that our society is starting to recognize that children do have the right to know who their biological parents are.

You said, “A legitimate adoption is one that is ruled, start to finish, by the child's best interest. What gays want to do is cause a change to the standards, so that the rights of gays who wish to have a certain type of experience, is prioritized over the consideration of the child's welfare.”

Please explain that to the child I know whose biological mother was on crack when she gave birth and whose gay adoptive parents pulled him from an ugly series of straight foster parents to raise him and put him through college, where he has struggled successfully against several learning disabilities. He’s met his biological mother a number of times, and he’s quite happy that his “relationship” has been limited to just that. Stories like this is why I encourage you to leave your armchair theorizing and get to know some real, live gay parents.

You said, “There is no way to demonstrate that gay parents are better or even as good for a child as having a mother and a father. The experience of having a mother-relationship or a father-relationship is not less important than the experience of having a lover or a spouse.”

There’s a logical contradiction here. You say there’s no way to prove that gay parents are better for a child, and then you say that having a mother and father is better for a child. So you can’t prove one, but you can prove the other? How? Would you like to offer proof, or is all you have bald assertion?

You said, “Since gay unions do not produce children or participate in the activities that make family trees, it is not clear to me why they think they are entitled to things that are meant specifically for those activities.”

But they do produce family trees when they have children—through adoption, children from a previous marriage, or sperm donation.

You said, “But it is not clear to me why the accommodations have to include fraudulent measures based on the gay person's desire to avoid obligations to his child's other real parent.”

Can you explain what fraudulent measures you’re talking about?

---

Michael PS,

You said, “Marriage is the ordinary means of establishing the juridical bond of father and child … It enlists the couple in a parental alliance and affords the child an indivisible filiation. This special nature of marriage is the basis for the existence of rules governing its conditions, its effects and its dissolution.”

You are being reductive, narrowing marriage to only one of its several purposes. As I explain above, marriage creates a new family unit, one that springs from and remains related to the originating family units of the spouses but is distinct, autonomous. In this new family, the spouses provide each other financial, emotional, moral and physical support. When they have sex, they can experience an intimacy that binds them closer together. They will sustain and nurture the children born from their sex.

The legal bonds thus include but are not limited to parental bonds. Property, inheritance, health, care, and other legal issues, including identities (last names, terms like husband, wife, spouse) are wrapped up in the marriage package. They are also public declarations of sexual fidelity and emotional and moral unity. All of these other reasons compel older couples and couples who cannot or will not reproduce to marry.

Older couples and couples who cannot or will not reproduce have adopted children or have brought into a marriage children from a previous union. Gay couples also adopt children or bring into their marriage children from a previous union. It is unjust to allow some types of marriages and prevent others.

You said, “Pierre Lévy-Soussan's views are based on psychoanalytical theory, as developed in the light of clinical practice by Freud, Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan. He was a student of the latter.”

Let me begin by confessing my prejudices. My experience with psychoanalysis makes me think of words like “hogwash.” Lots of speculation and case studies that are really exercises in interpretation. I’m far more comfortable with evidence-based psychology and more scientific approaches.

This prejudice is why I asked whether Lévy-Soussan was speaking out of his experience with children who have been adopted by gay parents. I’d like to see some empirical data from him.

As I’ve said, my experience with the children of gay parents has, with one exception, been positive. What has yours been like?

Michael, you are the one who keeps saying the same thing.

You keep saying that gays are good, loving parents.

By my definition, no parent - gay or straight - who uses a child the way these people are using their children, could be considered a "good" or a "loving" parent.

A good parent - a loving parent - is, by definition, a parent who cares for the child's needs.

A parent who raises a child in novel circumstance, without any evidence to suggest that a child will not be harmed - and ample reason to think a child will be harmed - then volunteers that child as "proof" that the child is "just fine", is not a parent that appears to be looking out for the child's well-being.

The Golden Rule says, do unto others as you would want others to do unto you. Would you like it if ideologues raised you to be "Exhibit A", born and raised for the primary purpose of "testifying" or "witnessing" on behalf of the parent's ideology?

This has nothing to do with anti-gay sentiment. This is about child exploitation.

