Even a democracy can undermine freedom and foster the unethical rule of power. America’s founders saw this, and placed in our Constitution a Bill of Rights to preserve civil rights and protect us all from the tyranny of the majority. Gay “marriage” is often regarded as a civil rights issue deserving that constitutional protection. And indeed it is. George Weigel has perceptively showed us, though, that it is not the kind of civil rights matter that its proponents claim it to be. They tell us gay rights run parallel to racial civil rights, but as Weigel notes,
the analogy simply doesn’t work. Legally enforced segregation involved the same kind of coercive state power that the proponents of gay marriage now wish to deploy on behalf of their cause. Something natural and obvious – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” – was being denied by the state in its efforts to maintain segregated public facilities and to deny full citizenship rights to African Americans. Once the American people came to see that these arrangements, however hallowed by custom (and prejudice), were, in fact, unnatural and not obvious, the law was changed.
What the gay lobby proposes in the matter of marriage is precisely the opposite of this. Marriage, as both religious and secular thinkers have acknowledged for millennia, is a social institution that is older than the state and that precedes the state. The task of a just state is to recognize and support this older, prior social institution; it is not to attempt its redefinition. To do the latter involves indulging the totalitarian temptation that lurks within all modern states: the temptation to remanufacture reality. The American civil-rights movement was a call to recognize moral reality; the call for gay marriage is a call to reinvent reality to fit an agenda of personal willfulness. The gay-marriage movement is thus not the heir of the civil-rights movement; it is the heir of Bull Connor and others who tried to impose their false idea of moral reality on others by coercive state power.
Several streams have fed into this. Until about twenty to twenty-five years ago, what was “natural and obvious” concerning marriage was that it was for a man and a woman. Now a significant number of Westerners think it “natural and obvious” that the meaning of marriage can be stretched beyond that. This principle has now been codified into law in New York and five other states.
Of course no one thinks it will go any further than allowing couples of the same sex to “marry;” no one would ever support stretching marriage to include polygamy or polyamory: for isn’t it obvious that marriage is for two adults? Well, yes, and once it was obvious that it was for two adults of opposite sex. What’s most obvious is that what is “obvious” can change over time. We cannot count on what is obvious today to predict what will happen tomorrow. Marriage has lost its moorings, and now it will drift where it will.
Those who do not know history, it is said, are doomed to repeat it. In this case they are doomed to invent a brand-new future; but this future continues a long-established trajectory. The Western world has been trying for centuries to establish mastery over nature in every way. We have won many battles, but not without cost: our victories have been Pyrrhic, as C.S. Lewis both saw and foresaw. We have overcome nature’s power in part, but in so doing we have pronounced ourselves part of nature, like the animals.
This giving up of ourselves to mere nature was never essential to the progress of science. It results not from any growth in our knowledge or skills, but from an intentional rejection of spiritual reality. Naturalistic philosophy lets us imagine that our dominance over nature will someday be complete. If on the other hand there is a God, then we have no such hope for total mastery.
In making ourselves part of nature, though, we forgot that nature is where appetite, instinct, and power prevail, and where reason and ethics have no place or meaning. The implications for marriage are profound. Whereas true marriage is mostly (not entirely, but mostly) about giving to and building a future generation, gay “marriage” is mostly (not entirely, but mostly) about appetite justified by instinct: ”I was born this way so I have to do it!” Psalm 8 tells us that God made us a little lower than the angels. The logic animating homosexual advocacy is that we are no higher than the animals.
Along those same beastly lines, the foisting of gay “marriage” upon us by courts or legislatures is mostly a matter of power. Weigel said concerning this,
resistance to the agenda of the gay-marriage lobby is a necessary act of resistance against the dictatorship of relativism, in which coercive state power is used to impose on all of society a relativistic ethic of personal willfulness.
He is right, and this has been a matter of great concern to me for quite some time. Where the ethic of truth is lost to public policy, public policy moves to being based on an ethic of power. When that happens, much more of what seems obvious today is at risk of being obsolete tomorrow. Now that we are living under a “relativistic ethic of personal willfulness,” what bounds can we set around said willfulness? I search and I can find none, other than someone else’s willfulness, someone who by force of power will establish his, her, or their ethics as dominant over the rest of us.
