Well, our líder has once again uttered the "sacred institution" mantra, in a last-minute attempt to push back the tide in this election. According to
this NY Times article, he said of marriage "I believe it's a
sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and it must be defended."
Well, one can debate the latter portion of this sentence, but it's the first part that I want to expend this diary on. What is the import of an institution being "sacred" in our constitutionally secular US system of government? Can the government have a role in "defending" such institutions; can the government even be concerned with them?
As many others have concluded, the problem with the gay marriage movement is precisely that marriage is a sacred institution
and a secular one. It is not true that there is no civil component to marriage. For millennia, Western governments have involved themselves with marriage in various ways, primarily to protect the property rights of the husband and to ensure an orderly transfer of the father's property to his sons. Over the centuries this has been liberalized so that now, at least in many jurisdictions, there is near equality in the legal status of husband and wife, son and daughter. This civil aspect of marriage also has been extended to allow special and unique privileges, such as spouses not being required to testify in court against husbands, rights of visitations in hospitals, and various preferences in terms of survivorship, guardianship of children, and so on.
However, around the time of St Augustine (one of my favorite ancient philosphers up until he drank the Christian koolaid), various people noticed that a distinction could be drawn between the kind of religious ecstasy that could be evoked from fasting, hours of prayer, self-flagellation, and chanting on the one hand, and simpler pleasures "of the flesh", such as the pleasures of food, wine, and, most importantly, sex. For the ancients, the issue was clear: religious ecstasy good, carnal pleasure bad. They tried various solutions, such as sexual segregation, bans against having sex at all, and so on, but in the end, they decided that sex was necessary for reproduction, and therefore that it would be allowed under careful church control only between man and wife, and only for the purpose of reproduction. This is the core of the "sacred institution" that Bush mentioned.
Now, it is true that the church's view of sex within marriage has been liberalized to some extent over the centuries, and it is also true that the myriad Christian and Christian-derived denominations and sects present a wide range of views regarding marriage. Differences and liberalizations include such things as divorce, birth control, abortion, the impact of adultery, the impact of sex before marriage, the importance of virginity at the time of marriage, and so on. Therefore, even within the Christian community, there is somewhat of a lack of agreement regarding the quality or definition of the "sacred institution". Bush wasn't referring to this diversity when he spoke: he was talking to his "base", who basically are perpetuating the ancient view of sex within marriage as the single exception to the general rule that Christians must avoid all carnal pleasure for their souls' sake.
And so now we come to what what I referred to above as the "problem with the gay marriage movement". Most proponents of extending the concept of marriage to include atypical groups such as two males and their offspring and adoptees or two females and their offspring and adoptees do not believe that the purpose of marriage is as an exception to the principle that carnal pleasure should be avoided. They see it as a secular, civil institution that creates a set of important rights and oblligations between a central couple with a set of important consequences for them and their dependents. In other words, they do not see marriage in any way as a "sacred institution", but as a set of legal principles that reward long-term supportive relationships and child-rearing responsibilities with certain legal and civil privileges. Once again we are embroiled in a political issue that has at its heart a fundamentally semantic and linguistic failure to communicate, in this case, a word "marriage" and it derivatives that has two conventional sets of meanings, one religious, and one secular. When this happens, it is very rare that the processes of democracy can help resolve the situation, because, just like the purple-thumbed Iraqis who voted almost completely along sectarian lines, the great bulk of the People will simply vote the way their priests and ministers tell them; any attempt to discuss it or even to consider the alternatives will be seen as a Satanic temptation to weaken their faith. Under these circumstances, democracy is a pitiful tool.
And this concept was well understood by the framers of our constitution. In particular, Thomas Jefferson knew that no democratic government could survive if it were to concern itself with "sacred institutions", and that is why the very first item in our Bill of Rights was designed to prevent it.
Therefore, I agree with what Bush said. Marriage (at least an important aspect of it) is a sacred institution. And I accept that those whose faith leads them to value that aspect of marriage will--and should--make every effort to defend it. However, by the same token, it is very dangerous to attempt to use our government and its system of laws for that purpose. Instead, Christians should use the power of the pulpit to persuade the faithful to adhere to their teachings regarding marriage and all other sacred matters.
However, once that it done, there still remains the issue of the civil concept of marriage, and the question that we must decide is whether society as a whole will benefit by once again liberalizing and extending that concept to a new group of individuals. Potentially, the processes of democracy could serve very well to resolve this issue. However, in the current cloudy atmosphere of the debate regarding this matter, such as it is, I have never heard a valid argument against the extension. Every single argument against it that I have heard, including President Bush's, is simply a direct attack on the First Amendment and fails to address the actual effects of modifying the civil definition of marriage under the law. So, unless someone can come up with such an argument, it seems to me (as it has seemed to various courts who have ruled on the matter) that under the principles of our democracy, the potential extension of marriage under the law to same-sex couples must be allowed by default.
Greg Shenaut
P.S. Actually, there is one argument against it that probably has been made, that the potential benefits to society from extending the law are not sufficient to outweigh the cost of extending it. I wish that the debate were framed in terms such as that, because then it would be possible to bring in things such as empirical studies of the question, and to use standard tools of logic and problem-solving to resolve the dispute. However, not only is there no debate in those terms, but the actions that have been taken by the opponents of the extension belie this proposition, since they have been trying to actively change the law to prevent the extension. Therefore, the question can now be turned around and be put to them: do the benefits to society from passing the new law or constitutional amendment outweigh its costs? But I haven't seen the proponents of the new anti-gay marriage laws frame the matter in those terms either.