In the state where I live - along with every other state in the USA - children have a right to a relationship with both their natural parents, mother and father. They have this right because the laws are based on child welfare, and in no other context other than ideological gay/feminist "wishful pretending" ideology does anyone doubt that a child suffers harm when that child is deprived of a relationship with his natural parents.

Even adoptive parents are now aware of, and expected to understand and accept, that their adopted child is not the same as a biological child, and the adopted child may have special issues. All the adopted kids I know have discussed whether or not to search for their real parents. The children of gays are probably not allowed to have that discussion, though, are they?

If you are so sure there is no difference between a man and a woman, between a same-sex relationship versus an opposite-sex relationship - if sexes are so truly interchangeable - then may I ask why gays make such a big fuss about marrying a particular sex?

Michael PS:

"The public purpose of marriage is the founding of a family"

Well, lets start with the fact that I do not agree with this affirmation. Marriage is a contract of two people who want to live togheter, regardless if they want to found a family or not. It is not a question of "simplicity" that the state does not stablish a screening process for fertile couples. It is more of a question of inalienable rights that people have a right to live their union as they want to live it, not as the state, the church or some other person, or group of persons demands them to live it. That is why unfertile couples and couples that are fertile but have decided NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN, CAN and DO marry.

Now, on the issue of the bond between fathers and their sons and daughters, I guess the question is the nature of that bond. Regardless of the fact that lesbians can have kids by biological means (from past relations or insemination, as the other Michael already pointed in this discusion), I think the bond is more about who takes care and raises the infant, rather than who are the biological parents of the children.

Blake:

I do not see why is relevant for a gay couple to be recognized as a "procreative couple". Again, unfertile couples and couples who have decided not to procreate, can still marry, as I already pointed out.

Now, I fail to see where comes this so called right of children to have a father and mother relationship, which is clearly the "right" to have a gender based relation with two parents, one a man and one a women . I fail to see why is an obligation for a kid to be raised by people of two different sexes, and not by people who ACTUALLY CARE FOR HIM (regardless of their numbers and sex), which seems to me, is the real reasonable criteria that should guide the right of parenthood and the responsabilities parents actually have with kids.

You claim also that one cannot compare homosexual couples with unfertile or childless couples. That may be true in the second case, but certainly not in the first (since unfertile heterosexual couples, are by definition, unable to procreate, and that is something they didn´t chose). Yet will you object them to adopt any kids? Of course not.

Finally, you talk about homsexual couples obligation to "real" (biological) parents. So how is that different for the supposed obligation unfertile heterosexual couples have with the biological fathers of their adopted kids? I don´t see any reason why YOU impose a different standard on homosexual couples and heterosexual unfertile couples, except the tacit assumption that homosexual couples will harm the kids they will eventually adopt.

Blake,

I’m having trouble understanding your logic, so I’m hoping your answers to these questions will help.

You said, “children have a right to a relationship with both their natural parents, mother and father.”

The adoption agency I used provided me only with pseudonyms. Did they violate my children’s rights to have a relationship with their biological mother and father? Please explain why or why not.

One friend of mine was married for six years and had two children. She divorced him when she realized she was gay, and she married her girlfriend in Vermont. The kids see their father once or twice a year. She and her gay spouse now have legal custody of her daughters. Has she violated her children’s right to have a relationship with their father? Please explain why or why not.

Another friend of mine has been with her partner for 17 years. They have a twelve-year-old daughter. The biological father is a gay man who they asked to help. The father has been a constant presence in her life, coaching her sports teams, etc. Has my friend violated her daughter’s right to have a relationship with her father? Please explain why or why not.

In my last post, I described the boy I know who was adopted by a gay couple. Several times, he has met the crack addict who gave birth to him, but she does not remember who the father was, and he has no real interest in seeing more of his birth mother. He’s a little more fond of his maternal grandmother but not much. Have his rights to have a relationship with his biological parents been violated by the gay couple that adopted him? Please explain why or why not.

You asked me two questions: “All the adopted kids I know have discussed whether or not to search for their real parents. The children of gays are probably not allowed to have that discussion, though, are they?”

As apparent above, most of the children I know do know who their biological parents are. A few may not. I haven’t asked whether those gay couples will help their children search for their biological parents, but I’d be surprised if they fought the idea. They’re good parents.

