It is important to situate the same-sex marriage issue in the context of dramatic changes in our society over the last forty years that bear upon the very nature of marriage. These changes have paved the way for the even more dramatic changes implicit in the adoption of homosexual marriage.
We should not hope to return to some mythical golden age of marriage in the past. Marriage has always had its problems, many of them significant. There have been some profound changes since 1970, and some of them (e.g., greater opportunities for women in education and employment) have been good. But others have been, in my opinion, catastrophic.
Wonderful article. Thanks for the post!
Interesting. His point is that same-sex marriage became a plausible question only because all those other things — some good (women in the work place), some bad (easy divorce, contraception, etc). I say what I always say here, that to start the war for a traditional conception of marriage by fighting gay marriage is basically to use the Law (religious, ethical, moral, whatever) to be tough on people not like us (at least most of us — gay people, say) while going easy on the Law-breaking of people like us (our divorced, contraceptive using, etc neighbors and co-workers). Our Lord was very tough on people who used the Law to benefit the insider while punishing the outsider. So, fine — you want to fix tradition marriage, start by fixing all the things people like us benefit from, then come talk to me about gay marriage.
Even though it may not be its main goal, this article makes a case for making “civil partnerships” and “marriage” two separate and distinct things.
But, for me, this is the money paragraph
“Children ordinarily need a mother and a father. Whether this is viewed as God’s design or as the product of evolutionary development, it is the way human beings are. A mother and a father each provide something distinctive to children—the complementarity of the spouses is an essential element of both their personal relationship and their relationship with their children. Among other things, young boys and young girls look to their parents to learn what it means to be a man, to be a woman”.
And, civilly or ecclesiologically, it speaks to what I’ve said before–that, just because too many of us often fall short of a standard, it does not mean that we should have NO standard, or the standard should be changed/diluted.
“just because too many of us often fall short of a standard, it does not mean that we should have NO standard, or the standard should be changed/diluted. ”
The fact is, your neighbor may have an actual speck in his eye, and the world may be an objectively better place once you’ve got him to remove it. But Jesus is still clear on the basic rule: take the plank out of yours first.
You know, #4, I was trying to leave my own personal life out of this. I try to exercise humility rather than consider myself some sort of “prime example”. But, since you basically asked:
I was married(man-woman) at 22 and thus far have nearly 22 years of happy, committed, monogamous marriage to show for it, not to mention, fulfilled kids(at least, so far). My prayer is for all of that to continue.
It seems to me I’m working on the “plank” just fine, and I have endeavored to live within both Scriptural and civil guidance. I trust that God will judge, comment, or change my path if He needs to.
If you have any sort of a testy/defensive problem with that, you might need to examine your own plank.
And my opinion re: changing the “standard”, well, stands, like it or not.
I think your story is great; it is, in fact, pretty much like mine. My objection was just that, if we agree with the article that the problem with marriage is a bunch of things that have benefited people like us (not “us” but “people like us” — all our divorced, etc friends) and a few things that are about to benefit people not like us, we need to focus our attention on the first group, because if we just work on the things that bother us about other people, well, things will feel just fine before we get to the things that bother us about our friends. The fact is that a whole lot of people who are up in arms now about “saving marriage” from gay marriage were just fine with the availability of divorce and contraception and the rest until just recently, and will go back to being just fine with it if they can succeed in keeping the social benefits marriage from gay people.
In saying “us” regarding “falling short of the standard”, I include ALL of humanity, and do not single out gay OR straight people. I try to avoid it myself, but am well-aware of heterosexual sin, too.
MarkP — Here’s my way of thinking about it, for what it’s worth. Marriage is a practice, as medicine or law are practices. The article speaks persuasively (I believe) to what constitutes the practice of marriage. The article also does a good job of enumerating the travesties we have perpetrated over the last forty to fifty years at the expense of that practice. And so? Well, maybe two things. First, I believe your point is cogent. At this point, to be horrified by SSBs but to treat divorce as a matter of routine is, um, inconsistent (From Casablanca, “I am shocked, shocked to discover there is gambling” “Your winnings, sir.”). For the same reason, given massive confusion in our culture, we can only respond to people living in same-sex relations as fellow pilgrims on the way, with respect for their struggles and questions. However, second, the case for SSBs hangs to a huge extent on normalizing an ideal of marriage as self-fulfillment for the partners, trivializing the importance of procreation, and treating divorce as a normal, in many ways positive, event. For these reasons, what we [b]teach[/b] about the practice of marriage matters. To redefine marriage in order to include SSBs amounts to making generativity and lifelong fidelity little more than “lifestyle choices”.
# 8, I don’t see marriage as a practice. In the eyes of the church it is a church-created sacrament – outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace. It is a holy, grace-filled way of life, that may incorporate a practice within it. But it is more than a practice. In that life two people of opposite gender live for and love each other through their love of God and through the grace of God. Sexual relations are a part of that grace-filled life, and procreation, if God so intends. Heterosexual treatment of marriage as something to use or discard as a matter of convenience is desecration of those holy lives and God’s gift of his grace.
