Below
is an essay by Richard Bastien, steering committee -
ENSHRINE
MARRIAGE CANADA
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND THE CULTURE WAR
Same-sex marriage is but the latest episode
in the culture war. This becomes obvious if one analyzes the arguments
supporting that concept and links them to those aspects of our modern culture
that give it an aura of legitimacy. Most
of the literature supporting same-sex marriage boils down to two basic
arguments: the inequity of traditional marriage and the bigotry of those
upholding it. I will depict both arguments as honestly as possible, show why
they are intellectually unsustainable and then indicate why our culture is
nevertheless unable to refute their apparent legitimacy. Finally, I will propose
a strategy, not of resistance, but of conquest. A conquest of hearts and souls.
The Inequity Argument
The inequity argument invoked by the
homosexual lobby runs as follows: our agenda puts no restriction on who
heterosexuals can marry but the prevailing rules impose a major one on us.
Allowing us to marry would enhance our happiness without diminishing that of
heterosexual couples. So long as
“straights” are not forced into marrying people of their sex, why should
they care about whether same-sex couples marry or not? The argument is as clever
as it is deceptive. If the definition of marriage is broadened to include gay
couples, the meaning of marriage will be changed not only for gays but for all,
including heterosexuals. Instead of a life covenant based on a procreative
promise, it would become a mere contract between any two individuals. The law
recognizes marriage not only because it entails a contractual relationship
between two persons but because that contractual relationship is consistent with
the good of society and the State (which also includes the good of individuals).
Marriage is generally ordered to the procreation of new persons, to whose
education and upbringing the spouses commit themselves. Same-sex couples are, by
nature, incapable of procreation. Moreover, most of them admit to never aspiring
to any life commitment (more on this later). Consequently, giving such couples
the legal status and rights proper to marriage would be unjust. Those rights are
linked to the expectation of duration and procreation. If there is no promise of
procreation, why should the State care about marriage?
The inequity argument wrongly assumes that
sexual morality has to do solely with the behavior of individuals. It ignores
its importance for family and society. Without sexual morality, the unity of the
couple and of the family is shattered. And since marriage and family are part
and parcel of the social order, sexual morality impacts very meaningfully on
society also. This is precisely why marriage is a social institution. Because of
its strength, human sexual impulse must be regulated. The regulation is
necessary not because the Church says so but so as to ensure the stability of
the family, which is the building block of society. The upshot is that, for the
family to fulfill its role and for ordered liberty to exist, some constraints on
sexual conduct are required. Marriage, family and ordered liberty cannot
co-exist with widespread sexual permissiveness. The more there is of the latter,
the less of the former, and vice-versa.
This is illustrated by the experience of
Soviet Russia where, in 1926,
Communist rulers undertook to abolish the
legal registration of marriage. According to the Soviet prosecutor of the time,
Krilenko, the rationale for such a move was as follows: “Why should the State
know who marries whom? ...
Free love is the ultimate aim of a
socialist state; in that State marriage will be free from any kind of
obligation, including economic, and will turn into an absolutely free union of
two beings”.1 The agenda of the homosexual lobby and of radical feminists fits
perfectly with that statement. Yet, the Soviet experiment was a dismal failure
and marriage was soon restored.
Concepts such as life commitment, conjugal
fidelity and social stability are completely foreign to the homosexual
lifestyle. A study of homosexual men under age 30 in Amsterdam, sponsored by the
Dutch AIDS project and published in AIDS 2003, found that single men acquire 22
causal partners a year, men with a steady partner acquire eight casual partners
a year and “steady partnerships” last an average of 18 months2.
In a book published in 1996 and entitled Virtually Normal, Andrew
Sullivan argues that stable homosexual couples have a “need for extramarital
outlets”. All this helps to understand why homosexual activists tend to view
society as an amalgam of people regulated solely by the State. The notion that
between the State and the individual stands another natural institution - the
family - and that families develop institutions of their own, such as schools
and local churches, seems totally alien to their mindset. According to their
understanding of equality, whether a boy grows up to marry another boy or a girl
has no social relevance. But equality does not entail the right to redefine
marriage: we are all equal vis-à-vis the social institution of marriage.
The Bigotry Argument
The other argument in support of gay
marriage is that traditional marriage is grounded not in reason but in religious
belief, which is assumed to be devoid of any rational content. Michael Kinsley,
editor of Slate Magazine, put it this way in a recent column: “We on my
side...don’t ... believe that our values are direct orders from God. We
don’t claim they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything,
crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than
insist”.
The argument wrongly assumes that anyone
who opposes same-sex marriage is doing so solely for religious reasons and is in
effect imposing his religious values on others. In other words, opposition to
same-sex marriage is deemed to be rooted in bigotry. This ignores the fact that
religious people who oppose gay marriage generally do so not solely on the basis
of religion, but also on the basis of reason. For example, a statement issued by
John Paul II on June 3, 2003 makes the following point: “Homosexual unions are
... lacking in the biological and anthropological elements ... which would be
the basis, on the level of reason, for granting them legal recognition. Such
unions are not able to contribute in a proper way to the procreation and
survival of the human race.” Far
from being opposed, faith and reason support each other.
