On gay marriage, no tenable compromise

I can't agree with all of this, but I really think you're onto something here, Rod, something that's been resolutely ignored by all sides in this endless debate.

My personal views have been far more outraged, and I am personally far more appalled, by the apparent death, among most of the young, of the idea that sexual intercourse can be or should be reserved for relationships where there is some commitment involved (formerly called "marriage") than by the agitations of the gays, who, after all, are a very small proportion of the population.

This thing is much bigger than gay marriage. The divorce rate among heterosexuals, all by itself, is or should be more than hint enough that we have a much larger problem here.

This kind of original thinking and writing is why I think you need a wider forum than Dallas.

Lee Harris writes - "This is how those fond of abstract reasoning can destroy the ethical foundations of a society without anyone's noticing it. They throw up for debate that which no one before ever thought about debating. They take the collective visceral code that has bound parents to grandchildren from time immemorial, in every culture known to man, and make of it a topic for fashionable intellectual chatter." Should we only have debates about things that someone else has thought about debating before? Harris seems to say yes to this here. If so, how do we ever get any new ideas, procedures, solutions. It is absurd to claim that throwing up for debate that which no one before has ever thought about debating will "destroy the ethical foundations of a society". This was the same claim leveled at Socrates and he was put to death for 'corrupting the youth' with his incessant questioning. One would have to admit that every tradition develops, changes, transforms, even the traditions that consider themselves to be the most conservative and unchanging. How would traditions develop and transform and change without "throwing up for debate that which no one ever thought about debating? All questioning has to start somewhere, and it ususally does start with someone asking a question no one has thought of asking before. The greatest scientific discoveries begin in precisely this manner.__ On questions of tradition and critiques of tradition, I've always found rich intellectual insights in the debates between the contemporary German philosophers, Gadamer and Habermas. Gadamer's opus, Truth and Method, is indispensible for anyone who wants to think philosophically about tradition.____

I think conservatives should try to reverse the growth of pro-homosexual sentiment in our culture. They can do this by better publicizing the serious health risks of homosexuality, especially the sharp reductions in life expectancy that results from the gay lifestyle.

Here's why the compromise is so difficult. You would not get along well with Jewish coworkers if you came into work and told them, "My religion teaches me that accepting Jesus Christ as Savior is central to all morality, so I think living a 'Jewish lifestyle' is inherently immoral, and I want to exercise my religious freedom to tell you about it. Further, the law should be structured in such a way as to deter Jews from forming lasting and monogamous relationships and raising children together. Also, this company should refuse to give health care, sick days, or death benefits to anyone who does not choose to accept Christ as Savior."

Unless you could keep your beliefs to yourself, your Jewish colleagues would not find you a person he or she would want to work with. Likewise, a gay person would have similar difficulties dealing with an anti-gay colleague.

Given the significant numbers of gay people in my office, anyone who was openly anti-gay would have a hard time socially and professionally. I know public defender offices are more liberal than the vast majority of workplaces, but my office is hardly unique in the number of gay co-workers. I see why anti-gay people are concerned. They should be. Over time, it will become harder and harder to be openly anti-gay.

Some issues just need to be fought out as a matter of power. That may be what has to happen with gay rights. In a democratic society, that power is expressed in the courts, legislation, initiatives, and in person-to-person contact. As Dreher points out, the anti-gay-rights side is currently more powerful, but that power is slipping away fast.

As to the tax exemption, I'm getting pretty sick of hearing about it. The government didn't force it on anyone. Churches and synagogues chose to take legal non-profit status, along with the restrictions that come with it. Basically, the government purchased some of your religious liberty for a few pieces of silver, and you sold willingly. Whatever happened to giving unto Caesar that which is Caesar's?

Groups as diverse as the NRA and the ACLU are non-tax-exempt, and they get along just fine. They both have smaller separate tax-exempt organizations, but deductions to the main groups are not tax deductible.

I value the religious voice in society. It's a shame that so many faiths think a tax exemption is more valuable than full participation in our democracy.

Larry,
The tax exempt status churches enjoy is and should be the same as any other non-profit. Regardless of what it was before Lyndon Johnson, today, tax exempt status is not "recognition that [churches] had a higher claim on the money than the state."

Churches should not get special privileges not enjoyed by other nonprofits. They also shouldn't face special restrictions. They could also give up that tax exempt status anytime and operate without any of the restrictions tied to the exemption.

Churches should follow the same rules and face the same restrictions as the tax-exempt wings of the NRA, ACLU, and thousands of other non-profits. If they don't like that, they can tell their members to pay taxes on their donations and then do what they please.

Basically, anytime religious groups complain that they might lose their tax exemption for this or that, they are complaining about a choice they are making. They are voluntarily giving up some of their liberty in return for a few pieces of silver from the government. I don't have much sympathy for that.

And it wasn't Lyndon Johnson who said, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s. . . ."

"This is why we're going to have a very nasty culture war. Just wait until more people understand -- no thanks to the news media -- what the full implications of gay civil rights are for their churches and schools."

They said the same thing about bi-racial marriage.

I can say that in Massachusetts, the 'cultural war' over gay marriage has generally produced a collective yawn. If anything, it's helped increase revenues from tourism.

I agree with the post that said that as people grow older they become more conservative.
And I also agree that the sight of radical gay protests will galvanize the opposition.
Certainly, once people understand the threat to religious freedom, the gay agenda will quickly fade away.

I totally disagree with the post that said that as people grow older they become more conservative.

I find - with one or two exceptions - that my friends have become more conservative fiscally, but much more liberal socially. When my Right-to-Life, far -right Catholic friend says "let them have civil marriage, it doesn't hurt me", I know the world is upside down, isn't it?

Except it isn't.

Compassion is a value we learn as we grow.

The "gay agenda" are my two middle-age/elderly friends who are together 30 years but not married (but that WILL be fixed in New York State next year). The "gay agenda" is my best friend from high school, with her partner for 15 years, with 3 children. Those are family values. That is what marriage is for.

If that's the "gay agenda", that's something this white, middle class guy will fight - and fight hard - for.

