"Family Reunion" is a new piece by Jon Rauch, a written follow-up, no doubt, to his recent debate about David Blankenhorn's [DB] The Future of Marriage.
Blankenhorn reports that he went away to his lucrative values echo chamber for a year to think about marriage, specifically marriage for gays and lesbians. Pardon me if I'm not impressed by that alone, as a claim to seriousness. Who did he talk to, besides some relationship radicals, who sometimes seem to think that all kin can be fictive to the extent that people are seemingly reduced to lego blocks? So what if he swats some of the low-hanging fruit from the musings of some of the more prominent writers on the topic, like AS, JR, and EW. Heck, I could do that in a weekend, never mind a whole year!
I have yet to uncover dispositive evidence that Blakenhorn's mission wasn't to find new and clever ways to expound against gay marriage, to write propaganda for Catholic doctrine, as it were. I'm patient, however.
Jon seems to think that Blakenhorn has shifted the debate in a positive way, but I'm completely unconvinced. To be sure, the arguments are different than the mud-pit of "I'm-right, you're-wrong, now go to hell". Perhaps it is a "lift" to frame things as rival goods - doesn't that, afterall, imply that gay marriage is a good in itself, in order to even make that formulation serious? But I just see it as a pernicious shift, not a laudable one, toward the age-old and powerful prejudice of "save the children" [hey, did you notice that, even just today, AG Gonzales is using the 'save the children' defense - it's real and pernicious].
What's more, Jon doesn't seem to consider that DB thought, "Well, I'm not going to be able to play the "right"/"wrong" divide on this, without a rehash of the 'natural law' stuff; and, if I try to rely on empirical sciences, the best I'm going to be able to do is come up with an 'on balance' assessment." Once he got into it, perhaps he realized that he could formalize his 'on balance' musings as a "greater good" argument, and do so along the lines of popular prejudice, a positioning that would juice his views, accordingly, and satisfice his sponsors.
If you think I'm being unfair, consider this. The "rival goods" exist in his rhetoric (and in his heart?) only insofar as the one can be discarded in favor of the other. DB, so far as I know, has yet to articulate any expression - social or otherwise - for the 'human dignity' of homosexual love and partnership. [hint: this 'silence' also follows Catholic doctrine - celibacy. Coincidence? Qien sabe?]. At every turn, he either dodges the question (remains unprescriptive), remains unheard, or chooses to be descriptive.
"Egalitarians," writes Jon, "may hate that idea, but it isn't stupid or bigoted." Perhaps, but why not go further and challenge DB's anthropology? There are at least three considerations.
For one, such a formulation could be bigoted if we find the basis of the 'discrimination' to be unfounded. Following DB's apologetic use of anthropology, I can find an 'antropological definition' of slavery (even Biblical ones), yet today, we largely reject the 'institution of slavery'. If we found that the 'antropological definition' marriage was formulated in ways that were ignorant (or hostile) of homosexual relationships, either historically or in the way we might think of them today, then we can, in fact, reject 'the anthropological institution' of marriage, and we can reasonably think of the prior formulation as having been bigoted (ignorant).
Separately, the one social meaning of marriage may have been what was required, in days long past, to guide and circumscribe an uneducated, nameless, randy, and superstitious populace to ... well, 'salvation', frankly - let's not pretend that, at least in the West, the Church's goal of saving souls wasn't as much the 'public purpose' of most of sexual ethics as 'binding children to parents'. Of course, there may have been other social utilities of the institution, but the Church's grip on sexual ethics was political power, I think we can assert without mistake... Today, we have more educated and tolerant populace, in many places, one that might be able to support a greater nuance in the social meaning of marriage, one that might accommodate a sub-group that was expediently abandoned in the past. By way of contrast, in places such as large parts of Africa, with poverty, low average education, and high degrees of 'cultural superstition', one finds anti-gay 'bigotry' thriving and being vocally supported institutionally by the Churches (and Mosques), quite often.
The third is the appeal to 'clusters of beliefs' as a way to measure what is right or wrong. That just seems like a recipe for institutionalized bigotry ... Enough said.
And, in the end, what do these 'clusters of beliefs' tell us anyway? To me, all they say is that there isn't a 'traditional way' of approving 'gay marriage', yet (at least one that is admitted on surveys). So, yeah, when you measure attitudes, 'gay marriage' comes up as part of a 'liberal value cluster'. D'oh. "Traditionalists" turn out to be their own worst enemy.
If DB is so concerned that 'gay marriage' is a right of personal expression, he should stop 'teaching' that is it one. If he keeps waxing on about how Canada's law alterations 'changed marriage for everyone', he should suggest how the law ought to have been changed (I could), instead of taking it as immutable truth. The list goes on, but the idea is the same: instead of complaining that 'gay marriage' poses risks, start articulating the understanding that proscribes those risks, from a "conservative" viewpoint, if you must . For marriage dirigistes, sitting back and saying, "No" to gay blessings/matrimony followed with "I told you so" is not a option for a serious mind on the matter.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Re-imagining Marriage
