I’ve been hearing the charge recently that there are no non-religious reasons to oppose same-sex “marriage,” and therefore there are no constitutionally valid reasons to oppose it. I’m not about to enter into the constitutional question; it’s not my field. First Things readers need no one to tell you that there are indeed many non-religious reasons to oppose SSM and support true marriage. That’s been said often enough here.
But there is a question in here somewhere that calls for consideration: If secular reasons against SSM are any good at all, why is it that religious people so much more likely to oppose SSM than non-religious people? Could it be that our secular reasoning is a kind of game, a smokescreen behind which to hide the essential religiosity of our purpose?
If that were true, then it would be best that we admitted it and got out of the debate, or else shifted over to the constitutional side of it instead. But it’s not. For one thing, good secular reasoning against SSM is good secular reasoning, regardless of who puts it forth or why. For another thing, there are other explanations for the religious divide. On my Thinking Christian blog I’m offering two such explanations, the first of which is that religious people are far more likely than non-religious people to accept that there is something that marriage essentially is, and which is not up to us to decide. What follows is an adapted version.
First I want to clarify who I am talking about here and who I am not. On both sides of this issue there are some who have taken their stance only because “that’s what my kind of people think about this.” Make no mistake: support for gay “marriage” has a lot to do with aligning with one’s social group. So does opposition to it. I’m not talking about that kind of support or opposition, but about that which is well informed and thought through.
President Obama declared his affirmation of same-sex “marriage” last week. His opinion changes nothing except the legal and political environment. More specifically, it has no effect on what marriage actually is, because the meaning of marriage is not up to anyone to decide—not even the President. It’s above his pay grade.
What I mean is that marriage has its own enduring nature or essence. Many will disagree with me on that. Where you stand on that question, though, will largely determine where you stand on SSM. The question comes to this: Is there, or is there not, something—some nature or essence, that makes marriage what it is? Or is “marriage” up for grabs? If the former, then the SSM advocate carries an exceptionally strong burden of proof, to show that the great majority of cultures through history have gotten marriage wrong by making it about male and female. If the latter, then marriage can be whatever it is at the moment, and there’s no good reason to oppose SSM.
The best secular arguments in favor of man-woman marriage lean heavily on there being something that marriage is, and that its nature, its essence, isn’t up for a vote. Girgis, George, and Anderson, for example, have developed a strong case for the enduring identity of marriage on natural, not religious, grounds. That view is no longer widely shared. Many of us take it that we can mold the meaning of marriage to suit the temper of the age.
Many of us, in fact, take it that we can mold the meaning of almost anything to suit ourselves. Is there an enduring essence of maleness and femaleness, or (as some now maintain) does each person have the option to choose (pardon me, but I can’t avoid saying it this way) his or her own gender? Is there an enduring essence of humanness, or are we (as again some hold to be true) of pretty much the same sort of thing as the animals? Are we on our evolutionary way toward becoming something else? Questions like these can be multiplied. (Interestingly, answers to all of them seem to line up along a religious divide.)
I suspect this is one major factor separating believers from non-believers on this issue: believers in God are far more likely than non-believers to hold that certain things have their own enduring nature, essence, or definition. Thus we are far more likely to hold that marriage, gender, and human nature have stable and lasting meanings.
That’s my theory. Supposing I am correct, why might that be so? I can think of at least three reasons.
1. Pride of progress, or, chronological chauvinism. Non-believers are more likely than believers to think that every new generation is wiser than every earlier one. This is, unfortunately, a silly conceit associated with the fallacy of thinking that all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Obviously scientific knowledge is increasing day by day. Does that mean wisdom is, too? Or literary expertise, or musical creativity and virtuosity? Obviously not. These have virtually nothing to do with science. Neither does marriage. Why would we assume we are any smarter than the ancients (read: anyone born before 1960) concerning the nature of marriage?
Believers are more likely than non-believers to recognize that fallacy for what it is. We are therefore less likely to fall for the fallacies of scientism (“science is all there is of knowledge”) and chronological snobbery (“our age knows more about everything”).
2. The sexual revolution. The children of the 60s—and their children—are running the country. The enduring message of the 60s has been that whatever consenting adults decide to do is just fine. Though there are both biblically- and non-biblically based arguments against this foolishness, Bible-believers have been more motivated than non-believers to give them proper respect—in theory at least, if not always in practice.
3. Evolutionary theories of origins. Darwinian evolution is an all-encompassing theory, covering every aspect of organisms’ physical and behavioral characteristics. It is furthermore—and crucially—a theory of change, of things that are always on their way to becoming something else. Of course evolution can accommodate and explain stasis in populations, but still for all that it remains a theory of change. Today’s humanness is a snapshot along the ever-new, ever-different road of history, so why shouldn’t today’s marriage be the same?
If I’m right, then a theory of marriage such as Girgis, George, and Anderson’s, arguing as it does on the basis of what marriage is, faces uphill sledding among non-believers. Why believe that anything is what it is, or at least that it is essentially so?
Though opinions may line up along a religious divide, these are not religious questions. Differences of opinion pre-date Christianity by hundreds of years. Can a man step in the same river twice? Is he still the same man if he does? Was Heraclitus correct to think change is the only reality? Or was Plato closer to the mark with his eternal forms?
There’s more that could be said about this, but I’m exploring and proposing ideas here, not trying to work out a final disquisition, so I’ll leave it at this. What do you think?
May 14th, 2012 | 3:18 pm | #1
It’s hard to mount a persuasive defense of the institution when it has already been undermined by widely accepted no-fault divorce practices and changing ideas on the telos of marriage from sustaining a family to raise children to personal fulfillment (helped in part by birth control and contraception). Add the new technologies that eliminate the need for physiologically complementary partners to generate children (not to mention older practices like adoption), and it comes down to either asserting one’s religious belief on a pluralist society, the dubious use of dubious sociological studies, or an unpersuasive natural law defense.
In his series on SSM, Ross Douthat pessimistically suggested taking it private: “The main objective of any serious social conservative, in the end, should be to restore a particular sexual ideal among *heterosexuals*, not just to forestall the redefinition of the institution of marriage to include gays. The goal should be a world where the struggle to defend marriage is understood primarily as a struggle against divorce and out-of-wedlock births and premarital promiscuity, and not just a world where the law offers a particular distinction to Newt Gingrich’s third marriage that it doesn’t afford Ellen DeGeneres and Portia DeRossi. And if all that social conservatives can ever hope to accomplish is to keep homosexual couples from getting marriage licenses, then there’s a case to be made for living with the public redefinition of the institution, taking the older ideal private, and trying to rebuild a thicker culture of marriage from the ground up.” http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/when-battles-are-lost
And it’s not that I want to retreat. Rather, it’s that, even if this tide is stemmed, the institution our culture would be getting back to is a thin, even emaciated, thing.
Like Douthat says, in terms of public policy, we need comprehensive reform, and yet I don’t find many who fight publicly against SSM also calling loudly for divorce reform, for instance. Sure, the former is the topic du jour, but latter gets (and got, pre-SSM) nary a passing mention from our pulpits, publications, or pundits, presumably because it is so pervasive.
For this reason, it’s hard for us to sustain a public argument for something so already moribund as the Western conception of marriage.
May 14th, 2012 | 5:04 pm | #2
“First Things readers need no one to tell you that there are indeed many non-religious reasons to oppose SSM and support true marriage.”
I’m a First Things reader and I do need someone to tell me the non-religious reasons to oppose SSM. Can someone provide a link to these arguments?
Thanks
May 14th, 2012 | 6:01 pm | #3
“There’s more that could be said about this, but I’m exploring and proposing ideas here, not trying to work out a final disquisition, so I’ll leave it at this. What do you think?”
Same-sex marriage is cultural and moral pollution, a grave wrong-doing that will hurt not only this country, but the whole world over.
Whatever the liberal green environmentalists have to say about global warming or “creation care” and how horrible that is to the earth and future generations, the same thing can be said many times over about the moral and cultural defecation brought about by installing gay marriage.
May 14th, 2012 | 6:46 pm | #4
Well said, Tom. I had just replied to a NCRegister article before reading this; I wish I had read this article first so I could include a link here in that comment. A commenter said that it should give us pause that the young and educated are more likely to support homosexual “marriage” than oppose it. I essentially pointed out that that was a genetic fallacy and in no way detracts from the substance of the best-presented argument for a position.
I believe you perceptively identify the reasons behind the believer-nonbeliever divide on the issue. More clearly, the divide is based off whether you have an egocentric (and thus purely synchronic) understanding of life and morality or if you have a more broad understanding of morality.
For instance, a friend of mine draws the line for abortion based on viability. Once the baby is viable, it would thus be wrong to abort the child. But how would this standard be applied retroactively, I ask, in 1300s Switzerland where adoption centers are not within travel distance? Would it then be permissible to abandon a five-year-old you can no longer afford to feed?
Those who support same-sex marriage have an overwhelming tendency to believe in the rhetorical lie called “progress” (your point #1) and show a lack of awareness of the past, or of anything not immediate.
I will note, however, that I believe one could hold to an evolutionary theory of origins without necessarily assuming complete fluidity of the definition of humanness. That generally is assumed, but it may be possible to coherently believe that evolution involves change moving towards a particular telos at which it becomes static.
Anyway, great post. Thank you.
May 14th, 2012 | 9:06 pm | #5
My apologies, James.
There’s a good list of them here.
May 15th, 2012 | 2:18 pm | #6
The non-religious reasons fundamentally revert back to religious ones at their root, don’t they? Forgetting the Creator-creature distinction leaves us in a world full of muddled thinking and opinions.
May 15th, 2012 | 6:02 pm | #7
Everything eventually leads back to the reality of God as Creator and as ultimate Truth, and yes, forgetting that fact really messes up our thinking badly. He is God and we are not. If he has said marriage is one thing, then that is what it is. We don’t get a vote in the matter. But why would we want to? Do we think we’re wiser than God, more good than God? (I know: some do think that, tragically enough for them.)
May 15th, 2012 | 8:59 pm | #8
Okay, sidestepping the ontological status of marriage for a moment, let me ask this: does anyone here object to a gay man being allowed to visit his partner in a hospital? Is there something fundamentally wrong with a lesbian couple wanting to file a joint tax return?
For me, I’m an anti-state marriage type (meaning I don’t think the government should regulate marriage at all), but politically speaking if the government continues to do so, I wouldn’t care if same-sex couples received the same benefits as heterosexual couples do now. Regardless of my religious beliefs, the insane amount of legal rights stemming from marriage aren’t anything that should be denied to same-sex couples. I don’t think it’s an affront to religious freedom at all if a gay couple got to share social security benefits.
Allowing same-sex couples these rights does not in any way “change” the definition of marriage for all of us. As already admitted in the first comment, marriage as sanctioned by the government ain’t exactly the conservative Christian ideal. Allowing same-sex couples to marry does nothing to my heterosexual marriage, nor does it degrade it. There are distinct differences between civil marriage and the private conceptions of marriage we as citizens are allowed to hold.
Plus, doing so would be a proper step toward a more sensible church-state policy, which the US government currently lacks. Much like how “the strict wall of separation” leads not to government neutrality but instead the preference of secularism above all else (we ought to be taking a page out of the Netherlands’ book), by sanctioning only heterosexual marriage the government impugns on the freedom of those who don’t agree with the heteronormative Judeo-Christian concept. If the government were to treat everyone fairly, then we wouldn’t be having these debates left and right.
May 15th, 2012 | 9:53 pm | #9
Legalizing gay marriage sure changed a lot in Canada’s legislation. http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=25-01-024-f
(If you like, skip down to “A Tool of the State” and start from the paragraph above it.)