Cons80,__When you refer to the "sharp reductions in life expectancy that results [sic] from the gay lifestyle", I'll assume you're referring to the studies done by Dr. Paul Cameron, a rogue psychologists. You might like to know that psychologists and statisticians have dismissed his studies as nonsense, and have recently described his work as "pseudoscientific gobbledygook". The reason for this is that his work was deliberately done wrong, in order to create an illusion of a reduced lifespan where there was none. In fact, all reputable scientific studies indicate that there is no significant difference in lifespan between gay people and straight people.____William R,__Get your facts straight. Catholic Charities was informed by the state of Massachusetts that it could either place children with same-sex adoptive couples, or it could lose state funding. It chose to place over 100 children with same-sex couples. At that point, the Catholic Church withdrew funding, and Catholic Charities was forced to close its adoption center. As for your imagined "threat" to religious liberties, look at Mormon adoption centers in Massachusetts which continue to legally refuse to place children with same-sex couples. They've been able to operate without state funding. There is a difference between losing state funding and experiencing repression of religious beliefs. Stop twisting the truth.____Mr. Dreher,__Wow! What a fascinating article. One thing I'd like to point out as a lawyer. You say that churches are more likely to be left alone to continue not performing same-sex marriages if same-sex marriage starts being legalized by the legislature rather than the courts. I think that it truly makes little difference which branch legalizes same-sex marriage. If a legislature does it, it's up to legislature to make sure there's an exemption for churches carved out. If it's up to courts, they can write in their opinions that it does not apply to churches. Incidentally, all three court opinions that have legalized same-sex marriage in this country have noted that requiring the government to perform same-sex marriages has no effect on churches, and also that each church has a fundamental right to religious freedom that cannot be encroached upon by same-sex marriage. Furthermore, tax-exempt status is also immune to challenges based solely on a refusal to perform same-sex marriage, just as churches who refuse to perform interracial marriages or interfaith marriages can also remain tax-exempt.__

Susan: "My personal views have been far more outraged, and I am personally far more appalled, by the apparent death, among most of the young, of the idea that sexual intercourse can be or should be reserved for relationships where there is some commitment involved (formerly called "marriage") "

Are you suggesting codifying that in law, by, say, making fornication and adultery illegal? If not, then that comment doesn't seem all that relevant to the gay marriage issue.

Cons80: "I think conservatives should try to reverse the growth of pro-homosexual sentiment in our culture. They can do this by better publicizing the serious health risks of homosexuality, especially the sharp reductions in life expectancy that results from the gay lifestyle."

I do think you have a point here. As with Susan's comment, it would seem to be better addressed by argument and propaganda, rather than law, although feel free to call for the recriminalisation of homosexual acts, if you so wish. However, I don't think this has much to do with people deciding who gets their house when they die, who gets to visit them in hospital, and who decides when to turn off the life-support. I'm in an odd place as far as these debates are concerned, being pro- same-sex marriage and yet at least sympathetic to anti-homosexual arguments.

"My personal views have been far more outraged, and I am personally far more appalled, by the apparent death, among most of the young, of the idea that sexual intercourse can be or should be reserved for relationships where there is some commitment involved (formerly called "marriage") than by the agitations of the gays, who, after all, are a very small proportion of the population.

This thing is much bigger than gay marriage. The divorce rate among heterosexuals, all by itself, is or should be more than hint enough that we have a much larger problem here."

*****

True, true, and, um, true.

If ever there was a case of a clash between religious liberty and the social understanding of marriage, it was the Mormon experience. Why are you not concerned that the State used its power to bully that church out of polygamy, which at least has Biblical precedent and a history of practice throughout the world? The practice has not undermined all tradition, ethics and morals as we know them, either. It is a ancient form of social organization.

Or is the Mormon experience a source of your concern?

The shells move so fast in this discussion that it can be hard to know which immutable and eternal principle is currently the topic.

Right you are, William R. It's all about religious liberty.

The State wanted to force Catholic adoption agencies to hand children over to gay couples. In order to exist in a way consistent with its understanding of itself, the Church in Massachusetts had no choice but to shut down its adoption work.

(Compare this with the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organizations, which re-wrote their constitution to promise non-discrimination against gay mentors. Uh huh. Gay male mentors for fatherless boys and teens. Don't be surprised when Big Brothers becomes indistinguishable from NAMBLA. Maybe they'll even forge a strategic partnership.)

What will happen when the State sets out to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions? Catholic hospitals are some of the best and most affordable. Do pro-abort activists really want to kill the Catholic healthcare system?

What will happen when the State tries to force Catholic schools to hire a quota of openly gay teachers, principals and administrators? Do gay activists really want to sacrifice the Catholic education system on the altar of rights-assertion rage?

What will happen when the State resolves to punish the 1,400 charitable organizations run by the Catholic Church for being "discriminatory against gays"? These orgs serve more than 10 million Americans in need each year -- soup kitchens, women's shelters, food banks, family counseling, etc. Do gay activists really want to shut down this enormous support network for people in need?

What will happen when the State seeks to fine or arrest ministers and priests for hate speech when they teach -- from the pulpit -- the Church's teachings on the nature of homosexual acts? Do gay activists really want a State church like the puppet "patriotic church" they have in China?

Watch out what you fight tooth and nail for, gay activists. It just might be the booby prize of a totalitarian regime bent on crucifying religious liberty.

thanks for thinking & writing out loud, rod - as is usually the case with your POV, it challenges me

2 things came to mind initially:

* the idea of marriage as concurrently a sacrament and a contract is not really something that tracts with historical Christianity. S simple search of he interwebs reveals:

The first known instance in the West of a blessing by a priest during a wedding ceremony is the 950 ritual of Durham, England. Although the fourth Lateran Council of 1215 required the blessing of a priest, it was unnecessary for the validity of the marriage. Only after the Council of Trent in 1563 was a ceremony compulsory for Roman Catholics. Not until 1754, after the Hardwicke Marriage Act had been passed, was a ceremony a legal requirement in England and Wales.

* it seem at best disingenuous and at worst manipulative to portray GLBTQ as the party unwilling to compromise, Rod. The trajectory of the "conservative agenda" far outstripes the "gay agenda" in terms an unwillingness to engage in dialogue and compromise.

