Ten Arguments for Sanity: 1-2

     Most people believe that the principal objections, or even the only objections, to the drive to legalize homosexual “marriage” spring from religious faith.  But that is simply not true.  Beginning with this post I'll offer ten objections that have nothing to do with any religion at all, except insofar as the great religions of the world happen to reflect the nature of mankind.  These objections spring from three sources.  The first is a commonsense observation of man -- his needs, his shortcomings, and his aspirations.  The second is a consideration of history: our own recent history, and the history of those who once committed the mistakes we are committing now.  The last is logic, that relentlessly honest instrument of thought.  The objections are such as should make everyone in our world uncomfortable, both those who call themselves conservative and are busy destroying the heritage of western civilization, and those who call themselves liberal and are busy curtailing and denying every freedom but that of the zipper.

1.  The legalization of homosexual “marriages” would enshrine the sexual revolution in law.

     Forty years ago, we were advised by popular singers that we needed to open our hearts to love, meaning a free and easy practice of sexual intercourse, without what were called “hangups”.  Modesty was decried as prudishness, and chastity ridiculed as either impossible or hypocritical.  Experimentation abounded: the so-called “open marriages,” public intercourse, intercourse under the influence of psychedelic drugs.  A few of the experiments fizzled out for a time, though they are now resurging, as witness the sewer of websites devoted to “swingers.” The #### explosion shows no sign of abating, having been given its second life by the internet.  In what they discuss and the salaciousness of their photos, the magazines that women buy at grocery store checkout lines are as salacious as anything put out by Hugh Hefner in the 1950’s.

     Is there any honest observer of our situation, or any political partisan so intransigent, who dares to argue that the results have not been disastrous?  We were told that the legalization of abortion would lead, paradoxically, to fewer abortions, and fewer instances of child abuse.  Instead it led to far more abortions than even the opponents ever imagined, and it so cheapened infant life that child abuse spiked sharply upward.  It has remained so high that no one is surprised to hear, on local television, an account a child chained to his bed and allowed to starve in his own filth, or a baby bludgeoned to death by a boyfriend, with the mother as accomplice.

     We were told that the legalization of contraceptive drugs would lead to fewer unwanted children -- certainly to fewer children born out of wedlock.  Anyone with a passing familiarity with the human race should have known otherwise.  Whatever one may believe about contraception, one must admit the historical fact: by reducing the perceived risk of pregnancy almost to zero, contraception removed from the young woman the most powerful natural weapon in her arsenal against male sexual aggression.  She no longer had any pressing reason not to concede to the boyfriend’s wishes.  So she agreed; and we now have one of three children born out of wedlock.  The sexual chaos has touched every family in the nation.  Who does not know at least one family whose children require an essay merely to describe who under their roof is related to whom, and how, and why they live together, and why others they call their father or mother or brothers or sisters do not?

     Some people reckon up the losses from this revolution in terms of percentages: of unwed mothers, of aborted pregnancies, of children growing up without a parent, usually the father.  It will take artists of the most penetrating insight to reckon up the losses as they ought to be reckoned, in human misery.

2.  It would, in particular, enshrine in law the principle that sexual intercourse is a matter of personal fulfillment, with which the society has nothing to do.

     It is hard for us to imagine, in a world of mass entertainment and its consequent homogenization of peoples, how central an event the marriage is in every culture.  It marks the most joyful celebration of a people, who see their own renewal in the vows made by the young man and the young woman.  For although marriage focuses upon the couple (and it is interesting to remember that even our word focus is a marriage word, denoting in Latin the hearth), it does so because the couple embody a rejuvenation in which everyone, young and old, male and female, take part.

     In his Epithalamion, the English Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser summons everyone to the solemn celebration of his wedding -- and after the priest has “knit the knot that ever shall remain,” and the revelers have splashed themselves and the groom’s walls with wine, and the girls have danced and the boys have run shouting up and down the street, and the bonfires have blazed and the hours of celebration have been hastened along in glee, he bids everyone to leave him and his bride alone.  They enjoy each other’s love, and pray that from their “timely seed” they may raise a large posterity.  Here we have an understanding of marriage infinitely deeper than the meager thing we are now left with.  Of course it is personal and private: and it is public, and universal, even cosmic.  It bridges two chasms that must be bridged, lest the culture, that is the cultivation of all that a people most dearly cherish, wither away, and the people separate one from another, into a suspicious world of privacy.  One chasm is that which divides the generations.  At the true wedding, the elders know that the future belongs to the couple, who in their love that night, or on a night soon to come, will in turn raise up yet another generation.  Sexual intercourse is, as a brute biological fact, the act by which we renew mankind.  We celebrate the wedding because it betokens our survival, our hope for those to come after us.

     But we could not have children without the bridge thrown over the more dangerous divide, that which separates two groups of human beings who seldom understand one another, whose bodies and psyches are so markedly different; who try to love one another, and so often fail, yet who try again for all that.  I mean men and women.  The wedding is a symbol of the union of differences: the generations, certainly, and separate families, but most strikingly, man and woman.  The very word sex derives from Latin sexus, denoting that which separates; it is cognate with a whole host of words for severance, such as (in English) schism, scissors, sect, shed.  It is a mark of our degeneracy that the ugly term “having sex” has come to mean the marital act, with the once delicate term “making love” similarly demoted.  What man and woman do in the marriage bed is not “have” sex; the sex, that is the separation, they are provided with already.  What they do is to unite, across the separation.  And unless man and woman unite -- and, given their differences, it always amazes me that they can -- the culture cannot survive.  The women will split away to protect their persons and their relatively few children; the unattached males will pass the dull hours in destruction.

Comments

[Joe Long]

"...those who call themselves liberal and are busy curtailing and denying every freedom but that of the zipper."

That's certainly a line I'll quote.

Those who most loudly proclaim "freedom to choose" abhor real choices; they don't want any choice to have consequences, and apparently don't see that choices without consequences aren't choices at all. Denaturing marriage is just one more instance where making something "accessible to all" destroys what it was. Handicapped-access elevators to the top of Mount Everest would make it accessible to all, and badly undermine the meaning of the climb; one girl's choice to attend "The Citadel" made it "accessible to all" and took away the option of an all-male military school from all young men - they can still choose to go to the Citadel, but less consequentially. And when anyone can be "married" - doubt is cast on whether anyone at all is "really" married.

Perhaps I am foreshadowing one of the next eight arguments...if so, I look forward to a superior expression of it, complete with more quotable lines! "Freedom of the zipper" - the Illiberal's chief value. Thank you.

[Matthias]

Don't miss this article:

The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights movement has become too narrowly focused on marriage and needs a broader vision, a coalition of 260 gay leaders and straight allies said.

A statement the coalition released... offers "a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families." ....

[James A. Altena]

Bravo, Prof. Esolen. We'll all eagerly await the sequals. Your line is indeed most quotable, and of course echoes c. S. Lewis' famous observation of those who "will justify anything -- so long as the result is four bare legs in a bed."

[GL]

Tony,

I look forward to reading your entire effort on this topic.

Matthias,

Thank you for the article to which you linked. From that article:

"(Same-sex marriage) is a limited goal, and to see that goal suck up all the resources and money has been very concerning to many of us," said Joseph DeFilippis, executive director of Queers for Economic Justice in New York and an author of the statement.

The statement lists relationships and households that would not benefit from marriage, including senior citizens living together, people in polyamorous relationships, single-parent families, extended families and gay or lesbian couples who raise children with other couples, among others.

"Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others," says the statement, which lists eight central principles, including separation of church and state, access to health care and housing, recognition of interdependence as a civic principle and recognition of a variety of relationships.

At one time, I contemplated this approach to deal with the arguments for gay marriage which many in our society might find compelling: rights of next-of-kin, inheritance, tenancy-by-the-entirety for real estate, etc.  The advantage of such an approach is that it would not entail as an explicit a connection between such shared benefits and couples whose relationship is based on their sexual relationship.  That is, two widowed sisters could enjoy the same benefits that two gay men have and so granting the benefits does not appear to manifest approval of the sexual relationship.  Thus, it would take away the most compelling argument that gays and lesbians put forth for gay marriage, we are denied benefits which any well-intentioned person would recognize as appropriate to anyone without regard to their sexual orientation.  Give them benefits without marriage, the argument goes, and you take away their best arguments for giving them marriage.

And therein lies the danger with this approach:

1. It even further diminishes society's recognition and support of the uniqueness of marriage between one man and one woman by making the benefits of marriage available to practically everyone whether married or not.

2. Tradition monogamous, life-long marriage between one man and one woman open to life needs to have greater, not less societal support.

3. Adopting such a proposal would enable gay marriage advocates to go to the "middle" group which buys into some of the arguments for marriage-like benefits being extended to gay couples but does not approve of gay marriage and say that this is not just for gays, but this is for your widowed aunts Mae and Sarah as well, and for your divorced sister, etc., thus persuading them to support such arrangements, reducing size of the opposition while painting those who remain opposed hard -hearted, right-wing Christian fundamentalists who would deny such benefits to old widows, etc.

Once such an approach is adopted, marriage has been substantially weakened by having many of its unique benefits and attributes diluted by being available to any two or more people living together whether married or not.  At that point, today's advocates may no longer care whether the state recognizes their relationship as a marriage, having been given all of its attributes except the name or, if they do still care about such recognition, they can just wait a few years, by which time the corrosive impact of these changes will have taken its toll on the meaning of marriage to many in society, and then go back and say that all they lack is the name and many in society will see the proposed change as no big deal, which, in fact, it may not be.

This is indeed a very smart change in tactics and one for which we now need to begin to consider counter-arguments.

[Bobby Winters]

Matthias and GL,
I was impressed by the leap of logic from their observation that there was more than one relationship between people to all such relationships should be treated equally. It would follow that since water, soda, White Zinfindel, and bleach are all liquids, then they should all be treated equally.

[John Hart]

Dr. Esolen:
I look forward to your series.

