|
|
|
|
2/23/04 Gay Marriage a Contradiction There are two main attributes of marriage as it has been understood in the mainstream culture of the United States for its entire history, until this century: heterosexuality and monogamy. Of those attributes, only heterosexuality is universal. If there has never been a recorded instance of a marriage that was not intended as a mockery in any culture in the history of humankind in which there was not at least one man and one woman involved, I have never heard of it. There have been, on the other hand, countless marriages involving only one man and many women, and there are many such marriages in the world today that are recognized in their own cultures as legitimate. It is ironic, then, that in this nation in this decade we are still crusading against heterosexual polygamy as practiced by some Mormons, but not only are homosexual unions tolerated almost everywhere, but there is a movement afoot among judicial activists to invent a right to a relationship that has never in human history been codified and to bring that relationship under the ancient rubric of marriage, as if it somehow naturally belonged there (and anyone who raises the question whether it really does can conveniently be regarded as a boor and a bigot). Well, at the risk of wrongly being labeled by the high-minded activists as boors and bigots, let's be blunt: polygamy has a more natural claim to the rubric of "marriage" than any relationship that does not even in theory admit of natural procreation. Heterosexual polygamy is a procreative relationship, and can even be an economically and socially viable one for all members. Whatever else we may say about it, "Gay marriage" is self-evidently an artificial construct. Marriage, a relationship that has been built around procreation and inheritance for all of recorded history and doubtless well beyond it, does not convene to relationships between individuals (or groups) that have no capacity to reproduce, even if all the plumbing is in tip-top shape. Married couples have always been expected to have children (that is, to conceive and bear them by themselves, without outside intervention) and only as a last resort to seek medical or legal assistance to obtain children in some other way. Only now are "marriages" being contemplated in which adoption or the involvement of some third party is the sole resort, and parentage is a no more than a legal formality. Many will object that the expectation of procreation in marriage was often oppressive and unfair, and thus that it was artificial. Declare it oppressive and unfair if you want (that does not make it so), but it was decidedly not artificial. The expectation existed (and exists) for a reason: it represents the normal order of human society, and as such has the best claim to the term "natural"; it was not invented, it was not imposed, it simply came about due to the natural evolution of human society in response to collective needs and choices over hundreds of thousands of years of experimentation. It is the tried-and-true way of things. "Gay marriage" has not been tried. It is an invention, a new order of things being imposed on society by the "enlightened" few. Like artificial sweeteners, weapons of mass destruction, the internal combustion engine, and communism, "gay marriage" is a creation of the human mind, taking things that exist in nature (or natural human society) and combining them in ways they never would have occurred naturally. The human mind is capable of great cleverness, but it can outsmart itself with too little wisdom. There are great risks in trusting too swiftly to that wisdom when the ancient compass of common sense, which for all the attempts to denigrate it remains the sanest part of the often irrational human psyche, tells us we are headed in the wrong direction. So it is wise and prudent to pause and reflect as those who crave a new order rant and rave and affix ugly names to anyone who dares dispute them. What does it mean to note that heterosexuality is the only universal attribute of marriage as it has always been known? It does not mean that we cannot change our definition. But it does put the burden of proof on those who claim that it is a biased institution and that preventing a man from marrying a man is the same as preventing a dark-skinned person from filling a job for which he is the best-qualified candidate. Since it would not be an injustice to deny a dark-skinned man a job for which he was not at all qualified, it must also be the case that if two men do not meet the qualifications for "marriage," not only do they have no right to marry, but it would be folly to assert that they do, like claiming a blind man has the right to be an airline pilot. It is therefore necessary, before we can credit the assertion that gays are being treated as "second-class citizens" if they are prohibited from marrying each other, for someone to attempt to prove that two men or two women are qualified to marry. The activists are attempting to co-opt the argument by pretending that marriage is simply a union between two people who love each other, because if they attempted to make the argument, they would lose, miserably. There have been qualifications for marriage licenses in many societies. Some have been financial: only people with certain means were allowed to marry. The logic there cannot be that the pair could only be allowed to cohabitate and love each other with sufficient means, since they would be no better off living separately on little means, and romantic love is nearly universally recognized as rendering its participants eminently willing (even eager) to make great sacrifices in service to that love. Logically, the only reason to "means-test" a couple is to guarantee that, when they bring children into the world, they will not be a burden to society by neglecting their children's physical needs. In some jurisdictions, the qualifications for marriage include a blood test, either to detect certain diseases or to detect evidence of genetic incompatibility. Again, two people of certain blood types pose no threat to each other unless one of them is to become pregnant with the other's child. Finally, the nearly universal qualification for marriage is that the groom and his bride not be too closely related, genetically. "Incest" is a sin in many cultures, including our own, but it is also a practical risk: inbreeding increases dramatically the risk of disastrous genetic problems. Again, there is no need for such a qualification if procreation is not envisioned as a part of the qualification for marriage. So if the argument is that gays are being discriminated against today, the activist must demonstrate that marriage has always (or even just frequently) been primarily about love and companionship, and not about procreation and family inheritance. The historical precedents can hardly be used at all to support that case. Failing that, the activist must simply maintain that the ancient institution has outlived its original purpose, and is now for the first time in history best regarded merely as the window-dressing of romantic relationships that come and go like fashion trends as people "grow apart" and "find themselves." That is a proposition that cannot be argued; it is an opinion evolving (or devolving!) from a certain philosophy, and that philosophy is nowhere near to being universally accepted in this or any other society. Therefore, contrary to the liberal cries, it is by no means a contemplation of injustice for members of this society to ponder proposing a constitutional amendment that would set in the brick and mortar of our civilization the tried-and-true definition of marriage that has existed from time immemorial. This is no new-fangled move to disenfranchise anyone, but a reaction against an irrevocable redefinition of a bedrock social institution. It is the activists who are on the move trying to make a change that is neither necessary nor demonstrably prudent. They are the ones who must be opposed, no matter how many names they throw at their opponents. Unfortunately, the hypocrisy of the courts will not resist them. Although there is no word in the Constitution about abortion, five Supreme Court Justices did not shrink from interpolating from 18th-century census practices a definition of personhood that allowed them to define abortion as involving only one "person"; nevertheless, they will apparently not study the historical precedents that indicate much more clearly that marriage was defined by the framers of the constitution and of every law on marriage since as a relationship involving man and woman, and not as a sexual or romantic relationship first and foremost, but as a procreative and familial one. Since judges ignore the truth when it interferes with their agenda, we will have to make it plain for them. It will yet not be impossible for them to ignore a plainly worded amendment, but I wager their reign would rather quickly be ended if they did so. That threat alone might dissuade them from their efforts to engineer a society to their specifications, and leave us alone to create it for ourselves. Modified: 09/10/2004 |
|
|
All Original Content (C) 2003, 2004, 2005 SoothSeeker.Com
SoothSeeker Welcomes your Comments at letters@soothseeker.com Report problems to webmaster@soothseeker.com
Hits on this site:
|