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by Ed Vitagliano
It may soon be a dark day for the institution of marriage in America.
In June the federal government of Canada, headed by Prime Minister
Jean Chretien and his cabinet, pressed ahead with plans to legalize
same-sex marriage. Soon, perhaps this summer, the Massachusetts
state supreme court – followed by one or more states in the
U.S. – may join our neighbor to the north.
Such a move would certainly toss the subject of gay marriage front
and center in our culture – but not for the first time. In
1996, both houses of Congress passed – and President Clinton
signed – the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). That legislation
allowed states the right to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages
that might be legalized in other states.
Homosexual activists, however, have hammered tirelessly against
the doors of heterosexual marriage, demanding to be allowed into
the sacred halls beyond. They appear to be on the verge of success.
Should Massachusetts legalize same-sex marriage, DOMA could be only
a short court challenge away from legal oblivion.
Many stunned Christians and conservatives thought it could never
happen in their lifetimes. Marriage, at least in its traditional
sense, may soon change forever.
As Mark Steyn noted in The American Spectator at the time
of DOMA’s passage, “Even the passage of the hasty, poorly
drawn Defense of Marriage Act is little more … than a dismal
recognition that an institution central to Western society is on
the defensive, if not yet on the ropes.”
The egalitarian appeal
Homosexuals are determined to win this fight, and have been forcefully
pressing their philosophical case for same-sex marriage, framing
the debate purely in terms of justice and equality. Society should
legalize gay marriage, they say, because homosexual couples deserve
to be treated on an equal footing with heterosexual couples.
This equality is sometimes expressed simply in terms of dollars
and cents, because same-sex marriage certainly would have a financial
upside. From tax breaks to insurance coverage, society does bestow
a bounty of benefits upon married couples – and many homosexuals,
understandably, want in on the deal.
This egalitarian argument, however, is something akin to an onion,
with principles layered on top of principles. On the surface it
seems relatively palatable, until you begin to peel away the layers;
and that is when a certain something begins to burn the eyes.
The real reason activists argue for egalitarianism is that they
insist that homosexual and heterosexual relationships are equally
valid. While gays admit that traditional marriage will certainly
remain the overwhelmingly prevalent expression of relationships,
nevertheless our culture must recognize that other legitimate forms
exist.
Of course, in our relativistic age, if they exist, they are therefore
good. This is the anchor of the entire appeal for state-sanctioned
same-sex marriages. Homosexual relationships are equally valid because
there is nothing wrong with homosexuals.
Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a
contributing editor at National Review Online, says, “[T]he
movement for gay marriage has little to do with an expanded regard
for marriage and everything to do with an attempt to gain social
approval for homosexuality.”
Homosexual attorney Evan Wolfson, who has been in the forefront
of the drive to legitimize same-sex marriages for two decades and
now heads up the non-profit organization, Freedom to Marry, holds
steadfastly to the egalitarian argument, saying “there is no
substitute for full equality” for homosexuals.
Marriage
and nature
Conservatives seem unable to offer a compelling response to this
demand for equality. Steyn says, “If they’re honest, most
people’s … objection to gay marriage runs along the lines
of: ‘I dunno. It jus’ don’t seem right.’ The
fact that that’s no longer enough is the best evidence of how
the other side’s winning.”
But what does one say? After all, when someone appeals to the good
old-fashioned American principle that everyone is the same from
the shoes up, how does one turn around and say, “No, everyone
is not the same”?
The answer is to dig down to the source of that gut feeling that
“It jus’ don’t seem right,” where we find something
which precedes America itself – as well as every other culture.
According to Hadley Arkes, professor of jurisprudence and American
institutions at Amherst College, when it comes right down to it,
the institution of marriage is actually anchored upon the very obvious
realities of nature. Arkes says that “it becomes impossible
finally to discuss this matter of marriage and sexuality without
using the N-word: nature. The question must return to that sexuality
stamped in our natures. … namely, the inescapable fact that
only two people, not three, only a man and a woman, can beget a
child.”
With that simple fact in mind, it is not surprising that the male-female
model of marriage is virtually universal in human history, and the
limitation of marriage to only two people its almost universal expression
in the last three thousand years of Western Civilization.
Katherine Young, professor of religious studies at McGill University,
says that “marriage, as a universal institution and the essential
cultural complement to biology, is prior to all concepts of law.”
That means that the institution of marriage is not an invention
of human society, but merely a recognition that something predates
that society. In the words of Charles Colson, it is “the state’s
recognition of a prior moral order.”
Such a simple argument draws heated protests from same-sex advocates.
What about a heterosexual couple, they ask, in which one or both
are unable to have children? Or a heterosexual couple that gets
married but decides not to have children? Or the lesbian couple
who, through the process of artificial insemination, can conceive
a child? Don’t these examples demonstrate either that marriage
is unrelated to procreation, or that lesbians, at least, can procreate
– and thus should be allowed to marry?
