In a letter to the Telegraph, William Hague, George Osborne, and Theresa May–all Conservative party MPs–write:
…We believe that opening [marriage] up to same-sex couples will strengthen, not weaken, the institution. As David Cameron has said, we should support gay marriage not in spite of being Conservatives, but because we are Conservatives.
The House of Commons will pass the marriage equality bill today, but it will be because of the overwhelming support of the Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs. Labour MPs will vote 218 for marriage equality; 14 against; and 3 abstaining. There may be as many as 150 Conservative MPs revolting against David Cameron and the senior leadership.
Conservatives are likely to be voted out of office soon. The Labour Party has a huge lead in the polls.
I like the argument that conservatives should support same sex marriage because they are conservatives, though. It’s a way to show you value marriage.
I agree, Diane, and David Cameron’s wonderful statement is an important step forward. He was doing that as a means of distancing the “new” Conservative Party from the Thatcherite Party, which had become identified with intolerance in much the same way the Republican Party is now. However, he has not been able to bring his entire Party along with him, and the decision not to “whip” the Party has revealed its divisions.
In the debate earlier today, Margot James, who in 2010 became the first Conservative lesbian in Parliament, responded to MPs who opposed the bill by arguing that equality did not mean getting rid of differences: “We are different, and we should celebrate differences. I agree with that, we should celebrate cultural and other differences, but having been different for most of my life I can assure you being treated equal would be very welcome indeed.”
She said, “I am indebted to the Prime Minister, not just for this bill, but also for the changes that he has brought about within my party, which has led to my own election and that of many others and has changed the face of the Parliamentary party. But I do feel that as a result of this debate, not just today but over the last six months, we may have gone two steps forward but I fear we have also gone one step backward and the modernization of the Conservative Party is not yet complete.”
She cautioned that the Conservative Party should be wary of “setting ourselves up like the Republican Party, who lost an election last year that they could have won, were it not for their socially conservative agenda.”
She said that the debate leading up to the vote had been problematic as some pressure groups and churches had used tactics, saying they “should have known better”:
“I feel that over the last 6 months a certain distress about the way this debate has been managed, and the pressure that has been put on so many of my colleagues from pressure groups and churches who, in my view, should have known better in the tactics they have deployed,” she said.
She said: “The Coalition for Marriage, and some of the churches, have deliberately and consistently misinterpreted the government’s intentions by pretending that we were forcing churches to marry same-sex couples. That was never the intention of this government, I and my colleagues would never have supported it had it been so.”
She also said, “One last point that hasn’t been raised, and that is that gay people, of course, have always been allowed to marry, as long as they choose someone of the opposite sex. This has been the case in politics, and in Hollywood, for reasons that are well known.
“Many gay people today appreciate the civil partnerships but do want more, do want the status of marriage, and I’m particularly thinking of the younger gay people who didn’t have to grow up in the environment that some of us had to grow up in, and I support their right to declare their love in a state of marriage, and I can assure honourable members that this will not undermine traditional marriage.”
The vote in favor of marriage equality was 400 to 175.
Go, UK!!!!
The tactics and rhetoric used to stop legal same-sex marriage have been shocking on both sides of the Atlantic.
I have no idea why this issue is important enough to some people to employ such awful tactics and words.
There is no way that allowing people to marry someone of the same sex is conservative! It’s hard to think of anything more fundamentally transforming of society and humanity than saying people have the same right to reproduce with someone of the same sex that they have with someone of the other sex.
Manny, I don’t think the right to marry is the same thing as the right to reproduce. People have the right to reproduce without being married.
Reproduction in our society isn’t so much a right as something you can do or you can’t.
Re: pretending that we were forcing churches to marry same-sex couples.
You mean, like what’s already happened in Denmark?
The English Government is already well on the way to bullying the church into accepting female bishops (in spite of the consciences of the significant minority of its members who don’t even accept female *priests*), so its promises regarding religious freedom sound a bit hollow.
“People have the right to reproduce without being married.”
