Unfortunately, I am in the rather unenviable position this week of discussing one the most controversial topics of our age: gay marriage. Of course I chose the issue, a fact doubtlessly predicated upon my perverse attraction to the more delightfully provocative debates in this new millennium.
The best method I can devise of explaining my own position is by describing what I perceive to be the four major tendencies of argument on the issue, including my own.
The first stance is perhaps the most obvious and the easiest to dismiss. There are some who are against gay marriage for the simple reason that, according to their personal religious beliefs, their posited deity regards homosexuality as an abomination. Unfortunately for them, the public policy of our nation has a long-standing and distinguished tradition of secularism dating to the founders. No, Thomas Jefferson was not a Christian, and yes, traditions are important. Dostoevsky once said that “without God, everything is permitted,” and the point is well-taken. Yet God is a matter of personal redemption. Society and culture do not, in fact, go to heaven. The measure for them is man and his reason.
The second position, that of the left, is far more insidious due to its cunning and pervasive influence over our contemporary minds. Institutions and traditions, these individuals say, are merely mouthpieces of the dominant ideology. Gays should consequently be given the right to marry in order to reverse the inherent repression they suffer by not being included as first-class citizens. While sound as this argument may seem upon first glance, the underlying assumptions it reveals are quite disturbing. For one, the purpose of a society seems to be missed. Liberty (or “rights”) is not the end of a community but a means toward which the community strives for happiness amongst the individuals which comprise it.
Essentially, the quest of the left is a re-balancing of power in order to include the marginalized. This emphasis upon power rather than the good for man betrays their willingness to vulgarize the elements of civilization by portraying truth as a mere power struggle. Ah, the left says, your insistence upon truth reflects your own conservative bias. Fine, but let us leave these hollow voices to their own meaningless despair for a moment to digress upon the nature of marriage.
As a tradition, marriage serves a specific purpose which is shared with traditions in general. Far from being a mere social position indicating economic power and status, the meaning of marriage rests upon its lineage as part of Western civilization. In repeating through ceremony what has been done for many centuries, the institution provides a connection with the past that strengthens the participants by including them in something much larger and older than the insignificance of two people and their whims. I liken the denigration of this institution through its perception as a mere function of power to the relationship between the lovers. Of course to be a couple may bring rewards economically and socially, but to view this as the end to love destroys its meaning entirely.
The far more sensible third position recognizes the importance of marriage as an institution and not as a mere “power game” necessary only to advance oneself socially, yet points out, and rightly, that traditions must change with the times, for otherwise they become repressive. They point out that social power is an issue that matters even though it shouldn’t supplant the meaning of marriage, and that gays have serious problems in achieving happiness due to the inherent inequality in marriage laws.
I agree, but my position, the fourth one, contends that because of the proposed civil union legislation, which allows gays the same economic benefits as marriage, the expansion of the marriage institution is unnecessary. I believe that the mere risk of the further vulgarizing of such an important institution at the hands of the radical left would be like Socrates surrendering to the forces of sophistry.
If it is shown in the end that despite civil union legislation, gays still have serious repression, then the country at large should reconsider the matter. I know I will.