To my ears, these arguments ring hollow. They sound eerily similar to arguments that business developers and foresters have used to encroach on the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Most wilderness, they say, has been lost to human activity — so the BWCA must be changed. In our modern times, others say, wilderness is just a vestige of an earlier hunter-gatherer stage — the march of economic progress must go on.
Yet the fight for wilderness preservation continues, at both the legal and personal levels. The law continues to decree that guests in the BWCA honor strict codes of conduct — eschewing trash cans, motorized boating, cabins and electricity to preserve deep, but not obvious, cultural goods. The benefits for various species, biodiversity and the human soul are profound.
Like wilderness, the deep cultural goods of marriage have been the result of meticulous social and legal exclusion. Throughout history, marriage has involved time-honored renunciations — premarital abstinence; gender separation for much of adolescence and early adulthood; parental oversight, and lifelong fidelity, to name a few….
“But the logic of same-sex-marriage proponents places priority on individual identity over the commitments intrinsic to genuine love.”
Such an ignorant statement could only be made by someone who has not experienced the genuine love and commitment that is the bedrock of many same-sex relationships.
Mr. Olson needs to get out more.
My first thought was, “How did this ever get into the Star-Tribune?” And from a school administrator no less! It was certainly courageous to write a signed opinion piece like that in Minneapolis. I hope he doesn’t have problems resulting from what I expect will be a strong and extremely negative response from the readers.
That does surprise me in the Star-Tribune as well. That’s about the only major newspaper I can get in Eastern South Dakota, and I rarely get it because it is extremely biased, even in the reporting sections. Being biased in the Editorial sections I could care less about, but when it bleeds over into your regular news reporting, that’s when I stop my subscription. I am surprised they even ran an opt ed like that.
RE: ““But the logic of same-sex-marriage proponents places priority on individual identity over the commitments intrinsic to genuine love.â€
An excellent statement by one who is obviously rational and doesn’t mistake subjective little personal experiences for reason, logic, and consistent deductive principle.
What a pity that some fellow Episcopalians are not similar, but instead base their opinions on personal subjective experience and feelings. No wonder our General Conventions are such tawdry, vacuous, and humorous displays to the nation. Thank goodness we are experiencing the natural consequences in our church from such behavior.