Thus Weigel is exactly right to see the same-sex “marriage” movement as a civil rights issue. More precisely it is a symptom of a larger shift in our culture, away from an ethics based in truth, and toward policy based in power. This is what the founders knew they had to prevent. This is why the created for us a Bill of Rights. This is what has protected our liberties for more than 225 years.
Herein lies the ominous irony of homosexual activism. It calls itself a movement of personal freedom and liberty. It borrows the language of civil rights. It employs the structures of a free society to achieve its ends. But it rests on a philosophical foundation that undermines all of these.
And herein also lies a caution to all of us who oppose this gay insurgency. Our rights are rooted in our being human, endowed by our Creator with a nature higher than the merely natural. There is no need to follow others’ descent to appetite, instinct, and power.
Therefore, while it is necessary to oppose power with power, we must never forget we have more at stake than just winning for our side. We’re fighting for the principle that there is a higher principle than mere fighting. Let us let that guide our methods in all that we do. We who believe in prayer, let us pray. We who believe in love, let us not return the other side’s language of hate, no matter how venomously they spew it at us. We who believe in truth, let us not resort to bumper-sticker slogans. Let us employ the power we have, but let us do so in a principled way.
(Thank you to Holopupenko for the Weigel link. Also posted at Thinking Christian.)
July 1st, 2011 | 11:51 am | #1
Finally, someone who understands what I have been writing for years–that we do not live in an age of reason, we live in an age of force and argument is a waste of time. One can make the most reasoned arguments possible against a position but if the person who holds that position has the brute force to push it, that is what will win.
It is therefore important to know where the power that matters lies. I have said that if i can get five votes on the Supreme Court it does not matter what anyone else thinks. Forget Congress, forget the States. Think strictly in terms of winning there.
July 1st, 2011 | 11:54 am | #2
Let me remind you how I ended this: “Therefore, while it is necessary to oppose power with power, we must never forget we have more at stake than just winning for our side…”
You say we live in an age of force, and argument is a waste of time. If so, and I am afraid on one level you are right, then part of our purpose must be to change the age. I hope you caught that in my article. This is not just about homosexual “marriage.” It is a warning against letting ourselves transition into an age of force. I do not believe that this has just one inevitable outcome. I believe there is still hope for us not to descend into tyranny that way.
July 1st, 2011 | 4:36 pm | #3
“Now that we are living under a ‘relativistic ethic of personal willfulness,’ what bounds can we set around said willfulness”
That’s what religious freedom entails.
…If “all men are by nature equally free and independent,” all men are to be considered as entering into Society on equal conditions; as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less, one than another, of their natural rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an “equal title to the free exercise of Religion according to the dictates of Conscience.” Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and to observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to man, must an account of it be rendered. As the Bill violates equality by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle, by granting to others peculiar exemptions…
James Madison, 1785
Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments
July 1st, 2011 | 5:26 pm | #4
The will to power.
July 2nd, 2011 | 9:16 pm | #5
What fascinates is that an era’s respected leaders can err so obtusely, self-confidently, coercively. Unknowningly, their folly provides a caution for future generations – ignominy.
July 11th, 2011 | 7:40 am | #6
“Now that we are living under a ‘relativistic ethic of personal willfulness,’ what bounds can we set around said willfulness”
That’s what religious freedom entails.
Except that not all religions get equal freedom.
“Gay Marriage” only makes sense if you are a humanist/Unitarian Universalist. That is the only religion that has beliefs that are truly compatible with “gay marriage”.
Every other religion in the world recognizes family as special, and the act of reproduction as sacred, in some form or another.
Every other religion in the world embraces some variant on “the golden rule” – some version of don’t do to other people what you wouldn’t want done to yourself. Gay marriage is based on broken families – for every gay couple with a child, there’s at least one mother or father who is estranged from his or her child and of course the child himself is expected to not feel the things motherless and fatherless children normally and naturally feel.
