{"id":449,"date":"2012-05-10T13:16:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-10T17:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=449"},"modified":"2012-05-10T13:16:41","modified_gmt":"2012-05-10T17:16:41","slug":"thoughts-on-gay-marriage-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/05\/thoughts-on-gay-marriage-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Gay Marriage II"},"content":{"rendered":"

The partisan weighing in on the issue of so-called \u201cgay marriage\u201d has one simple choice to make. On the one hand, he can choose to either join the consensus of the vast majority of people who have ever <\/em>lived by choosing to preserve the exclusively heterosexual character of marriage.\u00a0 On the other hand, he can choose to cast his vote in favor of the \u201cenlightened\u201d preferences of a minority of his contemporaries who seek to re-imagine marriage by transforming it into a bi-sexual institution.<\/p>\n

Being a relatively low risk taker, my money is on the wisdom of the species.<\/p>\n

Many of the most outspoken critics of \u201cgay marriage\u201d are certain that the decision to permit gays to \u201cmarry\u201d promises to undermine marriage.\u00a0 I do not share their certitude.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So-called \u201cgay marriage\u201d may <\/em>weaken institutional marriage\u2014or it may not.\u00a0 <\/em>The point, though, is that precisely because we cannot <\/em>know for sure how the adoption of such a revolutionary, historically unprecedented measure like \u201cgay marriage\u201d will impact this hallowed, socially indispensable institution\u2014or any other aspect of our lives\u2014<\/em>prudence and humility counsel us to submit to the teachings of our ancestors on this score.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marriage, though of crucial import, is but one institution in a complex of institutions.\u00a0 This much we know for sure: a change as radical in nature as that of \u201cgay marriage\u201d most certainly will <\/em>have an impact, not just on marriage, but upon the web of institutions of which marriage is a component.\u00a0 The very fabric of our culture will be altered\u2014even if it is quite a while before we determine either the nature or even the existence of the alteration.<\/p>\n

In the interests of fairness, however, it needs to be said that \u201cgay marriage\u201d does not appear as likely to deleteriously affect marriage and the family as other forms of conduct that we, as a society, have long since sanctioned.\u00a0 Moreover, because of these other trends, it seems to me that the case against <\/em>\u201cgay marriage\u201d is itself on extremely perilous ground.<\/p>\n

In a \u201cstate of nature\u201d\u2014a pre-political or pre-social condition\u2014there would be no marriage.\u00a0 Marriage is a legal <\/em>entity, a social <\/em>institution.\u00a0 As such, it exists for the sake, not of procuring satisfactions for those who marry, but, rather, civilizing<\/em> the married and their offspring.<\/p>\n

In the past, marriage has been viewed almost exclusively as the means by which the species can be propagated and educated.\u00a0 As the early nineteenth century conservative theorist Louis de Bonald put the matter: \u201cThe production of man is the purpose of the relationship between the sexes; his conservation is the purpose of the relationship between the ages, which is to say that man and woman produce the child, and the father and mother conserve it.\u201d\u00a0 And there is no doubt that the production and nurturance of children remain critical reasons for society\u2019s need to preserve and strengthen marriage.<\/p>\n

But in the past, in advance of marriage, there was no way to determine whether prospective spouses were capable of producing children.\u00a0 Today, obviously, there are.\u00a0 Among such methods is the now commonplace practice of pre-marital sex.\u00a0 Thus, not only have we long permitted non-marital sexual activity; for just as long, we have permitted marriage between couples who are either incapable of or unwilling to have children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My point here is not to criticize either of these practices.\u00a0 Instead, I seek only to show that well before anyone ever dreamt up \u201cgay marriage,\u201d heterosexuals had done much to deprive the classical justification for marriage articulated by de Bonald of much of its force.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, the argument that marriage is a great civilizing institution remains sound.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Marriage demands and encourages the cultivation of a host of virtues: honesty, fidelity, patience, forbearance, perseverance, temperance, humility, and, selflessness are some of the more salient human excellences that it promotes.\u00a0 Ideally, marriage should endure through sickness and health, better and worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And it should last until death.<\/p>\n

But the ease with which we grant divorce and the frequency with which couples avail themselves of it has rendered this ideal of marriage that much more remote. For many, marriage has become but another relationship of convenience.<\/p>\n

It becomes increasingly difficult to argue that \u201cgay marriage\u201d is impermissible<\/em> while permitting<\/em> pre-marital sex, illegitimate births, cohabitation, and no fault divorce. If<\/em> \u201cgay marriage\u201d should be forbidden because <\/em>it threatens to weaken marriage and the family, then<\/em> pre-marital sex, illegitimacy, cohabitation, and divorce must be forbidden as well.\u00a0 In fact, inasmuch as homosexuals claim to want to marry, the latter activities appear to pose a much clearer and more imminent threat to marriage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conservatives in the past were well aware of this.\u00a0 Take the eighteenth century German thinker Justus Moser, for instance. Moser authored a brief essay entitled, On the Diminished Disgrace of Whores and Their Children in Our Day<\/em>.\u00a0 In it, he writes that since \u201cmatrimony is always a highly important means to check vice and preserve virtue,\u201d states must appropriate those measures that make this institution inviting while eschewing those that marginalize it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This being so, \u201cIt is impolitic to give the children of whores the same honor as the legitimately born, since by so doing one destroys one of the strongest incentives for marriage.\u201d\u00a0 Moser makes frequent references to \u201cour ancestors, who were guided by experience rather than by theories [.]\u201d\u00a0 Past generations stigmatized illegitimate children, not because the children themselves did anything that warranted unequal treatment, but because they sought \u201cto reserve all honor and all civic benefits for matrimony, in order to encourage it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is not my intention here to argue for or against \u201cgay marriage.\u201d\u00a0 Nor is it my intention to argue for or against the criminalization, or even stigmatization, of non-marital sex, divorce, illegitimacy, or anything else.<\/p>\n

My objective is simpler than this: I want to bring to the reader\u2019s attention the fact that the enemies of \u201cgay marriage\u201d must do better than they currently have if they want to sound convincing, for they have allowed the development of trends that weaken, not just traditional heterosexual marriage, but their own case for traditional, heterosexual marriage. <\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The partisan weighing in on the issue of so-called \u201cgay marriage\u201d has one simple choice to make. On the one hand, he can choose to either join the consensus of the vast majority of people who have ever lived by choosing to preserve the exclusively heterosexual character of marriage.\u00a0 On the other hand, he can…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThoughts on Gay Marriage II<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/05\/thoughts-on-gay-marriage-ii.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Thoughts on Gay Marriage II\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The partisan weighing in on the issue of so-called \u201cgay marriage\u201d has one simple choice to make. 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