May 16th, 2012 | 12:33 am | #10
Several points here:
1. “Same-sex marriage proponents, for their part, are forced to set aside this concern. On their view, the parent-child bond lies beyond the immediate purview of marriage, as does the particular sexual act that produces children. Marriage is simply the formalization of an intimate relationship between adults. If those adults happen to produce or obtain children, well, that is another matter. Moreover, their bond with those children does not require any particular family structure to support it; good outcomes can be had from diverse family structures.”
Why aren’t we calling for the banning of single parenthood? “Statistically,” children do worse off in those scenarios.
Plus, even though gay couples can’t produce children, they can certainly adopt and raise them, and statistics show they fare just as well as heterosexual couples.
2. His biggest gripe:
“‘Marriage’ was now a legal fiction, a tool of the state, not a natural and pre-political institution recognized and in certain respects (age, consanguinity, consent, exclusivity) regulated by the state.”
This is entirely non-unique regardless of whether civil marriage is heterosexist or not. Currently, marriage recognized by the United States is a legal fiction. It may have been created under the auspices of the Judeo-Christian notion of marriage, but as practiced now it’s hardly religious. Government sanctioned marriage is a legal contract, and it uses legal language. Do Christians really want to claim that the fifty percent divorce rate mirrors God’s ideals for marriage? I’d hardly say that’s the case. There is a distinction between civil and private (church) marriage, and this article doesn’t handle it well.
3. Here I thought sensible Christian thought would have moved past the erroneous slippery slope of “liking gays leads to liking pederasts,” but lo and behold.
(A) Marriage contracts require two consenting adults. A child, by definition, is not a consenting adult. This is irrelevant at face.
(B) Comparing pedophilia as an “orientation” to homosexuality is nowhere near to a close match. (Also, he’d do well to cite a widely respected psychologist who will say that pedophilia is as normal as heterosexuality, not a NAMBLA pamphlet, which is where I’m assuming he got his sources from.) Homosexuality means to be attracted to someone of the same sex. Sex is a fixed identity. (This does leave out intersexed people, but i will qualify that in a moment). Pedophilia is an attraction to a certain age group, which by definition lasts only a certain amount of time. That amount of time is one when a child cannot enter a marriage contract. One ceases being a child after a certain point in time; unless one can afford expensive, painful, and time-consuming surgery, one does not just “become” another sex through a natural process like aging.
4. I’m not a Catholic, so I don’t uphold natural law logic in terms of sex always having to do with procreation… just to make that clear. However, if the government’s core purpose in sanctioning marriage is to endorse child-rearing, then we should also bar infertile and old couples from marrying. Not a very convincing criterion. And, in addition, even if this criteria were good, this doesn’t exclude gay couples because, as mentioned before, they can raise children. Just because they themselves did not produce the child doesn’t mean they don’t provide a benefit into society in raising a child that isn’t biologically theirs. Because, you know, our orphanages and foster child organizations aren’t overloaded or anything.
5. But again, this article overlooks the central question I posed earlier: when talking about marriage under the government, we are talking about the rights that emanate from that. This includes hospital visits, social security benefits, joint tax returns, among hundreds of others. I fail to see any compelling state interest in barring gay couples from having those things. Since the question of marriage (if it is to be regulated at all), as the article you cite concedes, is the interest of the state in promoting society, both sides have to show legitimate compelling harms or benefits to advance their argument. I see no such harms in allowing gays these rights; in fact, I see many harms in keeping it illegal as such.
May 16th, 2012 | 12:41 am | #11
The biggest obstacle to overcome is the distorted “Golden Rule” Christianity of many naive Christians. As long as love thrives as an heresy among many Christians, I see little hope.
http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Pacifism-Fruit-Narrow-ebook/dp/B005RIKH62/ref=pd_rhf_dp_p_t_1
May 16th, 2012 | 12:42 am | #12
WRONG link above
http://www.amazon.com/Love-Prayer-Forgiveness-Michael-Snow/dp/159467664X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337143341&sr=1-3
May 16th, 2012 | 9:21 am | #13
For Nikolai (and everyone else),
Here’s an interesting article that fits best with taking marriage private: “The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage”
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-liberal-case-against-gay-marriage
May 16th, 2012 | 3:38 pm | #14
I’ve read plenty of liberal arguments against homosexuality… this one is just plain weird. And illogical. I don’t know if the author has actually understood the force of the pro-gay marriage arguments.
1. Her point about the government distributing children is completely irrelevant. No gay couples are asking for the government to do so; if gay couples want children, they’d go through a surrogate or through an adoption center. Absolutely bizarre analysis here.
And, again, when she asks,
she gives credence to banning couples we know are infertile or old couples from getting married.
2. The definitional slippery slopes pervade:
This is just plain idiotic. First, this presumes that just because gay couples want the legal definition of marriage to change (and, keep in mind folks, the notion that history has always been dominated by the consensual, monogamous one man-one woman standard is utterly false) they thereby presume all words should be changed. Second, and here I’d need several pages to tear apart the disanalogies in that sentence, there is a biological impossibility in attending one’s funeral; you’re dead. (Although technically that still makes you in attendance). Two gay people can live together in love just like anyone else, and they can raise children, even if they themselves did not produce the children. The article handles this very, very poorly. She makes all these claims about parental rights to the child being obfuscated, which makes no sense in the status quo. If a gay couple adopts a child, it’s theirs; the biological parents gave up their claim on the child already. And if the couple uses a surrogate, there’s all sorts of paperwork they can sign to ensure the child remains theirs. Really confusing argument here.
3. Then it comes to the argument that plenty of liberals believe now in the status quo: pro-civil unions, anti-marriage. This, however, sidesteps the entire question: does the government have a compelling state interest in denying marriage rights (which are greater than civil union rights) to gay couples, who provide just as much a benefit to society in raising children? I don’t think the government has such an interest. If the goal of government is to treat people of all different belief systems equally, then it ought not prioritize one conception of marriage above the rest. This doesn’t mean that marriage is being “redefined” for the rest of us; plenty of Christians disagree with some stipulations of government marriage, yet they don’t have any such problem in signing the contract. (This is aside from the fact that marriage has been redefined plenty of times throughout history.)
May 16th, 2012 | 4:09 pm | #15
God, in Scripture, defines marriage. God, in Scripture, defines homosexuality as sin. Is there anything more to be said?
May 16th, 2012 | 5:25 pm | #16
Nikolai: name one time and place before the 1960s in which marriage did not have, at its core, the concept of childbearing and childrearing.
Of course the understanding of marriage differs in different places at different times. The definition of what constitutes “murder” also differs depending on who you ask, and when. But that doesn’t mean that murder is a fully malleable concept with no immutable nucleus. (If I’m wrong, then I guess I can say I just murdered your argument.)
May 16th, 2012 | 5:54 pm | #17
Steve,
“God, in Scripture, defines marriage.”
I understand the Christian argument against gay marriage at an ethical and ontological level. However, to the conversation of civil marriage under to a government that isn’t Christian, this is irrelevant. By legalizing gay marriage at the civil level, we aren’t asking churches to re-define their conceptions of marriage. The claim I’m making is that since we live in a pluralistic society wherein the government should treat people of all faiths equally, it is wrong for them to enforce one notion of marriage, especially since the purpose of government legislation on marriage is not to uphold the church’s understanding of marriage, to provide various benefits to couples who live together, as well as for those couples who decide to raise children. (Again, I think the notion of government-regulated marriage is ridiculous, but since this is never likely going to be deregulated, I have to live with the political reality that exists now.) That notion is not necessarily heteronormative. Christians act like because you’re banning gay marriage you’re somehow upholding the Christian notion of marriage, which is false. Just because the government-regulated marriage is exclusively heterosexual doesn’t mean it is necessarily Christian. (Again, I don’t think Christians would take any pride in the status of government marriage now.)
But even beyond that, I’m very skeptical of this notion of God “defining” marriage. Though all marital relationships in the Bible are heterosexual, God never comes out and says, “Marriage is this…” The legalese Christians used today to define marriage “a union between a man and a woman to the exclusion of no other for the purpose of raising children, etc…” comes from cobbling together various exegetical analyses. That’s not to say it’s wrong for that reason at all; compelling arguments have been made. However, to say marriage was codified to the T in the Bible is false. Polygamous marriage was a norm in the Old Testament, but I am not hearing any Christian churches call for a return to that system.
Gary,
“Nikolai: name one time and place before the 1960s in which marriage did not have, at its core, the concept of childbearing and childrearing.”
I’m sure there aren’t many, if any at all. However, tradition isn’t inherently good. Pre 1960s, miscegenation (mixed-race marriages) were illegal. For a long time marriage was nothing more than a property agreement, far from the notion of two people equal in Christ coming together in love.
And, in addition, this is a compelling reason to ban people we know are infertile or old couples from getting married. If marriage must always involve procreation, then those people can never have the deeply meaningful marriage that you talk about.
I’m not talking about overthrowing marriage as an institution; I’m not even asking churches to do anything other than they’re already doing. I’m talking about the civil rights that stem from civil marriage (keep in mind we’re talking about a government contract, not a divine ordinance), such as hospital visitations, social security benefits, joint tax returns, amongst others. I see no compelling reason to deprive same-sex couples of those things at all.
May 16th, 2012 | 5:56 pm | #18
Again, to make this clear: this is not a “is gay marriage Christian or not” debate. The question we are faced has to do exclusively with government contracts in a pluralistic democracy. This has nothing to do with church marriages or theology whatsoever. It has to do with the legal benefits that arrive from being allowed to participate in a particular institution.
May 16th, 2012 | 6:07 pm | #19
Brother Nikolai,
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the doctrine of marriage as instituted by God in Scripture. If God exists, then his decrees are binding, His say so is true and correct, His pronouncement is truth. If God doesn’t exist, then pell mell for all of us to figure out what it means.
May 16th, 2012 | 6:53 pm | #20
Nikolai,
If find it very curious indeed that you would say that the Christian definition is “cobbled together” and involves some sort of exegetical stretch or leap — However else you understand the account the Creation narrative of Genesis pretty much describes marriage as heterosexual and monogamous from the very beginning:
Genesis 2:21-24
21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman,
(9) for out of Man (10) this one was taken.”
24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
And for those who try the “Jesus never said anything about it” dodge there’s Jesus’ affirmation of this Creation mandate for marriage in Matthew 19:3-9.
I recognize that you are trying to make a case to “get government out of the marriage business” but it seems to me more than a stretch to act as though the Judeo Christian standard is mysterious or unclear. Quite the opposite. The fact that there were plural marriages in the Bible is, clearly, descriptive rather than prescriptive and are notable precisely because they deviate from the Creation norm.
May 16th, 2012 | 7:49 pm | #21
Steve and David C,
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the doctrine of marriage as instituted by God in Scripture. If God exists, then his decrees are binding, His say so is true and correct, His pronouncement is truth. If God doesn’t exist, then pell mell for all of us to figure out what it means.
Again, this argument isn’t about what God’s idea of marriage is. I’m not trying to persuade you about that one way or the other. The question of same-sex marriage at the government level has nothing to do with divine ordinances or decrees, but rather the ability of two consenting adults to attain certain benefits from the state. Since we live in a secular, pluralistic democracy, the government’s obligation is to treat all individuals fairly. It ought not enforce one specifically religious view upon others. I’m not seeing any compelling reasons why the state must necessarily align itself with the Christian church on this issue, especially since there are compelling reasons why it ought not do so. This is especially considering that government marriage is about contractual rights and benefits, not about saying, “this union is sanctified by God” or anything like that.
Civil marriage and church marriage are two different things with two different purposes. I’m trying to talk about the former, but all I’m getting responses about is the latter.