What you mean is that people reproduce without having a right to reproduce. Marriage is still the right to reproduce, and it should be required before a lab facilitates a conception. We should not allow people to facilitate unmarried reproduction with “donor” gametes. And whenever someone gets married, they should certainly feel the same emotional certainty of their right to reproduce with their spouse, they should not feel they already had a right to reproduce and nothing changed but their financial obligations to each other, that’s disrespectful of what makes a marriage special, the essence of marriage that must be respected.
And listen to what Diane is saying. She’s saying that a married couple does not necessarily have a right to reproduce, which is also a huge radical change to thousands of years of history, which is obviously not conservative. Conservatives should want to maintain the right to reproduce in marriage, and not say it is equal to a same-sex couple, who have no right to reproduce.
Sorry, Manny, the United States and the United Kingdom are not China. One does not need permission from the government to reproduce.
China and Diane both think marriage does not give a right to reproduce (or rather, China thinks it can be limited to one child, and then stops giving a right to reproduce, Diane hasn’t said when it would not give a right to reproduce but she says it doesn’t necessarily give it ever). I disagree with them, I think marriages should never be prohibited from reproducing, because marriage is the right to reproduce, and lasts until death.
@Hector St Clair – the English church is part of the State.
@ Manny – I didn’t say that married people don’t have the right to reproduce. All I’m saying is that in a free society, people have the right to reproduce if they are able to. We don’t do anything to prevent it.
This is a good thing, because when the government gets involved we have horrors like what happened in Virginia. (The link is about forcible sterilization in the 1920s)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/va-politics/va-eugenics-victims-would-receive-compensation-for-sterilization-under-proposed-bill/2013/01/30/eebad4de-6b0d-11e2-95b3-272d604a10a3_story.html
I think our terminology here is the problem. The right that is being defined here is the opportunity to have one’s marriage recognized and privileged by the state (some of those privileges pertaining to how the state engages one as a parent of children). No one has a fundamental right to either children or marriage, as the state cannot guarantee everyone a willing spouse or that one may successfully produce a child – it can guarantee as a civil right that you have an equal access to marriage and opportunities to produce children equal to everyone else. Your success in those endeavors is up to you.
The only reason the state secures this right of access, and privileges certain relationships, is because it believes it has a vested interest in securing access for everyone (same-sex couples included in the UK’s case) and seeing certain relationships succeed with state support. We call these interests the social goods of marriage and family.
Whether changing the definition of marriage to be more inclusive is conservative or not depends greatly on how one view’s the role of government in shaping and structuring society, and whether or not a nation’s laws relate to other laws (the natural law, ancient law, religious law). Basic conservatism is marked by several characteristics (imo, which is informed by copious readings of Russell Kirk):
1. A realistic perspective on the man’s nature
2. An appreciation for tradition’s stabilizing and moderating effects on society.
3. The virtue of prudence
Using these three characteristics, you could argue that approving same-sex marriages is both conservative and innovative. It recognizes that marriage is powerful moderating force in an individuals life which helps curb some natural impulses (Jonathan Rauch’s argument, which deals with nature). It appreciates that marriage has traditionally played a stabilizing role, while subverting the gendered definition of marriage associated with tradition. And, by passing the bill through parliament, with public support, it is not done in a rash manner without time for debate and consideration of all views (one view of prudence).
Manny says, “I disagree with them, I think marriages should never be prohibited from reproducing, because marriage is the right to reproduce, and lasts until death.”
Neither Diane nor I have said that people should be prohibited from reproducing, whether in or out of marriage. You are the one who seems to take a totalitarian approach to marriage and reproduction.
I’m saying we should protect reproduction rights, not equate them to a same-sex couple, who don’t have reproduction rights.
Diane was wrong when she said “I don’t think the right to marry is the same thing as the right to reproduce.” It is absolutely the same thing and it should never be denied like that. Any couple that doesn’t have the right to marry each other also does not have the right to reproduce together. Whether unmarried people that are eligible to marry have a right to reproduce without marriage is irrelevant, neither here nor there (they do not, but it doesn’t matter if we say they do). What matters is that everyone has the right to be healthy and fertile (ie not be sterilized or callously rendered infertile), and to marry a person of their mutual choice (except certain relationships), and that every marriage has the right to reproduce together. Same-sex couples do not have a right to reproduce together.