Your second question was this: “If you are so sure there is no difference between a man and a woman, between a same-sex relationship versus an opposite-sex relationship - if sexes are so truly interchangeable - then may I ask why gays make such a big fuss about marrying a particular sex?”

There are, of course, differences between men and women. I have no interest in having sex with men and enormous interest in having sex with women. My parents had different styles of parenting that reflected their gender in some ways, but I don’t remember ever wanting my parents to be more or less masculine or feminine. I wanted them to be more loving, supportive, wise, or knowledgeable. Gender was far less important. The stories I tell above also suggest that gender is less important than love.

"A parent who raises a child in novel circumstance, without any evidence to suggest that a child will not be harmed - and ample reason to think a child will be harmed - then volunteers that child as "proof" that the child is "just fine", is not a parent that appears to be looking out for the child's well-being."

A parent who raises a child in novel circumstance, without any evidence to suggest that a child will not be harmed....hmmm...that sounds as a description of all parents heterosexual and homosexual, specially first timers. Well, of course many heteresexual parents (in the world I will say the mayority) have evidence that they will harm their kids while they raise them. So I am perplexed...why is that you think homosexuals are the only ones who most "prove they will not harm the kids they raise"?

I suspect that there is a profound difference of philosophy, between those who view civil marriage as a "pillar of the Republic," to be valued for the public purposes it serves, rather than for the incidental benefits it confers on individuals and those who regard it as a means of access to certain personal advantages.

Those public purposes are obvious enough: 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. To date, no better, simpler, less intrusive means than marriage have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide. And that is no small thing.

In short: (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..

Michael PS,

I’m having trouble understanding your point. Please read my last post, where I ask Blake some questions. Can you explain whether these cases violate the state’s “clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable”?

Two other points. The state got interested in marriage only recently in the 1500s, when Martin Luther required that the state register marriages. Before that, churches registered marriages, but they did so on a voluntary basis and only started doing so in the middle ages. The Roman Catholic Church only started requiring church marriages after the Council of Trent in the 1500s. Thus your concern with marriage as a “pillar of the Republic” is a recent phenomenon, not an ancient one.

Secondly, as much as the church cares about the health of the state, the church is dedicated first to serving God’s will.

I will reconsider supporting gay marriage if the following conditions are met.

1. Misusing the benefits of marriage to fraudulently claim paternity of a child that isn't actually yours is classed as a felony - fraud against the state, against the family, and against the child whose paternity is being stolen.

2. The child's legal right to have a relationship with his mother and his father is elevated from the state level to the federal level, with full recognition that the child is every bit as much a human being with rights as the parents are. In order to guarantee the basic human right "freedom from exploitation", it is essential that the ONLY person who can sever a relationship between a child and his parents is a judge - and then ONLY when doing so is ruled by the best interests of the child.

3. The loophole that allows girls to give children up for adoption must be closed, so that it may no longer be used to *deliberately* create children to be "given up" - or more accurately sold. Those who have misused this loophole in the past should be investigated on suspicion of trafficking in human flesh.

4. Anti-adultery laws make it a crime to violate the institution of marriage.

5. Any parent who has participated in deliberately acting to separate a child from his or her natural parents should be investigated for child abuse.

6. Any judge or other government official who has knowingly violated the "child's best interest" standard, in order to prioritize interests that are not in fact related to the child's best interests, should be investigated for accomplice to trafficking.

6. The existing laws that protect children against having the boundaries between real vs. stepparents deliberately confused, need to be strengthened, so that all parents - gay as well as hetero - are made aware, that forcing a child to pretend that a stepparent is a "real" parent is child abuse. A "real" parent consists only of a natural (biological) parent, or an adoptive parent as presided over by a judge ruling entirely in accordance with the child's best interest standard.

7. Likewise, it needs to be codified into law, that children who have lost a natural parent have the right to grieve - that it is child abuse and parentification to force the child to pretend to be happy to have a stepfather instead of a relationship with the real mother, or to have a stepmother instead of a relationship with the real father.



Once we have shut down the baby-selling works that gay marriage requires in order to perpetrate the myth that there is no significant difference between their relationship vs. a real family, then we can talk about whether they have a "right" to marry.