I fail to see how allowing a gay couple to attain benefits from the state, such as hospital visitations, social security and tax benefits, and the hundreds of other civil rights that stem from marriage threatens the religious freedom of any Christian who believes that gay marriage is wrong. This doesn’t “degrade” marriage, since it’s plain to everyone (a) that government-regulated heterosexual marriage is far from perfect and (b) doesn’t force people to do things against their wishes. But by keeping marriage benefits away from gay couples, you do enforce a particular religious viewpoint of marriage, which violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment. But even more than that, the benefits that stem from civil marriage aren’t inherently religious; being allowed to visit one’s significant other in the hospital is something that should be denied to no one. So even though implicitly government marriage in the status quo does favor one concept of marriage above all others, it doesn’t even live up to its supposed ideological source. In addition, by legalizing it, the government doesn’t infringe on the Church’s right to believe certain things; just because it becomes legal at the civil level doesn’t mean churches must now comply. Despite being a member of a society where military spending is a huge deal and people believe the military to be just, as a pacifist I can still conscientiously object. Just because military action is legal doesn’t mean I must participate.
David, as to your Genesis analysis, I don’t want to get too far into that here as I’m not trying to have a theological discussion but instead a political one. All I meant by saying that God didn’t “define” marriage is that how marriage is traditionally defined today isn’t specifically codified in the Bible. That is, the Bible does not say, “Marriage is exclusively male and female; no other such unions can exist, etc. etc.” It’s not clearly laid out like, say, the prohibitions of the Leviticus law. Even that verse you cite is highly metaphorical: what does “one flesh” mean? That requires much more interpretation than an at-face reading. As I mentioned before, you can make coherent arguments that the Bible lends to heterosexist marriage alone, and the text does strongly lean toward that way.
But again, I’m not trying to say the Judeo-Christian ethic is wrong or scripturally incoherent; I’m saying it is irrelevant when talking about receiving legal benefits in a secular society.
May 16th, 2012 | 9:25 pm | #22
Nikolai, you say,
This seems incoherent to me. The Christian argument against gay “marriage” is not just a biblical argument, and if you think it is, then you are wrong to say that you understand it. Christians have been mounting arguments against gay “marriage” on multiple grounds, and for years now. Are they specifically Christian arguments? No, not in the sense that no one could offer them except Christians. But they are Christians’ arguments nonetheless, and they are part of Christians’ overall package of arguments.
To dichotomize biblical arguments away from other arguments is to accept a non-Christian view of knowledge, that only biblical knowledge counts as Christian. Even the Bible discounts that view.
There are ontological and ethical arguments against gay “marriage” that can be made without having to first show that the Bible is (a) true and (b) permissible material in public policy discussions. (For the record, I hold that a is true and I only wish b could be considered to be true once again.)
These arguments are not irrelevant in any discussion—not unless you would suggest that the state has no interest in supporting the single most fundamental structure in civil society.
May 16th, 2012 | 9:57 pm | #23
Tom,
I certainly don’t want to dichotomize Biblical thinking from Christian thinking, and I apologize if that’s what it seems like I’m doing; I’m not. I fully believe that “all truth is God’s truth.” But recognize that since we live in a pluralistic democracy, we implicitly buy into views from competing faiths and belief systems. The government does its best job when it treats most people fairly and gives each person their due in terms of legal rights.
However, your account:
I would say that in the broadest sense, most arguments we hear are specifically Christian arguments. I’m from California, and I remember the Prop 8 debates well. Few of the arguments were nuanced; most said that gay marriage erodes God’s standards for marriage and that the homosexual lifestyle is immoral, which was then backed up by scriptural reasoning. I’ve read your posts here before and you’ve said some things that are wise, especially in calls for civility from both sides, including the pro-gay camp. But overwhelmingly the people I’ve heard making these arguments are using specifically Biblical arguments.
But my difficulty is this. I think it is false to equate marriage as an ontological status to the civil marriage we see now. I’ve already argued here that just because civil marriage is exclusively heterosexual does not mean it is “Christian.” There’s no Christian jargon in the legal contract. The marriage contract as it exists now is a government-based agreement that stipulates certain rights. It has nothing to do with religious recognition whatsoever.
This means that even though we’re arguing about “marriage,” we’re meaning two different things. I’m not accusing these anti-gay marriage arguments of dichotomous thinking; I’m accusing them of not addressing the right type of marriage.
The arguments I hear against gay marriage have nothing to do with the legal rights that stem from marriage (i.e. why is it that a gay man can’t visit his partner in the hospital), but instead have to do with what God thinks about gay people getting married. I think asking if God would find it wrong for a gay couple to be able to have a joint tax return is a very different question than asking what God thinks about blessing gay marriages in the church.
So, for instance, when people say they want “to defend traditional marriage,” the only thing traditional about the marriage they’re defending is that it is heterosexual. However, the benefits and rights provided to married couples by the government, which aren’t based on religious principles, aren’t unique to heterosexual couples. I cannot think of a Christian justification for saying that two people living together who happen to be gay shouldn’t be allowed to share social security benefits.
May 16th, 2012 | 10:05 pm | #24
Also consider that in the status quo, we aren’t banning homosexuality. Gay people can be married in those states where it is legal but also live like they’re married in the states where it isn’t. The question of legalizing gay marriage, then, comes down to the rights that stem from civil recognition. My contention is that even if you believe gay marriage is ontologically wrong, it is not contradictory for the state to recognize the benefits that same-sex couples can provide, especially since the rights provided by civil marriage don’t fundamentally undermine heterosexual marriage, since heterosexual marriages get the same rights too. Plenty of Christians in the status quo are opposed to homosexuality, but aren’t calling for Uganda-type laws against it. They’re fine with gay people receiving the benefits of state protection, and in my view it should be the same way here.
May 17th, 2012 | 3:27 am | #25
While I certainly respect my friends who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, I think that, we have to look at this issue through the prism of equality. To deny gays and lesbians the right to marry, is to deny them full equality. I know that no one who comments here wishes to do this, and that no one who writes here is a bigot. But the result is that gays and lesbians cannot receive the benefits that those who marry enjoy, in terms of insurance, etc.
Some will resond with the respectable argument that marriage, exists in a platonic, or quasi-platonic reality. That is, there’s a marriage “Form”, that makes marriage what it is, and to accept gay marriage is a contradiction; the form of marriage entails a union between a man and a woman.
But if this form of marriage exists, it must have been created by God. And He must have given it essential elements besides being a union between a man and a woman. He must have given it Christian components, if the Christian God exists. But we clearly allow for Muslim marriages, Jewish marriages, atheistic marriages. Are these “real” marriages?
May 17th, 2012 | 1:26 pm | #26
“I’m from California, and I remember the Prop 8 debates well.”
Nikolai Volk, did you vote for Prop. 8 or against Prop. 8?
May 17th, 2012 | 4:03 pm | #27
This is the heart, the crux of the issue. Thanks Tom.
May 17th, 2012 | 9:13 pm | #28
Nikolai,
The history of this issue in jurisdictions that have approved civil unions has been that SSM advocates have cried Foul! Not Enough!
It’s a stepping stone, not a landing ledge.
Bret,
You are repeating yourself. We’ve heard it before.
God created governments. Does that mean they have to be Christian governments to be “real” governments?
God created parents. Does that mean they have to be Christian parents to be “real” parents?
God created horses. Does that mean that they have to be Christian horses to be “real” horses?
May 17th, 2012 | 11:50 pm | #29
Tom,
“To dichotomize biblical arguments away from other arguments is to accept a non-Christian view of knowledge, that only biblical knowledge counts as Christian.”
Would you mind extrapolating on this argument? Specifically, there’s a lacking of a real solid explanation of what “christian” and “non-christian” views of knowledge are, why they’re important, and especially how they would apply to public policy.
Also, your explanation is really confusing because you are arguing that dichotomizing Biblical arguments from other arguments is bad, but then you say that not all “Christian” arguments have to be Biblical arguments. But isn’t that creating a dichotomy between “biblical” and “Christian” arguments?
I also think that Bret really gets to something when he talks about other forms of religious marriage. The true definition of marriage held by many Christians is marriage between a man and a woman under God. If you take it as far as Gary does, it would be “marriage between a man and a woman under God for the intention of procreation” But haven’t we already as a society and as a matter of public policy abandoned that view of marriage?
For one thing, barren women are allowed to marry, and always have been in the case of America, so I’m afraid that Gary’s argument is pretty non unique.
Furthermore, the government recognizes marriages of people of any faith, whether it be Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or even Atheist. But in it’s truest sense, marriages that are not performed before God are not true marriages, theologically speaking.
Keeping this in mind, this completely addresses the common argument “you can’t redefine marriage”. Yes, actually, we can, and we have already in the status quo multiple times. Not only do we allow people of every faith to marry, but we allow them to marry regardless of their motives about procreation. A couple could have absolutely no intention of ever having a child, but we don’t screen couples to make sure that they plan on having children, nor do we require already married couple to have children. In fact, we often criticize other governments for regulation of birth rates.
So I’m afraid that legally there is indeed a difference between the “Christian” concept of marriage and civil marriage. We have already redefined marriage in a secular way that is not a “biblical” definition of marriage because we live in a pluralistic society.
May 18th, 2012 | 12:05 am | #30
Tom,
“God created governments. Does that mean they have to be Christian governments to be “real” governments?
God created parents. Does that mean they have to be Christian parents to be “real” parents?
God created horses. Does that mean that they have to be Christian horses to be “real” horses?”
I’m going to be frank and say that I’m afraid that’s pretty terrible logic. I could just as easily follow this line of reasoning and claim the following:
God created faith. Does that mean that faith has to be a Christian faith to be a “real” faith?
Furthermore, doesn’t this really uproot the entire idea of a single definition of marriage at a heterosexual relationship.
God created marriage. Does that meant that a marriage has to be a Christian heterosexual marriage to be a “real” marriage?
Obviously in the case of horses, they don’t have to be “Christian” horses to be “real” horses. I would think this would be obvious, but horses and marriage aren’t analogous. But in the case of divinely ordained sacraments/ceremonies (such as prayer for example) if someone told me they were praying to Zeus, I would say that it isn’t “real” prayer in truest theological sense because prayer is the communication between humans and God. Since Zeus does not exist, it isn’t true prayer. Legally speaking however, it is prayer because the government recognizes religious freedom and has a different, secular definition of prayer.
The same can be said for marriage. Marriages performed under another religion in front of a false god, I would argue aren’t “true” marriages because they lack likely one of the most important aspects of marriage: God. Yet, in the public realm, we recognize these marriages as legally valid.
May 18th, 2012 | 4:11 am | #31
I would echo Livingston Dell’s excellent comments. As a society, we have made peace with the idea that marriages can be secular, or religious.
This creates a conundrum for the religious believer. Does he try to get his specific idea of what a “real” marriage is, manifested into law, and try to make illegal all other versions? Or does he tolerate other versions that don’t conform to his specific religious notion of what a marriage is? Certainly the latter option is the wiser one, I would submit, and indeed what the United States, as Livingston has pointed out, been our tradition: we allow Christian, Jewish, agnostic, atheistic, Islamic, Buddhist, etc., marriages to be legally valid.
It’s only, curiously, when we come to gays and lesbians that this tradition of tolerance is abandoned.
But if marriage has an essence, that must be reflected in our legal systems, surely nonchristian marriages, from the Christian standpoint, do not conform, fully, to the essential properties of a real marriage?
May 18th, 2012 | 5:09 am | #32
TUAD,
I couldn’t vote for Prop 8, as I wasn’t old enough at the time; I would have had it been a year later. But presuming a counterfactual wherein those events were happening now, I’d vote against that measure. And I’m pretty sure I’m not going to hell for doing it.