I have one initial, and honest, question:
"those who call themselves liberal and are busy curtailing and denying every freedom but that of the zipper"

I've read this sort of phrase before and I am genuinely puzzled by it, though it may be deserving of a separate post and thread. What freedoms are liberals in the business of curtailing? I can think of a some areas in which the liberal philosophy favors more regulation than the modern conservative, e.g., environmental policy, workplace safety, etc., but I doubt that those are what you mean to reference. Can you help me understand this claim better?

Also, some responses:
“The legalization of homosexual ‘marriages’ would enshrine the sexual revolution in law.”

This seems contradictory. If the goal is to reduce sexual hedonism, what better way than to sanction monogamous union? If marriages strengthen society, then why not encourage it? Is there evidence that gay unions are any more or less subject to dysfunction, or any more or less likely to be stable and contributing units in society?

“child abuse spiked sharply upward”

Is there data that child abuse has increased? More cases may be reported -- that's not the same as increased incidence. We know now, for instance that there was a great deal more child abuse within the Catholic Church in more conservative times than was either acknowledged or reported. I'm not singling out the Church, just pointing out that sensational news stories are not statistical evidence. And if there were such evidence, the suggestion that legalized abortion has produced more sexual predation is contentious at best.

“... contraception removed from the young woman the most powerful natural weapon in her arsenal against male sexual aggression. She no longer had any pressing reason not to concede to the boyfriend’s wishes.  So she agreed; and we now have one of three children born out of wedlock.”

Are you suggesting that all, or even most, acts of coitus outside of marriage are only the result of the boyfriend's wishes and the girlfriend's concession? That would come perilously close to classifying all extramarital sex as rape, and run counter to a great deal of evidence from popular culture, and I daresay the personal experience of many here.

Also, the rise in children born out of wedlock cannot reasonably be directly ascribed to the availability of contraceptive drugs. The failure rate of the various forms of chemical contraception is quite small. The rise in children born out of wedlock stems from the decline in responsibility taken by and demanded of the fathers of those children, and to the declining stigma attached to single motherhood. How do either of those stem from contraception?

“[Marriage] marks the most joyful celebration of a people, who see their own renewal in the vows made by the young man and the young woman.”

Pace Spenser, marriage, in many cultures, including most western cultures until quite recently, has been principally about assuring the orderly transfer of property. The 'honor' of women is so jealously guarded by their families in “traditional” cultures not through a sense of romance, but rather of bloodline.

“What man and woman do in the marriage bed is not “have” sex; the sex, that is the separation, they are provided with already.  What they do is to unite, across the separation.“

Except for the genders I certainly agree. All of us are isolated in our own skins. A loving marriage is an ongoing and committed and compassionate attempt to meet the other in the space between. Sexual congress, for reasons both cultural and biological, is one of many means to that end. And when two people do unite, not merely, or even necessarily, physically, it is one of the glories of humanity. To focus on the physicality of that union, is to miss the point.

[Persnickity]

Small quibble. "Making love" meant flirting, not intercourse, as recently as 1953, when C.S. Lewis could describe Jill Pole as "making love" to all the giants in The Silver Chair.

[Joe Long]

The quote about "liberals" curtailing freedom immediately struck me, and I should think it's fairly obvious - which just goes to show how differently folks percieve things...

The illiberal Left is generally the offender in all sorts of political censorship, especially on campuses; freedom of speech and the press seem anathema to them. Tellingly, pornography is always protected, political speech increasingly regulated (the opposite of the Founders' idea of Freedom of Speech). (McCain-Feingold is an excellent example.) Their opposition to the Second Amendment goes without saying. The instinct to regulate what one cannot do, or must do, seems pervasive everywhere outside the bedroom for the Left: who must you hire, what you must pay them, whether they can smoke while on the job - or off of it. The names of sports teams - fair game for regulation, based on what some folks think SHOULD offend American Indians - whether it does REALLY offend them or not. All-male colleges (particularly military ones) must be denatured, private associations (the Boy Scouts) must adopt liberal social values, religous speech must be suppressed - freedom of association, speech, and religion again under assault. I cannot think of a single sphere of human activity in which the modern Left encourages more individual freedom - save sexual activities. (I lump the "freedom" to have abortions into that category, as it seems primarily to be about removing consequences from sex.)

I think you will find the evidence also strongly supports Dr. Esolen's statements regarding child abuse, the dramatic increase in the number of unwanted pregnancies AFTER the legalization of abortions, and the rest.

[James A. Altena]

Dear John Hart,

I'll take the liberty of ducking in here before Prof. Esolen posts a response to address your points.

1) There are quite a number of natural liberties that modern liberalism seeks to curtail. Among the most prominent are the right to practice one's religion in public and the right to raise and discipline one's own children according to one's own beliefs. (Cf. Gloria Steinem's call, echoing Plato's "Republic", for children to be taken away from their parents and raised and indoctrinated in feminist consciousness at state-run institutions; parents and children in Massachusetts being punished when they object to mandatory attendance for children at classes promoting sexual deviancy as normal and encouraging those children to experiment with particular perversions; the recent effort by a social worker in Canada to have a child taken away from the parents because they are 7th-Day Adventists; efforts to remove any reference to God from currency, public buildings and sites, school events, etc., and to forbid religious groups to use school facilities while extending such use to anti-religious groups.)

2) “The legalization of homosexual ‘marriages’ would enshrine the sexual revolution in law.”

"This seems contradictory. If the goal is to reduce sexual hedonism, what better way than to sanction monogamous union? If marriages strengthen society, then why not encourage it? Is there evidence that gay unions are any more or less subject to dysfunction, or any more or less likely to be stable and contributing units in society?"

The problems here are:

a) Proposed "gay marriage" is specifically intended NOT to be monogamous or to reduce sexual hedonism, as gay activists have often admitted and even proclaimed. It is on the contrary sought to procure legal sanction and endorsement for sexual hedonism, and to "redefine" "marriage" in terms of "open relationships" -- i.e. where the nominal legal partners have as many sexual partners as they want, and any notion of fidelity is rejected.

b) There is an extensive literature on the far greater dysfunctionality of homosexual relationships. E.g. the famous Bell & Weinberg study examined some 4,000 homosexual couples in California. [The authors are "pro-gay" by the way.] Among the questions asked was how in how many instances both partners in a relationship has practiced sexual monogamy with each other for the preceding five years. The answer? ZERO. Yes, ZERO. Not one single gay couple had been sexually monogamous for just five years. Yet even in this degenerate age, over 50% of heterosexual marriages endure for a lifetime.

Likewise, I recall an article on AIDS some years ago from the "Detroit Free Press" (a liberal newspaper, for which my father used to work) which cited research showing that the average heterosexual male has between 5 and 9 sexual partners in a lifetime, whereas the average male homosexual has over 1,000 sexual partners in a lifetime. Yes, over 1,000. It further noted that over 50% of male homosexuals admit to NEVER knowingly having had intercourse with the same man twice, and that less than 5% of homosexual "relationships" last more than three months. The proper words to describe such behavior are "pathological", "predatory", and "exploitative."

So, John, please don't waste our time and your breath with idle chatter about "sanction[ing] monogamous sexual unions" for gays. They have no intention of practicing any such thing. And I trust you won't pretend that legalizing "gay marriage" will somehow wave a magic wand over all this and suddenly cause gays to practice sexual monogamy. They inherently can't, because the very ability to do so is inherently grounded in a union being a joining of complementary opposites, like a lock and a key. You can't unite two locks and two keys.

Likewise, you can't "strengthen monogamous unions" be redefining them to include non-monogamous unions -- just as you can't strengthen geometry by deciding to start pretending that triangles are also squares. Abe Lincoln reputedly asked, "If you call a horse's tail a leg, how many legs does it have?" A man answered "Five." "No," answered Lincoln, "four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one." You can't alter reality by re-naming or legally "redefining" it, John.

3) "Is there data that child abuse has increased?"

Yes, there is. Various studies have factored in for increased reporting of abuse. Try consulting reports issued by various government and social agencies, and articles by academic researchers, on the topic.

4) "Are you suggesting that all, or even most, acts of coitus outside of marriage are only the result of the boyfriend's wishes and the girlfriend's concession? That would come perilously close to classifying all extramarital sex as rape, and run counter to a great deal of evidence from popular culture, and I daresay the personal experience of many here.

"Also, the rise in children born out of wedlock cannot reasonably be directly ascribed to the availability of contraceptive drugs. The failure rate of the various forms of chemical contraception is quite small. The rise in children born out of wedlock stems from the decline in responsibility taken by and demanded of the fathers of those children, and to the declining stigma attached to single motherhood. How do either of those stem from contraception?"

First, Prof. Esolen did not simply suggest that fornication results from a woman's concession to a man's advances. He said that readily available contraception took away the most power dissuasion a woman had against male pressure for fornication -- the likelihood of pregnancy and resulting obligation to marriage and supporting children that the predatory male is seeking to avoid.

Second, as for "com[ing] perilously close to classifying all extramarital sex as rape" -- from a Christian moral (though not physical) standpoint, where the male office of headship means the man bears primary responsibility as the initiator (cf. C. S. Lewis on male initiative and female response), that is arguably the case. (Rather perversely, certain modern lesbian feminists want women to have unlimited sexual license but at the same time to claim that any act of heterosexual intercourse constitutes rape.)

Third, you have no right to make snide insinuations that many of the participants in this web log have committed fornication. On the contrary, I'd wager that, unlike the larger secular culture, most came to their marriage beds as virgins. (I did last year at the ripe age of 46.) And those on this site who did not have acknowledged and repented of their sin (I can think of one regular contributor who has publicly done so in a posting.) The fact that you engage in such a tactic without evidence says something about you, rather than about those you target --and what it say about you isn't admirable, John.

