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January 31, 2007

Marriage is a serious topic that engages Americans in very serious thought—not emotion—over the conditions for and consequences of our shared future. Prior to any sweeping change in the legal structure of our nation, we need very sober, long-view deliberation.

Societies set moral parameters for the common good. We readily understand that laws based on moral precepts are in the interest of all, irrespective of individual rationales. But wherever society makes laws, some will see it as a curb on their personal liberty—just ask polygamists. David Link would have us accept his premise that, as regards marriage, “such moral mandates are inconsistent with our country’s notions about personal liberty and individual autonomy.” Yet the phrase “liberty and justice for all” has never meant, nor can it mean, that people are free to do as they wish. That historic phrase means that under the law we shall be treated equally; it does not indicate that special categories will be created to accommodate each and every vision of “individual autonomy.”

Slipping down the Slope

We are a nation organized publicly by the consent of the governed. It is our collective consent to some restrictions on personal autonomy that enables us to live in an orderly society. The gay community understands this well—it is the very reason they seek to change the consent of the American people as preparation for the radical cultural change they envision. The following examples illustrate this truth.

Michelangelo Signorile advises gay activists in Out magazine:

The trick is, gay leaders and pundits must stop watering the issue down—“this is about equality for gay couples”—and offer same-sex marriage for what it is: an opportunity to reconstruct a traditionally homophobic institution by bringing it to our more equitable queer value system … a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture.[1]

Judith Levine’s article “Stop the Wedding: Why Gay-Marriage Isn’t Radical Enough” in the Village Voice argues that, if patterned on marriage, same-sex unions will make “queerness” normal, but it will also restrict “achievement of real sexual freedom and social equality for everyone.” She writes:

Marriage—forget the “gay” for a moment—is intrinsically conservative. It does not just normalize, it requires normality as the ticket in. … Marriage pushes the queerer queers of all sexual persuasions—drag queens, club-crawlers, polyamorists, even ordinary single mothers or teenage lovers—further to the margins.[2]

Levine advocates the 1972 the National Coalition of Gay Organizations’ call for the “repeal of all legislative provisions that restrict the sex or number of persons entering into a marriage unit; and the extension of legal benefits to all persons who cohabit regardless of sex or numbers” (emphasis added). Should this be a civil right? Does it benefit the whole of society? Recall how frequently advocates insist in public forums that legalizing same-sex marriage is not the open gate for polygamy or polyamory—then reread the above statement. Most same-sex union promoters understand that logically there is no basis for prohibiting polygamy once marriage is defined according to one’s “individual autonomy.”

Next, consider Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships. This organization specifically endorses “households in which there is more than one conjugal partner” as entitled to government support.[3] That is, they seek government sanction for polygamy and polyamory. Beyond Marriage also endorses “children being raised in multiple households or by unmarried parents” and “queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households.” Lest any assume this group is a fringe element, I urge them to read the full statement and note the signatories.

Redefining Our Terms

The tool gay activists have employed to achieve this “transforming” change is a redefinition of legal term marriage. Here Link attempts to discount all of human history except for the last half of the twentieth century, when the homosexual movement organized politically. Are we to accept that in all of history to this point—10,000 years or so—not one culture has ever discovered the benefits to society of same-sex unions? Not one culture has made same-sex unions a revered option for marriage? The only reasonable reason that such benefits, options, and “rights” have not been cultivated is that homosexual unions are injurious to society. History is full of varieties of pagan cultures not subject to religious taboos; surely one would have discovered this asset to society. They did not because there is no benefit to the common good, the societal whole.

Link suggests that contemporary American heterosexuals “have had to struggle with the issue of seeing how sex—and now, marriage—might look from the perspective of someone who is not heterosexual.” He seems to think that if they “see” it from his perspective they will accept a redefinition of marriage to include homosexual behavior. In reality, Americans do “see” it, and clearly: They have rejected it.[4] Americans realize that marriage predates politics and lawmaking bodies. Marriage draws its meaning from biology, not governments. The function of government as regards marriage is to appreciate it for the service rendered to the whole community and to protect it from misuse such as bigamy or polygamy.

In short, marriage already has its “perspective,” and that perspective is understood by human nature. That is to say, it is understood above and beyond politics. Or, in reverse, politics cannot change human nature or the meaning of marriage by decree.

Gay Marriage in History

What Americans struggle with is how we might defend the legal meaning of marriage from uninformed demands on society. Still, Americans have ensured that those who pursue alternative lifestyles retain the same treatment under the law that all Americans enjoy. Thus, those who follow a homosexual lifestyle are not discriminated against in employment, services, housing, etc.

Link restates my point that no one is discriminated against in the law concerning marriage: “Homosexuals may marry under the same conditions that all people may marry.” But he asks, “What does a statement like this mean to someone who is homosexual? This question is one that no culture prior to our own has ever really addressed.”

Of course the question has been addressed prior to our culture. The gay culture has simply rejected the answer: All prior cultures protected marriage from redefinition to include homosexual relationships. Even the most public declaration by the emperor Nero of his homosexual “marriage” met jeers from a notably hedonistic culture.[5] The point is not who or if homosexuals should marry but that marriage laws are applied with the same criteria to all citizens. That an individual might pursue a homosexual lifestyle does not burden the society with any obligation to change the legal definition of marriage.