Re: @Hector St Clair – the English church is part of the State
Which means that the church should exert influence on the values of the state, not that the church should be required to abide by the whims of the mob. Indeed, the fact that England has an official state religion is all the reason you need that they should *not* allow gay marriage as a legal matter, since gay couples are completely incapable of meeting the requirements for a Christian marriage.
Matthew Kaal:
“Basic conservatism is marked by several characteristics (imo, which is informed by copious readings of Russell Kirk):
1. A realistic perspective on the man’s nature
2. An appreciation for tradition’s stabilizing and moderating effects on society.
3. The virtue of prudence”
Matthew, I read Russell Kirk entirely differently than you do. I recently commented here that I’m a Russell Kirk Conservative; and, none of the 10 Basic Principles that define Russell Kirk Conservatism seem compatible with same sex marriage (SSM).
Here are the first two principles in summation:
“First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.
This word order signifies harmony. There are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth. Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato taught this doctrine, but even the educated nowadays find it difficult to understand. The problem of order has been a principal concern of conservatives ever since conservative became a term of politics.
Our twentieth-century world has experienced the hideous consequences of the collapse of belief in a moral order. Like the atrocities and disasters of Greece in the fifth century before Christ, the ruin of great nations in our century shows us the pit into which fall societies that mistake clever self-interest, or ingenious social controls, for pleasing alternatives to an old fangled moral order.
It has been said by liberal intellectuals that the conservative believes all social questions, at heart, to be questions of private morality. Properly understood, this statement is quite true. A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.”
“Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire. It is through convention—a word much abused in our time—that we contrive to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions. Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation; it matters as much for society as it does for the individual; without it, life is meaningless. When successful revolutionaries have effaced old customs, derided old conventions, and broken the continuity of social institutions—why, presently they discover the necessity of establishing fresh customs, conventions, and continuity; but that process is painful and slow; and the new social order that eventually emerges may be much inferior to the old order that radicals overthrew in their zeal for the Earthly Paradise.
Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. Order and justice and freedom, they believe, are the artificial products of a long social experience, the result of centuries of trial and reflection and sacrifice. Thus the body social is a kind of spiritual corporation, comparable to the church; it may even be called a community of souls. Human society is no machine, to be treated mechanically. The continuity, the life-blood, of a society must not be interrupted. Burke’s reminder of the necessity for prudent change is in the mind of the conservative. But necessary change, conservatives argue, ought to be gradual and discriminatory, never unfixing old interests at once.”
I can hardly see, Matthew, how one can possibly see a Russell Kirk Conservative as approving of SSM. In my opinion, as a gay woman and a Russell Kirk Conservative, SSM absolutely upends our moral understanding of the basic unit of society: the family.
I think it’s important to fully flesh out this notion of “tradition” that gets bandied about. I keep hearing how “for thousands of years marriage was between a man and a woman!”
Several things bother me when this concept gets trotted out and used as a reason to prevent legal same-sex marriage.
First, this man/woman marriage “tradition” is more akin to a practice than a tradition, as it simply packages an existing product, the different-sex couple. Celebrating Christmas is a tradition; putting a star on the top of a fir tree is just a practice, it seems to me.
Second, it is only very recently that society has weighed the pros and cons of same-sex couples getting married. When marriage was first created, I highly doubt there was any discussion to the effect, “ok, we know we’ll let different-sex couples marry, but what about same-sex couples?” There weren’t any same-sex couples to consider, so they weren’t considered for marriage. Marriage was never defined as “an institution for different-sex couples, to the exclusion of same-sex couples.”
We’ve discovered that same-sex couples can and do exist. So now what?
Third, even if marriage were an important “tradition,” no one is advocating getting rid of different-sex marriage. Some people argue as if we’re choosing between different-sex marriage and same-sex marriage. If you believe that different-sex marriage is a hallowed, long-held tradition, then by all means, get thee into a different-sex marriage!
Traditionalists usually get impassioned when they fear a cherished tradition will be replace by something, not merely added to by something. I think we can all agree that same-sex marriage isn’t going to replace different-sex marriage.
The marriage “traditionalists” aren’t even arguing for tradition on the traditional basis!
