The following was posted on The GW Patriot’s blog in response to some discussions on gay marriage. The original post can be found here.
Andrew Clark, if you ever have trouble publishing for the Hatchet, I am extending, unilaterally, an invitation to write for the Patriot. Why? Mr. Clark has inspired a level of vitriol normally reserved for Patriot staff after writing this piece in the Hatchet. Our own Bill Flanigen has called it “Dumb, dumb, dumb.” Travis at the Colonialist–you remember those guys, the ones that drooled over “the most awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping, intellectually honest, honest, beautiful speech I’ve ever heard in my life. His face, his eyes, his voice: a serrated poem of a man,” followed by enormous joy over the ground breaking notion that Obama is getting a puppy for the White House (OMGGZ KIRK!)–refers to Clark as “a backwards thinking individual tolerant of discrimination.” How open-minded! That being said, Clark is off-track in his argument, but I’ll get there in a moment.
Travis’s claim that “this isn’t about opinions” is right for all the wrong reasons. Culturally, the definition of marriage was decided long ago, and no California proposition can change that. Whether the State redefines marriage to include homosexual, poly-amorous, bisexual, etc. marriages is irrelevant to the institution itself. It will always be between a man and a woman because it is religious in nature, and the state does not apply to the same authority the Church does. As St. Thomas More once declared, “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”
It may seem contrary to my point to declare the religious argument irrelevant. I do so because, whether I believe it should be this way or not, the state has become extremely involved in marriage for some time. Indeed, it is my own personal belief that monogamous, faithful couples of all stripes should be given tax breaks, and if that means universal civil unions than so be it. If marriage was just about consenting civil contracts, than it would be solely the business of the state, as Bill presupposes. But it’s not.
Travis, rather comically (they are a humor blog, right?) confounds the right to marry to the right to clean water for blacks in the 60’s. But the states have prohibited citizens from marriage for a long time with little objection. Roughly half of all states prohibit first cousins from marrying, and all prohibit marriage of closer blood relatives, even if the individuals being married are sterile and in love. In all states, it is illegal to attempt to marry more than one person, or even to pass off more than one person as one’s spouse. Some states restrict the marriage of people suffering from syphilis or other diseases. Are these the next boundaries to go?
I do not mean to say that all of these situations are equal (I can see the comments now: YOU BELIEVE HOMOSEXUALITY IS A VENEREAL DISEASE??), but rather that marriage is an institution with strict rules. Marriage, founded as an institution between man and God, is subject to moral and religious scrutiny. This MUST be addressed. Travis and others urge folks like Andrew Clark to “just think” but they fail to articulate an argument deeper that “this is love” and “their love for one another is real.”
If marriage was about love and only love, than this would be an easy issue. Unfortunately, this logic is absurd. Marriage is a cultural, moral institution meant to be a steadying force for societal progress. For centuries, the basis for marriage has not been love (imagine how romantic a proposal from your’s truly would be) but the transmission of one generation to the next through the creation and nurturing of new life. Dr. Somerville of McGill University’s Centre of Medicine, Ethics, and Law has said: “By institutionalizing the relationship that has the inherent capacity to transmit life — that between a man and a woman — marriage symbolizes and engenders respect for the transmission of human life.”
Dr. Somerville continues:
To change the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would destroy its capacity to function in the ways outlined above, because it could no longer represent the inherently procreative relationship of opposite-sex pair-bonding. It would be to change the essence and nature of marriage as the principal societal institution establishing the norms that govern procreation. Marriage involves public recognition of the spouses’ relationship and commitment to each other. But that recognition is for the purpose of institutionalizing the procreative relationship in order to govern the transmission of human life and to protect and promote the well-being of the family that results. It is not a recognition of the relationship just for its own sake or for the sake of the partners to the marriage, as it would necessarily become were marriage to be extended to include same-sex couples.
What the world seems intent on doing at the moment is completely changing what marriage is supposed to mean. The benefits to society of monogamy and stability in relationships is unquestioned, and should be rewarded by civil unions and any other governmental benefits possible. But as society’s degredation can be measured by the destruction of the nuclear family by the out-of-wedlock pregnancies and innercity deadbeat fathers of heterosexual couples, further degrading the institution’s child-rearing nature will only do more damage.
What about couples that do not intend to have children, you ask? Irrelevant, says I. Marriage between opposite-sex partners symbolizes the reproductive potential that exists, at a general level, between a man and a woman. Society is built on a societal-cultural paradigm where symbolism is just as important and is often indiscernible from actual rules and boundaries. The reproductive potential of opposite-sex couples is safely assumed at a higher level and the societal-cultural paradigm won’t allow for a case by case analysis. Such a case by case philosophy would submit any law to constant illogical scrutiny.
In short, the issue is all about what marriage actually is. If marriage is about loving relationships and if the reason for denying homosexuals marriage privileges is our inherent disrespect for their loving and possibly stable relationship, than we are wrong to exclude such people from marrying. But if the reason to exclude homosexuals and others from marriage is to protect the very essence, nature, and substance of the institution intact, than such exclusion is ethically acceptable for society.
If anyone just skipped here to the end, simply read Sam Schulman’s nearly-flawless defense of marriage, or even just this snippet:
I believe, in fact, that we are at an “Antigone moment.” Some of our fellow citizens wish to impose a radically new understanding upon laws and institutions that are both very old and fundamental to our organization as individuals and as a society. As Antigone said to Creon, we are being asked to tamper with “unwritten and unfailing laws, not of now, nor of yesterday; they always live, and no one knows their origin in time.”
Admittedly, it is very difficult to defend that which is both ancient and “unwritten”–the arguments do not resolve themselves into a neat parade of documentary evidence, research results, or citations from the legal literature. Admittedly, too, proponents of this radical new understanding have been uncommonly effective in presenting their program as something that is not radical at all but as requiring merely a slight and painless adjustment in our customary arrangements. This is simply wrong… The gods move very fast when they bring ruin on misguided men.
In the end, Travis is right. It’s not about opinions. It’s about history, culture, and society. The rules were written a long time ago with a very specific plan in mind. It’s time we started playing by them.