Fourth, your second paragraph here is fallacious. Not everyone who uses contraception uses chemical means. Some contraceptives have relatively high failure rates (e.g. about 15% for condoms). Also, studies have shown that many people who have illegitimate children used contraception (including the "Pill"), but erratically or improperly, despite extensive "education." However, readily available contraception has in fact contributed greatly to the huge increase in illegitimacy, by separating sex from procreation, making it recreational instead, and thus separating sex from marriage and from personal responsibility for the resulting children. In short, readily available contraception is related to increased illegitimacy rates by fostering a profound change in attitudes and behavior regarding sex -- the so-called "sexual revolution" ushered in by the Pill. Along with abortion as legalized murder -- a means to dispose of the inconvenient and unwanted "products of conception" [as PP loves to put it] -- the Pill created and fostered the "the decline in responsibility taken by and demanded of the fathers of those children, and [...] the declining stigma attached to single motherhood."

5) "Pace Spenser, marriage, in many cultures, including most western cultures until quite recently, has been principally about assuring the orderly transfer of property. The 'honor' of women is so jealously guarded by their families in “traditional” cultures not through a sense of romance, but rather of bloodline."

This load of horse excretion is a staple of pro-gay apologetics, and tips off where you're really coming from, John -- the pro-gay apologetics camp. In most cultures, marriage has neither been primarily about property (since until the last 200 years few people owned their own property) nor about "romantic love" (as fostered beginning about 1800). On the divine level, it has been about signifying the mystical union of Christ and the Church. (That holds even for those who, not being Christians, are not aware of that. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, Christianity does not say that all other religions and cultures are completely false. Rather, that they admix truth and falsehood, and the truths within them are the universal truths of nature, to which St. Paul refers in Romans 1, given to lead all men to Christ.) On the more general human level, it has been about the cohesive family (husband, wife, and children) as the necessary basic building block for social order and stability -- not just with respect to property but with respect to all human relations, whether material, emotional, or intellectual -- and the propagation of the species. Homosexual unions, being inherently sterile, cannot fulfill this function; so-called gay "families" are necessarily parasitic on genuine heterosexual unions for the children the homosexuals acquire by adoption. (Or, more distantly, by modern laboratory insemination techniques -- sperm and ovum being biologically heterosexual in nature and function.)

6) "A loving marriage is an ongoing and committed and compassionate attempt to meet the other in the space between. Sexual congress, for reasons both cultural and biological, is one of many means to that end. And when two people do unite, not merely, or even necessarily, physically, it is one of the glories of humanity. To focus on the physicality of that union, is to miss the point."

Well, John, you are at cross-purposes with yourself. First you want to write off marriage as being about transfer of property, and then you want to switch gears and call it a forum to "meet the other in the space in between" (what vacuously gaseous rhetoric! hand me my barf bag!) with "sexual congress" as one of the means. And sexual union is one of the "glories of humanity" ONLY when it is between a man and woman in marriage and performed by them with the intent to honor God. Otherwise, it is a great shame of mankind -- and St. Paul long ago noted those "who glory in their shame." We do not just "focus on the physicality of that union" (yet another standard canard of pro-gay apologetics) -- but we do recognize the true nature of physicality, what it signifies and its fruit. The fruit of heterosexual monogamy within marriage is children, stability, peace, and godly love. The fruit of all fornication, whether heterosexual or perverse, is disease, death, murder, and social disorder.

Finally, the clamor by homosexuals for "gay marriage" is grounded not in a desire to express and signify "love", but in greed, envy, anger, and rage against heterosexuality for being what homosexuality cannot ever be. (I say this with specific reference to homosexuality, not to the other dimension of homosexually oriented persons, so don't try to tar me with the "homophobic" label -- unless you wish to argue that homosexuals are simply reducible to homosexual conduct as their essence, as "Bp." Vicky Gene Robinson seems to think about himself. In which case, so much for the rhetorical pose of "I don't want be identified as 'gay John'; I want want to be known as 'John' who happens to be gay.") Opposition to "gay marriage" or homosexual conduct in general does not mean or entail that the opponents believe that homosexuals should not be allowed to vote, own property, be impartially considered for hiring and promotion at work where such conduct is not a factor, or a host of other civil and political rights. Nor does it mean that they are not otherwise kind, generous, honest, industrious, or otherwise admirable people. (I have treasured memories of a homosexual history professor from my undergraduate days, who did me many kindnesses and was one of the finest people I've ever met.) As persons, they are created in the image and likeness of God -- but their homosexual sin, being objectively disordered and a product of the Fall, is not. As Christians we view (or should view) their sin with more sorrow than anger, seeking deliverance for them from it rather than just condemnation. (I worked with an HA-style group for a couple of years for this reason.)

Marriage cannot be "redefined" into a "right" for homosexual couples, any more than triangles can be redefined into squares or tails into legs. Marriage is what it is -- the monogamous union of one man and one woman, nothing else or other. We cannot countenance disobedience to what God has ordered because sinners think it will make them feel better about themselves or grant them access to benefits they desire but by their conduct do not deserve.

[John Hart]

Joe Long:

Thank you. It was an honest question, and a helpful answer.

I'd like to engage with it, as I think there is a rich field to be tilled there, but this thread may be the wrong arena. Also, I'm about to be off-line for a week or so. I hope there will be a future opportunity to get into some of those issues.

[John Hart]

James Altena:

I regret that my post has sent all your gauges into the red zone. I'm afraid that I don't have time to properly respond, as I'm about to be away for the next week or so, but very quickly:

I am pro-gay, as I've said in earlier threads. I have posted here in the hope that an exchange of views with folks across the divide might be useful to both sides. I promise you I do my best both on and off-line to avoid being snide. I have profound differences of outlook with many of the posters here, but try hard to be respectful, careful, and courteous. I hope that on reflection you might find it in your heart to respond similarly.

[James A. Altena]

Dear John,

I do not see that anything I hve written fails to be respectful, careful, and courteous. It is hard-hitting, yes. But the distortions and lies propagated by pro-gay apologists, such as traditional marriage being about property, or that most homosexuals pushing for "gay marriage" either are, intend, or even desire to be strictly monogamous, or that opposition to gay marriage is "homosphobic", will be identified plainly for what they are -- distortions and lies. Uttering lies and distortions in gentle tones and soft terms does not make them any less lies and distortions, much less respectful, careful, and courteous.

I recall something I observed to a friend twenty years ago about a mutual acquaintance who was a disciple of Ayn Rand: "He's personally honest, but intellectually very dishonest. He wouldn't dream of taking a nickel out of someone's pocket, but he will not scruple at resorting to any lie, distortion, logical fallacy, or piece of definitional legerdemain that he thnks will enable him to win an argument." (My friend, who had a Ph.D. in logic, agreed.)

The problem I have with most pro-gay apologetics for "gay marriage" are their sheer disingenuousness, beginning with the definitional legerdemain with the word "marriage" itself, and moving on to the pretense that most homosexual couples practice, or would practice, strict sexual fidelity and monogamy. At least those pro-gay apologists who openly state that they have no intention of conforming to any such conduct are honest about their beliefs and intentions.

You wanted statistics, John. I gave you some. Now, how about if you supply some if you want to show that I'm wrong? Present hard, documented evidence that gay couples have more stable, enduring, and longer-lasting strictly monogamous relationships than do heterosexuals, and I'll take back every word I've written with profuse apologies.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I am pro-gay, as I've said in earlier threads.<<<

Define the boundaries of "pro-gay", if you please.

[Tony Esolen]

James has said many of the things I would have said already in response to John Hart. I'll only add these additional replies, and please forgive my haste -- time is a-running out at the public computer where I'm sitting:

1. Freedom of association, anyone? I know of not a single liberal who will defend it, because frequently you fill find that people who wish to associate with some will also wish not to associate with others.
Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, anyone? I am a conservative in higher education. Must I really say more?

2. The linchpin for justifying the sexual revolution in the minds of squeamish religious types was the diversion of attention away from the body and its manifest design and towards vague feelings -- a free-floating spirituality. So you can do with your body what you please, since the body is not that important; merely a nice shell that the soul occupies for a time. That does not rise to the level of a Christian heresy; it is gnosticism or angelism.

3. I know too much about history and too much about the cultures that produce the poetry I teach to believe that bit about marriage -- that tendentious slander first perpetrated by Friedrich Engels. Yes, aristocrats married with an eye to uniting wealthy families. But the overwhelming majority of people have never been wealthy or aristocrats. You need to look closely at what the common people did at weddings, what they sang, what they had written on their tombstones; their folklore, their proverbs, and so forth.....

[firinnteine]

Regarding "those who call themselves liberal and are busy curtailing and denying every freedom but that of the zipper" --

I highly recommend Aldous Huxley's Foreword (written some twenty years later) to Brave New World. He makes some astonishing claims about a societal tendency to increase sexual license as all other forms of freedom are radically limited. Huxley is no traditionalist Christian by any most extreme stretch of the imagination, but I find that his insights into the anti-human tendencies of our own culture (even fifty or sixty years ago) excellent.

The complete divorce between sexuality and procreation -- and the profound dehumanizing effects thereof -- is portrayed with great power in the story itself.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Prof. Esolen,

Once again, I am honored by your gracious notice of my efforts. I'm sure you would have written far more elegantly and concisely, and with less of an edge. But, Pontius-Pliate like, what I have written, I have written.

[Edward W Brown]

I'm just looking for any statistics or other truely proven facts to support the aguments put forth. it all seems like popular-conjecture.
For instance i did not realize that We were told that the legalization of abortion would lead, paradoxically, to fewer abortions, and fewer instances of child abuse. Instead it led to far more abortions than even the opponents ever imagined, and it so cheapened infant life that child abuse spiked sharply upward.
I would simply like facts to substantiate the claims. I am not pro-choice or pro-life. i am pro-be-the-best-person-you-can.
were did the get hese facts? is it from sensationalized media or true statistics?
I honestly tink it could be true - but I would not claim it so arbitrarily - I believe that the only purpose to statement like this is to in inflame for self ratings.