Teresa,
I really appreciate your thoughtful reading of Kirk, and I did not mean to suggest that most Russel Kirk conservatives would agree with my above statement. Anyone who has read my other comments hopefully realizes I don’t actually believe it and Kirk most certainly would not have.
You’ll note that I said that one “could” make an argument from the premises I laid out. That it is the best argument, or even a correct argument is entirely different and most Kirk adherents would disagree with the conclusions drawn. However, there are many Conservatives in Britain who are trying to reconcile their political philosophy with a desire for a more inclusive society that allows for ssm, and I could see them making this argument (it is made all the time in these conversations)
Matthew,
Thank you for your explanation. I see now that you were trying to harmonize Conservative thought and principles in Great Britain with ssm. Russell Kirk, Matthew, however, would not be happy with that attempt.
@Hector: and now you see the virtues of a system that separates church and state.
In the US, the government cannot force churches to marry same-sex couples, any more than it can force rabbis to marry interfaith couples or Catholics to marry Buddhist couples.
In my own state, the legislature recently passed a law explicitly stating that this is so (entirely redundant given the First Amendment, but it made some people happy). Anti-marriage equality groups fought it tooth and nail, even though it ostensibly gave them the protection they claimed they deserved. The stated reason was that they felt it legitimized same-sex marriage. I suspect the real reason was that it made it much more difficult for them to peddle one of their favorite lies; explaining the First Amendment takes time, but saying “No, that’s illegal, there’s a law that says churches don’t have to marry gays” is simple and easy.
I don’t claim to know much about Conservative thought, and even less about Kirk. But the fact that esteemed conservatives like Wendell Berry and Theodore Olson are in favor of same-sex marriage makes me believe that there is no contradiction between conservatism and support for ssm.
David Cameron’s position might be a little suspect since he is a politician in a country whose voters support ssm. He has made no bone about the fact that the Conservative Party will not be competitive in the UK unless it embraces an equality agenda. But Olson and Berry are not political candidates.
This conservative does not think that there can be a conservative argument:
Is There a Conservative Argument for Gay Marriage?
By Jennifer Thieme / 1 February 2013
http://clashdaily.com/2013/02/is-there-a-conservative-argument-for-gay-marriage/
This part in particular concerns me:
Mythago,
separation of church and state is irrelevant, England doesn’t have it.
In an officially Christian country, which England is, I think marriage law should reflect the Christian conception of marriage, not the politically correct cultural liberal conception.
Kevin,
Your argument seems to be to be wildly missing the point.
Suppose we had a society in which only a small group of people, e.g. Communist Party members, had the right to vote. In that society, voting would mean something very specific. It would be a right restricted to a few, it would signify an expression of a particular value complex, etc. Now suppose some politically come along and say ‘everyone should have the right to vote!’ And they tried to comfort the Communist Party members by saying ‘you still have the right to vote, it’s just that now everyone else has it too.’
That would be a silly argument, and those who opposed it would have every right to oppose it to their last breath. because in redefining voting as something everyone has a right to, irrespective of their political beliefs, you’re fundamentally changing the meaning of the vote, and replacing the existing value system with a fundamentally new and different one .
Hector:
“In an officially Christian country, which England is, I think marriage law should reflect the Christian conception of marriage, not the politically correct cultural liberal conception.”
England is an officially Christian country, in name only. Fewer than 7% of its population attend religious services. The pomp and circumstance of the monarchy, as well as the tourism dollars that accompany that, is what’s left of the supposedly Christian England. Divorce certainly didn’t stop Prince Charles from marrying Camilla, with that marriage being approved by the Church. I thought marriage laws forbade divorce … but, somehow that’s become acceptable.
Please, let’s stop obfuscating fact with fancy.
From Karen’s linked article:
What a ridiculous, hysterical argument. Same-sex marriage does not “dismantle” the natural family, any more than allowing people with children to remarry does.
Hector, your analogy doesn’t really prove your point, because we’ve already had a society exactly like the one you describe. It was called America before the 19th Amendment. You could argue that the definition of voting changed when women were allowed to vote, but that certainly doesn’t mean the change shouldn’t have been made.