Koan. Simple. The state of Massachusetts told the Catholic Church either place kids with homosexual couples or get out of the adoption business. It didn't matter that after a century it had handled more adoptions of foster care children than any agency in Massachusetts.

I think Rod makes an nteresting suggestion, then it all becomes a muddle:
"I think a sufficient number of social conservatives could be convinced to yield on gay marriage if we could be assured that our religious institutions would be left alone. This could be d, I think -- lawyers, correct me if I'm wrong -- if gay marriage were granted statutorily, instead of ordered by a court as part of civil rights jurisprudence. But as I indicate in the column, I don't think gay activists want any part of that -- they want full equality in every sense of the word."

As a gay man who is happy to be part of one of the 18k couples married in California since the Supreme Court decision, I would be more than happy to accept a compromise that made clear religious institutions did not have to alter their practices to recognize gay marriages. I think the Supreme Court decision pretty much said that, and I don't think it conflicts with "full equality." To the extent it was left unclear, I would probably have voted for an amendment that guaranteed that safe harbor. It's the backers of prop 8 who would have balked at that compromise. ____

William, this has already been covered. Massachusetts would have pulled state funding. There was nothing to prevent CC from continuing without state funding. A challenge, to be sure, but it would ensure complete religious liberty. As it was, the Roman Catholic Church cut off funding.

You can't have your religious liberty paid for with tax dollars. So pick one.

Should a fertility doctor who has moral beliefs against interracial marriage be required to treat an interracial couple or lose his license?

Should a lawyer who refuse to serve an interracial couple because he opposes interracial marriage lose his license?

Should an insurance agent who refuses to serve an interracial couple because he oppose interracial marriage lose his license?

Well, guess what?

That's the law today.

And because conservatives never spoke up about that, because they regard opposition to interracial marriage as despicable bigotry, they have no right to complain when the same thing is done to them by people who regard their own views on marriage as despicable bigotry.

If you want some interesting reading on this subject, google "Bob Jones University Nuclear Bomb Or Train Wreck".

If people who oppose interracial marriage on religious grounds aren't given exemptions, what makes you think people who oppose gay marriage on religious grounds will be given exemptions?

They won't. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dreaming.

Does anyone else think that Night Train is also against inter-racial marriage, but is coyly dancing around that exact statement in these posts? Night, be a stand-up guy. Just say straight out that you're opposed to inter-racial marriage, probably on what you see as religious grounds. That way, we can all see exactly what we're dealing with here.

In other words, we should've been sticking up for the rights of "bigots" a long time ago. But we didn't, and sat idly by and allowed the government to use the law to punish "bigots" because we didn't approve of their beliefs about marriage.

But now that we're the "bigots" because others don't approve of our stance on marriage, suddenly we're all bent out of shape about religious liberty and rights of conscience.

Well, it's too late. Either everyone should have rights of conscience when it comes to matters like this, or no one should. And we long ago decided that it was just fine for the government to violate religious liberties and rights of conscience when it comes to unfashionable views about marriage. But now that our own views are suddenly unfashionable, suddenly liberty and rights are inviolable.

Sorry, folks, but that argument is not going to fly in the courts of the law, or the court of public opinion.

Does anyone else think that Night Train is also against inter-racial marriage, but is coyly dancing around that exact statement in these posts? Night, be a stand-up guy. Just say straight out that you're opposed to inter-racial marriage, probably on what you see as religious grounds. That way, we can all see exactly what we're dealing with here.

See, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

JPL, what does it matter what my views are on interracial marriage?

What if I am opposed to it?

Assume for the sake of argument that I do oppose interracial marriage.

Does that make me a bad person?

Does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to express my opinions in a civilized manner in a public forum?

Does that make me a "bigot" and a "hater" who's beneath contempt?

If I own a bed and breakfast, should I be compelled to rent rooms to interracial couples who are legally married, or be fined out of existence for civil rights violations?

If I own an insurance agency, does that mean I should lose my license for refusing to serve an interracial couple?

If I'm a fertility specialist, does that mean I should lose my license for refusing to treat an interracial couple?

Many conservatives and Christians would say yes to all of the above. And then turn around and insist that they should be allowed to have exemptions for their own views on marriage, no matter how "bigoted" and "hateful" society finds them.

And apparently no one is able to see the glaring hypocrisy.

Bigots can believe whatever they want. In all those examples you cited, a state-issued license was the sticking point. You can hate black people all you want, but if you want a license from the state to practice medicine, you can't refuse to treat them. And in Mass, you can disapprove of same-sex couples all you want, but if you want a state contract to provide adoption services, you can't refuse to place children with them.

Yes, I know Koan. Maybe you haven't noticed, but that's what conservatives and evangelicals are complaining about. They can "hate" gay people all they want, as you put it, but they can't act on those beliefs by refusing to provide services to them.

And it's not only about people who are licensed by the state, like doctors and lawyers. A person who owns a bed and breakfast but refused to rent to interracial couples would soon be forced to either violate their conscience or go out out of business. That's been the case for decades now, and I don't recall Christian conservatives raising too much hell about that. But now that people who don't want to rent to homosexuals will face the same dilemma, they're all hopped up about freedom of conscience.

It saddens me to see so very much "us against them" among the conservative Christians here.

I don't fully understand your fears. Perhaps because I have lived so long in Europe, where we have full civil and human rights as gays, including state-recognized unions, and the churches are just as free to preach forgiveness or hate as they always have been. Relative to what I am seeing in America, considerably more love than hate.

A question or three, if I may. Do the advances of science and medicine over the last years matter?

The medical profession, psychiatry and mainstream scientists are in consensus: Homosexuality is not learned behavior, nor is it choice. Whether it is genetically based or determined in the womb, no serious argument is advanced by any neutral researcher in the natural sciences today that my sexuality can either be chosen or changed.

Do you conservatives who oppose granting me full citizenship rights reject these findings?

I am trying to understand your fears, your motivations for relegating me to second-class status. I have mentioned before, I have a dog in this fight, I must parley with my American family and they are all vehemently unwilling to budge an inch in their hostility towards me as a gay man.