Because even if they stopped trying to force everyone into LIES, it is still a matter of concern, that they appear to be trying to force their inherently faith-based/religious beliefs on the rest of us, in that no religion other than humanism/Unitarianism teaches that there is something evil about recognizing a difference in kind between a conjugal relationship vs. a relationship arising out of (and centered on) recreational sex.

Every religion other than humanism/Unitarianism teaches that kinship is set apart, "sacred", the basis of family. Only one religious doctrine can justify deliberately tearing these bonds apart recklessly just so that a pair of individualists can enjoy a fantasy that requires other peoples' involuntary participation.

Blake,

Well, these are all interesting suggestions, but you'll have difficulty getting people to sign on if you cannot answer questions directly.

I've asked direct questions so that I can better understand your position, and I've answered your questions directly so that you can better understand mine. But you haven't answered my questions, and you haven't directly responded to my answers to your questions.

I remain curious about whether any of the cases of actual people I know, the ones I described in my last response to you, violate any of the seven principles you've outlined.

Michael, I don't consider my personal experience relevant to the question (since the question in this case is based on assertions that are either true or not true, and trying to drag in personal anecdotes is usually an attempt at turning logic into emotional appeal).

However, I will answer the question anyway.

I used to be staunchly pro gay rights. The way actual gay people treated their children is what first planted doubt in my mind. They used them as props and political tools, and taught them to write letters of political protest in the guise of "Sunday school" or "religious education". (This was at a so-called "welcoming congregation")

One day, I watched the film "The Birdcage" again, and this time, instead of seeing it as a heartwarming story about an insecure man achieving the affirmation he craves, I saw the film from the son's point of view, and it disturbed me.

When I told my friends about this reaction, they of course flipped out, because apparently viewing the gay rights argument from the point of view of the child is like going onto a feminist site and talking about the point of view of the male, or going onto a militant black site and talking about how it feels to be white. You just don't do it. Except you can argue that whites owe blacks, or that males owe females - I don't buy into these arguments, but they are at least superficially plausible. But children do not owe their parents. They do not owe it to their parents to be grateful for having a home. That is a major pet peeve of mine, and it is the basis of the argument gays use.

Because the reality is that we have two standards in this nation: one standard for "wanted", loved, cherished children - and a different, lower standard for "unwanted" kids, who are expected to take what they're given and be grateful, even if it's less than what other kids take for granted.

Blake:

The set of conditions under which you support gay marriage are...weird to me. I mean, how many of those conditions wouldn´t apply in the case of heterosexual marriage...(5? Why will it apply only for homosexual couples and not heterosexuals). Other are simply inexistent (What loophole exists for selling your own biological offspring? And if there is who is defending such attrocious practize? And what it has to do with homosexual couples? Are they the only ones who adopt children????). Other points are not clear (4...are you seriously proposing to jail up adulterers? That is unaceptable (- egislating virtue-. And again, what it has to do specifically with homosexual couple?).

Michael PS:

It seems your whole argument is tied to the biological filiation between father and son. Any student of antrhopology knows that filliation is far more than a crude biological reality, and more importantly, there is no good reason why it SHOULD be that way. I can´t feel that is weird that religious conservatives (as you appear to be, an as many of firstthings readers are) are so much obsessed into essentializing biological condition...is like at the end your spirituality has more in common with modern day socio-biologists than with the historical roots of christianity (Judaic religion and greek philosophy...).

Sergio, any parent - gay or straight - who would deliberately set up a child to be motherless or fatherless needs to be corrected, or restrained - not enabled. That's as true of Octomom as it is of any gay parents. I not only hope, but fully expect, that the loopholes that enable this behavior will eventually be closed.

All children have a right to a relationship with their natural parents. The only exception is when it is in a child's best interest to sever that tie.

It's sort of like amputating a body part, only instead of amputating a leg, adoption amputates an identity, a heritage, a set of relationships - a part of the person that can never be recovered. That is why adoptees and AI-conceived kids so often feel the need to search out their real parents, even when (maybe even especially when) they genuinely love and feel secure in their relationship with their adoptive parent.

Gay rights advocates are claiming a right to treat this amputation as nothing, to make it an elective procedure - not something you do only to preserve the child's health and well-being, but something parents can do just because they want to, just because they'd rather have a child that doesn't have the attached "parts" that are inconvenient.

