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In my previous essay about marriage, I suggested that there are several legitimate reasons for a nation's government to enact laws. These reasons must ultimately include an interest of the state or the community, or must act as a protection of one or more rights upon which the state might other infringe, or which may be impeded by the community or other individuals and groups. I then discussed the state and communities' interests in the question of marriage and its chief characteristics. The state has a vested interest in marriage only the extent that it involves procreation--hence the state has an interest in marriage only in-so-much-as they are heterosexual:
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To the end of procreation, the state and the community have a vested interest only when procreation is naturally (or inherently) a possibility: which is to say, only in a relationship between a man and a woman. Any other form of procreation--adoption, artificial insemination or implantation, artificially inducing a woman’s cells to acts as sperm to be used in fertilizing another woman’s cells--involve additional human agency beyond the marital act itself, and thus are questions which must be settled prior to the state and community having any interest in relationships beyond these types. Should the state decide against all of these artificial forms of procreation, then neither state nor community would have any vested interest in recognizing these relationships, and thus the question falls entirely on whether or not there is an interest pertaining to ordered liberty. ...Therefore, the state itself does not have any particular interest in recognizing relationships between same-sex couples. It does, however, have such an interest in recognizing the relationships between opposite-sex couples. Hence, the state has no reason to redefine marriage.
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It is therefore reasonable to turn to the question of ordered liberty: would redefining marriage to include same-sex couples help the state to better maintain ordered liberty in our nation? Before expounding on this question, it is worth giving definition to “ordered liberty.” I will use the definition presented by Mr Bruce Frohnen's entry in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia concerning liberty:
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Bruce Frohnen wrote:
Ordered liberty is the ability to pursue the good in common with one's fellows. And the good is not defined by those in power merely, but by the permanent standards of natural law made concrete in the norms of social life...a sustainable liberty is ordered by the proper ends of natural law and the customs and common good of the community
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This definition by Mr Frohnen is rather similar to one given by our late great pope, John Paul II, who once said that “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” It should be clear that this definition of ordered liberty does not permit a redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples. Indeed, such a law goes quite plainly against “the permanent standards of natural law made concrete in the norms of social life.” Thus, to justify such a redefinition of marriage is to presume to overrule those norms and customs which have shaped not only our own nation, but our entire civilization. Indeed, such was the end-goal of a number of radical proponents of the movement to redefine marriage--that is, by the radical homosexualists themselves. For example, the essay What We Want, What We Believe, which served as the manifesto of the New York Chapter of Third World Gay Liberation, states that the end goals of the “Queer Liberation” movement include
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We want the abolition of the institution of the...nuclear family. We believe that the bourgeois nuclear family perpetuates the false categories of homosexuality and heterosexuality by creating sex roles, sex definitions....We want an end to all institutionalized religions.
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To be fair, this particular organization was pro-Marxist, and thus was likely to attack both the nuclear family and religions as “tools of capitalism” and “impediments to progress.” Lest this be taken as a single strange example of the end to which some homosexualists strive, consider the points outlined in Mr Carl Wittman's Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto, considered a flagship document in the gay liberation movement. Among other things, Mr Wittman writes:
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Carl Wittman wrote:
Homosexuality is the capacity to love someone of the same sex[/e,]...Bisexuality is good; it is the capacity to love someone of either sex...Exclusive heterosexuality is [expletive] up[strong]....We are children of a straight society. We still think straight: [strong]that is part of our oppression. One of the worst concepts is inequality. Straight...thinking views things primarily in terms of order and comparison. A is before B, B is after A; one is below two, two is below three; there is no room for equality....Our social institutions cause and reflect this verbal hierarchy....Marriage is a prime example of a straight institution fraught with role playing. Traditional marriage is a rotten, oppressive institution. ([em]italic emphasis in original, bold emphases mine)
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Such arguments hardly reflect a desire to maintain ordered liberty. Indeed, the desire here is not so much to expand liberties as to overthrow the current moral order: hardly a reason for the state, the community, or indeed individuals within the community to acquiesce to the demands of those radical homosexualists who demand that marriage be redefined to accommodate them. The issue in question for some is less about gaining rights as it is about overthrowing institutions, beginning with marriage and then continuing to religious institutions, including (and perhaps especially) the Church.
