Ten Arguments for Sanity

In case you missed them or would like to have them all in one place, here are Anthony Esolen's Ten Arguments for Sanity as posted on Mere Comments over the past few weeks.

Argument 1-2
Argument 3-4
Argument 5-6
Argument 7-8
Argument 9-10

Comments

[Rob Grano]

Skip the above link by "Sayo" -- he/she is a juvenile jokester. It's a porn link (surprise, surprise!) -- my filter blocked it.

[GL]

For those who may have missed it, the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that "[c]ommitted same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples." It gave the legislature 180 days to enact legislation creating same-sex marriage or civil unions which afford the same rights to same-sex couples as marriage does. See New Jersey court recognizes right to same-sex unions for a news account. See Mark Lewis and Dennis Winslow v. Gwendolyn L. Harris for a copy of the opinion and dissent.

[Bill R]

"It gave the legislature 180 days to enact legislation creating same-sex marriage or civil unions which afford the same rights to same-sex couples as marriage does."

Wait a minute--how about requiring of them the same duties as well as affording them the same rights, e.g., the duty to be fruitful and multiply? Just wondering....

[GL]

Bill R.,

Oh, but Bill, the New Jersey court anticipated your position, writing:

In terms of the value they place on family, career, and community service, plaintiffs lead lives that are remarkably similar to those of opposite-sex couples. Alicia Toby and Saundra Heath, who reside in Newark, have lived together for seventeen years and have children and grandchildren. Alicia is an ordained minister in a church where her pastoral duties include coordinating her church’s HIV prevention program. Saundra works as a dispatcher for Federal Express.

Mark Lewis and Dennis Winslow reside in Union City and have been together for fourteen years. They both are pastors in the Episcopal Church. In their ministerial capacities, they have officiated at numerous weddings and signed marriage certificates, though their own relationship cannot be similarly sanctified under New Jersey law. When Dennis’s father was suffering from a serious long-term illness, Mark helped care for him in their home as would a devoted son-in-law.

Diane Marini and Marilyn Maneely were committed partners for fourteen years until Marilyn’s death in 2005. The couple lived in Haddonfield, where Diane helped raise, as though they were her own, Marilyn’s five children from an earlier marriage. Diane’s mother considered Marilyn her daughter-in-law and Marilyn’s children her grandchildren. The daily routine of their lives mirrored those of “other suburban married couples [their] age.” Marilyn was a registered nurse. Diane is a businesswoman who serves on the planning board in Haddonfield, where she is otherwise active in community affairs.

Karen and Marcye Nicholson-McFadden have been committed partners for seventeen years, living together for most of that time in Aberdeen. There, they are raising two young children conceived through artificial insemination, Karen having given birth to their daughter and Marcye to their son. They own an executive search firm where Marcye works full-time and Karen at night and on weekends. Karen otherwise devotes herself to daytime parenting responsibilities. Both are generally active in their community, with Karen serving on the township zoning board.

Suyin and Sarah Lael have resided together in Franklin Park for most of the sixteen years of their familial partnership. Suyin is employed as an administrator for a non-profit corporation, and Sarah is a speech therapist. They live with their nine-year-old adopted daughter and two other children who they are in the process of adopting. They legally changed their surname and that of their daughter to reflect their status as one family. Like many other couples, Suyin and Sarah share holidays with their extended families.

Cindy Meneghin and Maureen Kilian first met in high school and have been in a committed relationship for thirty-two years. They have lived together for twenty-three years in Butler where they are raising a fourteen-year-old son and a twelve-year-old daughter. Through artificial insemination, Cindy conceived their son and Maureen their daughter. Cindy is a director of web services at Montclair State University, and Maureen is a church administrator. They are deeply involved in their children’s education, attending after-school activities and PTA meetings. They also play active roles in their church, serving with their children in the soup kitchen to help the needy.

[Bill R]

But none of these "couples" needs marriage, except as a vehicle for social acceptance of their relationship. I don't deny that homosexuals may be perfectly wonderful citizens. But what is marriage all about? Is it simply the "sanctification" of a relationship that cannot, except by extraordinary scientific means, be fruitful? And, where it is fruitful, does it not require us to deny that a mother and a father are the means by which psychologically healthy families are raised? Alas, I know you agree with me, GL, but when I read these stories, I almost hear Satan cackling in the background...

[James A. Altena]

More simply, the two partners did not have the children by and with one another -- its required involvement of third parties outside the "relationship." Thus their relationships are entirely parasitic upon heterosexual ones.

The NJ Supreme Court very cleverly ducked a straightforward ruling mandating "gay marriage" -- for now -- in order to provide political cover against the type of voter backlash that followed the Massachusetts rulings, though it mandates "marriage" in everything but name. The decision's only ostensible virtue is to place responsibility on the legislature where it belongs -- but that is a Potemkin village, since it has mandated to the legislature what its allowed options are, "gay marriage" or its substantive equivalent.

[Bill R]

Back when the Massachusetts ruling came down, I proposed to a horrified Christian friend that the day may come when committed Christians may have to renounce state-sanctioned marriage and only permit marriages sanctioned by the church. In other words, deliberately forego a marriage license and encourage the church to thumb its nose at the state. There will be economic penalties, of course, but would that not be better than deliberate acquiescence in an institution that is not really marriage at all?