The question then becomes whether persons of the same sex can call on the grace of God to live that same life of grace as the heterosexual married couple is called to live. My answer is
“no” but I understand why the question is asked.
#9 — My fault. I certainly did not mean to exclude sacramental grace. Faith is a gift of God; we practice faith. Both things are true. I was keying on the second usage.
[blockquote]…. the boys [or rather, the bad boys] won the sexual revolution (since it legitimized non-marital and recreational sex, gave them the option of deserting their wives for younger and better offerings, and even induced many women to adopt more male attitudes toward sex or accede to male demands in the sexual marketplace). [/blockquote]
The author states this as truth, but in fact, without a willing accomplise – the woman – this could not be true. Women have allowed all of this to happen. Women are responsible. Men would prefer things to be loose, and women obliged them. Women hold the key and when they exercise that power, children are born to 2 parents, when woman abdicate that power, children are born to broken households, or abortions occur, and the kids wind up in a predictable poverty (single parenthood almost insures poverty) and much greater liklihood of abuse to the children, as men move in and out of an unstable household. This is unwelcome news for women, but there it is. We can make 95% of all of this go away. But … the culture says that this is good. Not in my house we don’t say so.
MarkP,
I understand what you’re saying. And I find it ironically and tragically amusing that the same “peace and free love” generation which was so hellbent on being iconoclastic is now busily trying to repack the Pandora’s Box that it opened. Too late.
Mark’s point that we have collectively abandoned established standards because they interfered with our getting something we want, this is obviously sound. The conclusion -fix these first and then worry about ssm – is dumbfounding. This is tantamount t saying that we shouldn’t worry about prostitution until we solve humans tendency to gamble and drink excessively. Neither divorce nor, say, abortion, have any direct bearing on ssm. They are entirely different problems arising from entirely different sources. Divorce may be sought for sinful reasons or for an overwhelming necessity, but these are, by and large, deviations from an agreed norm. That is, the norm is granted, and divorce is a deviation. But homosexuals are inherently abnormal and no spin can make them otherwise. Ssm is an attempt to make them normal, the very reverse of divorce.
Moreover, the existence of civil partnerships make ssm redundant, if it is, as homosexuals say, the desire for civll guarantees that is driving them.
Even if we make divorce impossible, the problem of ssm will be no less compelling, no more desirable, no more sacramental, no less unsavory. And I might add that Mother Nature, who has a vested interest in marriage as an essential device for growing the next generation, clearly finds homosexual sex foreign to evolution and survival. It is never wise to fool with Mother Nature. Larry
What a great summary article. My thanks too for posting it.
“And I might add that Mother Nature, who has a vested interest in marriage as an essential device for growing the next generation, clearly finds homosexual sex foreign to evolution and survival”.
Yes, but that’s how they’re going to bag the procreation-marriage connection–because now there’s ART and everyone that can pay for it is entitled to that, too.
And so it goes…
One of the comments stated :
“Marriage is a practice, as medicine or law are practices.”
I strongly disagree with this assertion. Doctors gain experience and
increase their expertise by seeing lots of patients. Likewise, lawyers
increase their professional expertise by seeing lots of clients. I don’t
think married people increase their value as married people by “seeing”
lots of other people.
While all humanity is sinful and God can forgive sin, sin always harms–either the individual, the social fabric or both. Our choice–individually and collectively– is (1) to repent and to turn to God for forgiveness or (2) to stay hardened in our sin and to wait for God to act.
I think Mr. Wolfe has done a wonderful job of putting the debate about same sex marriage in a much broader, faith context.
In his Meditation of the Divine Will (September 1862), Abraham Lincoln wrote;
“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party–and yet the human instrumentalities, working as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.” Amen.
#11 – [i]…Women have allowed all of this to happen. Women are responsible. Men would prefer things to be loose, and women obliged them….[/i]
[url=http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=citation&book=Genesis&chapno=3&startverse=12&endverse=13]Genesis 2:12-13[/url] jumps into my mind:[blockquote]The man said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Then the LORD God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent beguiled me, and I ate.”[/blockquote]
Thank you, Old Guy, for that Lenten reminder. “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”
MarkP, you point out what Paul pointed out: if we do not speak the Truth in love for our fellow man, we are just noise makers. Jesus instructs we who desire to follow His will to be aware of our own sins first and not feel smug. Nowhere in the Gospel are we told to call sin, ours or anyone else’s, a good and wholesome thing. But as we ask God’s forgiveness and help in turning from our own ways, we are also to continue to call others to repentance and salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s good to be warned about the planks we have, but I don’t know if carrying same-sex coupling into the church is just a “speck” that can wait.
Rev. Tibbets notes a timely part of Genesis. God said eating the fruit from the one tree was forbidden. We thought it might not be so bad and ate anyway. God has said homosexuality is sin in his eyes. Today we hear how it’s not so bad as all that, in fact maybe good. Seems like we’ve been at this fork in the road before.