I will probably be the odd man out on this issue, but it seems to me the wrong questions are being asked because it is tacitly understood here that same-sex marriage (Drew is correct on the semantics) is justified. The word “gay” is a neologism.
Jurisprudence today emphasizes the “evolving paradigm” of the institution or the evolving nature of sexuality and human beings altogether. The underlying argument here is that morality evolves. The fact of the matter is that allowing such unions, and even encouraging them which is what will happen and is happening, will undermine liberty, strike a fatal blow at the heterosexual world, and marriage properly understood. A simple scan of Foucault inspired liberationist theorists will reveal that this is the aim. Indeed, just read the San Francisco Chronicle lately if you doubt the veracity. Does marriage need to evolve with the times? If so, then are not any marriages, however understood, acceptable?
Separating marriage from “the state” also means condoning, or allowing, these consensual relationships: polygamy, polyandry, polyamory, incest, statutory rape, necrophilia, pedophilia, and, yes, bestiality. Are not these valid “unions” under freedom of association?
It seems to me that the proper way to begin is from first principles. Is such a union consistent with natural rights? The answer is no. Is there an intrinsic moral worth to heterosexual marriage that ought to be supported and nurtured? The answer is yes. There is a reason why the Republican Party platform of 1856 claimed that polygamy and slavery were the “twin relics of barbarism.”
The ground of morality springs from nature. The basis of all our rights emanate from it, and the Founders of our republic understood that (see Declaration of Independence). Nature, then, provides an immutable standard of right and wrong, good and evil. This standard may be known through unassisted human reason. Unlike many who, following the influential Jean-Jacques Rousseau, believe everything in society is a construct, nature tells us otherwise. Nature made the distinctions between male and female, and to understand that distinction is key to understanding the order of our world. This distinction is more important than the one between man and beast. Without going into the specifics, Aristotle noted that the natural distinction between male/female provides the basis for marriage, and more so for families, and families are the bedrock of a healthy republic.
The family unit, then, is not simply for procreation (we could have that without marriage), but it exists to raise children to be fully human, to be good men and women (and I mean good in the literal sense of the word, not in its modern understanding). Human beings have a rationality that is able to discern the differences between right and wrong. Same-sex marriage represents yet another attack on reason and the natural law. Those who support same-sex marriage, deny that there is an objective standard of right and wrong. Consequently, they deny that a non-arbitrary standard is knowable. If same-sex unions are not wrong, then there is no rational basis to claim other forms of unions are wrong. With same-sex marriage, the others will follow and I am not just writing this hyperbolically. There are cases working their way through the courts contending for the legalization of polygamy on the same grounds as those allowing same-sex unions.
The proponents of vitiating marriage ultimately express a narcissism ever more prevalent in our society. Marriage, properly understood, offers something to the opposite sex that same-sex marriage does not. Men have something to offer women; women have something to offer men. You might say that the institution forces both to grow up (certainly this is true in the Jewish tradition where even a 78 year old man is considered a “boy” until he marries). Marriage, properly understood, then, helps us recognize our higher nature. In the case of men, it teaches them to be chaste, responsible, etc. Men learn this best from the opposite sex.
Therefore, Rick Martinez is particularly wrong in his assessment. He contends, basically, that because the institution of marriage is less sacred, we should allow other unions as well. It is not Janet Jackson, but “no-fault divorce” that is the culprit. Rick has it backwards. The remedy is to do away with no-fault divorce, not to allow all sorts of unions which will contribute to the destruction of freedom. Does he not understand that if we allow same-sex unions we will be giving them, not secure marriages, but the same no-fault unions currently in existence?
I most agree with Paul’s post. I would add that, certainly, there is a revelatory principle to consider here, and it agrees with the moral law emanating from nature. Yet even God, one might say, governs the world sub ratione boni. This is the position of official Judaism, and, we could argue, original Christianity.
This issue is not really about marriage. It is about the celebration of uninhibited freedom, the free expression of “self” however defined. Marriage is the occasion to that end. In our country today we are all so very tolerant of divorce, pornography, and, yes, same-sex relationships, etc. All of these undermine marriage properly understood. Recognizing that we are members of a common species and hence possess equal natural rights, is the basis of freedom. Beginning from any other point calls all of that into question, and undermines, the basis for liberty and the notion of consent. Consent must be rational and enlightened. Enlightened consent informs us of the virtuous life. Abandoning nature as a guide to our lives means renouncing the distinctions of life found in nature.
To quote an eminent scholar on this issue: “Nature and reason tell us that a [slave] is a human being, and is not to be treated like a horse or an ox or a dog, just as they tell us that a Jew is a human being, and is not to be treated as a plague-bearing bacillus. But with the very same voice, nature and reason tell us that a man is not a woman, and that the sexual friendship is properly between members of opposite sexes, not the same sex. It also tells us that the right ordering of this relationship is the ground of all morality, the ground of all resistance to tyranny.”
The natural law tells us the purpose of government is to secure our safety and our rights. The obvious guide for especially the latter is nature. Failing to understand the legitimate role of government, is to force us headlong toward tyranny which, needless to say, does not respect natural rights.
Before someone asserts that even the ancients condoned same-sex relationships, please be advised of Plato’s Laws:
636c-However such things are to be considered, in a playful or a serious mood, it should be understood that the pleasure is given according to nature, it seems, when the female unites with the nature of males for procreation. Males coming together with males, and females with females, seems against nature; and the daring of those who first did it seems to have arisen from a lack of self-restraint with regard to pleasure.
836c-if he were to say that is was correct to avoid, with males and youths, sexual relations like those one has with females, bringing as a witness the nature of the beasts and demonstrating that males don’t touch males with a view to such things because it is not according to nature to do so.
Finally, a friend of mine pointed this out to me from The City and Man: “In asserting that man transcends the city, Aristotle agrees with the liberalism of the modern age. Yet he differs from that liberalism by limiting this transcendence only to the highest in man. Man transcends the city only by pursuing true happiness, not by pursuing happiness however understood.”
ho nomos esti tes phuseos