Night Train, in order to accept your view of the situation, we would have to accept the idea that gender is no more consequential than race is.

No, that's not the case at all. I'm discussing two things - 1) the insistence by evangelicals that the CA Supreme Court decisions was judicial tyranny because it overrode the will of the people while simultaneously praising the same court for overthrowing the will of the people when it invalidated laws against interracial marriage and 2) religious liberty/rights of conscience protection. Whether or not gender is more consequential than race has zero bearing on either question.

Most of us came to accept long ago that a black man and a white man are not different from one another in any significant way.

That's true. But it has nothing to do with anything. At the time the courts overrode the will of the people by invalidating laws against interracial marriage, the vast majority of people believed that races differed in significant ways, and that these differences were important enough that interracial marriage was immoral and should not be legal. In fact, the percentage of people who held those views at the time was in the 95% range, far higher than the percentage today who view same sex marriage as immoral. Whether we like to admit it or not, a couple generations ago most people were as disgusted at the thought of interracial marriage as we are at gay marriage.

People's own experiences with life, children, heterosexual relationships, etc all tell them that unlike race, gender is real, important and meaningful.

Agreed, the vast majority of people believe that. But, clearly, many do not. But again, it's neither here nor there. What's important is that the vast majority of people used to believe that race is real, important, and meaningful, and yet the courts ignored that, and they also interpreted civil rights laws to require people to ignore their deeply held beliefs when it comes to serving the public. There are no exemptions for people who oppose interracial marriage when it comes to these matters. And if one group of people isn't entitled to exemptions for their beliefs, no group should be so entitled.

And if you think that you're going to get an exemption, you're dreaming. Because when it comes before the courts, the ACLU and others will argue that we don't give exemptions for bigoted views about interracial marriage, and therefore we shouldn't give exemptions for bigoted views about gay marriage.

And you can insist all you want that those nasty old racists don't deserve exemptions because their views on restricting marriage are hate and bigotry, but we deserve exemptions because our views on restricting marriage are deeply held moral and religious beliefs, but it's not going to work.

panthera, with all due respect, you keep talking about Europe allowing gay marriage, but there are only 3 countries in Europe which allow gay marriage: the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium. Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK and Switzerland offer some sort of domestic partnership or civil union to same sex couples. Of those, only Norway and Denmark's law are pretty much identical to marriage. Most do not allow artificial insemination through state medical care for same sex couples which is not the case here in the states. What is going on in Europe doesn't seem so different from the states where even Focus on the Family supports the creation of some sort of civil union for same sex couples. Yet, we are so closed off, hostile, blah, blah, blah? That doesn't even make sense. If you look at the article I link to above, you'll see that there is broad support among Americans for almost everything else gay couples could want aside from actual marriage. This is hardly an instance of "those boorish, close-minded, hyper religious Americans need to be more like us enlightened Europeans"!

From the French government's report on the issue of same sex marriage (which it rejected):
Marriage is not merely the contractual recognition of the love within a couple. It is a framework with rights and obligations conceived in order to welcome the child and provide for his harmonious development. Thus, marriage is the only structure reserved strictly for heterosexual couples. . . Because of the filiative nature of marriage (the fact of being the child of certain parents), it is essential that the male-female nature of marriage be preserved. This corresponds to a biological reality, that same-sex couples are naturally infertile, and to an imperative, that of helping the child develop his/her identity as necessarily coming from the union of a man and a woman.

Again, perhaps it really is so much better for homosexuals in Europe. If there is less family conflict around homosexuality in Europe, that is almost certainly so. However, Americans are not so different than Europeans in how they deal with the issue as a matter of law.

me's post reminds me of an insight I gained from her longer post on the "lavender brownshirts" topic. The conservative religious idea of marriage is a foundational belief. It's the keystone of a structure that prescribes roles for men and women, and insures and validates male dominance. Thus, no matter how much evidence piles up that change might not be bad, the belief can't be changed without causing serious disruption to the rest of the belief system. It's similar to the foundational myth that God created Adam and Eve. No matter how much evidence piled up to show that human beings evolved over time from other life forms, and did not suddenly appear on earth via direct divine intervention, people had a hard time accepting that because it disrupted their foundational myth of Man as the Image and Likeness of God. Traditional marriage is part of that same system, and that's why no compromise seems possible.

Unfortunately for conservatives, Rod is right and the battle is already lost. The reality of marriage has already moved too far from that foundational myth. Myths survive when they are able to adapt to changing circumstances. When they are held too tightly, they tend to shatter in the face of rapid change. Or people lose interest and simply walk away, because the myth no longer has compelling power in their new circumstances.

This articulates ... the idea that sexual intercourse can be or should be reserved for relationships where there is some commitment involved...
pretty well the conundrum without any religious "holier than thou" moral tyranny. Physical reality tells us that the somatic nature of our generative faculties isn't a mere "idea." Its an act. When the wee masculine cells ejaculated (at the point of surrender of the will) encounter a wee feminine cell erupting into a fertile cavity the relationship's commitment is sealed at conception. One speaks of "making love" when the consent of both parties is mutually given. One speaks of rape when not.

The "relationship" that nature has been designed to protect in all animal species is that of the newly conceived to his/her parents. Successful procreation aims at privileged status for the conceived persons as "siblings" member in the one FAMILY. The spectator sport of same-sex genital stimulation is not the same class of act, even if some entertain the "idea" that it is. Our children in their naive innocence know the difference, even if we mature ones are too PC to concede it.

So long as arguments for a "tenable compromise" from our protagonist revolve around designing rules around such disembodied "ideas," untethered from practical reason, there's no place for an incarnational Christian ethic and thus no grounds to "yield." Or even stake a stand to negotiate upon.

Dialog over.

Rod you're on a losing streak with this anti-intellectual project. Religion in the public square means defending the truth for all, not merely the elect. Philosophically, being human means acting in a human fashion, using human means to attain human ends. For the religious amongst us (of collectivist-, conservative- or libertarian-ideological bent) an act of faith is a receptive conforming of one's will to a will greater than oneself.

"Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done"

is not a Christianist rallying cry - its a pleading for intercession, a request for the grace necessary to choose that act that would please God most.