[R. C. Smith]

I have three somewhat unconnected comments:

1. I would like to submit, for consideration and debate, the proposition that the driving force behind much pro-homosexual rhetoric is not sexual but pharisaical. In general when I debate this issue, I try to establish that I consider homosexual practice to be a sin but that I do not therefore consider myself to be superior. In fact, since homosexuality as such is a sin of the flesh, I consider my own tendencies toward pride and wrath to be far more deadly.

This approach seems, in theory, to be exactly what is needed, since many members of the Christian Right do indeed give the impression that they are preserving righteousness. But, sadly, it has always resulted in failure. I find that my opponents are primarily trying to deny that what they are doing is sin and are not interested in my compassion or understanding, despite the fact that this is precisely what they publicly demand.

Thus, I am trying to develop a new approach that casts the homosexual advocate as ultimately trying to lower the standards so that he can feel righteous. This dovetails with what Prof. Esolen above notes about the illiberalism of "liberals" and has the advantage that it places the adversary in the position of defending their own perfection -- generally a losing proposition in our egalitarian culture.

It has the major flaw, however, of being somewhat unfair to the actual Pharisees. For all their hypocrisy, they evidently did teach the law to the extent that Jesus was able to say "The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach." This doesn't quite apply to the current batch of moral elitists, who are tending more and more in a pagan direction. But it seems to give pause to those Episcopalians who have been my primary concern lately.

2. I wonder if Prof. Esolen's project of critiquing "gay marriage" without reference to religion is actually possible. He is one of the best rhetoricians I am aware of, but I note that, even in the present post, he has makes reference to the symbolic and "cosmic" aspects of marriage as traditionally understood. These things may not be religion-as-such, but they fall into a general category of values that our culture has long since gotten into the habit of disregarding for largely the same reasons that they disregard the truly religious. I suspect that, if we have not already lost the battle over "gay marriage", the only way to win will be to reconvert the culture and then let the law and society follow. I have been accused of being "utopian" for making this argument, but I think the currency of Prof. Esolen's arguments, persuasive as they are to me, is not convertible in the current marketplace of ideas.

On a related note, we should all reflect on the notion of something being "enshrined in law". Has not disregard for marriage been so enshrined since at least the 1970s? Reforming the law is a worthy endeavor but it did not do much good for Josiah who, after all his reforms, only succeeded in saving his generation from the destruction to come.

3. James Altena: I think you are being a bit disingenuous to suggest that nothing in your earlier post "fails to be respectful, careful and courteous". Such phrases as "This load of horse excretion", "Gee, John", and "hand me my barf bag!" cannot reasonably be described as either respectful or courteous (however understandable) and they are not careful for two reasons: (1) They lower the tone of the discourse which is something you generally want to provoke your opponent into doing so that you can nail him for it. (2) They betray a lack of confidence in your own ability to succeed based on the merits. One can't reasonably suppose that such expressions would be persuasive to someone who is obviously hostile (however courteously so) to your position, so the impression they give is that you are trying to rally your own side to join in derision of a position that you can't otherwise answer. I don't say this is a fair assessment of your argument, which is otherwise quite powerful, and I recognize that for most people these days, polemics are inseparable from sarcasm. But you weaken a good argument by using the tools of the other side.

(By the way, I much appreciated your rebuttal to the tacit assumption that everyone is committing or has committed fornication. It is a point I never would have thought of making, but one that should be made more often.)

[Tony Esolen]

Mr. Brown:

The rhetoric, the arguments, and the falsified statistics put forth by the proponents of abortion "reform" in the late 1960's are all matters of public record. The best analysis of them, for my money, can be had in James Burtchaell's book, Rachel Weeping. Bernard Nathanson has also written about them -- and he was one of the pushers of the arguments back in that day.

RC: You have me in a bind. I want to argue as a natural law theorist would argue, without reference to Scripture. If I refer to Scripture, I lose half my audience immediately. If on the other hand I DON'T refer to ends that transcend the personal, I lose my argument -- but a society that can't imagine what transcends the personal, or even what transcends the current society, does not deserve to survive anyway ...

James,

Thanks for that pat on the back!

[Here's a thought]

Here's the beginning of a non-religious, natural law argument: homosexuality is not parasitical, but it is marginal. Papers have margins, but you're going to have problems if you try to do all your writing there. If the center of human life isn't biological reproduction it had better be pursuit of art or the welfare of mankind or union with God. Anyone who attempts to put something so completely silly as gay sex and defending their right to not be made to feel bad ever about the gay sex they have at anywhere near the center of their life needs to accept that they will live at the margins of the culture.

[GL]

Actually, one can make a natural law argument without reference to Scripture.  In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis addresses the universal truths which even non-Jews and non-Christians recognize and St. Paul, of course, noted in his letter to the Romans that even Gentiles had some such insight.  St. Thomas, however, declared that without reference to Scripture, any natural lawyer would be subject to mistakes in reason and miss truths which can only be discerned from revelation.  I encourage Tony to make the effort, but he is wise to realize that the complete argument cannot be presented without reference to revelation.  I frankly doubt that there are many out there today who would be open to natural law arguments who would not also be open to Scripture.  If there are a few, however, perhaps Tony can reach them.

[James A. Altena]

Dear R. C. Smith,

I understand your point with respect to those two specific comments, and perhaps I owe an apology to to John Hart in that regard.

However, there are times where the smooth, plausible, disingenuous cant of evil has to be called out on the carpet and plainly labeled for what it is. However, seemingly polite its phrasing, the claim that traditional marriage has always been about property and bloodline IS a load of horse excrement -- or, if you prefer, a vile canard. And nauseating bloviation empty of any actual content, that seeks to pass itself off as true rhetoric (in the classical sense), a poetic statement of high principle (such as a definition of marriage reducing it to an attempt to "meet the other in the space in between"), should be be hauled up short. [There was a previous "Mere Comments" post on "Clear your mind of cant" that applies here.] When one compare the drivel that nowadays passes for rhetoric with the speeches of people from Cicero to Lincoln, one should want to puke. (I'll wager that Prof. Esolen could back me up on that point.)

I admittedly am reacting to a problem now afflicting Christendom (particularly the Episcopal Church to which I once belonged) -- the confusion of the virtue of charity with mere social politeness and civility. If I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone object to taking principled, concrete action to withstand heresy with the rejoinder "Why can't you just be nice?", I'd be a rich man. (I checked concordances for several translations of Scripture, and "nice" did not occur once in any of them.) And Scripture does not refrain from blunt language about "cutting off him that pisseth against the wall" or counting all things to be dung in comparison to the knowledge of the excellency of Christ.

[Bobby Winters]

It looks as if James (Altena) and John (Hart) are indeed the sons of thunder. One standing up for the truth that God did create them male and female and the other standing up for those who are broken.

Or maybe I am just projecting the war about this topic that has occured in my thoughts over the years onto the current discussion. If you read and understand the Book of Genesis, whether you take it as historical or allegorical, there can be no doubt one man with one woman is God's design. Yet what sort of balm do we have to offer these broken people beyond Christ's "take up your cross and follow me."

Billy Joel sang "[Your mother] doesn't care for me / but has she ever said a prayer for me?" Do we? This is a hard thing because most of them claim they don't need our prayers because they are perfect just the way they are, as opposed to the rest of us sinners.

Sorry for interrupting and intruding on this good discussion with my own internal dialog.

[James A. Altena]

Having been to church this morning, and (I trust) benefiting from prayer and reflection, I wish to apologize for and retract any such statements by me in response to John Hart whose tone and demeanor have caused offense, if for no other reason than that they cause scandal to certain of the faithful. While I do not believe their substantive content is wrong, but their manner of expression should have been more restrained.

R. C. Smith’s post and the sermon I heard today (on an unrelated subject) have brought together for me certain points I wish to articulate that undergirded my response to John Hart. I intuitively sensed those points in writing my original post, but further reflection now allows me to present them as a coherent argument. Alas, it will be at far greater length than I or those reading it might wish, and I will offer it as a separate post. I am sorry for that, but that is an inevitable result of the close textual analysis involved.

Here, I wish to address points 1) and 2) in Mr. Smith’s post.

I think that your “proposition that the driving force behind much pro-homosexual rhetoric is not sexual but pharisaical” does not carry through, though on somewhat different grounds than the caveat you yourself articulate. The Pharisees, however blindly (and sometime hypocritically), sought to uphold and obey the Law of God as divinely given. Their error (as my parish priest has often noted) was to make observance of the Law, as virtuous conduct, an end in and of itself, rather than a means to loving and drawing closer to God. Thus they made man for the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath for man. The pro-gay apologist, by contrast, seeks to overturn or subvert the Law, altogether, as man-made rather than divinely revealed and given, and seeks self-fulfillment via self-gratification rather than virtue.

Having said that, I heartily endorse both what you say about spiritual sins (especially one’s own – motes and logs, etc.) being far more serious than fleshly ones (including fornication and perversion), and the insight that “the homosexual advocate [is] ultimately trying to lower the standards so that he can feel righteous.” The latter is in fact the point of my previous paragraph – the pro-gay apologist wishes (in the terminology of Gertrude Himmelfarb) to supplant objective "virtues" with subjective “values,” with all values hence being equally valid.

As for your questioning Prof. Esolen’s effort to put forth arguments based generally on the natural law tradition rather than on an explicitly Christian basis – others have already responded. I would simply add that Prof. Esolen’s approach is well grounded in Romans 1 and St. Paul’s own approach to evangelism. As J. Budziszewski’s “What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide” exemplifies, there are certain things that the rational man cannot either honestly deny or avoid knowing, even without the specific revelation of Christ, because they are grounded in the very order of the creation and evident to reason and the senses.