@Hector, you do realize that there are other views of marriage, both religious and secular, between your idiosyncratic Christian one and whatever you mean by ‘politically correct liberal’ marriage, yes?
@Teresa, where did you get the idea that “marriage laws forbade divorce”?
mythago:
“@Teresa, where did you get the idea that “marriage laws forbade divorce”?”
mythago, in particularly Catholic countries, divorce was forbidden.
Wiki:
“The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland repealed the constitutional prohibition of divorce. It was effected by the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution Act, 1995, which was approved by referendum on 24 November 1995 and signed into law on 17 June 1996.”
Time article from June 20, 1969:
“ Only eight major nations in the world, all Catholic, do not allow divorce. They are Italy, Spain, Ireland, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia and Paraguay. Of the eight, the one closest to ending its prohibition is the home of the church it self. Italy’s Chamber of Deputies last week began full debate on a bill that would allow civil divorce for one of seven reasons. Parliamentary observers predict that the bill will pass, probably before the end of the year.
Divorces have been difficult to obtain in Italy since ancient times.“
Teresa they do forbid remarriage, or at least they did until 2003. This is a perfect example of secular values contaminating the church, and it’s exactly what I fear will happen if England legalized gay marriage. Churches will come under increasing pressure to water down the meaning of marriage. Exactly like they did with divorce .
Mythago,
English law mostly forbade divorce till the early 20th century, and Anglican Church forbade it completely until 2003.
Karen:
“Gay marriage does not exist as a stand-alone policy issue. Nor is it a conservative issue, because it requires the natural family to be dismantled at the level of public policy. True conservatives support limited government, and they understand that there are other institutions which serve to limit government power. Two of these institutions are the natural family and religion.”
Karen, I do not support same sex marriage; but, some of the arguments given to prohibit ssm, simply do not carry water. Divorce dismantled the natural family at every level possible, including public policy.
Teresa,
Yes, Ireland unfortunately legalized divorce in 1995, thanks to the efforts of cultural liberals.
@Teresa, England is not a Catholic country. Also, as has been pointed out elsewhere, in any case Catholic countries have long gotten around the divorce issue with annulment. Your Wiki cite doesn’t mention England, which is of course where Charles and Diana divorced.
By the way, you might wish to rethink how your complaints about divorce destroying the ‘natural family’ sound to members of faiths that have and do recognize divorce.
@Hector, ‘mostly forbade’ and ‘forbade’ are not the same thing, particularly if by ‘mostly forbade’ you are talking about, for example, requiring grounds for divorce (which is not the same thing as forbidding it).
Again, certainly in the US in which there is an absolute prohibition on an established state religion
(sorry, bad editing there)
….the government cannot force any faith to perform same-sex marriages, period.
Hector, I beg to differ. My argument is that, if something didn’t even exist at the time that an institution existed, then it couldn’t have been considered in framing the institution (or the “tradition”). The committed same-sex couple is a recent phenomenon. When new facts come to light, it’s not “tradition” but “foolishness” to blindly maintain a tradition. Some people insist the earth is only 6,000 years old, despite a mountain of evidence that it is, in fact, billions of years old. That’s fine for preserving a personal belief system, but it makes for lousy public policy, and ultimately, this marriage argument is about public policy, not religion or personal beliefs.
There’s a fundamental difference between comparing a zero-sum game of power, voting, with marriage, which imposes no burden on anyone when same-sex couples get married. There is no dilution of power, or diminution of status, of straight couples, when same-sex couples get married. Marriage licenses are not a scarce commodity.
By the way, there is also a tradition that says children ought to be raised inside marriage, not outside it. Why is that tradition less important than the “man/woman couple only” tradition? I’ve been arguing for years now that if conservatives had any genuine commitment to their conservative values, they would be insisting that gay couples raising children get married, rather than trying to construct roadblocks for that to occur.
Re: England is not a Catholic country
I’m not sure in what way that’s remotely relevant. The Anglican church had the same blanket prohibition on remarriage as the Catholics, up until 2003. With the salient difference that civilly remarried couples were admitted to communion and could be blessed in church. But in the eyes of the church, until very recently, they were still held to be living in technical adultery.