That's exploitation, and as such is a human rights violation far more basic and fundamental than a lot of people recognize.

Blake,

Thanks for responding.

You’re right that personal anecdotes can turn logic into emotional appeal, but experience is one way of collecting facts. Experience, after all, is how social scientists collect facts.

I agree that it is unnerving when parents enlist their children in political causes, but it’s an odd, fine line that parents navigate. One sees and meets children campaigning against abortion or the death penalty or marching in demonstrations or campaigning for some candidate, and one worries that little automatons are being created in the parents’ image rather than being encouraged to think for themselves.

But, as I’ve tried to suggest in my list, I’m unnerved by the enlistment of children in any cause, whether I’m for it or against it. At the same time, I’m proud of the parents for teaching children the value of thinking about moral and political questions and of acting on their convictions.

All of this leads me to wonder whether you are offended by all acts of political protest sponsored at Sunday School or just those on behalf of gay rights? Are you offended when your congregation acts against abortion, against the war, or for any other moral/political cause?

I’m curious about why your answer doesn’t address the issues you have raised concerning the right to a relationship to a mother and father. Do you know these gay couples well enough to find out how troubled their children are by the lack of one or the other? Do you see signs of their lack?

As I described above, almost all of the children I know do know their biological parents. Is that the case with the families you know?

I’ve asked a couple of times whether you think the families I know are violating their children’s right to have a relationship with their biological parents, and I haven’t received an answer. I have trouble knowing whether some of these children fit into the categories you describe as “wanted” or “unwanted.”

Like Sergio, I’m having trouble understanding exactly what you mean when you criticize those who “deliberately set up a child to be motherless or fatherless.” I’ll run through the list of families I described: (1) The lesbian who divorced her husband and married a woman is just like many straights who divorce and remarry. Are you proposing to outlaw remarriage?
(2) The lesbian who gave birth to a child conceived by a gay man and has been with her partner for 17 years is much like the situation described in #1. The child knows her biological father better than the girls in situation #1. But in this case, you’re right that the severance from her biological father was planned. On the other hand, there’s acrimony around the divorce in #1, while the planned nature of #2 makes for fuller, warmer relations with the biological father.

(3) The gay men who adopted the son of a crack addict are like lots of couples who adopt, like my wife and me, for instance. One difference between our situations is that their child knows their biological mother and even grandmother, who live in the same city. My children live far away from their biological parents, and adoption agency only gave us pseudonyms for the biological parents. So whose situation is worse, the child of the gay couple or my children? Should one or both situations be made illegal?

When I look at the law as it is, to discover what is the state’s interest in marriage? Why does marriage exist, as a legal institution? What is the unique legal rôle of marriage? I compare the rules governing marriage on the one hand and civil unions (PACS) for same-sex and opposite-sex couples on the other (as well as unregulated cohabitation, which is not without legal consequences) On doing so, I find that the institution of marriage entails consequences with respect to filiation that the other forms of union do not. Marriage is the ordinary means of establishing the juridical bond of father and child - "Pater est is quae nuptiae demonstrant." All the other legal incidents peculiar to marriage flow from this principle. It enlists the couple in a parental alliance and affords the child an indivisible filiation. This special nature of marriage is the basis for the existence of rules governing its conditions, its effects and its dissolution.

I am fortified in my conclusions, by finding they agree with those of the great French jurist, Carbonnier, subsequently endorsed by the French Senate, who said of the presumption of paternity that " it is, in the words of Dean Carbonnier, the ‘heart of marriage,’ and cannot be questioned without losing for this institution its meaning and value." I respectfully agree.

Michael PS,

As I said last time, I’m having trouble understanding your point, so in order to gain clarity, I need some specific answers to specific questions.

Does either adoption or remarriage violate filiation?

In reference to situation #2 above, does the acknowledged fatherhood violate filiation?

Is the state’s concern with filiation obsolete now that we have DNA tests that quickly and easily establish fatherhood?

Since filiation only became a state concern in 1550 or so, would you say that institution of marriage before that time had lost “its meaning and value”?