God didn't design ejaculation or amplified libido upon ovulation to be sinful. They're powerful faculties of our complementarity genders - conjugating the two is the means he gave us to build His Civilization of Love. The second powerful faculty he gave us, alike unto his own, is our free will. We choose when we give our consent, to conform our will as a gift of love to another. The Christian understanding of love is modelled on the Divine love of our Creator for his Beloved creatures - it is no accident of Hebrew semantics that the term Bridegroom is used to describe such an abiding and fecund commitment. Conjuge means "united with God." The sacrament of MARRIAGE is the human epitome of that union, mutually conferred by the spouses on each other (not confered by a priest as mistakenly conjectured previously in this thread), where they privilege the beloved with a total gift of the two faculties closest to God's own - sex and free will. It is not a contract of cohabitation with insurance benefits, even if the state wishes it were so.

Such contracts are permissible and enforceable under the present laws. Certain injustices remain for cohabitating owner-occupiers, such as two spinster sisters who suffer existential economic loss when one predeceases the other. What the gay lobby would have us believe is that only one class of such injustices should be alleviated: sexually-active cohabitees (where the sexual relations may indeed be extraneous, conducted with third parties, to the private property relations).

What is just about privileging one class of citizens at the expense of others in similar predicaments?

Must religious practice condone such favoritism?

Rod, count me out.

Dear Me,
I am trying to avoid bringing both the various discussions here in Europe, spanning decades, as well as differing terminology into the discussion.

Perhaps, for one as well versed as you, this seems inaccurate. Please consider that your French data is no longer current, the German framework has been expanded enormously since enactment, etc.

Generally, when I speak of unions or marriage in Europe, I am referring to the basic rights which only a State (as opposed to The Commonwealth of Massachusetts) can grant. Specifically, there is a common consensus that if one partner is a non-EU resident, they are granted our equivalent of a "green card". The couple has all the obligations of heterosexual marriages, this is a universal. But the benefits apply, too, if some countries still have certain limitations. Over time, these limitations have been steadily reduced as societies have seen that there is no harm in SSM.

Adoption has been a thorny problem in some countries, with considerable more willingness to permit us to adopt arising over time in each country which now recognizes our unions.

Please note, "marriage" in the American sense, that is, no civil union through the State, only marriage in the church, is foreign to us. Perhaps here lies much of the confusion. Nobody but clerks in government offices (and seldom they) distinquish in speaking between "Civil Union",
"Domestic Partnership", "State registered but non-Catholic Marriage", etc. We all just call it marriage and let it go at that. The rights and obligations are in the civil union, the blessing ( or not) from the church.

Were I to "marry" in the American sense in Norway, this SSM would be granted full civil rights in Germany. Had I adopted children and brought them to Germany, they would remain mine.

Many gay couples in Germany do and have adopted children although the right to do so is not yet anchored. Our adoption agencies place rather more faith in the studies of the last decades than in prejudices. I am not aware of any court acceding to the challenges brought against such adoptions by the few people here who oppose our having full rights.

I fear there is a note of superiority in my writing, I apologize. It has been many decades since this was even a topic in Western Europe and I am still quite shocked every time I return to the land of my birth, only to be stripped of my status and rights.

I mention Canada and Europe, not to split semantic hairs with you, but in an attempt to defuse anxiety by showing that we do have SSM and the church is still thriving.

All this talk of good Christians being persecuted for their beliefs strikes me very much as a repeat of the arguments over interracial marriage I recall from my youth.

I should hate to think Franklin Evans' statement is true, tho' I appreciate the reply. If this be so, then perhaps my hope of finding a solution is in vain.

I would again suggest looking at the slate article I linked to above. As the author points out, there is wide spread support for most aspects of the homosexual rights movement. (as opposed to laws banning interracial marriage - people who supported such laws were opposed to every other aspect of racial equality as well.)

The author of the Slate piece made no such ludicrous, sweeping claim. He said that was the case in the Jim Crow south. California was never part of the Jim Crow south, and blacks enjoyed full civil rights there, except for marriage, when the law was invalidated. There were others states where the situation was the same which weren't part of the south. Many people had no problem with blacks having equal rights in all areas, like employment, voting, etc., but nevertheless opposed interracial marriage.

And if you think I'm some sort of pomo, you really need to get out more.

Rod "that can keep traditional wisdom and practice alive amid a hostile world"
and
Sigaliris "because the myth no longer has compelling power in their new circumstances"

are two sides of the same debased coin, the historicists who want us to put "eternity" on the reference shelf in the library, a "mythical" artefact traced from past "tradition" by a mental act of memory rather than a present encounter with the warm, messy facts of reality. The souls of the millions exterminated in the gas chambers will testify for eternity to the compelling power of the new circumstances of an Arian myth, that hostile world of a traditional might-makes-right "wisdom" and "practice".

Wisdom is not an idea - he's a Person. Right practice is a question of logic: true or false Love. What Rod and Sigaliris propound is that a sentimental embrace of false love is good enough for the common good.

May I aver.

The only existence powerful enough to resist evil is True love.

P.S. folks ought cut-n-paste their posts before typing the antispam ciphers it seems they're time sensitive - if you type too long they time-out and you lose you precious train of thought, and rendering our actions worthless!

Night Train: I googled "Bob Jones University Nuclear Bomb Train Wreck" and found nothing but a bunch of white supremacist stuff.

Yes, and if you google "Christians oppose gay marriage" you'll find nothing but a bunch of "homophobic" stuff. Innit great how labels work?

Anyway, nobody closed Bob Jones University down when it lost the Supreme Court case in 1983.

Who said they did? But the government stripped them of their tax exemption for acting on their belief that interracial marriage is a sin by banning interracial dating.

But if you have an agency that serves *all people,* not just members of your faith group, and if you receive a good % of your funding from taxpayers, then IMO you have to follow state and/or federal anti-discrimination laws in your agency's operations.

BJU never received a dime from taxpayers. They've always been a private institution.

night stalker, boy- talk about missing the point! If all we're talking about here is the courts overruling the people, the Roe v Wade would do. Or the Lily Ledbetter case from last year. I'm sure there are dozens of other cases which have been unpopular as well. But that's just not the point, is it?