Link is really asking, “What is the wider society willing to say about committed homosexual persons who desire to have their relationships recognized publicly?” The code of marriage may disappoint some, but it is not unjust. It is simply the recognition that some have rejected marriage in its actual meaning as one of their personal options.

A short digression: Male and female are not interchangeable. One of the purposes of marriage is to provide men and women a window into the wholeness of reality. Nature joins the two halves of the human species so that each can benefit from the other to integrate humanity. Same-sex unions attempt to negate the importance of gender. The mistake is compounded when children are involved. Is the child in a lesbian household served by an example that acts as if the male does not matter? Or at best, his one function is fertilization?

Link’s Particular Errors

Link asserts, “Anderson’s claim that there is no ‘gay gene’ is less an argument than a tactic. There is also no proof of any ‘straight gene.’” We can sympathize with Link’s own tactic here, yet most people easily grasp that nature’s design is utterly “straight”; otherwise we would be parthenogenetic. Again, we come to the heart of our societal dilemma: How to acknowledge human biology and science without hurting persons who have mistakenly assumed that a behavior trait is their inherent nature?

Link says, “I not only believe that I am homosexual in exactly the way that heterosexuals are heterosexual—inherently, unvaryingly, fundamentally—I also believe that most Americans are in agreement.” What he or I “believe” is not at issue. Science and human history simply do not support Link’s premise. Science has demonstrated that there are no inherently homosexual people; rather, there are people with same-sex attraction. Same-sex attraction can occur when developmental missteps and social contingencies happen during the toddler years (see footnotes 3 and 4 in my original essay).

Link claims that “more and more people accept that at least some people are homosexual by nature.” Agreed. I do see that the homosexual agenda, media hype, and politics have crafted this opinion. It is devoid of truth, however.

Link attempts to enlist the aid of the Catholic Church: “Even the Vatican has finally come to … acknowledgment of ‘homosexual persons.’” But Link misunderstands the very point he attempts to make. The Vatican’s term for homosexual acts is “intrinsically disordered.” The Catholic Church makes a clear distinction between the homosexual act and the person precisely to prevent the assumption that the person is defined by the act. Persons have free will and can freely choose not to engage in such disordered acts.[6]

An important untold story is the failure of the gay community to acknowledge that many people with prior homosexual lifestyles have made meaningful changes.[7] Some sought change, even a heterosexual desire and eventually marriage. Many simply hoped for release from a destructive subculture characterized by disease and violence.[8]

As for the rebuttal of the “gay bowel syndrome,” some context is important. Homosexuals object to this term; they view it as prejudicial to same-sex relationships. They have a point: Anyone, including heterosexual women, who engages in anal sex is vulnerable to the syndrome. The term “gay bowel syndrome” describes a cluster of infections typically found in men who have sex with other men due to the prevalence of anal intercourse. Even homosexual literature reports the danger of gay bowel syndrome.[9] This set of infections includes various sexually transmitted gastrointestinal ailments such as proctitis, proctocolitis, and enteritis. It is widely reported in medical literature.[10]

So while it may be true that gay publicity efforts effectively erased the term “gay bowel syndrome,” it is also true that they have been unable to erase the syndrome in the bodies of the infected persons.

The same sort of dissembling is at work on the issue of AIDS deaths in homosexuals. Link wishes to discount as a source the Paul Cameron study that examines the rate of AIDS deaths among homosexuals. Yet despite criticism of Cameron’s methodology, the Cameron study does cite Center for Disease Control studies that support his conclusion.[11] In addition, a study done by a hospital in Vancouver illustrates the effect that AIDS has on gay and bisexual men.[12] The homosexual culture has internal reasons for parsing the truth of AIDS deaths: It undermines their public claims that it is an “alternative lifestyle” with no different risks than heterosexuality.

No one makes the case for homosexuality as a healthy lifestyle. The purpose of an attack on methodology (Cameron) or terminology (gay bowel syndrome) is to drag a red herring across the known truth that practicing homosexuals suffer greater disease rates and lower life spans than heterosexuals do. We all want to save lives and promote good health. But this takes a commitment to the truth, however uncomfortable it may be.

The Nature of Marriage

The most accurate comment that Link makes concerns Griswold v. Connecticut. Link notes:

It is here, I believe, that most heterosexuals may first have begun to understand the perspective of homosexual couples. If heterosexual couples have a constitutional right to enjoy sexual relations while choosing never to have children, why should homosexual couples be treated differently under the law?

I think Link is correct—here is where marriages began to fail and the divorce rate skyrocketed. Why? Essentially, couples reduced their relationship to little more than pleasure on demand. Emptied of the deeper realities, marriages atrophied. I am not saying that without children a marriage is null. I am pointing out that an attitude that distills sex to little more than pleasure is corrosive. We have seen its effects in the divorce rates and the social consequences of broken families. This claim is worthy of a separate essay where it could be developed properly. Suffice it to say here that marriage needs to be rediscovered in its fullness. I hasten to add, however, that same-sex unions would worsen the well-being of marriage. Some suggest that permitting homosexuals to marry is the tonic marriage needs. The idea is about as sensible as using counterfeit dollars as a tonic for an ailing economy (as has been said by others).

Legalized same-sex unions are not a civil right at all but merely an attempt to redefine marriage to include a lifestyle that is injurious to the whole of society. Society does not disadvantage any group when it promotes marriage. Quite the opposite: Protection and promotion of marriage ensure a stable community and healthier society for all citizens.