Tom,
I think Livingston gets at what I’ve been saying this whole time:
The Christian standard for marriage is not merely that it is heterosexual; it also involves a union with God, amongst other things. But upon sanctioning the marriages of non-Christian couples, you recognize that the state has some ground to grant marriage contracts (which are again, legal contracts, not a philosophical treatise) to conceptions of marriage that do not align with yours. If the only basis for marriage in a civil society is that it is heterosexual, then I find the Christian standard very uncompelling.
Moreover, this becomes even more tricky when reproduction becomes part of the equation. Since the majority of the anti-gay marriage commenters here want to hammer hard on reproduction being the key factor, then there’s a real problem for also allowing the state to grant marriages to old couples or couples that are infertile.
Now you might say, “Well, those couples who aren’t religious still provide a benefit to society in raising children.” But now you have to face the mounting evidence showing that gay couples who adopt children or have a child via surrogate do just as well as straight couples, nor are you giving a justification as to why a gay couple who doesn’t raise children can’t file a joint tax return or have the ability to visit each other in the hospital. I really doubt anyone here finds the last two objectionable, since those are both legal fictions that have nothing to do with some transcendent notion of marriage, but I’m finding a lack of any response as to why a gay couple having those benefits is fundamentally wrong.
May 18th, 2012 | 11:53 am | #33
Livingston,
Thanks for the question about views of knowledge. I can see it needs clarification. My original paragraph read,
What I meant was that a dichotomized view of knowledge, in which only biblically-based arguments count as Christian arguments, is not a Christian view of knowledge. I was not trying to put forth a theory of what counts as a Christian view of knowledge, but rather to point out that this dichotomized view does not count as a Christian view. Whatever a Christian view of knowledge might be, it certainly does not include the stricture, “All Christian knowledge comes from the Bible.
That was wordy. I apologize. I hope it makes sense in spite of that flaw.
You further ask,
I was responding to Nikolai Volk when I brought that up. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly than I did the first time. I was speaking of Christians’ arguments, and noting that Christians’ arguments are not all biblical arguments.
That’s all I was saying. I wasn’t developing any theory of “Christian” knowledge, and I certainly wasn’t contrasting it with “non-Christian” views of knowledge. That might be an interesting project but if you think it would be irrelevant in this context, I agree with you.
The institution of marriage exists for multiple purposes. What makes it unique from all other institutions is that it includes procreation and child-rearing. Absent that condition and there would be no such thing as marriage, as Stephen Heaney has shown.
The government has not taken on the task of requiring fertility tests for marriage. How odd that would be: “You can’t get married unless you can first prove you can have a child out of wedlock.”
That general principle, whereby the government keeps its nose out of where it doesn’t belong, applies to all non-fertile or potentially non-fertile man-woman marriages. No analogous test is required of same-sex “marriages.” It’s obvious enough.
Where do you get that theology from??? That’s just false, as far as any theology I’ve ever encountered.
I don’t have any incentive to keep in mind what is plainly false. Further, marriage has never in the past been re-defined to mean anything other than man and woman. Even in polygamous situations, “marriage” is one man married to one woman, and then the same man married to another woman, etc. The wives are not married to each other.
May 18th, 2012 | 12:15 pm | #34
Livingston,
Faith most certainly does not have to be Christian to be real.
I have faith that my wife will not leave me while I’m off on my next trip. She has faith that I will come back from my next trip. Suppose neither one of us were Christians but we had that same faith. It would still be faith.
Do you really think there is no “real” faith in the world but Christian faith?? That’s just not true, and I would think that should be obvious. Sure, there is no real life-giving, saving faith but Christian faith. But that does not mean there is no real faith except real Christian faith.
Likewise there is (tautologically) no real Christian marriage except real Christian marriage; but that is not to say there is no real marriage except for real Christian marriage.
(As a side note, I’m not sure exactly what “real Christian marriage” is, except that it’s probably between two real practicing Christians who live out their faith in the context of their familial relationships. It’s not a terribly well-defined and delimited concept.)
God created institutions like government and marriage. They are what they are, whether or not they are populated by believers.
So while your criticism of my logic is duly noted, the analogy you yourself used to overturn my logic actually supports it.
(My reference to horses as admittedly over the top. I was trying to have a little fun.)
Frankly the only people I have ever heard say that a marriage has to be Christian in order to be a “real marriage” are people like Bret who want to use that definition as a hammer against definitions of marriage. I’ve never seen Christians say that.
More plainly stated: this so-called “Christian” definition of marriage has not been affirmed by any Christians, as far as I know. It’s a fabrication used against Christians. It’s not a Christian definition of marriage at all.
May 18th, 2012 | 12:16 pm | #35
Let me add this. You say,
That’s the Christian ideal for marriage. It’s not anyone’s definition of marriage, as far as I have ever heard.
May 18th, 2012 | 5:04 pm | #36
I’m re-reading this a few hours later, and I need to clarify one more thing. To say that the ideal for Christian marriage is that it involve a union with God could be misleading, almost as if God were one of the married parties, which is obviously not the case.
Christians are united with God through the indwelling Holy Spirit. God is in the midst of his people when two or more are gathered. The Christian ideal for marriage is that God be at the center of each person’s life and at the center of the couple’s life together. If that’s what is meant by “union” with God, I suppose that’s fine; but in the context of marriage it’s probably not the best word to choose.
Apart from that clarification, my previous point stands. None of this is part of the definition of marriage, but rather the ideal for marriage.
May 18th, 2012 | 11:05 pm | #37
Tom,
“That’s the Christian ideal for marriage. It’s not anyone’s definition of marriage, as far as I have ever heard.”
So now we have come to point of a dichotomy between the “ideal” for marriage and the “definition” marriage. As far as I’m concerned, this dichotomy is plainly arbitrary. 1) What’s the real distinction between “ideal” and “definition” as it pertains to marriage? 2) What criteria does something have to follow to be considered “ideal” or “definitional”? 3) If we’re following this arbitrary dichotomy, why can’t I simply claim that heterosexuality is merely the “ideal” of marriage, not the “definition” of marriage.
This also speaks to many of the “natural” and “essential” arguments that you claim in your article are made that are not necessarily built on religious grounds. If there is an “ideal” marriage, that isn’t the definition of marriage, than is the “essence” of marriage simply the ideal of marriage and not the definition of marriage? And if this is the case, can’t it be argued that the “essence” of marriage is not the “definition” of marriage, hence allowing SSM under the guise “well it’s just not an ideal marriage, but it doesn’t violate the definition of marriage” which you have established?
“Where do you get that theology from??? That’s just false, as far as any theology I’ve ever encountered.”
Let me explain further. You’ve stated in your article that “marriage has its own enduring nature or essence”. I would argue that the nature or essence of marriage that is defined Biblically includes one man, one woman, being married under God. I would argue, and I would hope that you would agree, that God is an essential element of marriage. So, if take something that is essential to marriage out of it (such as heterosexuality as you would argue, and being married under God I would argue) the married in a sense nullified. It’s not actually marriage, it’s an alteration of what marriage was intended to be.
I’m afraid that you’re asking for it both ways. You are asking for us to accept that samesex marriage is not truly marriage because it violates something that is essential about marriage (one man and one woman). Yet, you somehow believe that by taking something else essential out of marriage, God, you are not violating marriage’s essential nature.
If we are truly going to accept that marriage has an essential, unchanging nature, than we must also accept that society has already walked away from that nature. We have already accepted marriages that are not essential (or ideal) are legally valid. Marriages that take God out of the equation are still recognized under law, so as a society we have already defined God out of marriage. This is why I was stating that we have already redefined marriage. We, as a matter of public policy, have defined marriage as something that doesn’t require God. So I’m afraid that the “redefining marriage” argument is non-unique to the SSM situation.
“To say that the ideal for Christian marriage is that it involve a union with God could be misleading, almost as if God were one of the married parties, which is obviously not the case.”
I’m repeating myself, but Tom I guess the question where we differ is whether God is an essential part of marriage. I would argue that God is in fact an essential part of marriage. Not just “ideal” but essential, similar to how you argue that heterosexuality is not “ideal” but essential. If you think that God is not essential part of marriage, than I suppose there are greater issues for me to address than simply SSM.
Like I said earlier, although I don’t think that these marriages are true marriages (I suppose “real” is the wrong word), I think that they could be legally classified as such under the law because we already deviate from the Christian perspective of marriage in the law in the status quo. Quite frankly, I don’t think that allowing SSM marriages does anything to “ruin” or “perverse” my conception of marriage. The same logic follows for those who do terrible things in the name of God. Just because there are Christian radicals that kill innocents in the name of God doesn’t mean that it is less meaningful to be a Christian.
May 19th, 2012 | 3:01 am | #38
I think that the inconsistency that those who believe that Gay marriage doesn’t conform to the real essence of marriage, is best shown with their refusal to adequately grapple with the point that they allow for any type of union, as long as it’s between a man a woman. This, in their view, seems to be THE essence of marriage. It can be an atheistic marriage, Muslim marriage.
I certainly respect Tom, and others who hold to this view. Tom appears to be saying that, marriage, in order a marriage to be a full, real, marriage, it must have essential properties. This makes sense. Tom, I think you’re right that marriage, like anything else, has essential properties, that make it what it is. (I don’t know if you consider Plato’s version of realism, where the essence of things exists outside of space and time, not bound up with physical things, or, whether, like myself, you accept some “Thomistic” version, where the essential properties of things, although real, and what make things what they are, are entirely “within” the sensible objects that they provide the essence for. One need not be Catholic, as I’m not, to accept this.Certainly nominalism is a dead philosophical view, to say the least). So far, so good. You believe that there isn’t just one essential property that makes marriage a real marriage, you believe that it must be between a man and a woman, that is, opposite genders, and that they must be adult men and women, and that they must consent. Is this an accurate reading of your view? If so, we have three essential properties here. You seem to also believe that it must be between ONE man and ONE woman (I infer this based on your comments to Livingston concerning polygomy). Would it be accurate as well to say that the marriage must also be open to the possibility of procreation? If so, the following elements are essential (as opposed to accidential, or incidental properties of marriages) for marriages to be real marriages: 1) between a male and a female. 2) only one male and one female. 3) the male must be an adult; the female must be an adult. 4) the marriage must be consensual. 5) the marriage must be open to the conception of children .
Conspicuously absent here, is any connection to God. That is, Tom, you believe that a marriage can be a real marriage, without any reference to God, or any connection to God. This is very unusual indeed, coming from an evangelical Christian. You believe that God has no essential connection whatsoever, to marriage. The corollary, of this, of course, is that you must believe that God created marriage without any connection to himself.
I think that Livingston’s comment, that if you think that God is not an essential part of marriage, there are more problems than same sex marriage.
May 19th, 2012 | 3:14 am | #39
To clarify, my comments, above, which were written hastily. When I said, in my first paragraph, that for those who reject gay marriage, THE essence of marriage, is that it’s between a man and a woman, I meant to say that that’s what they seem to be focused on; it’s not literally true. As I pointed out later, Tom, and others seem to be saying that real marriage must have the essential properties that I then listed.
I do want to address the distinction, between essential properties and accidental properties. If a TV set’s essential proerties are its internal electronic components that enable it to do what TV’s do (transmit visual and auditory information) its accidental properties may be that it’s a color or black and white set (do they still make such things ;-)), it’s a big screen, or small screen, etc. With regard to marriage, Tom, you seem to be saying that a marriage can be a real marriage, without the participants giving their vows before God, or even acknowledging that God exits. That is, while most religious people believe that a marriage not only is a commitment between two consenting adults of the opposite sex, they also believe that they BOTH make a commitment to God, and WITHOUT this, it’s not a real marriage. You seem to be saying no, that the commitment to God is not an essential element of a real marriage, but an accidential element, similar to how “big screeness” or black and whiteness” is for TV’s.
