Against Gay Marriage

               Let me begin by stealing an analogy from Princeton scholar Robert P. George’s The Clash of Orthodoxies.

“Academic legend has it that there was once an A+ student in a moral philosophy class who passionately argued  term paper was titled “There Is No Such Thing as Justice.” Without penning a single remark on the paper, the professor gave a failing grade. Stunned, the student went to see the professor. “Professor,” the student began, “I worked extremely hard on that paper. I thought it was quite good.” “Quite so,” the professor interrupted. “In fact,” he continued, “it was perhaps the best term paper I have read in thirty years of teaching this class. Your arguments were lucid. Your writing was brilliant. And your withering attack on all legal, moral and religious orthodoxies concerning justice was profound. In fact, you persuaded me that ‘There’s no such thing as justice,’ so don’t complain!”

As this student learned, fidgeting with long established truths, in many instances, can be self-defeating and dangerous. Many of the moral, legal and religious truths that societies have long held can seem difficult to defend when faced with the liberal, progressive agenda of the day. The reason they are so hard to defend in once sense speaks to their correctness. One has never before had to generate arguments for things that societies have seen as self evident—almost a priori true. Of course we should not kill children. Of course there is an intrinsic difference between males and females. Of course marriage is an institution for one male and one female. Well, as the moral fabric of society continues to decay, those things which for centuries were simply and instinctually known to be true, now require rationalization. So, let me provide a brief, non-bigoted, rationalization for the preservation of marriage as a state ordained institution that can and must be between one man and one woman.

So what is marriage? Marriage has always been, and must remain, a bodily, emotional, and spiritual union of one man and one woman, ordered towards the generating, nurturing, and  educating of children, marked by exclusivity and permanence, and consummated and actualized by acts that are reproductive in type, even if not in every case, in fact.

What is the secular definition of marriage? “Marriage is a legal convention whose goal is to support a merely emotional union—which may or may not, depending on the subjective preferences of the partners, be marked by commitments or exclusivity and permanence.”

I have no registered political partisanship. I tend to be a libertarian on most issues. I want the government involved in my life as little as possible. I feel that when most people are pressed, they share these beliefs to a certain degree. We want to be left alone to live our own lives without perpetual interference. Yet, even the most strident libertarian, the one who wants no public education, and no governmental laws prohibiting the ingestion of foreign substances, does not fight for the government to stop enforcing traffic laws. Why is this? Because, in this instance, the libertarian understands that the government can secure the “good” for the people in a better and safer way than if it were left to the individual inclinations and proclivities of each individual motorist. Imagine driving in LA or NYC or on the LIE where every driver decided for himself what the rules of driving were. To avoid mass chaos, and secure a better world for its citizens, the government overrules the individual wishes of the masses and establishes laws that are in the best interest of the citizens. They establish laws that might seem annoying and bothersome and not what we want at the particular time, but they secure safety for all.

Now ask yourself a question, would you like the government to be involved in each and every one of your friendships? When you meet someone at school, church, the park, would you want to have to get the state involved before you could officially become friends? Would you want to fill out and sign paperwork to begin your new relationship? What happens if you get in a fight and you no longer want to be friends? Would you want to pay lawyers to decide how to redistribute your belongings?

This clearly would be absurd. But for some reason the state is and has been involved in marriages in this way. That is because, much to the chagrin of the secularists, marriage is not just any relationship. It is not even just one’s deepest or most intimate relationship. The state has always gotten involved in marriage because it recognizes that marriage is the most fundamental way to secure the “good” for society. The state has regulated marriages because just like the traffic analogy, if marriage was simply an emotional bond, then chaos would ensue.

So what is it that makes marriage so important in the eyes of the state? If the state does not regulate our day to day relationships, why does it do so with marriage? The state is in the business of not only functioning and surviving for this particular moment, but also for the future. And how do we secure the future? We must have well adjusted children.

Now no sociologist worth the paper that their degree is printed on will deny the fact that children who are raised in households with both a father and a mother are far more likely to be highly functioning, productive members of society, than those who are raised without a parent (we see this particularly when no father is around to raise the child). Simply look at our prisons; they are flooded with men who were raised in fatherless homes (Dr. Paul Vitz, Professor at NYU has a fantastic book, ‘Faith of the Fatherless,’ detailing that race has little to do with crime rates—children of all races, who are raised without fathers, are equally likely to commit crimes).

