I e-mailed Jim Kalb, author of "The Tyranny of Liberalism," to ask him how traditionalist conservatives should debate gay marriage. Here is his answer:
Convinced gay-marriage proponents are likely to stay that way.
It's like trying to argue a convert out of his new religion. The best you can do is give arguments that might affect a reader who's undecided.The question wouldn't come up at all unless people were confused about what human life is about, so the arguments have to go pretty deep.
That means we aren't likely to make converts fast. But we can raise issues and open doors, and if what we say answers to how people see life then in the long run it can transform things.
The basic point is that life isn't technological. It's not a matter of this cause and that effect that we can rejigger however we want.
It's much more a matter of ingrained and even innate patterns that make us what we are and define how we understand our connections to others.
Those patterns aren't totally fixed. Private property is a basic pattern, but it comes in different forms that vary from time to time.
Nonetheless, what it is and how it works can only be changed up to a point. If you try to do away with it altogether you'll have problems.
The question as to "gay marriage" is how all this works for patterns that have to do with sex and family life--man, woman, marriage, family, sex, chastity, and so on.
Those patterns are utterly basic, at least in their general form. That should be obvious. In all times and places myth, story, custom and law have treated the connection between man and woman as absolutely fundamental, something to be desired, fostered, shaped, honored and guarded. Sexual complementarity is so basic it's even reflected in the grammar of languages, in the form of grammatical gender.
Marriage is the relationship that gives order and form to sex and its natural procreative function. As such it's enormously important. If you can redefine it so that the sex of the parties has nothing to do with it, then you can redefine anything in human life any way you want. Man becomes the artifact of whoever is in power.
He's not, though, and we shouldn't try to make him so. We won't succeed, and we'll only disrupt the patterns that enable him to live decently.
The attempt to abolish private property led to starvation and mass murder followed by social degradation and collapse. It turned out that the patterns for human dealings that private property gives us are altogether indispensable.Sexual differences have been around for a billion years, significantly longer than private property. They are at least as closely connected to human goals and feelings, and more closely connected to human identity and the continuation of the species. Why expect that the attempt to abolish their significance and function so totally will work out? For starters, if you say marriage has nothing to do with what its point has always been, why expect that the remodeled version will do much for anyone?
Naturally there's much more to be said on particular points. The most important thing we can do, though, is to bring out basic issues clearly so they can do their work. The particular arguments will never convince anyone apart from a grasp of fundamentals that present-day thought and education tend to obscure and deny. If the basic issues are grasped they will transform the discussion of "gay marriage" and a great many other things.
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"By not using pejoratives to describe gay people (once you've called your opponent a "pervert," you've moved from argument to abuse)."
Mutatis mutandis, gay "marriage" supporters who call their opponents "bigots" have done the same.
Tony D.
As one D-surnamed person to another, I completely agree.
I think it is a waste of my time to call an opponent of same-sex marriage a bigot. Soon as I type that word, I might as well delete the comment or withdraw the statement.
It's never a helpful word.
I generally assume that people are arguing in good faith (the exception being those whose comments are strings of pejoratives and ad hominem attacks).
People who oppose same-sex marriage are not, on the whole, doing it with a deliberate intent to harm people. People are arguing what they think is best for everyone.
I find their arguments unpersuasive for a number of reasons. They find my arguments unpersuasive.
And so we go looking for those moments of commonality from which we may hammer out a way that we can live together in peace. It's a tough road, but I'm not giving up. And maybe I'll convince someone that gay rights and religious liberty do walk hand-in-hand.
Bigot is a descriptive word, it is only ugly if it describes true intolerance or someone who truely takes offence.
Funny if you look up Bigot in Wiki, it decribes intolerance of lifestyles but not intolerance of beliefs. Wiki can be funny like that.
If this revolution in definitions and meanings of something as basic as marriage is to occur it should not be done via fiat. Vermont seems to be the only state to have taken this route thus far. I have my doubts that this change was truely the will of the people of Vermont, a true revolution but it is the only respectable exapmle.
I think there are two fundamental points to be made.
First, heterosexuality and homosexuality are not equal. This self-evident truth and its attempted burial are at the heart of the homosexual "marriage" debate. The attempted equivocation is in reality an effort to claim NO DIFFERENCE between heterosexuality and homosexuality. This is willful propagation of a falsehood.
The second point is that homosexuals CAN get married. Not only can they get married via the laws that are equally applied to all of us, but they may take an oath before god in many liberal churches around the country. Again, it is FALSE to claim homosexuals can't/or couldn't marry.
The only thing denied to homosexuals is a state-mandated recognition of an "equal" union. No such thing can possibly exist as the union's fundamental components are not and will never be "equal."
I found the argument in the following article quite convincing because, even though I am a practicing Catholic, the rhetoric was not religious:
William Murchison, 'The Gay Marriage Fantasy' Chronicles Magazine Online (29 April 2009).
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