This being said, there is a deeper flaw in
the bigotry argument. It is the claim that, in these matters, only people who
don’t take their cue from God can truly argue in reason. People who think like
the editor of Slate magazine, i.e. the bulk of academia and the media, think
that the litmus test of “reason and open-mindedness” is complete divorce
from any religious faith. This is
the secular humanist view of the world, one in which there is no God, the world
of the spirit does not exist and man is a mere animal - a sophisticated
chimpanzee. People who adopt this view are free to do so. However, they must
realize that their choice gives them no claim to some kind of intellectual or
moral superiority vis-à-vis people who profess a religious faith.
Secular humanism is itself a system of
beliefs, just like Christianity, Judaism or Islam, and no less dogmatic than the
latter. For example, the Humanist Manifesto of 1933 declared that “religious
humanists” believe the universe to be “self-existing and not created”,
that “man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as the result of a
continuous process”. An updated version published in 1973 reiterates these
ideas and states that “moral values derive their source from human
experience”. These ideas are simply taken for granted and never proven. For
secular humanists to claim they only are “crippled by reason and
open-mindedness” is thus pure arrogance. Indeed, it is a case of religious
intolerance.
Anyone who thinks this is an exaggeration
should read what leading secular humanists have been saying in recent years. I
recommend an article by Robert
Reich, a senior member of the Clinton
Administration, who lately argued that “the great conflict of the 21st century
will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists ... between those who
believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings
owe their allegiance ... to a higher authority; ... between those who believe in
science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through
Scripture and religious dogma.”3 This statement displays as much ignorance as
it does arrogance. If Reich had his facts straight, he would know that many
great scientists also believe in a personal God. He would also know that
allegiance to a higher authority, far from diminishing respect for the
individual, enhances it.
Gay Marriage as a Game Plan
It would be nice to stop here and conclude
that the arguments about same-sex marriage are rooted in a secular humanist
tradition whose claim to intellectual and moral superiority is demonstrably
unfounded. But, unfortunately, the story does not end here. What we are up
against is not just phoney arguments but a vast strategy of deception. The
debate on marriage is part of a broader religious war.
And Christians need be made aware of this lest they soon find themselves
stripped of their religious rights.
The issue of gay marriage has come about
because the homosexual lobby has a strategy. In 1990, Marshall Kirk and Hunter
Madsen published a book entitled After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its
Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90’s setting out how the gay movement should go
about achieving its objectives. In an article entitled “The Overhauling of
Straight America”, Kirk summarized the strategy as follows:
[We] can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by
portraying them as antiquated backwaters, badly out of step with the times and
with the latest findings of psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional
Religion one must set the mightier draw of Science and Public Opinion.
Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before, on such
topics as divorce and abortion....
Our campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual practices;
but should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme.
Science and Public Opinion: these are the
tools that the homosexual lobby pretends it has been using to advance its
agenda. But again, that claim simply does not square with the facts. The
evidence provided in support of gay marriage has been shown to be phony. For
example, gay activists tried for years to propagate the idea that they represent
10 percent of the population. They invoked “scientific research” done by the
great guru of the Sexual Revolution, Alfred Kinsey, to support that claim. Yet,
no reputable scientific survey has ever been able to duplicate Kinsey’s
findings. And it is now generally acknowledged that his number was widely
inflated. In 1993, Time magazine reported that “recent surveys from France,
Britain, Canada, Norway and Denmark all point to numbers lower than 10 percent
and tend to come out in the 1 to 4 percent range”.4
The other myth propagated by the homosexual
lobby and the media to legitimize gay marriage is that people are born with
their sexual orientation. Yet, no one in the medical community subscribes to
this view. How could it be otherwise? If homosexuality were generic,
evolutionary science suggests that it would have died out. A survey of the
literature on this issue indicates that research has yet to find any “gay
gene”.5 Interestingly, there is
one thing that the literature does show clearly although it is hardly ever
acknowledged by the homosexual lobby or the media: many people have changed from
a homosexual orientation to a heterosexual orientation with and without
therapy.6 The complicity of silence on this matter is simply astounding.
The contraceptive mentality
What the foregoing suggests is that: a)
arguments in support of same-sex marriage are intellectually unsustainable; and
b) the push for same-sex marriage is part of a wider agenda based on junk
science aimed at eradicating any remnant of Christian culture. But we must now
ask ourselves why phoney arguments and, more generally, the gay strategy, have
succeeded in making such an impact on our Western societies. Is it merely
because of a lack of understanding of what the gay agenda entails?
The problem we face, unfortunately, is not
just an intellectual one. It is rooted in the heart. As mentioned earlier, the
inequity argument in support of same-sex marriage is refuted by marriage’s
ordering to procreation. However, this refutation ignores a major point: the
link between marriage and procreation has long been severed by the widespread
use of contraception. When a married couple resorts to contraception, it
wilfully separates the unitive and procreative aspects of the sexual act, where
God ordained that they be always united. Pope Paul VI, in his 1968 encyclical
Humanae Vitae, taught that every marriage act must remain open to the
transmission of life.