Michael

Adoption is a fictional adscription of paternity by a judicial act; in the case of plenary adoption, the original filiation is extinguished, in the case of simple adoption, it is not. Note that, in neither case, does the adscription extend beyond the immediate parties, so the parents of the adopter are not legal ascendants of the adoptee. There is no legal duty of support or rights of inheritance between them.

Remarriage has no effect on filiation; generally step-parent and step-child have no legal rights and duties to each other.

DNA testing does not supercede the Presumption of Filiation, for, in all but a handful of cases, the presumption of paternity arising from marriage cannot be rebutted by other evidence. As I said earlier, it is in the state’s interest that filiation should be clear, certain and incontestable. . A universal system of testing at birth would be difficult to implement and, if paternity can be questioned at some later date, would defeat the object of making filiation incontestable. Laws are enacted for the general case and anomalies are the price that legislators pay for simplicity and certainty

Filiation has always been a state concern – Read Justinian’s Digest, from which the maxim “Is est pater quem nuptiae demonstrant” is derived. Given the central importance of Patria potestas in Roman law and a system of inheritance based on descent from a common male ancestor through males, the means of establishing it were of the first importance. The absence of registration simply meant that marriage had to be proved by other evidence: by witnesses, by habit and repute, by judicial decree &c.

Michael PS,

If I read you right, then, the state should have no problem with a gay couple adopting a child. And would have no problem with a divorced woman with children remarrying a woman. In both cases, filiation has remained clear.

If a gay couple has a child by some other means, then a simple DNA analysis could establish any contested paternity.

And so the state has always been concerned with filiation but has only cared about it when inheritance was at stake.

So what exactly is wrong with gay marriage? It seems to meet all of your tests.

Michael,

Before we get to the question of what is wrong with gay marriage, we should first establish just why do gays need to be granted the right to legally coerce people into pretending their union is the same in kind as a procreative one?

I still have yet to hear a compelling answer to this question.

If we assume that gays ought to have equal rights;

If we assume that equal rights necessitates accommodating the fact that a gay man cannot make a genuine life-partnership with his baby's mother, or a gay woman cannot make a genuine life-partnership with her baby's father;

It still does not explain why the required accommodation has to be one that involves redefining the family unit away from "kinship" and in favor of requiring everyone to enter into the fiction that a group of unrelated people are just as much a "family" as a real family.

In short, the problem with gay marriage is obvious as soon as you recognize that gays are not the only ones with rights, and look honestly at the rights you are demanding others to give up - and for what?

Why?

Why do gays NEED to demand that children give up their mother-relationship or father-relationship?

Why do gays NEED to demand that the members of every religion in the world except their own give up the right to hold conjugal relations sacred in kind (and thereby inherently distinct from sex which is merely recreational)?

Why do gays NEED to change the definition of family away from the stability of kinship (stable because obligations tied to kinship remain obligations regardless of questions of personal affection), to the inherently unstable definition of family as a group of people bound together by the ever-shifting bonds of affection and law?

The equality argument does not honestly stretch to cover a person's right to enjoy benefits that weren't meant for that person. Women are not equally entitled to things being distributed for the purpose of detecting or combating testicular cancer. Blind people are not equally entitled to a right to a driver's license. Gay people can argue that they are entitled to recognition as life-partners, but it is not clear to me why we should even be having the argument as to why they are entitled to procreative benefits.

Blake,

I’ll be happy to answer your questions after you answer mine. I’ll repeat them here:

I’ve asked a couple of times whether you think the families I know are violating their children’s right to have a relationship with their biological parents, and I haven’t received an answer. I have trouble knowing whether some of these children fit into the categories you describe as “wanted” or “unwanted.”

I’m having trouble understanding exactly what you mean when you criticize those who “deliberately set up a child to be motherless or fatherless.” I’ll run through the list of families I described: (1) The lesbian who divorced her husband and married a woman is just like many straights who divorce and remarry. Has she deliberately deprived her daughters of a father? Are you proposing to outlaw remarriage?

(2) The lesbian who gave birth to a child conceived by a gay man and has been with her partner for 17 years is much like the situation described in #1. The child knows her biological father better than the girls in situation #1. But in this case, you’re right that the severance from her biological father was planned. On the other hand, there’s acrimony around the divorce in #1, while the planned nature of #2 makes for fuller, warmer relations with the biological father. Which child’s situation is worse, #1 or #2?