While I agree with Aquinas (thanks for the reference, GL!) that without Christ even reliance on natural law can go astray, St. Paul does present it in Rom.1 as a sufficient foundation for basic morality. What the specific Christian revelation does in this regard is to give us a far richer understanding of that basis, and to unite that to an understanding of many other things which we otherwise would not have known to be related. To put it a bit differently, if the natural law is rightly articulated, then it will be in perfect accord with Christian understanding even if the latter is not explicitly invoked. But once assent is gained to that, then the unbeliever can be led to the Gospel by showing how the natural law is not only in accord with, but an expression of, the Gospel. Prof. Esolen’s approach is therefore entirely valid. He is following the example of St. Paul, who in Acts 17 first quotes an inscription on a pagan altar, and then a saying of a Greek philosopher, to gain the ear of the unbelieving Athenians to hear the Gospel.

[James A. Altena]

As promised, I now turn to addressing Mr. Hart’s original post I more detail. While more dispassionate in tone (not to mention laborious), I fear that nevertheless it finally may be even more displeasing to him than was my original post.

As previously mentioned, I once attended meetings of an HA-type organization for some months, and thus read a fair amount of literature by pro-gay apologists as well as Christian authors. The pro-gay literature fell into two broad camps: the “radicals” who openly vented their hatred of Christians and traditional moral standards, and the “moderates” who presented themselves as offering reasonable, restrained, and polite arguments for the legitimacy of homosexual conduct. However, I soon identified in the latter a certain mode of argument that I can only term cleverly disingenuous (necessarily so, given the mental and moral gymnastics entailed in even making such an argument) – and that was exemplified in Mr. Hart’s post.

First, Mr. Hart noticeably avoids when possible positing positive arguments for his position, in favor of asking questions. This tactic attempts to place Prof. Esolen on the defensive, in the position of having to justify his propositions, while Mr. Hart does not have to defend corresponding positive arguments of his own, and can always deny any such arguments inferred from his questions by responding “I never said that.” It’s a clever debating strategy, but is aimed at winning an argument rather than arriving at truth.

Second, Mr. Hart’s questions are nominally posed to gain information or clarification and thus increase understanding. But examine those questions closely. They are not objective in content or tenor, but framed in such a way as to skew the argument in Mr. Hart’s direction, by leading the reader to question Prof. Esolen’s veracity without placing Mr. Hart under the same scrutiny. They avoid addressing Prof. Esolen’s actual arguments by subtly misrepresenting them or by implicitly redefining terms involved. To examine several of them one by one:

“If the goal is to reduce sexual hedonism, what better way than to sanction monogamous union?”

A) Prof. Esolen never argued that the “goal is to reduce sexual hedonism.” Even granting that as a purpose for marriage (e.g. in the sense of “a remedy for fornication” per the traditional Book of Common Prayer), there are more fundamental purposes of marriage, such as procreation, that he cites instead.
B) As both many gay activists have publicly declared (and Mr. Hart surely knows), and studies of homosexual promiscuity show, there is no intention that legally sanctioned homosexual unions will be monogamous. Or, to put it a bit differently, the “monogamy” will only be a legal formality, in terms of desired economic, social, and political benefits -- not sexually and psychologically exclusive, the “forsaking all others” of the traditional concept of “fidelity”.
C) Merely granting a veneer of formal legal and social approbation to sexual hedonism does not somehow make it no longer sexual hedonism. Per the Lincoln anecdote I previously cited, calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg. Once again, Mr. Hart is implicitly playing a game of definitional legerdemain.

“If marriages strengthen society, then why not encourage it?” [i.e., “gay marriage” as a type of “monogamous union”]

Point C) immediately above applies here as well. Falsely calling something “marriage” that is not and intrinsically cannot be marriage strengthens neither society nor marriage, but as a deception undermines both. The crucial point that marriage must inherently be a union of complementary opposites is simply sidestepped and ignored.

“Is there evidence that gay unions are any more or less subject to dysfunction, or any more or less likely to be stable and contributing units in society?”

This question is simply risible, and yet it is posed as if the answer is unknown or in doubt. The evidence of the dysfunctionality and instability of homosexual partnerships is overwhelming; I mentioned but two examples of reported statistical findings. One can consult any number of statistical studies by the Center for Disease Control, the Department of Health and Human Services, and in published monographs and journal articles by academic researchers. These show that a majority of homosexuals never form any stable or long-term partnerships of any kind, and that homosexuals have a much higher incidence of alcoholism, drug addiction, venereal disease, and suicide than do heterosexuals, despite having overall higher levels of education and disposable income. The typical response of the pro-gay apologist is to blame this all on “heterosexism” and “homophobia”, without offering any solid positive evidence to prove it instead of question-begging assertions.

“Is there data that child abuse has increased?”

Again, the question is risible, and the documented evidence (from the sources previously mentioned) supporting Prof. Esolen’s statement overwhelming. Mr. Hart is obviously articulate and well-educated, and clearly also considers himself well-informed. Thus, for him implicitly to pose this question as if the answer is unknown is again a disingenuous tactic.

“Are you suggesting that all, or even most, acts of coitus outside of marriage are only the result of the boyfriend's wishes and the girlfriend's concession?”

I have already dealt in my previous response with how Mr. Hart misrepresented Prof. Esolen here.

What is striking here is the similarity of Mr. Hart’s rhetorical strategy to the serpent’s questioning of Eve in Genesis 3. The serpent starts off posing a seemingly objective question (Gen. 3:2) ostensibly intended to promote information and understanding, but which misrepresents what God actually said, and does so in such a way as to skew the discourse that follows by leading Eve to question God’s veracity (Gen. 3:4-5). Compare this to the just-cited questions Mr. Hart poses to Prof. Esolen, and the follow-up statements regarding child abuse, contraception, etc.

Third, R. C. Smith’s observation regarding “the homosexual advocate as ultimately trying to lower the standards so that he can feel righteous” illuminates the relation between Mr. Hart’s statements on contraception, fornication, heterosexual marriage, and gay unions. Mr. Hart clearly objects to the privileged status of heterosexual marriage in contrast to homosexual intercourse and partnerships (as few as, and such as, they are). So what does he do?

First, as pointed out in my previous post, he casts an implicit slur on the folks posting to this blog site (and heterosexuals in general) by questioning their avoidance of fornication. The implication is that heterosexuals (and particularly Christians) are hypocritically denying homosexuals a pleasure in which they themselves illicitly indulge. (This point is plausible insofar as it concerns heterosexual fornicators, particularly the practitioners of “serial monogamy” via easy divorce and remarriage.)

Second, he then traduces the sacred institution of marriage by pretending that it traditionally is only about “property” and “bloodline”, rather than the union of naturally complementary opposites for the perpetuation of life, the care and nurture of children, the good ordering of society, the prevention of sexual exploitation, etc. – to confine ourselves to natural law arguments per Prof. Esolen, apart from its mystical signification for Christians of the union of Christ and the Church.

Third, Mr. Hart’s statement that “a loving marriage is an ongoing and committed and compassionate attempt to meet the other in the space between” is a prime illustration of the rhetorical tactics of modern apologists for sexual hedonism. Note first the caveat of a “loving” marriage, designed to call implicitly into question the veracity any marriage that by this definition is not “loving.” Next is the definitional reduction of a “loving marriage” from something very specific and concrete – the union of one man and one woman to form a new family that can have children for the propagation of mankind – to a set of undefined, vague, open-ended abstractions. It is “ongoing”, not lifelong; it is “committed” (a subjective act of will) rather than requiring fidelity (an objective moral obligation); it is a mere “attempt” – not an actual union – “to meet the other” – and what is the other? In order to justify gay marriage, it cannot be the complementary natural opposite of man or woman, but must needs be any two different beings. Having no restriction, by definition it could be man and man, man and boy, even man and pet dog. As for “the space in between” – that is so vague as to be utterly meaningless. Its intent appears to be to imply that the differences between any two persons are the same in kind, regardless of sex. If so, then the “union” of two persons of the same sex is no different in kind from the union of a man and a woman. Indeed, the vague abstractness of the entire statement is directed to promoting this notion.

Thus Mr. Hart’s closing statement that “. . . when two people do unite, not merely, or even necessarily, physically, it is one of the glories of humanity. To focus on the physicality of that union, is to miss the point.” The specific physicality of marital union stressed in Prof. Esolen’s argument is simply dismissed in favor of further abstractions. Not man and woman, but any “two people; not marriage, but any union; and not to focus on the physicality of marriage, in order to justify any physicality. (It brings to mind a statement I once read by a pro-gay advocate that “the only ‘unnatural’ sex act is one that is physically impossible to perform.”)

This is complemented by postmodernist rhetoric that “man” and “woman” are culturally defined “genders” and thus infinitely malleable, rather than biologically defined sexes with essential and unalterable natures. A corresponding assumption is that all real human beings are reducible to legally abstract “persons.” (Hence the recent court rulings supporting “gay marriage” in Canada, asserting that “man” and wife” do not mean what they say, but mean any two legal “persons”.)

The rhetoric of abstraction with respect to sexed human beings here – the studied avoidance and denial of their concreteness and particularity – is precisely the same as that employed by the advocates of abortion and embryonic stem-cell research (“products of conception”, “fetus”, “zygote”) , euthanasia (“life unworthy of life”), and advocates of women’s ordination (cf. C. S. Lewis’ essay “Priestesses in the Church?” in which he specifically points out the reliance of pro-priestess apologetics on the reduction of men and women to interchangeable abstractions). They are all of a piece, evil fruits of the same corrupted tree.

In short, the rhetorical strategy of even “moderate” pro-gay apologists such as Mr. Hart is thoroughly disingenuous. As R. C. Smith suggests, he is “ultimately trying to lower the standards so that he can feel righteous” with respect to both the moral fibre of his opponents and of marriage itself. To mince no words, his statements about marriage are lies, and their source is the father of lies. I must necessarily grant Mr. Hart the benefit of the doubt, and suppose that perhaps he employs and repeats this rhetoric unreflectively by having picked it up from others, and thus errs from confusion or ignorance rather than acting knowingly and willfully. (Having seen this strategy from pro-gay apologists far too often, however, I am tempted to suspect otherwise.) But, whatever his subjective intent, the objective content of his statements is another matter. C. S. Lewis once wrote of the phrase “Don’t speak damned nonsense” that there is a mode of speech which, unchecked, will lead one to Hell. I submit that the striking similarity between the line of questioning by the serpent with Eve in the Garden of Eden, and that employed by Mr. Hart against Prof. Esolen, is not accidental. Because of the objective moral evil it seeks to justify, it leaves a trail of footprints in the sand whose shape is not that of our Lord, nor does its path lead to Him and His Kingdom.

