This cartoon came from the Village Voice a few years back. I love it, and it seems particularly apropos. Several op-ed writers with a religious viewpoint tackled marriage equality today. Writing in the NY Times, Ross Douthat, a conservative Catholic who opposes marriage equality, looks at the common arguments used to oppose gays and lesbians getting married, and comments,
These arguments have lost because they’re wrong. What we think of as “traditional marriage” is not universal....I don't know about you, but this seems to be the effort of an intelligent man to fight a rearguard action that he knows he has already lost. Read the whole thing for his conflicted effort to justify why "tab A into slot B" is a "microcosm of civilization", while admitting that gay unions can be perfectly justified.
So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending...? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.
This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship....
The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.....
Matthew Yglesias comments,
[A]s Douthat’s piece makes clear, the status quo is really a cop out. Instead of holding heterosexuals up to a rigorous standard of conduct—no divorce, harsh & unforgiving attitude toward infidelity—we’re going to discriminate against the gay and lesbian minority and then congratulate ourselves on what a good job we’re doing of upholding our ideals.
Susan Russell points us towards this article by Susan Brooks Thistlewaite over at the WaPo:
There is no "wrongness" in being gay in the Christian perspective, not because DNA evidence tells us that being gay is very likely rooted in one's genetic code, but because gay men, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgendered people are created in the image of God. In the Christian theological perspective, therefore, they are fully and completely human beings in their relationship with other human beings and the God who created them.
And Rev. Peterr, a Lutheran writing at FiredogLake, takes on Cardinal Mahoney, who blogged, "There is only one issue before each of us Californians: Is Marriage of Divine or of Human Origin?" with this reply:
Judge Walker was not placed on the bench to decide whether laws and conduct in the United States match up to the Bible, the Koran, the Torah, or other religious writings. His job is to measure the disputes that come to his courtroom against the laws and constitution of the United States of America....Walker believes that you and your fellow Catholics believe that gays and lesbians are "objectively disordered" and sex between people of the same gender is a "grave depravity." He’s read the materials put out by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (see Finding of Fact #77, points i and j on pdf p. 104). By the end of his decision, he agrees with you that this is why you want to enshrine this belief in law.
Thank God, however, that he believes this is "not a proper basis on which to legislate."
You may be free to discriminate against gays and lesbians within the Catholic church as a matter of faith, but the state of California is not free to do the same as a matter of law.
Andrew Sullivan also takes him on.
10 comments:
I thought Douthat wrote a good column. I wasn't expecting to like it, but I think you're wrong to claim he's opposed to same sex marriage. So kindly show some evidence of that.
It's not in this quote.
Actually, Josh, it's pretty clear when he writes this:But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.
His point is clear that IF the "specialness" of straights is let go, THEN gays should be able to marry. But he's arguing that straight marriage should be distinctly preserved and protected. He admits that straights have screwed it up but he concludes that they should STILL be privileged.
Just because he has some lingering respect for GLBT people doesn't mean he wants us married. I suspect he'd endorse civil unions, something to stress our OTHERNESS next to good Catholics like the thrice married philandering Newt Gingrich. DOuthat is interesting because he's clearly an intelligent man, and in a struggle. But that isn't a column supporting same sex marriage.
He reflects further on his elevation of TabA-SlotB with evident regret in his blog today:
looking out across America’ landscape of heterosexual dysfunction, it’s still a little hard for me to accept that what this moment demands of us is the legal formalization — indeed, the constitutionalization, if Judge Walker has his way — of the ideological conceit that marriage has no necessary connection to gender difference, procreation or childrearing.
That he acknowledges some justification for SSM doesn't mean he supports it.
More on his views here and here
Douthat's column was good until the last few paragraphs, when his logic started to fall apart. In the end, he seems to oppose gay marriage because it somehow threatens the sanctity and uniqueness of "traditional" marriage. All because of tab A and slot B, I guess.
I love Cardinal Mahoney's comment about marriage and divine origin. There is not a shred of biblical evidence that divine origin is even claimed for marriage. It is far more likely that the Hebrews adopted the sexual ethics of the surrounding culture, and that Christians later claimed without proof that these were somehow unique. The Hebrew Bible is remarkably mute in its commentary on sexual laws. I have always found that curious.
Josh, you have to go to the original to get Doughat's closing paragraphs:
But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.
But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.
Blogger ate my comment, which was much the same as Paul's. Douthat is acknowledging in this column that GLBT people deserve some recognition, but he is insisting that TabA-SlotB deserves something special. He's been nailed throughout the net for this insistence for this even as he acknowledges the futility of the usual arguments.
He expands in his blog,
redefining marriage to include gay relationships is unlikely to have anything like the kind of impact on American life that, say, the divorce revolution of the 1960s and 1970s did. But again, I think it’s a little naive to assume that it will have no impact at all — that legal changes don’t beget further cultural changes, and that public definitions don’t influence private conduct. Maybe the potential consequences are so vanishingly minimal that they’re easily outweighed by the benefits to gay couples; that’s certainly a reasonable position. But looking out across America’ landscape of heterosexual dysfunction, it’s still a little hard for me to accept that what this moment demands of us is the legal formalization — indeed, the constitutionalization, if Judge Walker has his way — of the ideological conceit that marriage has no necessary connection to gender difference, procreation or childrearing.(My emphases)
He is an intelligent man who is evidently very uncomfortable with his opposition to SSM, which he has stated elsewhere (here and here) and this is the best he can do.
Blogger refuses to post my comments. As I have tried to post several times:
Douthat is on the record of opposing SSM here and here.
In his current post, he defends treating Str8 marriage as something "special" even while admitting that GLBT people may deserve some recognition as Paul quoted.
In his blog today, he expands:redefining marriage to include gay relationships is unlikely to have anything like the kind of impact on American life that, say, the divorce revolution of the 1960s and 1970s did. But again, I think it’s a little naive to assume that it will have no impact at all — that legal changes don’t beget further cultural changes, and that public definitions don’t influence private conduct. Maybe the potential consequences are so vanishingly minimal that they’re easily outweighed by the benefits to gay couples; that’s certainly a reasonable position. But looking out across America’ landscape of heterosexual dysfunction, it’s still a little hard for me to accept that what this moment demands of us is the legal formalization — indeed, the constitutionalization, if Judge Walker has his way — of the ideological conceit that marriage has no necessary connection to gender difference, procreation or childrearing. Emphases mine.
There has been a lot of anger across the web at his admission that the opposition has no case, yet he can't quite let go that STr8 is special. He's an intelligent man and he recognizes the problem. But he's still unable to say, we're the same, and deserve the same.
Testing (Blogger posted, then deleted one of my comments)
testing 2 (IT again). Getting very frusrated with Blogger.
I find it rather interesting that the vast majority of opponents of same-gender marriage acknowledge that their conviction is wrong, yet they keep espousing it. I can't quite grasp that logic.
It's like a friend of mine who has a 1/2 black granddaughter (by birth, not adoption). He adores that child and and continues to hate all blacks.
As I recall, the traditional Christian teaching about marriage is that it is a grudging concession to human need. St. Paul seems to believe that celibacy is the ideal state for those expecting the Second Coming.
I think Christianity is a lousy family values religion. It was founded by a young man who never married with followers who left behind (abandoned) spouses and children.
If we were really serious about family values, we'd bring back the old Roman religion of hearth and ancestors where the family was quite literally sacred.
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