What in God's name are you babbling about?

Ah,that's the problem, we all have been thinking first and writing second. Thanks, Clare. I knew it couldn't be me.

Speaking of which, "me", there is a very simple solution to the problem. I cut about 500 words from my post and the decades was, indeed, attached to another issue - that of whether gays are normal or deviant. I do apologize for that sloppiness.

Am I really lording it over y'all with Euro-Centric arrogance? I do apologize, it is not my intent to create any more dissension than we already have. Those Americans who live or travel abroad seem to all suffer to a greater or lesser degree from this syndrome - Europe is not perfect, but Western Europe has not suffered the culture wars of the US over the last years. No, that is not right, hmm, I mean to say, gays and women are accorded more rights than we are in the US.

The gender-specific discussion is interesting. I, too, have read studies that societies with high degrees of sexually assigned rôle division are most uncomfortable with granting women and gay men human and civil rights. Of course, the Italians, Spanish and Israelis seem to have survived, so perhaps heterosexual men are more flexible than we give them credit for.

Larry's correct.

AMH, please read my statement again:
"Europe is not perfect, but Western Europe has not suffered the culture wars of the US over the last years. No, that is not right, hmm, I mean to say, gays and women are accorded more rights than we are in the US."

The "No, that is not right..." is, sadly, due to my very recognition upon writing that, yes, religious intolerance is still a problem. Gays and women do still face enormous hostility from Islamic fundamentalists.

Still, at some point, my feeling is that in the late '80s, Western Europe very quickly came to accept that relegating us to second-class status was incompatible with fairness. The conservatives fairly quickly decided to stop fighting the inevitable ( not that they fought on the same basis as here in the US, homosexuals having been accorded civil and human rights throughout most of Western Europe some time before (trying real hard to please your desire to hold me to exactness here "me" without going into paragraphs of Euro-centric statistics).

In Germany, a relatively conservative society, there was a clear desire to achieve a social consensus. In marked contrast to what I am reading here and in other places, once rights are granted in Europe, the opponents tend to accept the new status quo.

In fact, the conservative parties in Germany have quite a few important elected officials who are openly gay and nobody is much bothered about it (except for jokes such as one from a few years ago regarding two gay mayors: "If the mayor of Berlin marries our mayor in Hamburg, we must have pre-nuptual agreements, that the Berliner not take all our money!" Berlin being de facto bankrupt and Hamburg quite well to do at the time.

A question. If, as seems to be the consensus, gay unions are inevitable, would it not make more sense to work with us to create stable, practical social structures than all this fighting about whether we live to be 50, or insisting that monogamous little me must die of hideous diseases or that I have chosen my sexuality out of defiance of God?

I suspect this, in the end, is the immovable force hits inevitable object conundrum. (sic.)

Tenable compromise =

1. Full equality for gays under state/federal law including civil marriage.

2. Churches continue to believe whatever they want, recognize or not recognize civil marriages as "true" marriages before the eyes of God, and marry or not marry whomever they want.

Tada! That was easy.

panthera, with all due respect, you keep talking about Europe allowing gay marriage, but there are only 3 countries in Europe which allow gay marriage: the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium. Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, the UK and Switzerland offer some sort of domestic partnership or civil union to same sex couples. Of those, only Norway and Denmark's law are pretty much identical to marriage.

Actually, Norway's parliament has already passed SSM legalization into law, stepping into force in early 2009. Sweden's political parties have reached an agreement to pass SSM legalization in their parliament next year as well. It's also supposedly fairly near in Ireland and there's some tumult forming in Greece.

I really don't understand this argument from conservatives about religious liberty... maybe someone can explain it to me.

Why can't the middle ground be something like Roman Catholics & divorce? The official position and teaching of the Catholic Church prohibits divorce (in spite of it being widely accepted in the legal & civil culture). Catholic priests & parishes refuse to marry divorced persons. No one comes after their tax-exepmt status, and they are free to practice their religious liberty. Divorced Catholics who want to remarry may feel disappointed, but they accept this limitation (and usually find Protestant pastors who are willing).

What's different about same-sex marriage in this regard?

"Certain injustices remain for cohabitating owner-occupiers, such as two spinster sisters who suffer existential economic loss when one predeceases the other."

how can two people ie sisters suffer economic loss if one dies before the other. There are laws covering intestate death. Each state's rules are different, but I don't see how they could suffer economic loss.

Now if it is two unrelated who cohabitate and one dies before the other then yes the survivor could suffer economic loss if their is no will or any ownership papers.

I'm sure it is frustrating to keep talking and talking to little apparent effect to those who disagree with ssm. However, the core of the problem is that all the talking is so much hot wind to say, "your concerns are irrelevant and foolish. And only a cover for your religious bigotry. (or religious oppression of women.) What I say is so self-evident that all REASONABLE people think like I do. Now aren't you convinced?"

Rod basically has it right, perhaps inadvertently, that there are two arguments at work. One is about the truth of a dogma, the traditional code of selective sexual prudery, which some people here assert to be true and sacred in often remarkably vulgar terms. The code just doesn't hold up to empirical/pragmatic analysis, though, which is the standard the youngest generation in the U.S. holds it to.

The second argument is about a sacred quality to marriage. The conservative side believes that certain kinds of sexual behavior, violating the code of prudery, disqualify a same sex couple independent of actual spiritual relationship. And a heterosexual couple, requiring no spiritual relationship and no matter their sexual behavior, always entails that sacred quality. Some here argue that conception, as an event, confers this quality...but infertility somehow doesn't seem to matter. So there is magical materialism at work in this theory. Or just inconsistency.

So, explain to me again why your side is the reasonable one?

No, there is no tenable compromise, any more than the 1940's Dixiecrats (separate but [un]equal for blacks) could be compromised. Separate and unequal has no place in 2008 America.

"me", I am not entirely sure how much of your writing is intentionally ironic and how much meant to be understood exactly as stated.

I shall, therefor, only permit myself a response out of personal experience. At the height of the Aids crisis here, when there was no clear understanding of the vectors involved in transmission, I did volunteer work together with many others.