[Bill R]

James A. Altena,

Amen, amen, and amen!

[YaknYeti]

Mr. Altena,

While I agree with you on the morality of homosexual behavior, I'm not as confident of your diagnosis of Mr. Hart's questions. His arguments seemed quite reasonable, and capable of producing an excellent discussion when clearly answered. If he introduces bias through the questions (e.g., "If the goal is to reduce sexual hedonism..."), you can (and have) brought it up to steer the discussion back on track. Perhaps I'm less sensitive to others' deceit in this area... but I worry that you may scare away honest inquirers with your forceful response to such subtleties.

There are two gray areas related to what Mr. Hart brought up that I, for one, would like to understand better.

1) Our goal is not to reduce sexual hedonism alone, but to encourage conformance to God's plan for all of us. Is it, as a general rule, acceptable to allow or encourage some sins in order to avoid greater sin/ harm? For example, will I tolerate the dishonesty of espionage in order to prevent terrorist attacks? Most of the examples of this, such as condom usage, tend to be very contreversial, but I don't know if I can rule all of them out.

2) The statistics show a greater trend toward promiscuity amongst homosexuals than heterosexuals. But do we control for the stabilizing effects of marriage? One good of marriage is certainly to help the married couple avoid sin (lust toward others in particular). If this is true, then we should be willing to admit that our statistics for homosexual promiscuity aren't directly comparable with those for heterosexual promiscuity, due to that stabilizing influence. I believe that the likely gains in monogamy between gay couples will be minimal, and that the statistics show a disparity between homosexuals and heterosexuals. But, from what I've seen, strict evidence isn't available because no one has experimented with gay marriage for long enough yet.

I am happily open to contradiction, of course.

[GL]

Is it, as a general rule, acceptable to allow or encourage some sins in order to avoid greater sin/ harm?  For example, will I tolerate the dishonesty of espionage in order to prevent terrorist attacks?

I was unaware that espionage was a sin.  Do you have a particular example in mind?

[James Kabala]

Well, a spy must often lie by using a false name, made-up background, etc.

[Joe Long]

Caleb and Joshua - and co-conspirator Rahab - got nothing but divine favor for their espionage.

Yaknyeti, the Scandinavians and Dutch have experimented with equivalent social re-arrangements rather extensively. I commend to you Stanley Kurtz' work; a sample at http://nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz200405250927.asp , from his debate with Andrew Sullivan.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Yaknyeti,

You raise several important questions, which I will endeavor to answer in separate posts (though not in the originally stated order).

1) Per I Cor. 10:13, it is a cardinal principle of Christian theology that God does not allow a situation to occur in which the only alternatives open to us are to commit one sin or another, and choose the “lesser of two evils” between them. We may have to choose the lesser of two evils in the O.T. sense of “evil” as misfortune – i.e., we may have to bear our Cross and suffer with Christ – but not in the sense of having to choose to commit sin.

2) Specifically regarding espionage. I assume James Kabala has discerned your point – that espionage involves certain kinds of deception. At the risk of casuistry, I will suggest that the commandment against bearing false witness against one’s neighbor does not straightforwardly apply here. First, the obligation always to speak the truth does not limit us only to known facts and to opinions we conscientiously hold to be true – otherwise, the reading and writing of fictional literature would by definition be forbidden to Christians. (There are certain “Fundamentalists” who in act hold this view and denounce C. S. Lewis and Tolkein as servants of Satan!) But I believe that the distinction also involves two other factors – i.e. that false witness involves intent to injure others and is self-serving.

Let me illustrate with an example. Suppose I was a Dutch Christian during the Nazi occupation of WW II who knows the location of the secret hideaway of Anne Frank’s family. A Gestapo officer knocks on my door, states that they know the Frank family is in hiding in the city, and asks if I know the location of their hiding place. I lie and say I do not, or perhaps even misdirect the officer to a false location, in order to gain time to warn the Franks to flee. Have I sinned? Arguably not (though St. Augustine would disagree with me and say that I should tell the Gestapo officer I do know but refuse to tell him, and bear the resulting consequences). I have not sought my own benefit, nor have I sought to injure my neighbor. (The Gestapo officer openly in the service of Satan is not my neighbor in this regard, and by keeping him from committing an evil act I not only have not injured him, but have arguably done him good.)

A second and more pedestrian example. In December 1956 the renowned conductor Guido Cantelli, the only real conducting protege Arturo Toscanini ever had, was killed in a plane crash. The 89-year-old Toscanini, near death, was expecting a visit from Cantelli and regularly asked about him. Rather than tell the mortally ill aged maestro the truth, and possibly cause him to drop dead from shock and grief, they said things to him such as “Guido’s awfully busy and just hasn’t had time to call.” Toscanini died less than two months later. Did the family sin in lying to Toscanini and sparing him this terrible news in his final days? Perhaps I’m wrong, but arguably not. They sought neither their own advantage nor to injure him (indeed, just the opposite).

As I said, perhaps I’m wrong; certainly the justification for such “white lies”, if not a sin, is open to gross abuse. But with respect to espionage, the argument comes into play. Does the spy seek to serve himself, or his country (or perhaps the causes of truth and liberty by fighting against evil). Does he seek to injure his neighbor, or to oppose evil doers who (like the Gestapo officer above) are not his neighbors in the gospel sense? It’s a tricky question, because our patriot or hero can be or is the other side’s villain. Most spies, like Hansen or Ames, have sold out for venal motives (money, personal disgruntlement at lack of promotion, etc.); but an Alger Hiss was arguably acting from subjectively noble intentions (if objectively misguided judgment). We want to consider the high-ranking KGB officer who spent 20 years passing secrets to the US and Britain (I forget his name) before his defection to the West a hero for opposing the evils of Communism; but to many Russians he must appear to be a traitor who violated a sacred oath to serve his country. In such cases we argue that the heroism and treason must be judged against an objective standard of what causes the person’s actions objectively serve, as distinct from their subjective motives.

Thus there is an argument to be made for espionage as compatible with Christian moral principles. That is not to say that the application of those principles is easy or clear.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Is it, as a general rule, acceptable to allow or encourage some sins in order to avoid greater sin/ harm? For example, will I tolerate the dishonesty of espionage in order to prevent terrorist attacks?

I was unaware that espionage was a sin. Do you have a particular example in mind?<<<

Well, I will supply an example from my own personal experience. I have a friend who worked as a case officer for what I shall call an "Other Government Agency" for more than two decades. Unlike most OGA employees, he did not work out of one of our embassies, but had what is called "Non-Official Cover"--that is, he lived under a false identity using a fake business as a cover whereby he could meet people whom he could recruit as agents. In other words, this man was a spy.

A few years before his retirement, he converted to the Roman Catholic Church, and like many converts, he took it very seriously. Well, almost immediately he began to have qualms of conscience over his work. It wasn't so much the false life he was living as a NOC case officer, but rather the fact that his job was to convince people to betray their countries and become agents of the United States. To do this, he was prepared to (and often did) lie to them, entrap them, compromise them and coerce them into doing what he wanted. This disturbed him greatly, and eventually, he went to his confessor for advice.

And his confessor did not make it easy for him, because he did not try to sugar coat the things he had to do in his job. Yes, he lied. Yes, he manipulated, bribed and threatened people. The question that the confessor asked him was whether he thought what he was doing served a greater good, and whether the benefits of that good exceeded the harm done through the sins committed in the course of his duties.

Well, this was the Cold War, and since he had seen first hand the evil that was the Soviet Union, he eventually concluded that what he was doing was a necessary evil. Which, in his mind, did not excuse the sins he had to commit. He always looked at his work in that light, but he continued to do it until his retirement.

[GL]

Is a soldier guilty of sin when he kills an enemy in battle while fighting a just war?

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Is a soldier guilty of sin when he kills an enemy in battle while fighting a just war?<<<

Depends on whose Tradition he follows.

[GL]

Stuart,

Are you saying that, all other things being equal, killing an enemy in combat would be a sin for a Quaker but not for a Baptist, for example?  Surely you do not believe that whether it is a sin is relative.  Under that logic, abortion would be a sin for a Catholic, but not for a Methodist.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>Are you saying that, all other things being equal, killing an enemy in combat would be a sin for a Quaker but not for a Baptist, for example? Surely you do not believe that whether it is a sin is relative. Under that logic, abortion would be a sin for a Catholic, but not for a Methodist.<<<

No, I am saying that the Christian East has no formal concept of "just war", and views all killing as sinful. However, the East also has a very different view of sin than that which pertains in the West, which in turn explains partly why the West HAD to develop a theory of just war, and the East did not. I attach the following, written by a Byzantine Catholic Studite monk, shortly after September Eleventh:

A Just War
Stavrophore Maximos

Around 1537, the Moldavian prince, Petru Rares, an important figure in Romanian history, commissioned the painting of holy icons on the exterior of the man church of the monastery of Moldovitsa. Among the icons he had painted, one in particular stands out: a depiction of the seige of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. The painting retains to this day much of its vividness. Nothing of the horror is left out. Cannons boom. Missiles fly. The massed ranks of the invaders stretch into the distance, while within the city the doomed people take up their holy icons along the walls to beg for a miracle of deliverance. A miracle that never came.

Why is this picture on the wall of an Orthodox church? Surely it is there as catechesis. A common view among Orthodox monks was that Constantinople fell to the Turks because of the sins of the Orthodox people. Petru Rares was engaged in a struggle against the Ottoman Turks. His monastic painters were warning the people about the danger of sin.

