Sometime in June, the U. S. Supreme Court will define marriage for us: a prospect that helps to define the moral mess we're in as a people. May gays marry gays, or do we, should we, will we stick with the ancient prescription — one man, one woman? Judges are the ones to tell us? The larger question, maybe, is how in the world did we get to this point?
We got sucked into it, I want to suggest. We climbed, culturally speaking, aboard a train that steadily gathered speed. Every turn of the wheel advanced the radical notion that when we want something badly enough and feel deprived for the lack of it, government is under the sacred obligation to provide it.
A fair number of Americans want very badly indeed the right to marry — as it were — a person of the same sex. The claim enjoys increasing public support, at least according to polls. For some, the matter is a no-brainer. According to a comment on The New York Times' website, "The ability to marry the person you choose is a freedom that should not be infringed."
So that's it, is it? We wait for enough people to want the same thing. Enlightened Opinion declares whatever it is to be a human right. The core of the question - is this particular right, so to speak, Right? — needs no debate. We need desire. We need numbers. That's it: game, set, match.
The reason rights, in the legal sense, commonly trump questions of Right is that humanity contrives these days on important occasions to trump God himself. Let me phrase that a little more precisely. The historic idea of humanity as subject to the purposes of God cuts less ice than it used to - often much less.
The idea that the Big Boy in the Sky might have particular ideas of his own regarding how life should be lived on earth frequently yields to the comfortable notion that he created us smart enough to call the shots ourselves, to figure out our personal needs, as contrasted with other people's.
The ideas God's agents (priests, prophets, preachers and so on) used to promulgate about divine intention might — or might not — have been well enough in the old days. That doesn't mean the old concepts — e.g., marriage as divinely shaped for the reinforcement of sexual complementarity and the projection of human life — are big deals to Modern People. No, you see, Modern People understand things dead people failed to grasp. Who needs gods? We can do this thing ourselves — with the government's help.
The notion that creature knows better than Creator is the characteristic notion of modern times. Science and technology spread it around. Genuine gifts to the people — liberty, democratic governance — fortify the tendency. Reinvent marriage? Why shouldn't we if enough people want to for personal satisfaction? So goes the reasoning (not too crudely caricatured, I hope) behind the push for same-sex marriage.
As for those who disagree with the reasoning, who see good sense, if not divine authority, in the historic understanding of marriage, the understanding many would like the Supreme Court to throw away — tough. Sympathy with older viewpoints and with those who see the intelligence in such viewpoints isn't the conspicuous trait of those who demand fulfillment of their claims.
How the Supreme Court will rule in the two same-sex marriage cases before it this week — Hollingsworth vs. Perry and U. S. vs. Windsor — isn't clear to anyone. Clearer by far are the stakes. The judicial overthrow of one of civilization's oldest, most useful institutions — the family, as consisting of husband, wife, and children — would unleash consequences impossible to foresee or control. That numerous Americans don't care — can't you see, they want what they want! — is the most disheartening part of the equation. More than the family breaks down here potentially. Comity, cooperation and order follow suit, and without delay.
William Murchison, author and commentator, writes from Dallas. To find out more about William Murchison, and to see features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.Creators.com.
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Sir;... I agree we are in a moral mess only because we have no morals; but if anyone believe in love, in the reality and power of love, then they are not totally without morals...
The real moral mess in this land results from the diversion of law from justice... Justice, like law is another moral form, something that cannot be defined, but which really helps to define the social forms that are made out of it... If law were completely without justice it would be easy to see it is not law...Since justice is the Genus, and law is a species of it; law should be entirely just, as just as human hands can make it; and it is far from that... Liberty is as essential to morality as justice is...No one who rejects liberty or justice could be said to be moral, and no slave could be with truth called moral, just, or free... The powerful in society who are powerful in relation to the many who are weak want to determine for all people what morality means, what justice and liberty are... If anyone can decide those meanings for us, then we are not free to do so for ourselves... Still, marriage in a sense, can be defined; but only within the strictures of culture rather than morality... Yes; we think in our culture of marriage as between a man and a women, or women if you follow the Bible... Anthropology reveals many more kinds and types... People, all people who are moral, must be moral to survive because morality has the same relationship to individual health as it does to the health of a society...Immoral societies present with a variety of individual illnesses and social malaise... Healthy societies have healthy relationships on every level including their various forms of marriage...
Here is the problem laid out simply for you, Sir: From the vantage point of a society that is immoral and ill, that cannot define morality, justice or liberty, or make those meanings real in its social forms, you, and none of you can judge the morality of anything, and form or form of relationship... At their most basic, as marriage is, people must be moral and just in their relationships to have any chance of their success... And it is good for the weak minded to have a template of sorts for the sorts of relationships that one might form; but ultimately, no matter what sort of idea people have of their relationships going in, they inevitably evolve into something quite other that is better and more healthy so long as those within them are essentially moral, that is honorable, which means just...
While we like to think we give something, such as social support to marriages, and get something from them, like another generation; we actually give quite little for the lot we expect... Being a parent is god awful hard work, and thankless; but people are compelled to have children even if they are not so inclined... If they follow their faiths, and obey the laws which are restrictive, they are compelled to have children, which is labor for nothing since parents can no longer demand the services of their children when young, or expect them when old, but must serve their children... So all that nonsense about marriage for children may fit with somebody's desire to coerce, but it is immoral, unjust, and illiberal to do so...
I would tell the gays that all the rights they expect from the formality of marriage is not worth the spit of a society rotten in a thousand different ways... If you have a love relationship, you already have the best part of marriage...To say you want the recognition of this society for your relationship is like saying you want a first class ticket on the Titanic... You better find some better reason to be together, or hang it up... And I say this being married, which tends to give my kids some rights as well as my spouse...Not the licence, nor the oaths would bind me for a moment if I was not in love and miserable unhappy; so why bother... Forget the form, and enjoy the relationship... The relationship is the life of the form, and if the form is rotten, or the relationship is, the thing is a failure...
Sir; forget the form, what ever the form may be... It is the relationship within it that is either moral or immoral, and the people in it who are moral or immoral... If they are immoral, the form cannot possibly keep them todgether or be a success... To judge a marriage between same sex couples immoral says they are individually immoral, in which case they would not be just, obey just laws, or accept liberty... If they are moral, which is honorable, their relationship will be happy and successful... Gay marriages can be immoral, as can hetero-sexual marriages, but only if the people inside of them are morally defective... And you ought to know about that...
Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Mon Mar 25, 2013 8:17 PM
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