There is certainly no lack of effort on the parts of homosexualists to use gay marriage as a vehicle of assault against other institutions. Examples abound: there is the relatively recent demand of Augusta State University that a counseling student undergo “training” to accept homosexuality prior to graduating; this, after she was told by the university that her Christian beliefs are unethical. Nor is this the only case of an individual, business, or even church being punished for voicing or otherwise holding the view that homosexual relations are sinful, immoral, or otherwise bad--or even just different from heterosexual relations--and that there is no such thing as same-sex marriage. There is the case of the professor who was fired from his job for holding such views; or of eHarmony's being ordered to merge its gay and straight dating sites. There is the case of a Christian photographer who was not only sued by a lesbian couple for refusing to photograph their “commitment ceremony,” nut was moreover found “guilty” and ordered to pay the couple $6,600. Then, there are those churches which dare to refuse the use of their facilities to gay couples who wish to perform “commitment ceremonies.” And finally, perhaps most memorably, there is the forced closure of the Boston Area Catholic Charities adoption service after the state ordered this organization to place children for adoption with homosexual couple, in spite of the fact that other agencies existed in the area which were willing to do just that. It is no wonder that Mr Mark Shea--among others--has remarked, “Dogmatic enthusiasm for homosexual practice is certainly shaping to be one of the main avenues by which Christian faith and practice will be legally practiced.”
The objection may be made that this only represents the radical wing of the “gay liberation” movement. There are the radical homosexualists--a minority--and there are the much more common advocates of a same-sex marriage redefinition who only want to work towards granting gays equal rights with straights. This is, at least, the main argument openly used in public by most proponents of redefining marriage. The question which is to be asked here is, “Does redefining marriage grant protection to some right which is being wrongly suppressed in our country, and does it do so without suppressing another, more important right?”
I have already argued that there are prudential reasons for opposing a redefinition of marriage to prevent it from becoming a means of suppressing another right: the right to freedom of religion. The question therefore hinges on whether or not there is a right to marriage which is more fundamental than the freedom of religion. I answer that there is not; not only is the right to marry more fundamental than freedom of religion: it's not truly a right at all.
Every right--let alone every privilege--comes with a set of duties and responsibilities. For marriage, either as a right or a privilege, the chief duty is found in procreation: bearing and raising children so that both our society and our species may survive and indeed prosper. As I previously noted, heterosexual couples are naturally capable for performing this duty, whereas homosexual couples are not. Sans this responsibility, the “right” to marry does not exist, and the privilege is pointless, fro the perspective of the state.
As to the “benefits” conferred by being in the status of marriage, these are largely geared towards maintaining more stable families--at least by way of not destabilizing family life--and so are not needed by same-sex couples. Dual-enrollment health care plans, for example, are needed by a family in which the wife upon becoming a mother stays home to raise the children, hence losing her employment and thus her ability to pay for (or be enrolled in) health insurance of her own; that many women are opting instead to return to the workforce as soon as possible does not negate the need for this particular privilege for those who do not choose to do so. It is not a privilege which is strictly needed by same-sex couples, since these cannot naturally procreate. Thus, the matter is not of interest to the state or the community, but only to the individuals and the insurance companies, and should be decided between these entities.
Other benefits found in marriage are sometimes cited by those who want to redefine this institution. These include such things as joint ownership (which means, among other things, a death-tax-free ability to inherit each others' property); hospital (emergency room) visitation rights; and the ability to jointly file for tax returns. As to these tings, with the possible exception of joint filings on tax returns, I actually am in agreement with those who think that homosexual couple should be allowed to enjoy these privileges: indeed, I oppose the death taxes, and think that a person ought to be able to specify whoever he desires for hospital visitation (as well as who will make licit “medical decisions” in a state of emergency), provided that the person is not overruling the rights of his spouse in these cases. That is to say, if a person is already married, then it is obvious that his spouse ought to receive any major inheritance first, or to make medical decisions for him in an emergency, etc. However, none of this is reason to expand the definition of marriage. These are all rights and privileges which might be enjoyed without requiring a marriage certificate of the couple who wish to exercise them.
With that said, it seems that these are not really what the majority of homosexualists are after. If the issue really was only about these tangential rights, then why reject such solutions as same-sex civil unions, which guarantee all of these rights: as happened in actuality in California, and as happens more hypothetically when proposals to offer such unions are brought up? Even when proposals are made to recognize a difference between civil unions and religious marriages, the general reaction is scoffing from the homosexualists. Although I myself do not support such recognition of same-sex relationships by the state--there is little reason beyond social engineering to do so--they do represent a compromise solution which gives equal benefits to both kinds of relationships while at least preserving the concept of marriage for religious institutions. This compromise, like the first solution of re-defining marriage represents a hasty and imprudent attempt at solving a problem presented by the desire to obtain some or all of these privileges.
The question of prudence set aside, such solutions allow for a compromise which at least accomplishes the stated goals of the proponents of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples. Thus, rejection of such proposals in favor of redefining marriage can only be rooted in a desire to blur any distinctions between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, and not merely in the eyes of the state or secular community. By blurring this distinction in name, an attempt is made to blur the distinction in reality: a dangerous game of nominalism and social re-engineering.
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