May 19th, 2012 | 8:36 am | #40
http://www.reformedandconservative.com/2012/05/mommy-or-daddy-pick-one-why-same-sex.html
May 19th, 2012 | 10:49 am | #41
“I couldn’t vote for Prop 8, as I wasn’t old enough at the time; I would have had it been a year later. But presuming a counterfactual wherein those events were happening now, I’d vote against that measure. And I’m pretty sure I’m not going to hell for doing it.”
Nikolai Volk, do you support the legalization of same-sex marriage?
May 19th, 2012 | 11:15 pm | #42
TUAD,
Yes… that’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. I haven’t been evasive about it.
Tom,
I think Livingston its it right on the head:
You say that the notion of God being involved in a marriage is “not anyone’s definition of marriage, as far as I have ever heard.” Um… yes, it is the Christian notion of marriage, it’s not just “ideal.” Again, the Christian conception of marriage is not merely that it is heterosexual, nor should it be. Heterosexual marriages can actually be quite damaging.
You qualify by saying,
This is true in terms of the legal contract, which is what I’ve been saying the whole time. It is not exactly true, however, in the case of the Christian notion of marriage. In most church vows I’ve heard, God is spoken of as actively involved in the marriage process. Not merely in the way of “God is omnipresent, so he is in this marriage as well,” but in a unique way. Marriage is a unique relationship, which means God has a unique role.
But then we’re back in the same problem when you say,
Okay, so now we’ve got a criteria: procreation and child rearing. (Thank you, by the way, for delineating this, as often times this conversation gets muddied by a lack of standards.) First, I would argue that physically having the ability to procreate specifically is not a criteria that makes heterosexual marriage the only thing that should receive legal benefits. As mentioned previously, a couple, same-sex or heterosexual, can adopt children and still provide to society the same benefits as a couple who biologically birthed the child. I don’t see why the state can’t give benefits to couples that make that same sacrifice. Second, and I’ve beaten this to death already, this is a great reason to exclude infertile and old couples too. As the Heaney article attests, at that point the marriage is merely for the couple’s benefit, which is for some reason a bad thing.
You respond to this by saying,
(A) You don’t have to have sex out of wedlock to take a fertility test. A man just has to submit a sperm sample and a woman has to go to her OBG/YN to see if she is properly releasing eggs. No sex required. (B) Just because the government isn’t doing it now doesn’t mean it shouldn’t do it under your standard, especially since (C) procreation is the unique thing that makes heterosexual marriage worth being the only kind to receive benefits from the state. You can’t say “procreation and child rearing are what makes marriage so important and unique,” but then just gloss over those couples who are physically incapable of doing so. If procreation is as important as you say, then couples who prior to getting married submit a failed fertility test or old couples shouldn’t receive the benefits from the state that heterosexual couples who can reproduce do.
But finally, you say, in terms of society’s changing conceptions of marriage,
Just because it has always been heterosexual doesn’t mean that marriage’s definition hasn’t changed. One man and multiple woman marriage is radically different than the standards we have today, and frankly I would argue that situation is far more prone to abuse than same-sex marriages. Moreover, it wasn’t just the parties involved that were different, it was the very structure of marriage that was so removed from what we experienced today. In the past marriage has been nothing but a property agreement, especially for leaders to reserve their power and ensure their lineage. It was not, as we understand it today, a meaningful relationship between two adults who both equally want the marriage.
May 20th, 2012 | 11:05 am | #43
Q: “Nikolai Volk, do you support the legalization of same-sex marriage?”
A: “TUAD,Yes… that’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. I haven’t been evasive about it.”
Just wanted to be extra sure.
May 20th, 2012 | 2:14 pm | #44
Nikolai,
Concerning “God” being essential to the Christian definition of marriage, could you provide a source, please? I’m quite sure you will not find anyone saying “If God is not in it, then it is not a marriage.”
You will easily find Christians saying it is good, or ideal, or best, or desirable, or otherwise a really great idea for God to be a part of a couple’s marriage. But although Christians would say that’s a very good thing for marriage, and necessary for a marriage to be all it can be, I don’t know of any who would say it is required for a marriage to be called a marriage at all.
You give up the definition yourself. A damaging heterosexual marriage is a marriage. It’s a rotten marriage, a horrible one, but it’s a marriage.
Maybe we’re getting confused between the definition of a Christian marriage and the Christian definition of marriage. They are not the same thing. When the question was first raised here it was not about the definition of a Christian marriage, and in fact that definition has no relevance to the discussion at hand.
May 20th, 2012 | 4:33 pm | #45
Okay, so there are three issues here that I feel are being unaddressed:
1. The “Ideal” and Definition Debate
I would be hard-pressed to find a Christian couple who would only find having God in their marriage merely as “potentially beneficial” or “a nice addition.” No, God being involved in the marriage is an active, important process that’s important to living out that marriage. So when you say,
I find that in the public sphere, Christians are advocating for a severely watered down version for marriage. As I mentioned earlier, which has gone largely unrefuted, just because something is legal doesn’t mean you must accept its veracity. No Christians are advocating for the barring of infertile or old couples from getting married, despite the fact that they fail to meet the irreducible criterion of marriage that you have, namely procreation and child-rearing. Those couples cannot do that, and at the point that they’re undermining the notion of marriage that you’re trying to uphold and are getting married merely for the benefit of the adults (which, as your Heaney article points out, is somehow wrong), then they ought not receive the benefits from the state.
At this point, you’re already granting exceptions to your “definition” of marriage. I’ve posited that in the case of receiving legal benefits, same-sex unions can meet the criteria for having those rights (hospital visitations, social security benefits, and joint tax returns), and in the case of adoption or surrogates they can in fact raise children, and as I’ve cited before they fare just as well as heterosexual couples.
2. Private Conceptions of Marriage vs. Government Contracts
This is where I feel this discussion has been sorely mishandled. My advocacy does not by any means suggest that this “Christian definition” (which is different from “the ideal”) is bad, or that it ought not receive benefits from the state. Instead, I posit that same-sex unions meet the criteria of receiving benefits from the state and should receive them as well. Marriage isn’t a “zero-sum” game; just by allowing gay couples to marry doesn’t mean that heterosexual unions are somehow less valuable. That’s just not true at all.
I fail to see why legalizing gay marriage as a government contract stipulating certain benefits (this is what we’re talking about here, people) means that Christians are forced to believe something they do not wish. I personally am very torn in my reading of the “is homosexuality right or wrong” debates. However, despite my personal undecidedness on the subject, I still feel I can support these unions under the government and not feel coerced into believing some overarching moral position. Again, I hear no laws coming from Christian communities barring homosexuality as a whole, but these communities can still believe that homosexuality is wrong. Legalization doesn’t mean you must accept it as a moral good.
If civil marriage was to run against private conceptions of marriage (which I established it already has, for those couples who can’t reproduce), that doesn’t mean people couldn’t hold their private views on marriage any longer. The very first question I asked in this comment section seems largely unanswered, and that’s because I think no one here really would find it objectionable for a gay couple to file a joint tax return, share social security benefits, or be able to visit each other in the hospital.
3. The Type of Society We Live In
In reality, this should be the first thing we talk about when discussing this issue. I said earlier in this discussion that we live in a “secular, pluralist democracy;” however, I would remove “secular” from that definition. (My bad). We live in a pluralistic democracy. Which means we live in a society with a multitude of views, and as part of good governance we ought to find a way to respect the beliefs of as many people as possible. Obviously, this can only go so far; the government ought not sanction acts of terrorism or violence, so it shouldn’t legally protect terrorist attacks by extremist groups. Rather, the government ought to respect the competing claims on social issues.
In this debate, we have two competing claims of marriage. One says that marriage should be exclusively heterosexual under the state. The second says that while heterosexual marriage is good, there is nothing in that prevents same-sex unions from receiving state benefits as well. The government needs to weigh these claims fairly; it cannot just merely defer to tradition because this second view is new and unfamiliar.
In passing I referenced the Netherlands earlier, and I’d like to expound upon that here. In Dutch schooling, any parent who wishes to send her child to a school that fits her religious beliefs can at no additional cost. If you’re a Christian, Christian schooling is free. Same for Muslims and Jews. If you have no particular affiliation, then you get secular schooling for free, just like everyone else.
This is much better than what goes on in the United States; here, people conflate “secular” and “neutral,” which leads to schooling being exclusively secular. The high cost of private school tuition means there are active incentives for parents to opt into the public school system alone. This is not government neutrality. What the Netherlands does is true neutrality; it respects all belief systems equally. Furthermore, Just because the Christian’s taxes likely help pay for Muslim schooling doesn’t mean that they must now believe Islam. The success of this model (there is markedly less religious strife in Holland) is because they believe that disagreement doesn’t have to mean they can’t come together as a unified society. This is truly what America needs to be striving for.
In this way, were the government to sanction same-sex unions, those people who believe same-sex unions provide the same social goods as heterosexual marriages do (which, in the US, is now a majority of the citizenry) have their beliefs respected, as well as those who believe solely in heterosexual marriages. Both couples receive equal benefits. My contention here is that the government, when competing claims to certain issues are made, ought to be minimally invasive in the denying of a certain group’s beliefs. I believe that in the status quo this is not happening, and as a result we need to rectify it.
Just to make it clear to Tom, TUAD, Steve Drake, and all of the other commenters who share the anti-same sex marriage view: I’m not saying that your view is wrong, or that it ought not receive no respect. I believe Christians should receive the same respect in the public sphere as anyone of any belief system. However, we live in a democracy with competing value claims, and we should be striving toward an inclusive society, which has been shown to lead to less strife among religious groups that disagree.
May 20th, 2012 | 5:25 pm | #46
No, Nikolai.
Where did you get that from? From my not insisting that God’s involvement be part of the definition of marriage? From my not insisting that only Christians can marry? I sure hope not; there’s no way you could draw that conclusion from what I wrote. Was it from my not insisting that a bad marriage be called a non-marriage? Please. How do you propose the government manage that oversight? Do we need inspectors visiting every couple twice a year to find out whether their relationship is a marriage or not?
The same question goes for this:
One reason Christian don’t advocate against infertile couples getting married is because, well, we have this other thing we oppose, which is (not to put too fine a point on it) finding out whether they’re fertile before they get married. Especially since sometimes it takes years before that question is answered–which is also why (part of the reason) there’s no history of Christians telling childless 30-year-olds, “Oops, sorry Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you got no kids, you gotta call it off!”
As for older couples, well, have you ever heard of a grandfather clause? It has a rather more literal sense in this context than usual. Further, it’s consistent with the principle that we don’t get the government poking around into the question of whether a couple is going to have babies before it issues a marriage license. And frankly it’s often consistent with the role appropriate to that age: grandparenting.
Meanwhile, the question of whether Bill and Frank are a fertile couple is rather easier to answer. Same with Linda and Suzanne. Hardly any pre-marital medical testing required for that one, as I know you know.
You are rather over-eager to extrapolate the results of research into lesbian parenting to subsume all same-sex parenting. Not good sociological methodology there. At best your research supports lesbian “marriage.” I don’t know–if someone offered that as a compromise in this culture conflict, I might just listen. (That’s a safe offer, I know. No one’s going to do that.)
Actually there’s a good case to be made that genderless marriage degrades man-woman marriage; see this PDF.
You think “the type of society we live in” should be “the first thing we talk about when discussing this issue.” I’m sorry, but I’m a member of this society, as are SSM advocates, and we both have our opinions concerning the type of society we want to live in, and the type of society we think is right. But suppose you were right in your assertion. Why didn’t you open up your mouth about it when the type of society we lived in was one in which SSM was considered wrong, outrageous, and unthinkable? By your standard, SSM advocates have been wrong from the start to want to change the type of society we live in.