The idea that sin leads to war, and even to defeat, is an important one in the tradition of Eastern Christianity. In a prayer service of the Slavonic tradition, the first troparion of the canon puts it clearly: “On account of our sins and transgressions, O Righteous Judge, You have permitted our enemies to oppress us”.

It is important for us as Byzantine Christians, in this time of war, to be aware of this theme in our Tradition. But it is also important to understand the subtlety of the teaching. We cannot support the view put forth in the immediate aftermath of 11 September by some conservative Protestant figures that God had “withdrawn his hand” from America due to the specific failings of named groups. This idea sits very ill with orthodox Christianity.

“You came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first”. Echoing the worlds of St. Paul (1 Tim 1:15), we remember the truth at every Divine Liturgy in the prayer before Communion. Petru Rares did not show his people the fall of Constantinople to remind them of the sins of the Greeks a century before. He did it to remind them of their own sins in their own time.

There is a great mystery here. It is too simplistic to think that divine justice functions according to the laws of Newtonian physics. Every action does not have an equal and opposite reaction. The guilty are not always punished in proportion to their wrongdoing, and the innocent are certainly not spared according to the measure of their purity.

“Why do the wicked prosper?” asks the prophet Jeremiah (12:1). Our faith teaches us that all evils in the world—natural and man-made—are the result of sin. If 11 September teaches us anything, it is that the geometry of evil is of a kind to ghastly for comprehension. “Between the Holy Trinity and hell there is no other choice” says Father Pavel Florenksy. We can live either within the perfect order and harmony of God’s life, or we can exist amid the chaos that is outside of Him. Through sin, we choose chaos. Fallen with the rest of creation, the laws of cause and effect have themselves been corrupted. A single evil can produce untold and unpredictable consequences. How apt, for once, is the jargon of military analysis, which describes terrorist attacks as “asymmetrical”.

Perhaps this is why Byzantine theology has never attempted to devise a theory of “just war” as has been done in the West. The East has seen no point in trying to make a system of what is essentially the antithesis of system. You cannot herd cats, and you cannot make chaos neat. The East has not sought to open up the ethics of war to dialectical analysis. War is not an intellectual problem to be solved so much as it is an existential fact, or rather, an existential disaster. Reflecting on the asymmetry of the fallen world, war must be endured as a necessary evil—but with the emphasis on evil.

Even when we must take up arms for protection (as is surely the case in the present conflict), we must never forget that to fight a war is to participate in evil. God ordered His world out of chaos and called it “good”. Wars are the eruption in creation of that same chaos. How can this ever be called “good” or “just”?

“Save your people O Lord, and bless your inheritance. Grant victory to the emperors over the barbarians. . . “ So goes the Troparion of the Cross in its original Greek, pronouncing as best it can, a blessing on the warfare of Christians. But it immediately adds: “and protect your city by your Cross”. Ultimately, it is the Cross which is our true salvation. Caesar must fight, of course, and we must support him. Our sin has made such warfare inevitable. But we must never forget that true victory is not to be found in superficial things. No “system”, be it military, political, economic or even theological, can ever succeed against the chaotic asymmetry of evil that my own sin has unleashed on creation. No system can succeed, but only a Person, and a Cross.

Which brings me back to the painted siege on the wall of Moldovitsa. The ultimate collapse of the entire Byzantine political system is depicted here. A little further along the wall, the onlooker will see revealed an even more profound collapse: the end of time, and the Last Judgement. The artists’ aim was to put into perspective all our attempts to improve the world by means of politics, social action and war. The catechesis is this: do not fear the dissolution of human systems. Do not fear and do not despair. Work to make these systems bear fruit by uniting them more completely with the One who alone can order eternal life beyond the collapse of earthly existence.

Looked at in the light of the end of all things, the eschaton, all our human activities show up their myriad imperfections and corruption. Christian life is seen in the East as an ascesis, as the process of purifying our lives and actions by careful exposure of all that we do and think to the cathartic light of Christ’s judgement. War is no exception. For Eastern Christians there is something utterly stupid about debates between warmongers and peaceniks. In the light of Christ, we see that there is rarely an “either/or” when it comes to war. What matters is that the choices we make be examined constantly in that same penetrating spiritual Light. We must seek out evil wherever the Light reveals it to be: in our enemy, in our national and international policies, and above all, in our own hearts. There is no room for the sentimentality either of either the jingoist or the pacifist. There is room only for the intellectual and spiritual honesty of ascesis, as individuals and as a nation,

Eastern Christians can wholeheartedly embrace the following statement of Vatican II, quoted in the section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that deals with War. “insofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them, and will continue to do so until Christ comes again; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished and these words shall be fulfilled: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Gaudium et Spes, 6, quoting Isaiah 2:4)

[James A. Altena]

Dear Yaknyeti,

I want to bring this thread back on track to the debate over "gay marriage," and not get further "off point" with discussions over espionage or digressions over Western vs. Eastern Christian efforts to come to grips with the morality and tragedy of war.

Joe Long has already done yeoman’s service with the link he has posted to Stanley Kurtz. I want to address the point from a different angle. The concluding sentence of your paragraph reads: “But, from what I've seen, strict evidence isn't available because no one has experimented with gay marriage for long enough yet.”

This indicates that you have not grasped a central point of Prof. Esolen’s argument, that I have sought to buttress. By definition, there neither is nor can be any such thing as “gay marriage,” any more than there can be such things as square triangles. When I say “by definition,” I do not mean merely a set of words in a dictionary (which after all could be re-written at will). I mean that essentially, by virtue of what God created marriage to be. It is not a matter of God simply naming the union of man and woman “marriage.” Rather, marriage is something that, by its very nature and unalterable constitution, be made only by the union of a man and a woman – just as a square can be made only by combing four lines of equal lengths at consecutive right angles to one another. It is possible in some sense to “unite” two persons of the same sex (or an man and a dog) – just as it is possible to unite three lines of equal length (instead of four) in consecutive 60 degree right angles (instead of 90 degree angles). But the “union” of those two same-sex persons is simply not a marriage – just as the resulting three-sided figure is not a square but an equilateral triangle. Calling a tail a leg does not and can not make it a leg. Calling a relationship between two person of the same sex a “marriage” does not and can not make it a marriage, no matter what a court or legislature chooses to call it. One can not alter reality simply by changing names. To oppose homosexual behavior as immoral, one of the things that it is absolutely critical to do first is to disallow and combat any and all attempts to refer to any such relationship as a “marriage”, no matter what legal imprimatur it is given.

This also means that the line of research you suggest (likewise by definition in the sense given above) does not make sense. Again you seemed to have missed a crucial point of Prof. Esolen’s argument that I sought to support. ANY sexual activity other than that of one man and one woman within wedlock, by nature constitutes sexual hedonism. Even if a homosexual relationship involving sodomitic intercourse between the two partners is totally monogamous, it is still hedonistic, and giving it a legal pedigree does not make it one white less so. Again, one can not change reality simply by renaming it. In a culture that blabbers nonsensically about “my truth” and “your truth” (whereas in fact “truth” be definition is objective and universal), this needs to be said again and again and again and again.

This leads to my next point. You write of Mr. Hart’s post: “His arguments seemed quite reasonable, and capable of producing an excellent discussion when clearly answered. If he introduces bias through the questions . . . you can (and have) brought it up to steer the discussion back on track. Perhaps I'm less sensitive to others' deceit in this area . . . but I worry that you may scare away honest inquirers with your forceful response to such subtleties.”

I appreciate your good-heartedness and genuine concern here. But I am deeply concerned that for you, Mr. Hart’s “arguments seemed quite reasonable.” What I am trying to suggest is that they have a superficial plausibility, the seemingly moderate tone of which is quite seductive – until his use of language is taken apart and analyzed. Once that is done, two things stand out. First, he seeks subtly to redefine reality by redefining terms such as “marriage.” Second, he seeks even more subtly to misinform a right view of reality by avoiding concrete and particular objects in favor of vague and general abstractions, whose very lack of definition then allows him to fit them to situations that the concrete and particular terms would make impossible.

In sort, at a certain level, Mr. Hart is not engaging in an honest argument. Instead, whether he realizes it or not (and it is possible he does not) he is playing a disingenuous game with language, in order to manipulate his readers’ perception of reality into accepting something false. Given what marriage is essentially, by nature, by definition, he cannot even begin to make a case for “gay marriage” except by playing such a game. This is fundamentally different from, say, most debates among Christians over women’s ordination or the morality of the current war in Iraq, where each side can make its case by using particular and concrete terms defined in an above-board manner. It is instead like the argument between Christians and non-Christians over abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia, where the “pro” side again can make its case only by manipulating language to defining away the concrete and particular humanity of the human beings whose lives they seek to destroy.

If you indeed think that Mr. Hart’s argument is “reasonable,” then you are most likely less sensitive to the deceit involved than those of us who have regularly confronted it. Or perhaps you have not fully grasped the centrality to defense of the Christian position of not allowing the other side to re-define reality away, or that a “reasonable” argument by definition entails above-board definitions of terms.

(As an aside, such disingenuous use of language is endemic to the homosexual sub-culture. E.g., on several occasions when I attended meetings of an HA-style group as a observer, some person ostensibly interested in joining would appear. After a preliminary claim of being in sympathy with the group’s principles, he [interestingly, it was invariably a man] would attempt to hijack the meeting by raising some peripheral issue – e.g,.why wasn’t the group working to protect its members from homophobic discrimination by supporting gay-rights legislation – and get into a debate with those present, before stalking out in a putative huff. The most striking thing about it was not only the manipulative use of language in the same fashion as Mr. Hart, but the air with which it was done – it had a certain cynical, almost cruel edge to it, like a cat playing with a mouse in its paws before killing it. In college, I witnessed similarly manipulative conduct by openly gay professors toward some identifiably heterosexual students. The manipulative use of language goes hand in hand with the emotional manipulation entailed in the unnaturalness of homosexual relationships.)