Re: in any case Catholic countries have long gotten around the divorce issue with annulment
I’m not sure you understand what annulment means. it’s a recognition that a valid marriage never existed, not a statement that a valid marriage could be dissolved.
Re: By the way, you might wish to rethink how your complaints about divorce destroying the ‘natural family’ sound to members of faiths that have and do recognize divorce.
I’m not sure why. There are religious cults in New Guinea that endorse cannibalism, but that doesn’t make cannibalism in any way natural. I certainly don’t think every religion is equally valid.
Re: ‘mostly forbade’ and ‘forbade’ are not the same thing
Well, let’s look at what the laws of England said about divorce, until the 1960s. The ‘grounds’ for divorce were *exceedingly* stringent.
“The first liberalisation came in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, which enabled the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes to grant a divorce where the petitioner could prove not only that the respondent had committed adultery, but also that there had been no collusion or condonation. This was difficult even for a male petitioner, but a wife had to prove aggravated adultery – that is, adultery plus incest, cruelty, bigamy, sodomy or desertion. This extra requirement was abolished in 1923, but adultery (treated as a “matrimonial offence”) remained the only ground of divorce, and could be defeated by any evidence of collusion between the parties.
“The Matrimonial Causes Act 1937, based on a private members’ bill introduced by A P Herbert, introduced three further grounds for divorce: cruelty, desertion for at least three years, and incurable insanity. However, the emphasis was still on proving a matrimonial offence by the respondent (except in the case of insanity), and condonation and connivance remained as bars. There was also a bar on any divorce within the first three years of marriage.”
Re: The committed same-sex couple is a recent phenomenon.
Not really. The knowledge that sexual orientation is innate and inborn, is a recent phenomenon. Same-sex couples have been around for a long time ago- the Greeks were certainly aware of them.
Re: Again, certainly in the US in which there is an absolute prohibition on an established state religion
Great, which is why I stopped talking about same-sex marriage *in the United States* quite a while ago. I’m pretty sure we are talking about England here, which does have an established religion.
So many of the posters here think they own institutions, words, concepts, etc. There clearly is a conservative case for same-sex marriage. The arguments made against same-sex marriage are made by theocrats who would impose their religious views on the entire society. That is not a conservative position. Barry Goldwater died before the question of ssm came up, but he clearly and forcefully warned against the rise of the religious right. His idea of conservatism has nothing in common with the ideas propounded by Pat Robertson or Opus Dei or other religionists who want to capture the conservative movement.
There is some irony here. Conservatives in the Republican Party made a crass decision to embrace the religious Right in order to gain political power. Now, however, the religious right has taken over the Republican Party, which is no longer conservative but simply extreme.
Re: You could argue that the definition of voting changed when women were allowed to vote, but that certainly doesn’t mean the change shouldn’t have been made.
I’m pretty sure I was talking about one-party states restricting political rights on political grounds, not on the basis of sex. But it’s pretty amusing to me, and typical of the mindset of some, that they inevitably see everything through the lens of gender, ‘sexism’, ‘patriarchy’, and other similar fashionable buzzwords.
Teresa writes:
“Karen, I do not support same sex marriage; but, some of the arguments given to prohibit ssm, simply do not carry water.”
I apologize that I have not been following why you do not support redefining marriage – what do you think the strongest arguments are?
Personally “because it requires the natural family to be dismantled at the level of public policy” IS the strongest reason why I do not support the redefinition. Law effects culture.
Karen said:
“Personally “because it requires the natural family to be dismantled at the level of public policy” IS the strongest reason why I do not support the redefinition. Law effects culture.”
I agree with your reasoning here, Karen (bolded words). However strong that argument is, it fails in impact; principally, because public policy regarding marriage has been shape-shifting for several centuries now. And, those public policy decisions have born fruit in law, and affected culture. The precedent has been set, so our arguing to that reason has lost weight. It’s pretty useless to attempt to shut the barn door, now that the horse has escaped.
Karen asked:
“I apologize that I have not been following why you do not support redefining marriage – what do you think the strongest arguments are?“.