SSM advocates have absolutely failed to do that from the get-go. They’ve been trying to find a way to disrespect the beliefs of the vast majority. (It’s only recently that they could claim they had numbers on their side–after they accomplished much of their cultural revolution). And they still are disrespecting the views of many, when for example they pounce on a printer in Arizona who refuses to print their explicit and political material. In other words, maybe maximum mutual respect is your ideal, but I don’t think it has the slightest bearing on SSM advocates’ motivations. If it did they wouldn’t have initiated this massive cultural insurgency upon us.
Yes, in terms of the belief systems you mentioned. But see below for more.
Wrong. Obviously wrong. Blazingly, glaringly, wrong. To call SSM “marriage” is to tell me that I have to accept that Bill and Frank can be married, and that is violent disrespect concerning my belief system.
And this is the problem with thinking the Netherlands practices true neutrality: it’s impossible. It’s a lie. “True neutrality” of that sort absolutely nixes any belief other than in true neutrality.
Really???!!!! HONESTLY???!!!! What on earth were you saying then? That you’re truly neutral toward it????
May 20th, 2012 | 6:36 pm | #47
Okay, this could help clarify things. Suppose we did what I want the state to do, and not regulate marriage at all. There would be no legal contract whatsoever, which would mean if, for instance, you were a Christian, you would just have a church marriage and you wouldn’t have to go through all the legal mumbo-jumbo. Would marriage still exist, absent such a contract?
(Despite my stance against state marriage, I realize that deregulating the institution is a political move no one is willing to make, so I have to live with what the status quo has.)
May 20th, 2012 | 6:52 pm | #48
I think that it’s fair to say that we have people on both sides of the SSM “debate”, who are respectful and decent, and, unfortunately, we have people on both sides of this SSM “debate” who are disrespectful, and indecent, at least concerning how they treat those on the other side. I have no doubt that Tom, and others who oppose SSM are being respectful and decent. And I think that Tom’s right that they have been subject to great disrespect from some on the pro SSM side. This is cause for great saddness, for those of us on the pro SSM side, to see those who claim to share our views, behaving in such a morally reprehensible manner toward those who disagree with SSM.
This is an issue about arguments, not about attacking other people.
I would like to address the essence argument, for anyone who wishes to consider it, and/or respond. For those who oppose SSM the argument that they rely on is that marriage has an essence to it, and only those relationships that conform to this essence can be called real marriages, and therefore be legal. But they seem not to consistently apply this argument. That is, they argue that one of the essential properties of a real marriage is that it’s between a man and a woman, and since obviously SSM does not fulfill this criterion, it’s not a real marriage. However, they also argue that, in order for a marriage to be a real marriage, it must be open to procreation. But yet they allow for heterosexual couples, who are not fertile, or who will never intend to have children, to get married. Tom points to the pragmatic problems that the government would encounter trying to enforce the rule that every couple must be open to procreation. But if only having marriages that accurately reflect what the essenece of a real marriage is, is so important, souldn’t we at least try? And if we’re not successful, we’re not successful, but we should at least give it a valiant effort. Perhaps we could ban contraception, thereby at least not having readily available legal commercial methods for couples not being open to procreation. Perhaps we could only allow those of childbearing years to get married. True, this may seem unkind to older people who wish to marry (like it may seem unkind to gay/lesbian couples), but since it wouldn’t be a real marriage, (since the elderly couples cannot procreate) we have to do what’s right. One could say, our intent is not to be unkind, and we wish the best for elderly couples, but the cannot “marry”, because it wouldn’t be a real marriage. We have to do what’s right. And, if we’re concerned with elderly couples who have married prior to this law going into effect, perhaps we could deal with their situation the same way we would deal with “married” gay/lesbian couples who have “married” in states where it’s currently legal.
May 21st, 2012 | 11:50 am | #49
Tom Gilson to Nikolai Volk: “Wrong. Obviously wrong. Blazingly, glaringly, wrong. To call SSM “marriage” is to tell me that I have to accept that Bill and Frank can be married, and that is violent disrespect concerning my belief system.”
True.
“And this is the problem with thinking the Netherlands practices true neutrality: it’s impossible. It’s a lie. “True neutrality” of that sort absolutely nixes any belief other than in true neutrality.”
Seems to be an argument for being open and honest that both sides don’t “respect” the other side’s arguments and positions (whatever “respect” means in that context) given that neutrality is a myth.
The legal marriage definition debate is really a zero-sum game.
There’s a winner and a loser.
P.S. Do I “respect” the arguments made by proponents of same-sex marriage?
Define “respect”. Then I’ll be able to answer you.
May 21st, 2012 | 3:21 pm | #50
Here are the truths from which we can not escape. SSM
involves a pledge. It’s a pledge of committed homosexuality. Homosexuality is idolatry [Romans 1]. Idolatry has no place in a country that pledged to acknowledge the moral directives of the Lord God. The one God that it attributed its blessings to on April 30, 1789. The creator who condems same sex relations, teaching us for this very reason He will destroy a nation, Leviticus 18:22-24. This nation was dedicated to God. Sadly our Chief officer is self serving enough to ignore it and deviate from acknowledging His ways one. From, “One nation under God”, to “One nation deviant of His way,” white washing inordinate sexual appetite under a banner of civil rights its purest leader would have never endorsed.
May 21st, 2012 | 3:45 pm | #51
One makes arguments to persuade. Arguments based on a common religious belief are going to persuade a religious person with a shared belief, but are not persuasive to someone who is not religious, or does not believe religion is relevant to public policy issues of this kind. So you make the kinds of arguments that will persuade others, based on what they are receptive to. that does not invalidate your religious arguments, or invalidate your secular arguments because you also believe there are religious reasons that lead to the same conclusion. The notion that the existence of a religious belief as one of the motives of a policy argument somehow invalidates the argument has no bearing in logic or justice. It would penalize people with religious beliefs per se, and is therefore unreasonable. It would, for examplel invalidate rthe declaration of Independence because that document cites a divine origin for the civil rights of Americans, justifying their creation of a new nation independent of the Britich monarchy.
The notion that the concept of “evolution” should validate same sex marriage because it is “a change” is a misunderstanding of the very concept of evolution by natural selection. The essence of scientific evolutionary theory is that LOTS of changes occur through random processes, but only SOME of those changes survive, because they better meet the needs of the organism than the other options they compete against. Natural selection does not FAVOR change per se, it allows change to occur in an organism IF the change is advantageous to the organism in its reproduction and survival.
It is far from obvious that same sex marriage confers any particular survival and reproductive benefits onto human societies. It does not per se provide more opportunities to reproduce.
The fact that marriage as a social institution has existed for many generations of human society, and across many cultures throughout the world, even as other institutions have changed significantly, is an indication that normative marriage contributes towards survival and reproduction in human societies. The polygamous variation of marriage has also had a long history in certain cultures, and continues to the present.
The hypothesis that same sex marriage will also survive through natural selection and establish itself as a third continuing pattern of marriage in human cultures is so far just that, an hypothesis. It is hardly proven in any scientific sense. And the question that skeptics can offer in response to the hypothesis is, if SSM is a viable, survivable option that will benefit human societies, why hasn’t it appeared before in the long history of human marriage culture? We know that some earlier societies were tolerant of homosexual relationships (as in ancient Greece and Rome), yet there was no apparent history of SSM in those societies. Doesn’t the lack of SSM through the known history of humanity bring into question the hypothesis that it is a practice that contributes enough to the survival of human cultures that it will be selected for, and incorporated into the options for human behavior?
If we are regarding human societies as analogs of biological entities, then the survival and long term persistence of SSM is an open question which can only be answered by the passage of time. The advocates of SSM hardly conceive of it as a contingent social experiment, which may yield to the heartless logic of natural selection. They actively claim it to be a civil right, which must be instituted due to certain imperative commitments in societies, and they would reject the idea that it has contingent status and may expire if it does not over time add to the differential survival of societies.
The mutational, contingent aspect of SSM raises another point: In the environmental ethic, actions which may have a major impact on the “human environment” (those words are straight out of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act) are required to be studied extensively by the Federal government before the government implements such actions. The “cumulative impact” of many small changes over time and geography is specifically called out as one of the impacts that must be wieghed before a formal decision is made to go forward with the change. In the most extreme version of this principle, adopted in Europe, the “Precautionary Principle” prohibits going forward with a proposed action if there is any substantial uncertainty about the outcomes, placing the burden of proof on the advocates of a major change.
Environmentalism argues that alteration of the natural environment is something that should be avoided whenever possible, so that every wetland and every potential habitat for wildlife should be preserved as a presumptive policy. We should not, for example, introduce an exotic species into a natural environment, since such species can upset the balance of nature in an ecosystem. Recognition of the limits of human foresight argue that natural aspects of the ecosystems we live in should be preferred over changes, and that the strong burden of proof is on those proposing innovations to demonstrate that they will do no harm.
Yet we have people like Barack Obama proposing that America blunder, willy nilly, into a profound change in the human social ecosystem, with no consideration or weighing of the potential negative effects over time and space. A respect for the limits of human knowledge would argue for sitting back and watching how the notion of SSM plays out in other nations, and in the few states that have chosen to adopt it, and see how it actually affects human society in its happiness, prosperity, health, integrity, and survivability. It is a remarkable innovation, and we are conducting a vast experiment, whose outcome we have no certain assurance to know. We simply lack the wisdom to predict how this will play out over time, because we have no examples from human history.
May 22nd, 2012 | 10:37 am | #52
First of all a faulty premise cripples this discussion. It trips over nothing and falls into unreality by accepting that there is such a thing as “separation of church and state”. Church and state address overlapping areas of concern, church the larger area of the two. An imaginary meme of “separation” blinds one to the reality that a when a state legislates, it is legislating morality. There is no other kind of legislation. Opponents of SSM should not accept the premise that one can discuss SSM without the moral systems that under-gird and spawn secular systems.
Secondly, if one wants to conduct “secular” ( to indulge one’s taste for fantasy) arguments then the science of Anthropology and the art of History both offer stunning affirmation of the fact that the man-woman-children family is a wired-in structure of the human mind, and more importantly, the basic building block of all societies. The testimony of Anthropology and of History both confirm that if this building block become deconstructed then the surrounding society collapses like a termite-riddled building. The preponderance of this disciplined evidence indicates that conventional marriage is essential to the cohesion of civilizations.
A moderate admixture of divorce has not proven fatal, a large incidence is fatal to a civilization. Is someone out there arguing that our civilization is not experiencing decay as a result of the decomposition of marriage, or that SSM will not accelerate the decomposition? The supposition that SSM functions well as an analogue to marriage producing societal cohesion has been inadequately tested to regard as a basis for foundational changes.
Many supporters of SSM don’t realize that using the word “marriage” for gay families is invading upon a very sensitive and beloved area. When one broadens a definition, one dilutes it. And the highly specific term “marriage” (and its very specific translations i.e. geedzeco, matrimonio, Ehe, kasal, 婚姻, hjónaband, etc.) is a very old and has an universally accepted definition.
Like it or not, this definition is also beloved and considered sacred, a precious sacrament, by most of the people in the world. Indeed for the world’s largest religious sect, the intercourse of a man and woman is the sacrament itself. Without this act the public ceremony in the church is considered void, there was no marriage.
If Lutherans created a ceremony for Protestant adolescents called “Bar Mitzvah”,
Jews would be well within their rights to object and say , “OK, we are glad you agree that it generally is a good practice, but create a different name for your puberty-rite ceremony. We have deeply loved our term “Bar Mitzvah” for 5000+ years. It has had a powerful effect on holding our civilization together. Have a little respect for the sake of civility and good manners.”
Proponents of SSM are accusing opponents of hate and bigotry. This has occurred in the past, it used to be a real concern. But today marriage is being damaged by the gay community, not out of hate, but by a failure to love. A bit of agape is missing. Leave marriage alone, that it is sacred to most people should concern you. SSM proponents are attempting to purloin marriage. They should instead create some new and appropriate structure for their unions.