Perhaps the greatest danger in Mr. Hart’s argument is precisely its outward garb of moderation and reasonableness that conceals the radical core hidden underneath. The closing words of my post from two days ago about the trail of footprints in the sand were not chosen casually. The serpent did not try to scare Eve into eating the forbidden fruit by appearing before her in a red suit and waving a pitchfork; he sweet-talked her into it with eminently “reasonable” and “moderate”arguments. Many heresies and immoralities begin with some re-definition or manipulation equivocation of some key term. We must be ever vigilant in that regard – wise as serpents (and wiser than one!), even if gentle as doves, for our enemy roams about, seeking to seduce us by stealth as well as to devour us in plain sight.

As for whether I “may scare away honest inquiries” with my “forceful responses” – it’s possible, but I doubt it (though I must leave it to others to judge this). Posts on “Mere Comments” regularly feature strongly worded, even combative, exchanges, and that doesn’t seem to have scared people off. As the late Fr. Louis Tarsitano of blessed memory once wrote to me, in the modern culture of “niceness,” many people seem no longer to understand the rules of debate. So long as one sticks to logic, facts, and examples, and does not resort to logical fallacies, ad hominem attacks, etc., there is nothing wrong with going at it hammer and tongs. Saying to an opponent “your argument is nonsensical” is essentially different from saying “you’re stupid”, because it targets the soundness of argument (and requires proof to support the assertion), but does not attack the intelligence or moral character of the person (every intelligent person says something utterly stupid now and then). I think the only persons likely to be ‘scared off” are those who rely on sloppy, fallacious, or disingenuous arguments. And to scaring off those who make dishonest arguments, I would happily plead “guilty.” Christians have no obligation to argue with deceivers; that debate was settled for us on Calvary almost 2,000 years ago.

[YaknYeti]

Dear James,

Thanks to you (and everyone else) for a stimulating discussion. I'm not sure whether I can concede your main point about forceful argument or not. There is a point when the misuse of language - or different use, perhaps - is a hurdle to be overcome. As Chuang Tzu put it, "Where is a man who has forgotten the meaning of words so that I can have a word with him?" Once that point is reached, the further abuse of terms may fall into the category of manipulation, and shouldn't be treated so gently. But looking at posts above, it's clear that we shouldn't underestimate the attachment of individuals to their own definitions of various terms. Stuart's use of "war" and "sin", for example, is something that I doubt will be completely resolved even if we go through several dozen more posts. It's tough to move beyond such fundamental terms.

Thus we come to marriage. I did understand the main thread of your argument, and believe our disagreemnents are more semantic than actual. I don't support experimentation in law to allow same-sex marriage, nor do I believe that the legal mimicry of marriage will make a significant difference in homosexual circles. However, when looking at statistics, we need to compare apples to apples. If cultural/legal status & benefits make a difference in the longevity of heterosexual marriages, and such status and benefits are not conferred on homosexual couples, we can't say that the statistics prove that homosexual relationships are much less stable than heterosexual ones. We haven't controlled for all the influential factors. Mind you, I admit that the statistics are suggestive; I just can't say that they are conclusive. I think we, as Christians, need to accept that point.

Joe, Stanley Kurtz' statistics (I've read some of them, although I don't regularly keep up with his work) show that marriage is falling apart in Scandanavia/ Europe, and he provides reasonable explanations for why this is happening. But they're far from conclusive. Are we controlling for the fact that marriage has been spiraling downhill in those countries before they legalized gay "marriage"? Have we left enough time for everything to play out? The statistics are only from 1990 and after, which is a relatively short time.

Finally, others have generally covered the espionage issue well (probably better than I would have covered it). I'm not convinced that the question is mooted by 1 Cor. 10:13, since it depends on one's definition of evil (and whether the least evil option, in some cases, becomes morally obligatory, which I might see therefore as "good"). Again, see Stuart and "evil."

I've posted on a friend's blog on similar issues fairly heavily. See here and here if you're up for being provoked by people who are generally well-meaning and reasonable but use terms very differently. I post as "Dave" there.

[Bobby Winters]

This discussion reminds me of an

[Bobby Winters]

This discussion reminds me of an essay I wrote sometime back. It is posted at http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/an-okie-in-exile/peanut-butter-and-honey-1501.html

[James A. Altena]

Dear Yaknyeti,

I think I've said enough (I'm sure many out there are saying, "Amen!") and stand by my previous comments. I would only point out once again that by definition, the "apples to apples" comparison of the sort you wish to posit and perform can't occur or be made, because one side by definition can't even be apples for this purpose. (All right folks, no puns about "fruits" here!)

Dear Bill R.

Belated thanks for your kudos to my earlier posting.

[Joe Long]

"If cultural/legal status & benefits make a difference in the longevity of heterosexual marriages, and such status and benefits are not conferred on homosexual couples, we can't say that the statistics prove that homosexual relationships are much less stable than heterosexual ones."

C'mon - you really think there's a question about the matter?! And when the "cultural/legal status & benefits" don't stabilize the relationships either, will there be another "yeah, but" at the end of that? I don't believe for a minute that a quest for a parallel version of Christian monogamy drives the "gay marriage" movement.

There were periods of intra-denominational conflict where marriages of various Christian sects were declared illegitimate by the dominant factions...there is no record of outbreaks of wild promiscuity among Scotch Presbyterians during the phase of the Anglican "Test Acts"; black slaves forbidden marriage made secret vows, and Roman Christians undergoing a similar persecution (at least according to folklore) wound up with St. Valentine's exploits. Forbidden legal recognition of their marriages, they became married in fact if not in the eyes of the law - while the current agitators seem very interested in being married in the eyes of the law, but not necessarily in fact...

I commend to you the dispassionate, nonpartisan and rational (if snarky), Steve Sailer's observations on the issue at http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/culture/culture-sailer070100.shtml

Excerpt follows:
"...could it be, instead, that fewer gay men want to be married than get married? Does gay marriage appeal more because sexual fidelity offers a role for a lifetime, or because a wedding provides the role of a lifetime? As one gay comic puts it, 'Gay marriage is the hot political issue because you get all these great benefits: insurance, adoption, and a really fabulous veil.'

Of course, there is nothing preventing gays from acting monogamous today. For example, many a straight man finds a wedding ring a useful tool in staying hitched, since it makes it inconvenient for him to forget to mention to young ladies that he's already married. Yet, I've only met one gay man who wore a wedding ring. And if gays don't like rings, with their connotations of heterosexuality, they certainly possess the creative talent to devise their own insignia that would communicate to other gays that they aren't in the market. Yet, though gays have dreamed up AIDS ribbons, rainbow bumper stickers, and sexually semaphoric combinations of bandanas and earrings, gay men have shown little enthusiasm for this task.

And, after all, what would be the point? A wedding ring on a straight man serves the same function as a brand on a Texas steer. It's a warning from his wife to other women: 'Don't bother. He's taken.' But with gays, the response from the Other Man would too often be: 'I don't want to take him. I just want to borrow him for 15 minutes.' "

(Mr. Sailer, it should be noted, sees no particular social harm in what he seems to regard as flamboyant farce.)

[Bobby Winters]

>>>And, after all, what would be the point? A wedding ring on a straight man serves the same function as a brand on a Texas steer. It's a warning from his wife to other women: 'Don't bother. He's taken.' <<<

To be completely impertanent, if he were a steer, the warning would be unnecessary.

[John Lofton]

The "Ashbrook Center" Web page has an item headlined: "The Non-Religious Case Against Gay Marriage." It says, in part: "Over at 'Mere Comments,' Anthony Esolen has initiated a series of posts making the non-religious case against gay marriage." There is ,of course, no such thing as a"non-religious" case/argument since Jesus Christ is king of Kings, Lord of lords, and has all power in Heaven and on earth. All cases/arguments are therefore Christian or non-Christian. John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com. Hope you'll visit us...

JOHN LOFTON / RECOVERING REPUBLICAN

For more than 35 years John Lofton has covered national politics and cultural/religious issues as a journalist, nationally-syndicated columnist, TV-radio commentator/analyst and political advisor.
• Editor, "Monday," the weekly, national publication of the Republican National Committee, 1970-73.
• Nationally-syndicated columnist for "United Features" Syndicate in more than 100 papers nationwide, 1973-80.
• Editor, "Battleline," monthly newsletter of The American Conservative Union, 1977-80.
• Editor, "Conservative Digest" magazine, 1980-82.
• Columnist, "The Washington Times" newspaper, 1982-89.
• Program-host/commentator, "America's Voice," a national cable TV network in all 50 states, 1998-99.
• A commentator on the "Mutual Radio Network;"
• An advisor to the Presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan;
• Author of a monthly column on the Federal bureaucracy for Howard Phillips' "Conservative Caucus."
• Has written articles for the NRA magazine “America’s First Freedom”; Gun Owners Of America.
• Communications Director for Constitution Party Presidential candidate Michael Anthony Peroutka in 2004.
• Co–host with Michael Peroutka of “The American View” radio program nationally-syndicated by “Radio America.”
John Lofton has given numerous speeches before various groups, Liberal and Conservative, including Liberty University/Bob Jones University. He has appeared on every major TV/radio talk show (including the Comedy Channel’s “Daily Show”/“Politically Incorrect”) to debate every imaginable kind of anti-Christian goofball --- and some who are unimaginable but who do, alas, exist. And he never went to college which is why he is so smart. He can be reached at: 313 Montgomery St. Laurel, Maryland 20707. Cell phone: 301-873-4612; email: [email protected]

[Patrick]

Anyone have a religious or non-religious case against vainglory?

[Ethan Cordray]

Mr. Lofton, you might want to add one more bullet point to that c.v. of yours:

* Spammer, "Mere Comments" blog.

In charity, I assume you don't know the etiquette of comment posting. What you've done is very bad form.

[Dale Cosby]

You can make "non religious" arguments about everything but it is never ending..
Why is "A" wrong? ....because it causes "B". Ok, why is "B" wrong? Because od "C"
well....
Wihtout a standard to go back to, it is a never ending cycle.