“Gay marriage” involves a belief that only one religion holds: that “choice” matters more than “truth”.
“Gay marriage” involves a belief that is unique to humanism/Unitarian Universalism: the belief that we can choose everything – from which people we count as kin to what gender we ourselves are (regardless of the body we’re born with). We can make that child be related to Jim but not Sarah by simply choosing.
The problem is twofold: (1) it’s not true and (2) it’s not fair. It’s not fair to all the people who are forced to play along with a lie, so that the ones at the center of the “choice” can live out a fantasy.
July 11th, 2011 | 9:53 pm | #7
Brother Gilson, you do disservice to all when you write with such confidence on philosophical matters that are clearly beyond your area of competence, whatever that might be.
July 11th, 2011 | 10:25 pm | #8
Thank you for that substantive criticism, Konstantine, such as it is.
July 12th, 2011 | 1:47 am | #9
Putting gay “marriage” in scare quotes is every bit as offensive as doing the same with the Christian “religion”.
July 12th, 2011 | 5:46 am | #10
Mike,
While there is some truth to your comment, comparing the legitimacy of a two thousand year old religion to a relatively new social development hardly counts as a legitimate analogy.
July 12th, 2011 | 6:59 am | #11
First, Mike, I don’t mind one bit if one puts quotes around “religion” that way.
Second, since you seem to want to draw a parallel, let’s make the parallel a genuine one. Suppose there were some powerful social movement suddenly claiming for the first time in history that Christianity was a religion, and suppose also that others contested that claim. Those who contested it, who thought the word “religion” did not accurately apply to Christianity, really should use quotes when speaking of the Christian “religion.” If they thought there was no such thing as a Christian religion, it would be semantically contradictory for them to speak of a Christian religion. To accept the language of Christianity being a religion would be to give up the dispute for no logical reason whatever.
Or suppose there were suddenly to arise some powerful social movement led by married men claiming to be bachelors, and insisting that they be called bachelors. If I had reason to write about these so-called married bachelors, I would either have to use a construction like so-called married bachelors, or the simpler and quicker married “bachelors,” which uses quotes to communicate the same thing in fewer words.
The quotation marks in gay “marriage” are not there as scare quotes but as ordinary old-fashioned quotation marks. You see, some people say there is such a thing as marriage for couples of the same sex. I don’t think there is. If I spoke of same-sex marriage without the quotation marks, I would be speaking of something I regard as self-contradictory and therefore devoid of meaning (like married bachelor). (Note that in those negating constructions I am speaking my own opinion so there is no need for the quotation marks.)
It’s not, by the way, just that same-sex marriage doesn’t exist in my state of Virginia, or that I don’t think it should exist. It is that I believe the term “marriage” has an inherent and enduring definition that entails opposite-sex couples as part of of it. Therefore I don’t put quotes in there because I think it’s ethically wrong, or for rhetorical/political effect, I put the quotes in there because I think same-sex marriage, like married bachelor, is literally without any meaning.
But sometimes I need to quote the language in which others express their opinion. In order to do so it is semantically necessary to show that I am quoting their language, not my own thoughts. When quoting others’ language, one uses quotation marks. There’s nothing unusual about that, is there?
Others who use the quotes in same-sex “marriage” do so for the same reason. If that is offensive, then I am sorry about that. But your taking offense cannot be the reason for us changing our minds and concluding that there is after all such a thing as same-sex marriage. There isn’t.
July 12th, 2011 | 7:50 am | #12
This is not just some political dispute over whether “same-sex marriage” should be accepted. It is a dispute over whether there is or even could be such a thing as same-sex marriage. It is a dispute over the nature and definition of marriage: whether it entails opposite-sex couples and whether that entailment is inherent and enduring.
I hope that’s clear to all.
July 14th, 2011 | 2:54 pm | #13
[...] “Gay “Marriage,” Civil Rights, Power, and Principle,” Tom Gilson, Evangel [...]
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