Please note that this is a book review of Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts, edited by Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello, Jr. and Robin Fretwell Wilson (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)–KSH.
Having said all of this, I should say that I am not a supporter of marriage as a liberation strategy. Frankly, I really cannot see why, given all the ugliness about it that feminists have exposed over the last four decades””despite the legal incentives””Gay people would want it. Personally, I am not interested in redecorating the burning house. Of course, I am aware that despite the many principled reasons I see for resisting marriage, none of the marriage opponents on traditionalist grounds are making any of them. Their arguments are arguments for subordination. I also understand that, for Gays, having marriage, the ultimate straight measure, is a powerful teaching tool.93 But in the wake of Lawrence v. Texas, Katherine Franke, rightly I think, warned us about the “domestication” of Gay rights. The Gay movement’s headlong rush to marriage is a move that has been largely without critical analysis from the inside. Maybe it is time we start asking ourselves: Are we being led””to borrow a phrase from Alice Walker””“to sleep if not to the slaughter”?
RE: “The Gay movement’s headlong rush to marriage is a move that has been largely without critical analysis from the inside.”
I think this is not correct. The point of the “headlong rush” of course has not been some sort of respect for the institution of marriage. It’s been to attempt to add a forced layer of pretense of societal approval to same-gender sexual relationships.
So there has been no need for some sort of “critical analysis from the inside” of the institution of marriage. “Marriage” — as they conceive of it — is merely the prop for the facade of societal approval of their actions.
Interesting article that makes a fairly complex case based upon the idea of rights as a group. It’s contestable, in my view. Briefly: she may be right that equality matters; but I don’t think she gets the religious exception quite right. I also think she relies a bit on identity / group based formulations. It’s a lot of words to describe a simple idea that people have a right to have the benefits of marrying the person they love.
She says, “A demand for something better is treated as an omnipresent threat to religious liberty because religion has always been a primary tool to subordinate women and Gays.”
I don’t think this is perfectly accurate. As usual, a caricature of religion and faith. Although I’m sure plenty think that is exactly what religion should be doing.
The ultimate goal is not the institution of “Gay Marriage”. it is the destruction of the [url=http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html]”bourgeois family”[/url]. “Gay marriage” would certainly do that.
Since the state refuses to wither on it’s own, they are simply trying to force the issue, and we are blinded to the real goal by the repugnant details. The utter failure by some to recognize the self repudiation of marxism during the 20th century is a source for many of these conflicts.
Sarah has got it right. The normalization of homosexual marriage will not lead to domestication. Afterall, domestication is about raising children and what the normalization of homosexual marriage is saying is that the end or purpose of marriage is not children. Having children becomes a personal choice for couples and not something intrinsic to marriage. If homosexual marriage is normalized neither homosexuals nor heterosexuals will be domesticated, which means that the children lose.
Children are already at a lose with or without homosexual marriage. We are approaching the point where the majority of children are born out of wedlock and certainly the point where most children do not live in intact 2 parent households made up of their birth parents who are married to each other. To lay that at the feet of homosexuals is simply intellectually dishonest. And if i am not mistaken it was Vatican II (and i think Pius XII before that ) who said that bearing children was not the sole purpose of marriage. Homosexual marriage might well be a symptom of the current state of marriage, but certainly not a cause of it. Unless and until heterosexuals are willing to reform their conduct of marriage, this tragectory will not be slowed. And they have almost universally and completely refused to do that.
DeaconMark, first, I didn’t say that procreation was the sole purpose of marriage. Second, I didn’t lay the blame on the breakdown of the family on homosexuals. Obviously, the procreative and unitive are the ends of marriage, but the procreative act is what consummates the unitive end(one flesh). The homosexual agenda is a small part of a larger breakdown in the modern spirit which has lost touch with the nature/ends of things.
I also disagree with you that people have universally and completely refused to reform their marriage conduct. Both Protestant and Catholic churches are involved in a great deal of work on marriage and there is a nascent movement to rethink our no-fault divorce laws. But as I said we are suffering from a spiritual crisis and there’s not going to be any quick political fix to that.
Actually DeaconMark, there are two purposes or ends of marriage, 1) for the mutual good of the spouses and 2) the procreation of children. However, if one is weighing official Catholic teaching on the two, the procreation of children has more theological weight.