Thinking Christian

An important insight from Francis Beckwith on same-sex “marriage” and its supposed analogy to interracial marriage. Based on historical/legal research,

It is clear then that the miscegenation/same-sex analogy does not work.

[From Interracial Marriage and Same-Sex Marriage « Public Discourse]

The disanalogy: where the antimiscegenation laws came from, and why they were wrong.

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From Creative Minority Report: Marriage as a Life Issue:

Guttmacher points out that “the overwhelming majority of women having abortions (85%) were unmarried.”

…

Abortion is a symptom of a lack of love…. real committed love….

Maybe one of the most pro-life actions one can take is defending marriage.

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Albert Mohler, on a new book by Andreas Kostenberger with David W. Jones:

As Kostenberger observes, “What until now has been considered a ‘normal’ family, made up of a father, a mother, and a number of children, has in recent years increasingly begun to be viewed as one among several options, which can no longer claim to be the only or even superior form of ordering human relationships. The Judeo-Christian view of marriage and the family with its roots in the Hebrew Scriptures has to a certain extent been replaced with a set of values that prizes human rights, self-fulfillment, and pragmatic utility on an individual and societal level. It can rightly be said that marriage and the family are institutions under seize in our world today, and that with marriage and the family, our very civilization is in crisis.”

…

At the cultural level, Kostenberger suggests that the rise of a libertarian ideology explains the elevation of human freedom and a right to self-determination above all other principles and values. The quest for autonomy becomes the central purpose of human life, and any imposition of structure, accountability, boundaries, or restriction is dismissed as repressive and backward.

…

[Kostenberger] argues that marriage is rightly understood as a covenant, defined as “a sacred bond between a man and a woman instituted by and publicly entered into before God (whether or not this is acknowledged by the married couple), normally consummated by sexual intercourse.” Thus, marriage is not merely a bilateral contract, but is a sacred bond. Moving from marriage to the larger family context, Kostenberger suggests that a biblical definition of family points to the structure constituted by “primarily, one man and one woman united in matrimony (barring death of a spouse) plus (normally) natural or adopted children and, secondarily, any other persons related by blood.”

[Link: A Christian Vision of Marriage and Family]

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We’re continually asking and answering the wrong questions about same-sex “marriage.” Defenders ask, “what’s wrong with it?” Opponents answer by pointing out its various moral and social ill effects. Defenders deny that those effects happen or that they make any difference.Then they ask, “Since you can’t show it’s doing any harm, why not allow it?”

Why not instead ask, “what good does it do?” More than that, “What good does it do for anyone other than the participants?” (I do not thereby concede that it is good for the participants, but for the sake of argument I would propose setting that aside for at least a moment.)

“What good does it do for anyone other than the participants?” I ask again. And I would be willing to bet that at least some readers’ reflex answer is, “Why do you ask? Does that make any difference? Marriage is for the participants, after all.”

And here I have found myself tempted to follow the usual path of defending traditional marriage over against same-sex “marriage.” I actually wrote an entire paragraph before I realized I was answering the wrong question, even while I was warning us all against it.

The problem, friends, is not gay “marriage.” The problem is the attitude, “I’m going to do what I want unless you can prove to me it’s hurting someone else”—with the standard for such proof set impossibly high, by the way.

An approach like this is rights-oriented instead of responsibility-oriented; it is about wanting what one wants when one wants it, and getting upset if anyone else gets in the way; ultimately it is self-centered and self-excusing. One grants oneself full permission to take offense if anyone else takes offense. Everyone else’s offense is regarded as wrong and bigoted, while one’s own is fully condoned and sanctioned as the right kind of offense to take.

But it’s not just about gay rights. It’s about an attitude toward rights in general, one that regards individual liberty as the highest good. It could be (and has been, obviously) equally expressed in the form of corporate greed, racial bigotry, peddling drugs and smut, or any of the common forms of individual crime.

It can even be expressed within a traditional man-woman marriage relationship. In my own marriage I’ve often been guilty of focusing on my own needs and my own “rights.” The difference is that marriage was not originally designed nor intended just for the sake of expressing individual liberties. Its purpose is broader, richer, and more demanding than that by far.

Therein lies the real danger of gay-rights activism. It is its incessant focus on individual rights, and its utter lack of attention on what builds stronger societies and better people in this generation and the ones to come. “Better people? What’s that? Isn’t it awfully bigoted to consider one person better than another?” Maybe so, in many cases. How about this, though: what would build me to be better than I otherwise would be?

The question is not what’s wrong with gay “marriage.” The better question is one that I fear is bound to provoke some upset and anger. It must be asked nevertheless. The better question is, “why do you continually focus on such a self-oriented question?”

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“Not tonight, dear, I have to reboot.”

Artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy projected a mock image on a screen of a smiling bride in a wedding dress holding hands with a short robot groom. “Why not marry a robot? Look at this happy couple,” he said to a chuckling crowd…. In his 2007 book, Love and Sex with Robots, Levy contends that sex, love and even marriage between humans and robots are coming soon and, perhaps, are even desirable.

Related:

• Woman “Marries” Dolphin
• Woman “Marries” Herself
• Portable Alternative “Marriages”

… and any article you see on same-sex “marriage.”

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