[Stuart Koehl]

Don't any of these people have real jobs? I mean, really: pastors at erstwhile "churches", executive search firm, town planning council, speech therapist, administrator for a non-profit, etc. The closest they have to working class stiffs is a retired nurse and a dispatcher for FEDEX. One definitely gets the impression that being a same-sex couple is a hobby for the dilettant class.

[GL]

when I read these stories, I almost hear Satan cackling in the background...

Soon, I am afraid, to be followed by a deep belly laugh when (as appears likely) one or more of the pending state constitutional amendments to protect traditional monogamous heterosexual marriage is defeated. See MARRIAGE DIGEST: Marriage amendment opponents optimistic about Election Day chances.

I have heard less consternation over the New Jersey ruling than the Massachusetts ruling (probably in part because of the reasons James noted, but also likely because with each such ruling, the public cares less). With time, I am afraid that fewer and fewer people will care. Then the U.S. Supreme Court will accept an Equal Protection and/or privacy challege to the state laws (including state constitutional provisions) restricting marriage to one man and one woman, note the trend (as it did in the case where it declared any execution of a person for a crime committed while a minor as cruel and unusual), and declare same-sex marriage to be a right protected under the U.S. Constitution.

I give it a decade, at most, before we all witness this, but it won't be in the next year or two. The obvious strategy is to win victories here and there in the states to build the trend and to weaken popular opposition.

[GL]

Wait a minute--how about requiring of them the same duties as well as affording them the same rights, e.g., the duty to be fruitful and multiply? Just wondering....

Bill R.,

For an interesting piece by a frequent contributor to Touchstone, Allan Carson, on the issue raised in your above quote, see Marriage and Procreation: On Children as the First Purpose of Marriage. After reviewing social and legal history in this area, Carson writes:

Can we still defend the purpose of marriage as procreation? No, not in the current Constitutional climate. It is now clear that the “right of privacy,” conceived by the Supreme Court nearly four decades ago, is the enemy of both marriage and procreation separately, and is especially hostile when they are united. It is also clear that we lost the key battles in defense of this union decades ago, long before anyone even imagined same-sex marriage. And we lost these battles over questions that—if we be honest—relatively few of us are really prepared to reopen. How many are ready to argue for the recriminalization of contraception? How many want to argue for a strict legal and cultural imposition of the word, “illegitimate,” on certain little children? One might imagine a new effort to repeal the “equal protection” clause of the 14th Amendment tied to language that denied the existence of “the right of privacy.” But even before facing the enormous political issues so raised, it would be unlikely to work. The Supreme Court has made clear that the subversive “right of privacy” is older and more fundamental than the Constitution itself, and that it “emanates” from the “penumbra”of the Bill of Rights. Mere words—even of a new Amendment—are unlikely to contain these “penumbras” and “emanations.”

[GL]

In light of Wednesday's New Jersey Supreme Court decision, I reviewed an article I have read as part of my current research project by Thomas C. Grey, a professor at Stanford Law School, titled Eros, Civilization and the Burger Court, 43 Law & Contemp. Probs. 83 (1979-80). Professor Grey reviewed the legal literature that followed the Court's decision in Griswold in light of the Court's affirmance of a homosexual sodomy conviction in Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney, 425 U.S. 901 (1976). This decision dashed the expectation of 38 of the 41 law review articles, comments and notes Grey reviewed which read Griswold as representing the "constitutionalization of some contemporary version of John Stuart Mill's principle of liberty" which would lead to the Court declaring unconstitutional state and federal laws prohibiting sodomy, fornication and adultery as it determined that sexual practices were of purely private concern. While those expectations may well have been dashed in 1976, by 2006 those expectations have been fulfilled and then some. Thus, as early as the months immediately following the Griswold decision in June 1965, legal scholars and theorist understood its full implications and projected (correctly, if prematurely) where it would lead. By the way, many (if not most) of these legal scholars and theorist were in favor of such results.

[James A. Altena]

Dear Friends,

At long last, I had a chance to browse for statistics regarding: a) homosexuals as a proportion of the population; b) homosexual vs. heterosexual promiscuity and duration of "relationships"; and c) homosexual activity and disease. For future reference, here are two articles that provide copiously footnoted documentation to recent studies:

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/homosexuality/ho0075.html

[Garry]

The WORLD has had it own way of dealing with their sins for as long a history exsisted. Today is no exception when it comes to the sin of homosexuality. They can do what ever society will allow and accept. Is that the way of the world or what? The way of the Lord Jesus is a little different form the worlds way. we're told Not to Fellowship with them. I take that as not to become their personnel friends, accepting them into your inner circle of fellowship. That is until they REPENT and turn from their sin and seek the guidenced of the Lord Jesus and receive His gift of the Holy Spirit, who will give them the Power to be overcommers of their sins and live in freedom; a normial 'Christian life'. It's the Fellowshiop of the Saints [those Saintified by Christ Jesus], is what I call the Church. The world will go it's own way, but we're not to follow the ways of this world, being citizens of a world beyond. Set FREE freely forgiven and freely forgiving others. Lets follow the 'Guide Book' given to us by God. Hallelujah. Garry