May 22nd, 2012 | 12:55 pm | #53
Excellent comments. Thanks.
May 22nd, 2012 | 2:20 pm | #54
I didn’t get an answer to my initial question directly, but in a way Kevin gets to what I was aiming for when he says:
This would be a compelling argument… for banning homosexuality. Or at the very least not allowing gay couples to live together at all. The status quo, which most people are okay with for some reason, does not solve for this claim. Gay people can already pledge their love to each other and decide to live a life together. In a sense, they already can get “married;” they just don’t get certain benefits from the state in doing so. If preventing “committed homosexual unions” is what you’re really concerned about, then you should be advocating for laws against gay couples living together at all, not whether or not they should receive certain rights from the state. Again, I haven’t gotten a single compelling reason why a gay man being allowed to visit his partner in the hospital is a significant moral affront.
This is why I asked if marriage were solely private (which, personally, is what I want to happen, however unlikely that is), would it disappear? I don’t think so. Marriage, for the majority of human history, existed without the state providing certain benefits to it. I don’t understand why people are so convinced that if marriage were reformulated that the institution would cease to exist. I think that’s bizarre. Gay couples can live together and call themselves “married” now, but that doesn’t force you into “accepting” that identification, nor would that change if they also got to file a tax return together. I’ve never gotten a clear explanation as to why legalization means forced acceptance.
This is why I want deregulation of marriage, personally. I think it’s ridiculous that only heterosexual couples should get to file joint tax returns or share social security benefits (not because I think heterosexuality is bad, but because I don’t see why those benefits are unique to marriage). I think it’s inhumane to deprive anyone a right to visit their loved one in the hospital. I think the marriage you all on this blog section so desire would exist just fine without the government providing benefits to it, and if we deregulated it there wouldn’t be any gripes about rights distribution if the government got its hands out of it.
May 22nd, 2012 | 2:22 pm | #55
Raymond,
I wasn’t using evolution to justify my arguments, and I hope same-sex marriage advocates aren’t doing it either. Not a very convincing line of reasoning. If marriage is solely about procreation (which we’ve already established isn’t the case, since plenty of couples can legally get married and have children), then at worst gay couples just do nothing to further increase the human population, despite their ability to raise children who are adopted. Plus, the evolution example is a disanalogy because gay people aren’t a separate species; we aren’t introducing a new organism into the human ecosystem.
Furthermore, even if we were to ban gay marriage in protection of this ecosystem, there’d be no benefit gained in terms of reproduction. Sexual orientation isn’t transitive; were we to bar gay marriage, these people wouldn’t then say, “Well, now that I don’t have this option, I guess I’ll go procreate.”
May 22nd, 2012 | 2:34 pm | #56
Tom and De Las Casas,
A clarification on the church-state point. I was not saying that Netherlands was “perfectly neutral.” Do I think a government could ever be perfectly neutral? Probably not. I think a government could try really hard, maybe with soft universalist morality in mind, but then they would arrive at a point where arguments become so clearly delineated one direction or another that it’d be impossible to impartially weigh one way or the other.
My point was not that church and state shouldn’t interact. In fact, in most societies that have more sensible church-state policy than the US does (which, as many articles on Evangel can attest to, is not so hot), do have interactions between church and state. The Netherlands definitely does, since the government actively sanctions religious activities.
Rather, my point is a recognition of a reality: we live in a pluralistic society. Many beliefs conflict. I’m not saying you should just assume that no one is right because everyone is; hardly my claim. My point is that even though everyone has convictions, there will come points in time where religious beliefs conflict on particular policy issues. The government, who should try to maximize religious and ideological liberty as much as possible, should not defer to one side if at all possible.
This is why the Netherlands model is, I believe, one the US ought to move towards. The government sanctions all types of schooling, religious or otherwise. This does mean, however, that Christians pay taxes that go to Muslim schools, Muslims pay taxes that go to Jewish schools, secularists pay taxes that go to religious schools, etc. However, they don’t see that as problematic. They believe that competing religious beliefs can still allow for them to come together as a diverse populous and have a unified vision for a country. Is this perfectly neutral? No. But it is far better than what we face here, and I think the pragmatics bear this out quite plainly.
May 22nd, 2012 | 3:35 pm | #57
Nikolai,
You say,
I’m really, really having trouble seeing how you come up with these things. The argument of which you speak goes like this:
2. Homosexuality is idolatry.
3. Therefore homosexuality should be banned, or gay couples should not be allowed to live together.
Your syllogism is missing a major premise:
1. Everything that is idolatry should be banned.
That’s just not true.
Your “at the very least” clause is also missing this:
2a. The government ought to inspect same-sex roommates to determine whether they are heterosexual.
That’s not true, either.
Do you see the illogic of your position?
Do you see that you are just wrong, right off the bat?
Your conclusion in the first sentence here has already been shown false. Note also that opposition to SSM really is about preventing SSM, not “committed homosexual unions,” which is a separate issue with its own separate moral and practical ramifications. So your premise in that sentence is also false.
That’s strike three.
If you’re going to argue for deregulation of marriage, it seems to me you ought to be starting from a significantly more successful base than that. And of course you would also need to take into account the reasons that government has an interest in marriage.
May 22nd, 2012 | 3:49 pm | #58
Nikolai Volk,
Do you affirm Scripture’s teachings that same-sex behavior is sin?
May 22nd, 2012 | 5:09 pm | #59
TUAD,
I’m not talking about that now. If your standard for banning same-sex marriage is merely that scripture prohibits it, then homosexuality should also be banned, not just gay marriage. If homosexuality is as much a moral ill as many have made it out to be, then by that logic it’s just as much a danger even if it doesn’t receive benefits from the government.
Tom,
1. I wasn’t trying to make a general claim about arguments against same sex marriage, I apologize if I was unclear. I was specifically responding to Kevin’s point, in which he argued,
My point is that “committed homosexuality” already exists in the status quo. Not granting certain legal benefits doesn’t change that. So, following from that, if Kevin’s concern is about “committed homosexuality,” then logically it would be impermissible for the state to allow that. Yes, it may be difficult to regulate, but if you’re going to take a principled stance against something then the pragmatic difficulty shouldn’t outweigh the moral harms Kevin outlined.
So no, my premise is not “all idolatry should be banned.” I definitely agree with you in the incorrectness of that statement. Rather, following Kevin’s specific argument (even though he doesn’t say these premises directly, I think it’s fair to presume given the air of his statement):
1. Committed homosexuality is a sin. (Keep in mind Kevin did not delineate the difference between certain benefits from a marriage contract and two gay people living together as a “gay married” couple without said contract)
2. The state should not endorse committed homosexuality, for it violates the natural family order, which has X, Y, and Z impacts.
3. In the status quo, “committed homosexuality” is allowed.
4. Therefore, the state ought to reverse its policies on this issue.
When you clarify, “Note also that opposition to SSM really is about preventing SSM, not “committed homosexual unions,” which is a separate issue with its own separate moral and practical ramifications,” this gets at the precise tension I’ve tried to identify this entire time, which I feel has gone underrefuted. Currently, gay people can live together and basically live a “married” life; the only thing that separates them from straight couples are specific benefits from the state. However, this state of affairs does not in any way force you to accept their conception of marriage. I don’t see how by suddenly giving them rights you are forced to accept their conception of marriage as correct. Gay people who reject the notion that marriage must be about procreation aren’t forced to accept it now because it is legalized under the state.
2. You say against my position of deregulation, “And of course you would also need to take into account the reasons that government has an interest in marriage.” It’s interesting that you bring this up, as it takes me back to that Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy article you posted awhile ago, where it argued via non-religious reasoning that same-sex couples ought not receive the same benefits under the state.
Though well-written, I was rather disappointed in the article’s handling of my position, which occurred only in one paragraph. They basically make the argument that deregulation leads to more social programs, which is a problem for those who like small government (like myself). These are the policies to solve for orphans, social programs for mothers harmed by deadbeat fatherhood, etc. However, the argument entirely fails in uniqueness, insofar as during the time when the proliferation of those programs occurred, the government was still incentivizing marriage. Moreover, I don’t see the logic of, “If the government doesn’t incentivize it, less people will get married!” The majority of benefits received by being married are invisible most of the time, so it’s not as if people are scheming to get married because they might get a cool benefit down the line.
My point being, I don’t know why so many people want to defend status quo marriage. It has a fifty percent failure rate, not to mention the other bunch of problems associated with it. I believe marriage has always been a private function, not one that requires the government’s involvement.
May 22nd, 2012 | 5:11 pm | #60
And to further clarify my response to Kevin, notice that he said, “Homosexuality is idolatry [Romans 1]. Idolatry has no place in a country that pledged to acknowledge the moral directives of the Lord God.” His own argument buys into the “all things idolatry must be banned,” since he says (a) that homosexuality (not gay marriage specifically, but homosexuality in general) is idolatry and (b) the state has NO place to acknowledge such idolatry.
May 22nd, 2012 | 9:17 pm | #61
What frustrates me about this:
… is how simplistically you seem to think we think, as if there is but one thing that matters, just one thing a Christian defender of marriage would consider before choosing a policy position. “If it’s immoral then outlaw it!” Nothing about broad social effects of the immoral act, nothing about how it would be monitored, nothing about the evils that would engender, nothing about how it would be enforced, nothing about whether prevention is practical, nothing about how it would be policed, judged, punished… Nothing but “hey you dummies, why won’t you be consistent with your own single-minded standard?”
Nikolai, you didn’t see it last time, but I’m trying to make it plain this time. We’re not as simple-minded as you make us out to be.
In a word, detecting and preventing SSM is infinitely easier and less inappropriately intrusive than detecting and preventing the other immorality of which you speak. Policing, judging, and sentencing infractions aren’t even a factor for SSM if SSM is impossible in the first place.
So no, it’s not the case that if our standard for banning SSM is merely that Scripture prohibits it then homosexuality should also be banned.
It astonishes me that this needs to be explained. It should be more than obvious.
And no, it’s also not the case that our standard for preventing (not banning!) SSM is merely that Scripture prohibits it.
May 22nd, 2012 | 9:28 pm | #62
You write,
You don’t? Seriously?! Legally, my friend, I would be forced to accept their (ahem) conception of marriage as correct.
Here’s where your incoherent thinking shines through magnificently.
1. If SSM bothers me, no matter, because I’m not forced to accept it as correct, even if it’s made law. Therefore it shouldn’t concern me if SSM is enacted.
If you’re going to suggest I take that position for that reason, then consistency would require you to say to the SSM advocate,
2. If man-woman-only marriage bothers you, no matter, because you’re not forced to accept it as correct, even if it’s law. Therefore it shouldn’t concern you if SSM is never enacted.
May 23rd, 2012 | 1:14 am | #63
Tom Gilson: “If you’re going to suggest I take that position for that reason, then consistency would require you [Nikolai Volk] to say to the SSM advocate,
2. If man-woman-only marriage bothers you, no matter, because you’re not forced to accept it as correct, even if it’s law. Therefore it shouldn’t concern you if SSM is never enacted.”
Nikolai Volk, are you being consistent?
May 23rd, 2012 | 1:21 am | #64
Tom,
(1) When I was addressing TUAD (another clarity issue here, my apologies), I was pre-empting the trap I was expecting him to spring on me based on the past interactions we have had, not attempting a reductionist, “If wrong, then illegal” claim. For instance, if I were to say, “Yes, I accept those prohibitions on homosexual behavior,” (notice he said behavior and not marriage) then I would expect him to say, “then how could you believe in gay marriage?” The argument I was expecting was simplistic; it wasn’t the same argument I’ve been having with you. Again, my apologies on the confusion there.