(3) The gay men who adopted the son of a crack addict are like lots of couples who adopt, like my wife and me, for instance. One difference between our situations is that their child knows their biological mother and even grandmother, who live in the same city. My children live far away from their biological parents, and the adoption agency only gave us pseudonyms for the biological parents. So whose situation is worse, the child of the gay couple or my children? Should one or both situations be made illegal?

Regarding the lack of a mother or a father: see the book Motherless Daughters by Hope Edelman - by no means the only book out there, but it does specifically address gendered issues, enough so to thoroughly debunk the notion that we can or should assume that mothers and fathers can be presumed interchangeable.

There are similar books addressing the other relationship dynamics, but I have not found one non-partisan enough to use as a reference.

Children have a relationship that is different IN KIND with their same-sex (role model) parent than they do with their opposite-sex parents.

Plus, of course, there is the argument I made before, which is that if gays are going to argue that they are entitled to have their relationships recognized as inherently valuable, then there is no logical, ethical way they can say that a child won't be deprived of something if he is deprived of the chance to have a mother-relationship and a father-relationship, both of which meet the same criteria for being societally valued and "important" that gays use in describing their own "valuable" relationships.

And if gays are going to make an argument based on the statement that nobody should be forced to "live a lie", then it is really hard to see why their children should be forced to submit to being required to pretend that having a stepfather is just as good as having a mother. As I pointed out (though perhaps did not make this point explicit) these children are being pressured. Whatever they say about not minding not having a mother or father is suspect, because the decision - that they wouldn't miss having a mother or father at all - was made before they were born, and they are not given a CHOICE: in the liberal, "welcoming church" atmosphere I witnessed (which admittedly might be toward an extreme on the spectrum?) these kids understood from a disturbingly young age that if they did not affirm the script given to them, the evil "Christofascists" would "win".

Not all children are raised with a bogeyman who will come attack the parents (speaking of parentification) if the children don't cooperate, but the entire idea (however it's enforced) is that these children are "not going to" mind, and they are pressured. They are put under pressure to not mind.

The gay community is relying too hard on these children as evidence. The type and amount of pressure they are putting on these kids makes their testimony suspect.


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Regarding the amputation metaphor for adopted children, the tests and studies demonstrating that adoption is not harmless but also that that adoption continues to be justified based on the argument that forcing a child to stay with an "ambivalent" mother, see (among others) Being Adopted: The Lifelong Search For Self by Brodzinsky, Schecter, & Henig.

Again, all 50 states have determined - through a process that consulted available knowledge about children and child development - that children have a natural right to a relationship with their mother and father, and that only a judge may perform the necessary "amputation", because there is reason to be concerned about exploitation. Gays have been allowed to get away with so much because of loopholes, gaps, and inadequacies in the law, not because the principles of family law have not already been determined. They have been determined. They're just not being applied uniformly. There continues to be a double standard in family law: one standard for beloved children of important (and invariably married) people, and another standard for children born out of wedlock, who are presumably expected to be grateful to have any parents at all.

I hate rereading what I wrote; I always find things I missed or that didn't come out right.

I meant to say "but also that adoption continues to be justified based on the argument that forcing a child to stay with an "ambivalent" mother is more harmful than the harm done by severing the tie."

Michael

The state has always been concerned with filiation, not only where inheritance is at stake, but in the far more important case of the paternal power of a father over his children and the rights and duties of guardianship, in the event of his death. It also involves the mutual obligations of support between ascendants and descendants, in case of need. The rule is simple: in the case of a husband, his wife’s children are his, because she is his – “Whoever bulls my cow, the calf is mine”

What is wrong with gay marriage is precisely that it has no relevance to filiation, which is the public, legal purpose of marriage. It is a futile exercise. An institution whose distinctive function is to secure the filiation of children is irrelevant to a gay couple. It is this that distinguishes marriage from civil unions and unregulated cohabitation and all the rules peculiar to marriage derive from this.

Of course, it is irrelevant to opposite-sex infertile couples either, but to establish a screening process would be burdensome, expensive, intrusive and litigious, especially given current and psooible future 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.

