It Leers Towards Totalitarianism
In the aftermath of the California Supreme Court's legalizing of homosexual marriage, the claim that the decision jeopardized traditional marriage in our state met with a response that went something like this: "What do you mean heterosexual marriage is in danger? Men can still marry women in California; only, now, we've extended the privilege to same-sex couples."
I have thought, "Such a response is disingenuous. After all, those making it surely understand what we mean when we say the Supreme Court's decision has undermined marriage." But, after considering the matter further, I thought again: "Maybe they don't understand what we mean." And then I thought, "Of course they don't understand what we mean!"
But then I considered the matter yet again, and came to this conclusion: "They do understand, but just disagree."
And what do these, the proponents of homosexual marriage, disagree with us about? The very nature of marriage. For them, marriage is a social construct — one, indeed, with deep traditional roots, but for all that still susceptible to legal manipulation and social engineering. Secondly (with most of heterosexual society, alas!) they disagree with us that procreation is the primary purpose of sexual intercourse. For our opponents, sex is about pleasure and something they vaguely call "love," and, since it is about those things, they see no reason why it must be relegated to opposite-sex encounters. Basically, they find nothing disordered and, therefore, nothing disgraceful, nothing bad, in homosexual intercourse. For them, it's just another variation in human sexuality.
Of course, I have made no revelations here, nor did I intend to. I wanted merely to remind both those who agree with me that homosexual marriage is a moral impossibility and those who don't what the grounds of our disagreement are and the basis why those who oppose the legal recognition of homosexual marriage think it overthrows traditional marriage.
For, of course, the state is not going to forbid men and women to marry. All who uphold traditional marriage recognize this. Nor, in the near future, at least, will the state force religious bodies to recognize same-sex marriages. Marriage between a man and a woman is as legally secure — not as it has ever been — but at least as it has been since California began allowing no-fault divorce 40 years ago.
But the legal recognition of same-sex marriages will predictably have social and cultural consequences. It will lead to a devaluation of traditional marriage. How?
Those who think homosexual unions are as natural and good as the union of a man and a woman will doubtless disagree with what I write here. But, I think they will have to admit that, at least, on the assumption that homosexual unions are truly unnatural and, therefore, immoral, equating them with the union of man and woman can only lead to a lessening of the regard society extends (even today) to traditional marriage. Yes, society will conceivably respect traditional marriages in the way it will respect homosexual marriages — as unions founded on (at least short-term) commitment and love. But what if marriage is far more than this? If it is more than this, then it deserves a greater respect. To give it any less respect, to equate it with not only a lesser, but an unnatural union, is to remove from marriage the regard it deserves. It is to lower it in the esteem of society.
How we think about a thing affects how we act toward it. Now, I will not indulge in any prophetic jeremiad. I do not know whether or how recognition of homosexual marriage will affect the rights and privileges accorded traditional marriages. But the legal rights and privileges of marriage are perhaps not the most important consideration. The greater consideration is the effect equating traditional marriage with homosexual unions will have on how people regard marriage. Certainly, such an equation must lead to moral confusion. Laws influence morality, for in our deepest sense we know that laws are supposed to protect morality. Change a law that enshrines certain moral standards and you begin to change the public's moral sense. For the general run of men, "it is legal" means "it is right."
The legal recognition of homosexual marriage will further advance the decay of the public's moral sense in regard to marriage. Granted, this decay was already quite advanced before the Supreme Court's decision; but we shouldn't be administering poison to the wound. And this is precisely what the Supreme Court has done. Instead of striving to heal an ailing moral sense, it is working to kill it.
But there is a further consideration. It is ironic that those who praise the Supreme Court's decision for establishing a right heretofore unknown don't see how it has destroyed the basis for any claim to rights beyond those the government grants. In limiting the government's power to exclude one class of couples from its definition of marriage, the Supreme Court has in reality extended the power of the state beyond all bounds. A limited government requires limits, and, ultimately, for government to be truly limited, society has to recognize boundaries beyond which government may never tread. For its citizens to possess rights in a real and secure fashion, the state must acknowledge spheres of human life which lie outside its authority to act.
The state, for instance, may and must recognize what constitutes human personhood, but it does not create or bestow personhood. The state has to acknowledge human persons but it does not grant them the right to be or be called human persons. This is because human personhood preexists the state and is the cause of the state rather than the state being the cause of it. Likewise with marriage, which also preexists the state and is a cause rather than an effect of the state. The state may and must recognize what God, nature, and human tradition have said marriage is; it must acknowledge what an Authority outside itself has determined marriage to be. The state must acquiesce to the fact that, because marriage is a pre-political institution, its character and definition are not subject to governmental manipulation. The state can no more change the definition of marriage or declare what isn't marriage to be marriage than it can bestow human personhood on beasts and the inanimate creation.
By granting the state the right to change the definition of marriage, the Supreme Court has completed the state's aggrandizement of power over the family. It has declared that the state has the authority not simply to intervene in the family (solely on the state's discretion), but that the state may redefine marriage, and therefore, the family; for marriage is the basis of the family. Marriage and the family thus derive their definition and, therefore, their very being from the state. The state has gone from being the guardian and promoter of marriage and the family to being their creator and absolute lord. And what the state can create, it can also destroy.
The California Supreme Court's legalization of homosexual marriage has indeed been a triumph, but not for marriage. Not even for homosexual "marriage." It has been a triumph for state totalitarianism — which, like every totalitarianism (as Pope Benedict XVI reminds us), is rooted in relativism. For relativism, recognizing no rules demanding absolute respect, breaks down all barriers to the grasp for power.
This item 8265 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