At no time, not even once, was I or any other of the people I know, left without the support and aid of clergy from both the Catholic Church, the protestant church (please, shall I list the denominations all to satisfy you?) and our Orthodox community.

When our volunteer network was reactivated following the crisis in Bosnia, again, not one single time was there a problem with support from the church.

You remind me a great deal of my British colleagues in your insistence upon cold statistics and unwillingness to grant the opposing side any positive motivation.

Truly, this is a difficult issue for all involved. For me, it is a question of my rights. Rights which I at this moment, writing at my desk at a university here in Europe enjoy, yet in five weeks time shall be stripped of, reduced to second class citizenship, until I return to Europe after Christmas.

Yet, I have found people here who do not understand me, are frightened by my very existence, yet still continue to treat with me.

We have seen cultures which tried to solve this conflict through murder, both the Soviets and the Nazis. They failed.
We have seen the South after the War of Northern Aggression, as my American family puts it.

It is time for all of us to find a third way.

At this point, I think I've learned enough to know that I won't be able to find any common point with my American relations. They represent the most inflexible of all the arguments I have seen here. At least, now, I can move ahead legally without remorse.

How ironic that the "godless gay man" (not quite their words) should be the one trying to keep the Christian family together.

Keep thinking, praying and posting folks, thanks for the help. I hope I will be welcome to post again at times.

Rod, you have no idea how much your willingness to work with those of us who disagree with you is. Thank you, personally.

Traditional religious believers have always been a minority, so it is no surprise that the view of traditional religious believers should eventually become the minority view. We have not lost the young, nor have we lost the culture. Our views are losing ground. As that continues, society will descend more and more into chaos, the state will lose sight of the importance of marriage to its own survival, and the suicidal counterculture will murder civilization and itself. What will survive the chaos will be the sound minority culture of traditional values. Phoenix-like, from the ashes of western society, religious culture will rise up. No worries. Jesus, come soon.

Sigaliris,

It isn't about being "the boss" as you put it. Perhaps I'm reading into things, but you seem to be drawing from feminist ideas about patriarchy in which male leadership only means lording it over women as their "boss." Read the description of marriage I referred to in the book of Ephesians. The form of leadership it describes is a loving, sacrificial one. It is far from selfish or lording over someone else. The model for a Christian husband after all is Christ, not Archie Bunker. Really, Christians and non-Christians have totally different things in mind with all this.

Also, it's not about treating men "special." It's actually having a role for them and giving them a little respect.

rr

rr: "patriarchy"="rule of the father." That's the etymology of the word. And "rule" is defined as: "To exercise control, dominion, or direction over; govern. To dominate by powerful influence." So, when you say that you're in favor of patriarchy, but not domination, I think you're quibbling. The English language doesn't support such a distinction. I think what you may be trying to say is that Christian patriarchs will dominate women, but they'll do it in a really nice way. Forgive me if I am sceptical. History has made me that way.

This could turn into an all-day discussion, and I'm trying to stay somewhat on topic, so let me ask if you could be more specific about what concrete actions are required for men to feel that they are being given "a little respect." One thing you've mentioned is that if gay men are allowed to get married, heterosexual men will be less interested in marrying. Why is that? Is it simply that anything gay men are allowed to do is devalued in the eyes of heterosexual men? That doesn't seem logical, since gay men (and even women) are allowed to work for a living, vote, drive late-model cars, etc. Yet heterosexual men still do all those things. What is it about gay men getting married that will discourage other men so deeply? And why are you not at all concerned that lesbians getting married will keep heterosexual women from marrying? I'm not being sarcastic--I'm trying to understand what the premises are here.

sigalirus,
as you well know, patriarchy in the best sense, and in the sense which rr is no doubt thinking of it, simply refers to a system where men are expected to take responsibility for the well being of their family. If he doesn't do so, women and children are left alone to fend for themselves. If he does, then he and his wife will work together to provide for the well being of the family. While patriarchy can certainly morph into giving the man privilege in the family, it is really simply about assigning responsibility. It says that the man is not optional to the family unit. Pretty much any intact family unit where the man feels a sense of responsibility to his family such that he will do whatever it takes for the family to survive is a patriarchy regardless of who has the more dominant personality within the family unit.

While modern people often like to think we can change human reality, the simple fact is that men are much more likely and can much more easily abandon their children and the women they impregnate. There have been places where matriarchies were the norm, but really, society has rarely, if ever, had to deal with women routinely walking away from their children. As we can see in our inner cities, men doing so happens pretty quickly when things fall apart and there is no compelling reason not to. Patriarchy is an antidote to that.

And yes, that does mean giving men respect. We all need respect - including respecting a man for taking responsibility for his family. Women of course deserve the same respect for taking on their responsibilities. However, for whatever reason displays of respect don't seem to give women the same sort of reward/pleasure that they do for men. I would also say that modern people underestimate the unconscious psychological insecurity which men often have that is caused by being essentially disposable in the creation of a family. Add in that men often do not derive the same pleasure from the early, hard days/years of child rearing that women tend to - especially if they have the sense that their place in the family is optional or periphery. It is entirely reasonable then to create societal expectations which off set these realities. Thus, patriarchy in the simplest and best sense of viewing a man taking responsibility for his family as essential is the most common way societies deal with the realities of family formation between men and women.

Now, all that said, I am in no way someone who buys into the idea that there are "proper roles" for men and women. I believe that we should all be allowed to bring what we have to offer into a relationship and push ourselves to improve those areas where our weaknesses can cause problems. This will of course mean different things for different people. However, because of the reality of sex differences, we will probably never reach a day when it is more common for women to be hard driving, ambitious career people than it is for men. We will probably never see more men looking forward to shopping for new curtains on the weekends than women. I guess that the bottom line for me is that I think it is ridiculous to assign specific role based on sex without regard to the actual people involved. However, I think it is equally ridiculous to expect that we will ever reach a day where men and women are the same. We need room for individual differences, but also need to deal with the fact that as a whole men and women will tend to gravitate towards different strengths, interests and ways of relating.