Your questions regarding a gay couple adopting a child really begs the question; a single person can adopt and so can a married couple, whom the law treats as a single entity. Otherwise joint adoption is not permitted.

The remarriage of a divorced woman with children has no effect on parental rights, any more than her cohabiting with or entering into a civil union with someone of the same or opposite sex does.

Blake and Michael PS,

Although you all criticize gay marriage with different issues in minute (filiation for Michael and the “right’ to relationships with birth parents for Blake), you both make the same mistake of reducing marriage to procreation. Marriage creates a new family out of two previous ones, joining a couple into a unity that includes the sexual, physical, emotional, moral, and financial. This new family most often includes children and sometimes not, but it figures into so many other societal structures, including church, neighborhood, social, and civic groups. Few things are as central as the family, which is why many gays are fighting to be recognized as having created and nurtured new families.

Michael, you have stated that filiation is “the public, legal purpose of marriage,” which reduces the complex legal, moral, and societal entity I’ve described to just one thing. In answer to my questions about specific cases of gay families with children, you step into contradiction. You claim that gay marriage confuses the issue of who the father is, but then you admit that adoption creates a “legal fiction” of fatherhood. You say that “married couple” can adopt because “the law treats [them] as a single entity.” If gays can marry, then the law can treat them as a single entity as well.

Similarly, you admit that “the remarriage of a divorced woman with children has no effect on parental rights.” Since that is the case, filiation has been served through her marriage to another woman.

Your case against gay marriage has fallen apart.

Blake, you bring a more significant challenge to gay marriage because your concerns are not as reductive as Michael’s. The question of relationship to birth parents touches more on the whole picture than Michael’s concern with filiation does. But at the end of the day, relationship with birth parents remains only part of the picture.

I can’t explain my logic to you as thoroughly as I have with Michael because you continue to refuse to answer my questions, but I’ll do what I can here.

It is true that gay parenting relies on broken parental relationships in a way that straight parenting in general does not. Gay parents must acquire children through adoption, their own failed straight marriages, or through sperm donors or surrogacy. Most straight parents simply have sex. Infertile straight couples have had to rely on the same three methods that gays do. Both gay parents and infertile straight parents are surmounting obstacles biology through in their path. If you want to outlaw adoption, remarriage, donorship, or surrogacy, then do it for both types of families, but don’t continue the injustice of allowing them for one and not the other.

By the way, despite my requests, you’ve never clarified what you mean by “exploitation. Gays have been allowed to get away with so much because of loopholes, gaps, and inadequacies in the law.”

You pose a more serious challenge still when you raise the question of whether children need both a male and female, but you haven’t made a case that gender makes a significant difference. You need to do so. Raw assertion isn’t enough, especially in the face of evidence I have in front of my eyes of gay parents who have worked hard to provide the cross-gendered guidance they know they can’t provide directly.

Your experience seems to be different. I haven’t heard any talk of “Christofascists” in my welcoming congregation. There’s a lot more talk of providing children all of the guidance and support they need. The parenting is significantly more deliberate, careful, and sensitive than the parenting I experienced and saw in my church when I was growing up.

Does the boy whose mother was a crack addict wish he had a better mother? Sure. Does he love and feel more cherished by his gay male parents? Absolutely. They stepped in where many straight couples feared to go. And they have opened connections to his mother and grandmother that the mother and grandmother have wanted to keep closed. Meanwhile, they have given him rich experiences with his adoptive grandmothers and aunts. You think he’s been programmed to describe his experience positively. I think he speaks from his heart.

Of course, seeing as how these are human beings, not products, the question is not - or should not be - whether they are 'damaged' or not, but rather whether their rights as people are violated. And explain what you mean by saying that gay marriage entails a redefinition of education, church state relations, community service, and everything else.

"Gay people want the state to recognize the unity they have formed as a couple and the families they have formed. This recognition will afford them the same property, domestic, health, and custody rights that straight couples have. The next question is whether the church should bless those marriages." In general you are right. But the experiment has already occurred, and it is succeeding. These children are thriving, and your assumptions about what children need are being proven wrong.

Yes, but this takes as an assumption that marriage is a pre-society or pre-legal arrangement. But since marriage was from the beginning a contractual relationship to regulate property and inheritance, then the basic premise is false.