Men and women clearly have different attributes that they would pass on to a child, and that child would be best suited if he or she had both influences in his or her life. But even if we succumb to postmodern gender politics and claim that there is no difference between a man and a woman (Think about how absurd such a statement is: “There is no difference between a man and a woman.” This statement is only rendered logically coherent because there is a difference. One is saying that there is no difference between X (those things) and Y (those DIFFERENT things) there is a deeply specific way that only traditional marriage secures the “good” for society.

Children are better off if their parents are together. But if marriage is purely and emotional bond, and is not predicated on exclusivity and permanence, then what we have is a society that views marriage as something that can be ended as quickly and seamlessly as a high school friendship. Marriage, on the traditional view is predicated on a love that lasts forever, because it is a love that continues through the birth of a child (see my Valentine’s Day post). The secular conception of marriage is something that streamlines the ability to end the relationship. As the state grows to accept these non-traditional marriages, the process and protocol for ending marriages will be streamlined for Gays and non-Gays alike. The repercussions of this will fall like an anvil on the coming generations of children.

I have tried to avoid anything that might be construed as “fear mongering,” but it is clear that opening the door to gay marriage is a slippery slope. If marriage is simply one’s deepest relationship what stops one from allowing polyamorus relationships? What about five frat brothers (who do not have a sexual relationship with each other) who decided that they all want the rights and privileges of marriage? What if I am a loner by nature, but I grow to have a deep, intimate and loving relationship with myself? Can I then marry myself?

This all might sound absurd, and it should, because it is absurd. Gay marriage is beyond oxymoronic. It is not a thing. It is gibberish. To allow “gay marriage” is to deny marriage as a thing.

Valentine's Day: Discovering the Meaning of Love

               We are a people who are infatuated with love. We love everything about love…whatever those things might be. We write and sing love songs. We devour romantic comedies and stories. We even have a national holiday, which is in essence, a celebration of love. It is safe to say, we are in love with the idea of being in love. It is much less safe to say that we have any idea what we mean when we use, over-use, and abuse this all important four letter word.

               Some 2,500 years ago (It would be so symmetrical if it had been on February 14^th) in ancient Greece, the world witnessed what would be the epic precursor to all Lifetime movie marathons. In one of the greatest pieces of historic literature ever penned, Plato tells the story of a great dinner party. This was more than just an average party; it was a grandiose celebration of love! It was a festival, a feast, a Symposium that gave the great minds of the day a chance to individually honor what mankind loves so much: namely, Love.

The keynote speaker was Socrates of Athens, and the raucous room fell silent as he stood to give his address. It may do us good, especially at this time of year, to follow suit and quiet ourselves so as to hear afresh the words of a man who truly sought to understand what it means to LOVE.

Socrates begins in a way which was almost unimaginable given his place in time. He asserts that the entirety of what he knows of love he has learned from a woman, Diotima. As most men can attest, Socrates was surely on the mark in realizing that the fairer sex is much to be thanked for helping us to understand what love truly is. In this regard a debt of gratitude must be paid to my beautiful wife J.

Socrates goes on to prove that Love must always be the lover of something rather than of nothing. Just as a father must always be the father of someone. If a father was the father of no one, he would not be a father at all. This may seem innocuous enough, but the ramifications of such a truth are far-reaching.

Socrates then asks if Love longs for what it is in love with. The answer to which is clearly yes. But we only long for things that we do not already have. So is it true that once we have the thing or the one we love that we no longer love it or them? Certainly not. Once we have the thing we love, love consists in desiring, in scrapping and crawling, in battling to secure that thing to ourselves forever! This is why marriage is one of the only true expressions of love. It is an open commitment and acceptance of what love is: a securing of something to ourselves forever. This securing to ourselves of something can only be considered love depending on the thing that is secured, but more on that latter.

So we have two points so far:

1.)    Love must always be the love of something

2.)    That thing is something that we lack

 

            The other dinner guests had previously asserted that the actions of the gods were governed by a love of beauty. But if love must be the love of something that it lacks, then love CAN NOT be beautiful! But we would not call love ugly, would we?