As for religion, I didn't live in the past, so I can't speak accurate to how Christianity played out pre-1980 or so. (Although I will say that I will not attend a church or denomination which doesn't engage in the ancient practice of authorizing women to hold any and all positions in the church body. It's unbiblical and a horrid witness to the world, imo. Thankfully, this isn't nearly as big of a problem as it once was- especially as churches become more post-denominational.) I do know enough not to take either the idealized view of past Christian patriarchy or the feminist patriarchy-as-oppression pov at face value. All I speak of is what I see today where I have been blessed to know amazingly few women who subvert themselves to play their "proper role" due to their religious beliefs. To me, this seems about as common as the women who dress in denim jumpers and wear their hair in buns for their religion. As far as I have been taught, Christianity tells us to care for the other in in submission, love and sacrifice. Part of that means meeting the other's needs rather than worrying too much about imbalances in the relationship. So if my husband needs me to thank him twice a week for working so hard to provide monetarily for us, that's what I do. If I need him to sit and listen to me babble for an hour about all the little details of my day stuck in a house with kids, that's what he does. It would be very easy for me to find thanking my husband for going to work demeaning and devaluing to the unpaid work that I do. But that's petty and immature. It would be very easy for my hubby to say that he's too tired and worn out from doing important work to listen to me go on about something as silly as cleaning the bathroom. But that would be immature and uncaring. If past trauma around the issue had left me needing to receive affirmation 5 times a day that he viewed me as equal, that's what he would do. Because when we put our natural pettiness, selfishness and self-importance aside as our religion teaches us, we can bridge the gap between us, including the gap between male and female.

To me, religion can provide language and a framework for what I see going on in the world around me. I don't start with what I think religion tells me and then stubbornly try to make it fit the world around me, even when it clearly doesn't. If anything, I tend to err on the side of doing it the other way around. However, most often if my religion does not fit with what I see in the world around me, the problem is that my understanding of one or the other is off and it's up to me to figure out where the problem lies. So yes, I can search my religion for affirmation and explanation of the importance of the sex differences which I see plain as the nose on my face all around me. However, to think that I've found evidence of sex differences in religion and am trying to super-impose them on reality is ridiculously wrong.

Sigalirus,

"Me" has done a good job in elaborating on much of what I was getting at with patriarchy. Yes, we could go on about this for a while. I understand your skepticism. I'm a skeptic myself, though it is the rise in VD, divorce, abortion, out of wedlock births, and the overall disintegration of the family since the late 1960s that has led me to be skeptical that the secular left has any positive ideas on sexuality , women's issues, and the family. Jillian's idea that traditional code of sexual ethics (ethics, not "prudery") doesn't hold up to empirical/pragmatic analysis is simply laughable in light of all the ills that stem from the sexual revolution. All the statistics point the other way and I just can't take Jillian's argument as I understand it remotely seriously. I'm also a genXer and I've seen the carnage of the sexual revolution first hand all my life. And you guys make fun of fundamentalists for believing that the world was made in a literal six days? Pot, meet kettle. But I digress.

As to gay marriage, it is just one element in the general breakdown of sex morals and a denial of sexual differences and roles (which no, need not be rigid, but in many cases are based in real differences between men and women). Gay marriage not only would serve to normalize homosexual relations, but it would reinforce the idea that men and women are interchangeable. It would also reinforce the idea that father's are disposable. After all, gay marriage will lend credence to the notion that a child can just as well be raised by two mommies instead of a mommy and a daddy. "Me" made a number of good points about the role of men in families. The more men are seen as optional to what we consider a normal family, the more men will opt out of family life altogether. As "Me" mentioned, unlike women, a father's attachment to a child isn't as direct and immediate as a mother's attachment. The last thing we need to do is to blur and/or diminish the role of father and husband even more than it already is. Men need roles (ideally as husband first) to bind them to the women they impregnate and the children they father.

Look, I've already written numerous times on this board that our society simply doesn't have a common sexual ethic anymore. If we aren't going to try promote a model of behavior that is good for society as a whole (and I'm convinced the only such model is the traditional one), we might as well just take the libertarian approach and get the state out of the marriage business. This would mean the state would not be involved in marriage and would only have civil unions for all consenting adults. Now I'm sure that many on the secular left would never go for this as they want to apply the word "marriage" to homosexual relations in order to give state and social approval to them. Color me skeptical that "gay marriage" will do anything to encourage young, straight men that the role of husband and father is a vital family role that they should aspire to one day.

rr

"Imagine a stranger coming up to you and asking if he can drive your eight-year-old daughter around town in his new car."

What a bogus analogy!

If gays are frame as the stranger, and traditional Christians as the parents, then who - or what - is the daughter? If the girl represents the Constitution, then the stranger (gay) also a parent because their are no second-class citizens. If instead the girl represents american culture, then neither party are parents because no one owns nor has legal guardianship of it.

Stefanie,

Once again, "me" has stolen my thunder with some great comments;) I'm a French historian, so I'm quite aware of what you are talking about. To add to your remarks, anti-clericalism and religious skepticism in 19th century France was in very large part a male phenomenon. Of course, many men didn't like their wives going to confession either and feared the influence priest had on their wives, especially when it came to the issue of "coitus interruptus." Irregardless, the sexual behavior of many men in 19th century France was far from Christian.

We could quibble all day long about the term "patriarchy" or the different variations of it. Needless to say, the behavior of many men in 19th century France is far from the idea of male leadership and sexual behavior (see what Paul says about men avoiding prostitutes and remaining faithful to their wives) as described in the New Testament.

rr

Very thoughtful response. Thank you very much for posting this. Francis Schaeffer's "A Christian Manifesto" speaks to the real battle being between secular humanist worldview and a Christian worldview and how the two are completely incompatible.

I work with several groups regarding these issues and am sending warning bells that the game plan of jumping from one public policy battle to the next has not and will not work. I don't think the "culture war" is over but it is certainly going to take on a different form ... quickly.

As the boomer utopian ideals get knocked off pedestals, Gen X will have to get pragmatic but it is the millennials coming up that will make the difference before this generation disappears.

And then again I am tired and reserve the right to be wrong :) thanks again for a great post.

Rod - I read the Lee Harris article and I finally understand the right's point of view in the culture wars. Thanks you for linking to that article.