That teaching, although upheld and
developed by John Paul II, has gone largely unheeded by both Catholics and
Protestants over the past 50 years. Consequently, it would be a serious mistake
to assume that the issue of same-sex marriage is merely judicial. It is most
emphatically cultural and religious. By allowing contraception to become a basic
feature of modern life, we have made the legalization of same-sex marriage very
difficult to oppose. (It must be mentioned here that contraceptive methods do
not include partial abstinence, which is based on a woman’s natural biological
cycle). Contraception implies that it is up to spouses only to determine whether
and when the conjugal act will have any relation to procreation. And if that is
the case, why should sex be reserved for marriage? And why should marriage be
permanent? And why limit marriage to heterosexual couples? It is no wonder that shortly after the introduction of the
contraceptive pill in the 1960s, cohabitation began to compete with marriage and
the rate of divorce skyrocketed.
What this means is that same-sex marriage
is only the latest assault on an institution that has been beleaguered for quite
some time. The first attack was triggered by the Anglican Lambeth Conference of
1930 where contraception was declared permissible. Since then, marriage has had
to face a constant onslaught from the media and trendy theologians who refuse to
uphold Church teaching. If legislated, same-sex marriage may well bring about
the end to marriage as a social institution. But that would only be because
marriage was already undergoing a slow death. Same-sex marriage would merely be
a coup de grâce.
A Natural Law Strategy
The upshot is that marriage must be
rescued, not from same-sex marriage, but from a deeply-entrenched moral decay of
which same-sex marriage is but a symptom. Same-sex marriage will not cause the
degeneration of marriage: it is its outgrowth. If we want to re-establish the
beauty and value of marriage, fighting the homosexual lobby will not suffice.
The most important thing is to reaffirm the link between marriage and
procreation. And that means fighting the contraceptive mentality. For every
petition we sign opposing same-sex marriage, we should also sign one asking our
clergy to propagate and explain the Church’s teaching on contraception. The
Pope has laid out the theological foundations of that teaching in 129 general
audience addresses between 1979 and 1984. It is referred to as John Paul II’s
theology of the body and it has the power to reshape our entire thinking about
human sexuality.
But teaching is not enough. For a new
understanding of sexuality, marriage and the family to come about, there must
also be couples who are ready to take up the challenge of a true Christian
marriage. John Paul II’s call to re-evangelize the culture is first and
foremost a call for lay people to live fully the demands of the Gospel in family
and professional life. Since the Council of Vatican II, we tend to associate the
renewal of the Church with a rethinking of doctrine or liturgical practices.
That is not what Vatican II was about. Rather, it was about the fact that not
only priests and religious but all baptized people, whether living in the world
or outside the world, are called upon to sanctify themselves. The specific task
of lay Christian is to sanctify temporal affairs, which for most of us means
sanctifying family life and our professional work.
What the Church needs nowadays is not more
participation of lay people in its administrative apparatus. What it needs are
rebels who have the courage to confront the culture inherited from the Sexual
Revolution. More specifically, it needs young people who are willing to testify
to the truth of its teaching about sanctification through family and
professional life. Can there be anything more exciting and challenging than to
bring into the world beings endowed with eternal life? That beats making tons of
money. It beats making major scientific discoveries. For most of us, it is the
only thing that can make life worth living.
What the foregoing suggests is that three
things are necessary to ensure a minimum of sanity in modern society: a) as
protector of the common good, the State must maintain the traditional definition
of marriage and conform its laws to the natural law; b) as teacher of souls, the
Church must put greater emphasis on its traditional teaching regarding
contraception and divorce; and c) as members of the Church and of society,
ordinary lay people must live up to the requirements of a true conjugal life.
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1
By a Woman Resident of Russia, “The Russian Effort to Abolish Marriage”,
The
Atlantic Monthly, (July 1926), as quoted in: Dr. Allan C. Carlson,
Marriage
on Trial: Why We Must Privilege and Burden the Traditional Marriage
Bond”,
Family Research Council, Family Policy Papers, November 23, 2004.
2
The study is available at:
http://ipsapp003.lwwonline.com/content/getfile/13/1073/12/abstract.htm).
3
Robert Reich, “Bush’s God”, American Prospect Magazine, June 17th 2004.
4
For a thorough analysis of the number of homosexuals in the population at large,
see: Sprigg, Peter and Dailey, Timothy, Getting It Straight - What the
Research Shows about Homosexuality, Family Research Council, Washington
D.C.
2001.
5
McGuire, T. (1995) “Is
homosexuality genetic? A critical review and some suggestions” , in Journal of
Homosexuality, 28, ½ : 115-145.
6
Throckmorton, W. (1996), “Efforts to modify sexual orientation: A review of
outcome literature and ethical issues”, Journal of Mental Health and
Counselling, 20, 4:283-305