Goodness however, is certainly beautiful, but that means that love CAN NOT be good!

             So love is neither beautiful nor good. Would we dare call it ugly and bad?

             God is certainly both beautiful and good. So love CAN NOT be divine!

          So if love is not divine, can we say that it is human? Socrates would, and did, say, certainly not! Love is something that intercedes between the finite and the infinite. Love connects man with the divine. Love is a longing for the beautiful and the good which are eternal and divine.

          But this begs the question: Why do we long for the beautiful and the good? We do so because what is ACTUALLY GOOD and ACTUALLY BEAUTIFUL (see my essay “Fatherly Love”) will make us happy!

           Love then, in essence, is a longing for happiness. Love is a longing for every kind of happiness. The type happiness signified by teddy bears, chocolates, roses and hearts is just one small aspect of TRUE LOVE. When one makes you dinner, cleans your clothes, watches what you want on TV, reads with you, joins you in your favorite activities, THIS IS LOVE, as it is a desire to make you happy! Once again I am indebted to my wife for her unceasing display of daily love.

           As much as Hallmark may have skewed our sensibilities, love IS NOT a searching for our “other half.” Love is a perpetual searching and longing for the Good. Love is wanting the Good and wanting to secure it forever!

         Since goodness is divine, love is our ticket to the divine. It is our gateway. Once again we see the power of love as expressed in marriage. Love’s longing to secure the good forever, is always thwarted by death, yet through procreation, the ultimate expression of human love, death is put at bay (at least temporarily). The birth of a child symbolically defeats death as love has expelled death and momentarily brought a glimpse of immortality to the beloved.

        Death must always be central to a rigorous conception of love. That is why the ultimate demonstration of love was God laying down his life for man. But why? So that man, through this love, can have the good secured to himself FOREVER!

       Because this is the culmination of love, all acts of earthly love are miniature crucifixions. Every act of love is a sign to the world of the fact that God, in Christ, has reconciled the world to himself in absolute, unadulterated love! Any supposed act of “love” is no such thing if it fails to recognize this central truth (“And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.”- 1 Corinthians 13:3).

       The one that you love, the one that loves you, in their love, is a daily reminder of the cross, and that is something worth celebrating.

I love you Julia.

For Torture

For Torture

 

            If we believe that man is nothing but matter, which is the logical consequent of the materialism of the day, I see no problem with torturing known terrorists.

            If we do not hold that man is a supreme being, made imago Dei, then man only becomes a human being based on the arbitrary standards that other human beings have decided upon.

            Given the pro-abortion stance of this country, the “rights of humanity” are not conferred to a first trimester fetus, or for that matter a second or third trimester fetus. In some cases, the rights of humanity are not even conferred to a fetus/child/baby/infant/half-person/ bundle of matter, whatever we wish to call “it”, when it has partially emerged from its mother. Even further, some, like Princeton’s celebrity ethicist Peter Singer, have argued that we should, in certain cases, delay declaring these balls of atoms “humans” until they have lived for a full month outside of their mothers.

            Whatever standard is chosen, being that it is man made, will be in essence arbitrary and susceptible not to the slippery slope fallacy but certainly to the runaway train fallacy. A first trimester fetus does not have the cognitive ability of a one month old. On the same token a one month old does not have the cognitive faculties of a five year old…etc, etc.  

            Mankind is now in the business of deciding when a thing becomes a human. When we grant this molecular mass the “rights of humanity” we are endowing them with both positive and negative rights. They have the right not be killed or raped, but they also lose the right to kill or rape others. They are, without their consent, entered into a pre-determined social contract. They have rules they must follow that they did not have a part in designing or implementing. This is all wildly arbitrary, but these are the rules to the game we are playing.

            Under the current pretenses of this game, what is the problem with torturing terrorists? Why not, for utilitarian purposes, make an amendment to the made up rules to the game? If we are the arbiters and can confer the rights of humanity on things, why can’t we take those rights back? If you are involved in terrorist activities you have violated the made up rules and are henceforth removed from the game. You, the terrorist, no longer being a human, can be tortured and abused in any imaginable way with out any “moral” (whatever this word even means in a world post mortem Dei) repercussions for the torturer.

            It seems to me, that one who is pro-abortion has no basis to be anti-torture.