(2) On the “acceptance” point. Yes, you would have to accept it was legal, I wasn’t denying that, but that wasn’t the point that I was making. My point was that by making it legal, it doesn’t force you to believe that it is an accurate conception of marriage. You aren’t coerced into that belief, nor are gay people currently coerced into believing that marriage is heteronormative. I can think of any number of things that are currently legal that you and I both would not think are legitimate, but the legality of the thing doesn’t mean we must accept it as moral truth.
I suppose then this claim really is about the nature of legality as it relates to private belief and not a positive argument for legalizing homosexuality, as you yourself have noted that you believe there are pragmatic reasons to not legalize gay marriage, even if you aren’t coerced into a specific belief. I’ll concede that.
(3) This point interests me:
Are you saying that while there may be good principled reasons to ban homosexuality, practically it’s unenforceable, and therefore it ought to remain legal?
If that’s the case, then it’s an interesting departure from the many people who share your views. Notice it is generally conservative (not trying to peg you with a political ideology, I’m no fan of that, but I’m identifying a specific group, not you), anti same-sex marriage advocates who argue there is no Constitutional right to privacy, which is why, for instance, Rick Santorum has advocated for the reinstatement of sodomy laws in the past.
Obviously you and I have no problem with homosexuality being legal, but I’m now curious as to what you think about the Constitutional right of privacy.
May 23rd, 2012 | 11:35 am | #65
Q: “Nikolai Volk, Do you affirm Scripture’s teachings that same-sex behavior is sin?”
A: “TUAD, I’m not talking about that now. If your standard for banning same-sex marriage is merely that scripture prohibits it, then homosexuality should also be banned, not just gay marriage. If homosexuality is as much a moral ill as many have made it out to be, then by that logic it’s just as much a danger even if it doesn’t receive benefits from the government.
When I was addressing TUAD (another clarity issue here, my apologies), I was pre-empting the trap I was expecting him to spring on me based on the past interactions we have had….”
Nikolai, you extend me too much credit. Of course there are implications and consequences to God’s timeless transcendental commands, but do you, Nikolai Volk, in and of itself, affirm Scripture’s teachings that same-sex behavior is sin?”
May 23rd, 2012 | 2:35 pm | #66
Nikolai, you asked,
There are good principled reasons to regard homosexual practice as wrong. I assume that when you speak of banning homosexuality, what you really mean is sexual acts. No one (I hope!) would think there’s any conceivable way to ban preferences.
The Constitution provides freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. I’m no legal scholar, but I doubt that anti-sodomy laws could be enforced without violating that freedom. (Note that I also stated other reasons besides for my position besides that freedom.)
There is instructive value in having laws like anti-sodomy: they say that we as a society agree that it is wrong. I think that would be a good thing, but not an absolute or essential good. It would need to be balanced, for example, against the message sent by writing a law that could never be enforced, or could only be enforced in a way that would in turn produce greater evils.
May 23rd, 2012 | 6:01 pm | #67
Understood, Tom. I definitely agree with you here, and I’m glad that you recognize the importance of privacy on this matter, as many anti same-sex marriage advocates who tend to be small government ironically will advocate for the invasive laws you point out the harms of.
Thanks for this conversation… it’s been quite helpful in drawing out the key political issues here. I think this is often made too simplistic in the public sphere, which overlooks the nuances both you and I present.
I also appreciate that we, in the parlance of your earlier blog posts, Treated Each Other as Humans. If we’re calling one group homophobes and the other godless sodomites, we’ll never have a sensible discussion, which means that sensible conclusions will likely never be reached. This is probably one of the few online comment sections I ever feel like I can walk away edified from.
Cheers!
May 23rd, 2012 | 6:30 pm | #68
“Thanks for this conversation… it’s been quite helpful in drawing out the key political issues here.”
It’s also helpful to draw out the key Scriptural issues here as well.
Of course there are implications and consequences to God’s timeless transcendental commands, but do you, Nikolai Volk, in and of itself, affirm Scripture’s teachings that same-sex behavior is sin?”
May 24th, 2012 | 9:26 am | #69
Q: “Nikolai Volk, Do you affirm Scripture’s teachings that same-sex behavior is sin?”
A: “TUAD, I’m not talking about that now. If your standard for banning same-sex marriage is merely that scripture prohibits it, then homosexuality should also be banned, not just gay marriage. If homosexuality is as much a moral ill as many have made it out to be, then by that logic it’s just as much a danger even if it doesn’t receive benefits from the government.”
“If homosexuality is as much a moral ill as many have made it out to be”
Nikolai, forget the “many.” Does God, in His Holy Word, say that homosexual behavior is a moral ill, a sin?
Nikolai Volk, Do you affirm Scripture’s teachings that same-sex behavior is sin?
May 26th, 2012 | 9:31 am | #70
De Las Casas:
“Many supporters of SSM don’t realize that using the word “marriage” for gay families is invading upon a very sensitive and beloved area.”
You recognize that you and yours don’t have a monopoly on our common culture, its language, and its terms, right?
May 26th, 2012 | 9:36 am | #71
Tom Gilson:
“There is instructive value in having laws like anti-sodomy: they say that we as a society agree that it is wrong. I think that would be a good thing, but not an absolute or essential good. It would need to be balanced, for example, against the message sent by writing a law that could never be enforced, or could only be enforced in a way that would in turn produce greater evils.”
Are you seriously suggesting that anti-sodomy laws _haven’t_ been enforced in the past and didn’t produce greater evils? (Making intimate relationships impossible, even dangerous, for the low single-digit percentage of people who aren’t heterosexual is a pretty significant evil, no?)
May 26th, 2012 | 5:43 pm | #72
“Are you seriously suggesting that anti-sodomy laws _haven’t_ been enforced in the past and didn’t produce greater evils?”
Let’s continue this line of logic:
Are you seriously suggesting that anti-murder laws _haven’t_ been enforced in the past and didn’t produce greater evils?
Are you seriously suggesting that anti-theft laws _haven’t_ been enforced in the past and didn’t produce greater evils?
Are you seriously suggesting that anti-organized crime laws _haven’t_ been enforced in the past and didn’t produce greater evils?
Point?
The abuse of a thing does not negate its proper use.
Other examples: Driving a car to get somewhere vs. drunken driving killing someone.
Gun ownership to hunt for food vs. gun ownership to kill someone.
Knife ownership to cut food vs. knife ownership to kill someone.
Biblical patriarchy vs. abusive pastors and husbands.
Anti-sodomy law vs. the abuse of the anti-sodomy law.
May 26th, 2012 | 7:32 pm | #73
So, to be clear, you classify sodomy as a crime akin to murder and theft, and view the suffering inflicted on people who aren’t heterosexual by sodomy laws as justifiable?
May 26th, 2012 | 10:02 pm | #74
Randy McDonald,
Do you concede the general principle in #72?
Namely:
The abuse of a thing does not negate its proper use.
May 27th, 2012 | 1:40 am | #75
I don’t understand to a reasonable degree of certainty what you mean. Are you saying that, despite the harm anti-sodomy laws inflict on non-heterosexual, on balance they benefit society more than they harm it?
May 27th, 2012 | 2:56 am | #76
Thx for the conversation. Maybe you’ll understand general principles another day. Best of luck!
May 28th, 2012 | 7:23 pm | #77
If “this is wrong because God says it is wrong” counts as a “religious reason,” then what, from a Christian perspective, is NOT a religious reason? We believe in government because God ordained government. We believe murder should be punished because God opposes murder. We believe in promoting the general welfare of our neighbor because God said “love thy neighbor.”
If the Constitutional test is whether or not a law has a religious motivation, then religious people are effectively banned from politics. The religious/secular dichotomy is a smokescreen.
May 29th, 2012 | 11:33 am | #78
“If the Constitutional test is whether or not a law has a religious motivation, then religious people are effectively banned from politics. The religious/secular dichotomy is a smokescreen.”
The Catholic bishops and the Catholic Church are opposed to Obama’s Healthcare Mandate because of religious Catholic doctrine.
Also, secularism is arguably a “religion” as well. Depends on how you want to define what is a “religion.”
May 30th, 2012 | 9:49 pm | #79
It is science that will doom SSM in due course. Marriage is, above all else, a system of privileges bestowed on a man and a women because it’s in the interest of society to have the maximum number of its members be raised with both a masculine and a feminine parental influence from the psychological standpoint. Neuroscience and the most recent findings of social psychology on matters of gender are giving the lie to the notion that has been popular since the Sixties that male-female psychological differences are mere cultural stereotypes. The differences are real and they are important to the future of the human race. It’s all provable scientifically and provides all the rationale needed for refusing the special support of marriage to any other sexual relationships that are alternatives to male-female marriage. Also, the failure to recognize the importance of psychological gender differences has been an important reason for the fatherlessness that is the best predictor of criminality and psychological disorder there is.
May 30th, 2012 | 10:22 pm | #80
“It’s all provable scientifically and provides all the rationale needed for refusing the special support of marriage to any other sexual relationships that are alternatives to male-female marriage.”
Male and female characteristics aren’t dichotomous, but rather represent extremes on a spectrum. Mixtures of male and female traits, to one degree or another, can be quite common.
May 31st, 2012 | 4:47 am | #81
Just had to pop back in to say to Randy:
An often overlooked fact in this discussion. Thank you.
May 31st, 2012 | 8:10 am | #82
MF sees marriage itself as rendered defective by the recent poor performance of a minority of participants. It is true that a minority of people have multiple marriages, skewing the statistics upward for unsuccessful marriages. The great majority of people have just one marriage.
However MF ‘s post abounds in other non-sequiturs. If a minority of us start falling off our bicycles, due to the contemporary rise in obesity, and then decide to take to the streets in motorized baby carriages, it would be absurd to call these carriages “bicycles”. It would be sensitive to the fat and disordered minority, though risky and insensitive to traditional bicyclers attempting to use bike paths. Nothing is simple.
Some people want the word “Marriage” to be diluted to accommodate them?
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
If one seeks secular support for the natural law of man-woman-children marriage, the science of Anthropology long ago confirmed the essential function of predominantly stable marriage to the structure of its host society. Loose or loosen it and the society is at risk of toppling.
Supporters of SSM are failing to love us enough. They are disrespecting us in their desire to defacing something most precious to us. A mutually sensitive compromise would be to invent a lovely sounding neologism for these Gay Unions and write a new set of far more appropriate state laws governing these domestic arrangements. Or is this campaign really just an onslaught against the oldest universal human structure that has always been the basic building block binding successful societies together.
I caution opponents of SSM to not cede the field before the game begins by accepting the mythical “separation of church and state”. There is no such thing. All legislation legislates morality. There is no other kind of legislation. You cannot have a reality-based discussion on this subject without including religious concepts. Religion and so-called secular governing entities address the same areas with different protocols. . Church and state are dissolved in a common solution, not emulsified.
June 1st, 2012 | 11:31 pm | #83
“Supporters of SSM are failing to love us enough. They are disrespecting us in their desire to defacing something most precious to us.”
You realize that supporters of same-sex marriage aren’t aliens to your culture but in fact come from it and share many of its values? It’s not obvious why any subset of a community should have a monopoly over terms and values that are common to all.
“A mutually sensitive compromise would be to invent a lovely sounding neologism for these Gay Unions and write a new set of far more appropriate state laws governing these domestic arrangements.”
One problem with this is that whenever domestic partnerships and the like were raised in the past, they have been opposed on the grounds that they devalue marriage. Opponents of same-sex marriage talk about civil unions as an option only as a very last resort; otherwise, they have treated domestic partnerships as being as much non-options as same-sex marriage.
“Or is this campaign really just an onslaught against the oldest universal human structure that has always been the basic building block binding successful societies together.”
See above. People who support same-sex marriage see it as a logical development of a principle endorsed not only by certain subsets of the population.
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