I offer the following only as my opinion; and, I’m hoping none of this breaks the civility or propriety commenting policy:
Karen, I’m a gay, Catholic, Russell Kirk Conservative. I have a dog in the stake on this issue. I’ve been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt on this issue. It’s upfront, blunt and candid, for me. That should set the framework of what I’m offering here:
First, the whole ‘natural’, the biology of gender embedded in our DNA, the complementary male/female, masculine/feminine, the two becoming one in biology as well as spirit, the completion of a part into a whole, the gifts that come with each to build something beyond the ‘I’ … naturally conceived children that may or may not result from this union … is the central point of argument for me.
Second, naturally following from #1, I do not, and cannot find a way to think same sex attractions are simply a normal variant of sexuality. (Make of that, what you will). I think the ages of humanity have always seen same sex attractions as troublesome to a cohesive society: troublesome, so much, as to outlaw the behavior, everywhere. (The much used Greek allusions to acceptance of same sex behavior have been much exaggerated).
Karen, I can’t concede #1 or #2, ever. If I move down the logic chain to public policy, in my mind, the argument against ssm is lost.
I’m sure that what I’ve just commented here will disturb some. That was certainly not my intention. I do not apologize for what I’ve said. I simply can’t do that, without giving way to incoherence in what I’ve formulated … for me.
Teresa writes:
“Karen, I can’t concede #1 or #2, ever. If I move down the logic chain to public policy, in my mind, the argument against ssm is lost.”
I think you are saying that there are no ‘legal’ arguments that have any weight against redefining marriage?
Am I right?
If so, well, I agree with you. But that doesn’t negate what you and I both think are true (you as a Catholic and me as a respectful supporter of the religion but came to it based on logic/reason/observation and lived experience, not faith…although now that I understand, I’m much more open to that the idea of faith)
We are in for a ride regardless.
Thank you Teresa.
ox
How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!
Still to ourselves in every place ensigned
Our own felicity we make or find.
– Samuel Johnson
I think I have Diane and Rob down for the count.
I’m annoyed because they both threw smoke bombs out there that I worry some other readers might have fallen for. I hope everyone sees what they did, for it is THEY who are pushing us to a totalitarian China-like control of reproduction rights when they deny that marriages protect reproduction rights and equate a married man and woman’s right to reproduce to a same-sex couple, who don’t have reproduction rights at all. To say that marriage rights are not reproduction rights is totally radical, absolutely not conservative at all, and ought to be the nail in the coffin on this debate. Having a right to reproduce is NOT EQUAL to not having a right to reproduce.
Labour MP David Lammy said the following on the floor of the House of Commons:
“Let me speak frankly.
‘Separate but equal’ is a fraud. ‘Separate but equal’ is the language that tried to push Rosa Parks to the back of the bus. ‘Separate but equal’ is the motif that determined that black and white could not possibly drink from the same water fountain, eat at the same table or use the same toilets. ‘Separate but equal’ are the words that justified sending black children to different schools from their white peers – schools that would fail them and condemn them to a life of poverty.
It is an excerpt from the phrasebook of the segregationists and the racists. It is the same statement, the same ideas and the same delusion that we borrowed in this country to say that women could vote-but only if they were married and not until they were 30. It is the same naivety that made my dad a citizen in 1956 but refused to condemn the landlords that proclaimed ‘no blacks, no Irish, no dogs’. It entrenched who we were, who our friends could be and what our lives could become.
This was not ‘Separate but equal’ but ‘Separate AND discriminated’,
‘Separate AND oppressed’.
‘Separate AND browbeaten’.
‘Separate AND subjugated’.
Separate is NOT equal, so let us be rid of it.
Because as long as there is one rule for us and another for them, we allow the barriers to acceptance to stand unchallenged. As long as our statute books suggest that the love between two men or two women is unworthy of being recognised through marriage, we allow the rot of homophobia to fester.”
John Howard, posting under a different name does not somehow make your arguments more rational. No one is arguing about “reproduction rights” but you; you have to get off this hobby horse of yours and stop disrupting every conversation you involve yourself in here.
Karen, please explain how allowing same-sex couples to marry “dismantles” the natural family in either law or culture. Do you really believe more people will divorce or leave their children because same-sex marriage is legal? What is your evidence for this belief?