Quite frankly, these cases demonstrate no such thing. The process
of artificial insemination, for example, requires a male sperm donor,
and is, in fact, an admission that only one man and one woman can
conceive a child.
As for an infertile heterosexual couple, attempts are often made
to medically correct the situation precisely because the expectation
is that male-female couples are meant to reproduce. It makes no
more sense to claim that infertile couples prove that marriage is
unconnected to procreation than to argue that blindness proves that
eyes are unrelated to sight. There is a design in nature, whether
or not it always works.
Finally, for the increasing number of couples in Western culture
who get married without wanting to have children, such a development
likewise does not affect the procreative roots of marriage. Their
choice does not alter the biological fact that the male and female
come equipped with complimentary sexual organs that can – barring
some biological defect – produce children.
Janet Smith, associate professor of philosophy at the University
of Dallas and author of Humane Vitae: A Generation Later,
says, “[S]exual organs, whether fertile or infertile, temporarily
or permanently, by the choice of the individual or not, are ordered
to procreation. They are organs of the reproductive kind; thus,
they are often called reproductive organs.”
It is out of this common sense and self-evident fact of nature that
the institution of marriage has arisen. No amount of arguing to
the contrary can change that.
Opening
the door
The solution for activists, of course, is to change the definition
of marriage to suit homosexuality. However, if marriage is to be
unhinged from nature, then what should undergird it?
It is here that advocates for same-sex marriage roll out perhaps
their most effective argument: Marriage is not about nature, they
say, but love and commitment. As long as two homosexual men or two
lesbians love each other, they should be allowed to marry.
Such sentiments bring an endless parade of same-sex couples before
the public, as homosexuals tout their love for one another, while
promising to honor the sanctity of marriage just as much as heterosexuals.
An important component in this emotional appeal is the depicted
tragedy of a love dishonored by society. Lesbian writer E.J. Graff
says this disconnect between love and law has put her and her soul
mate in “matrimonial limbo.” In an article in The Advocate,
Graff says that they were “wedlocked in our hearts and our
friends’ and families’ minds, [but] strangers to each
other in the eyes of the state.”
To Graff, this goes right to the heart of the current turmoil over
marriage: “It’s really a question over what marriage is:
an inner state defined by the pair or a stamp conferred by an outside
authority? Is it a contract made by the families, a religious sacrament
that the two alone enter, or a state-issued license that orders
civil affairs?”
It turns out to be a trick question. Like many homosexuals who demand
the right to marry their same-sex lovers, Graff conveniently leaves
out the real answer from among the multiple choice selections: marriage
is rooted in nature. But this oversight – intentional
or not – throws open the door to an infinite variety of relationship
permutations.
Kurtz says that if our society decides it can no longer protect
the traditional concepts of marriage and family, “then I assure
you that marriage will be abolished, and a system of strictly private
contracts set up in its place.” Legalize homosexual marriage
and “we face legalized polygamy, group marriage, and the eventual
legal abolition of marriage itself and its replacement by an infinitely
flexible contractual system.”
If marriage is a “right” anchored in the human need for
love and commitment, then, as Arkes asks, why should society refuse
to recognize a “marriage” for “the people who profess
that their own love is not confined to a coupling of two, but connected
in a larger cluster of three or four? The confining of marriage
to two may stand out then as nothing more than the most arbitrary
fixation on numbers.”
Harvard law professor Martha L. Minow has argued for same-sex marriage,
but admits that she is “not certain about polygamy.” Too
bad. She has thrown open the door for her cat, but is not sure whether
or not she would like snakes, spiders and rats to come in through
the same door.
When love becomes the sole measurement of the legitimacy of relationships,
then that standard must, by definition, allow more than heterosexual
or even homosexual couples. Limiting marriage to only two people
does become arbitrary, because love can encompass many. And, depending
on how loosely one wants to define love, the possibilities are,
in fact, limitless.
Marriage
and nature’s God
In the end, however, the conservative defense of traditional marriage
– even when articulated by gifted writers like Stanley Kurtz
– has an underlying weakness. There is an unwillingness to
peel back the layers on heterosexual marriage just one more time,
to discover what lies beneath the natural law to which Kurtz appeals.
The problem is, marriage is not primarily about the sexually complimentary
nature of heterosexual couples, nor social stability, nor children;
it is also not primarily about love and commitment and caring, either.
All of it – natural law and passion – arise from that
last, bedrock layer to which even conservatives seem hesitant to
go: God. Marriage is a heterosexual institution because in creating
mankind in His own image, God used the male and female model through
which to express Himself.
While it may be true that most Americans view marriage as essentially
based on love, that is a sad truth. It is the sorrowful admission
that our culture has lost sight of God, and is blind to His creative
purposes – even when they are staring us full in the face.
So when we finally, as a culture, make our decision about marriage,
it may tell us less about how we view that institution than how
we view its Creator.
That may be a fateful day, indeed.
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