Maggie Gallagher: Is Gay Marriage Inevitable?

We must distinguish between gay marriage and legalized gay relationships.  It really makes no difference whatsoever if the word “marriage” is reserved for heterosexual couples.  What must be defended is the exclusive place that marriage is supposed to hold in society.  It is supposed to function as the legitimizing relationship for sexual behavior.  But this has long since been discarded.  Sexual behavior no longer requires a relationship to be legitimate, and this attitude is endemic in the culture. 

What is likely to be implemented is some form of legal civil relationship based purely upon consent that will function as a gay marriage equivalent.  It won’t be called “marriage” but it will provide all of the benefits of marriage.  Traditional marriage will become a subset of this relationship, and eventually the whole idea of covenant marriage will be removed from the Law.  Traditional marriage will be taught in churches, but will not be legally enforced. 

Maggie Gallagher is whistling past the graveyard.  Opposition to gay marriage only matters if that opposition intends to re-establish traditional sexual morality.  That is self-evidently not the desire of the current hyper-sexed generation.  They believe sex is a private matter warranting no public restraint.  They believe sexual morality is purely a matter of consent. What they want to call “marriage” is largely beside the point to these much greater issues.

carl

I think I understand where Carl is coming from, but don’t think I’m prepared to go there.  I am a priest, and am first concerned about the Church and its Sacraments.  I not only cannot support legalized gay marriage, I don’t believe that I can, in good conscience, support legalized heterosexual marriage: I don’t think that any secular government should be able to tell me, as a priest, what Sacraments I may or may not celebrate.

As thing currently stand, if I were to preside at a a Nuptial Mass anywhere in the US, I would be expected, no, required, to fill out certain paperwork for the County Clerk, who might be Anglican (unlikely) or Baptist, Buddhist or Hindu, Islamic or atheistic.  And that County Clerk would then have the right to tell me whether or not the Church’s Sacrament was legitimate or not?  I don’t think so.

I do not remember taking any vows to (or receiving paychecks from) the Office of the County Clerk.  My responsibility and duty is to my bishop and to 2,000 years of Christian tradition as guided by the Holy Ghost… not to the latest political poll.

The 6th point that Carl quotes is particularly telling: Maggie Gallagher writes that “Change is inevitable”.  In the secular world, that is so.  In the secular world, gay relationships may well be fully legalized.  So be it. The change which is so inevitable will eventually swing back the other way.

But… that doesn’t mean that we who are simply passing through this secular world need to shift with the wind.  Rather, we should hold to the Rock which is everlasting, and teach and do what the Church has taught and done since the Apostles’ time.

If there are secular benefits attached to secular legal contracts in the secular world, and they are available to believers as well as unbelievers, then let us avail ourselves of them, without worrying so much about whether nonbelievers may also so benefit from such secular contracts (which are the only legitimate area within the secular County Clerk’s purview).  Our role isn’t to keep gays from getting inheritance rights or whatever—it’s to convert their hearts to Christ Jesus.

There are so many young women who are walking wounded, having been in romantic sexual relationships that did not turn out to be permament.  In addition, there is a growing perception (and I don’t know if this is statistically confirmed) that there are fewer young men willing to commit to marriage.  I wonder if the backlash to the sexual revolutiion will not one day come from heterosexual women.

I disagree with Carl. I believe that only about 5% of homosexual couples opt for gay “marriage” in Toronto. However, legalization of gay “marriage” rather than civil unions allows them to say that there is a complete equivalency between heterosexuality and homosexuality. When a parent objected to the “Two Princes” book for second graders, she was told, “It’s the law, get over it.”

In terms of a now-accepted “right to privacy,” gays can have sex with whomever they wish above the age of consent. This is a direct result of the right we heterosexuals demanded to be able to shack up without being discriminated against.

In terms of a right to own property, (for example) a gay couple can buy a house, just as an unmarried heterosexual couple can buy a house.

Etc. Etc. Whatever damage we have done as heterosexuals to the fabric of society, gays will move into that space, and we have no legs to stand on to deny them.

Gay marriage is past its prime, the tide is turning. But civil unions? That’s another question. If hetero’s can be convinced it’s a good thing (whether truth or lie), we’ll have it, and so will the gays.

#5 Br_er Rabbit -

If hetero’s can be convinced it’s a good thing (whether truth or lie), we’ll have it, and so will the gays.

What you describe is exactly the experience here in Victoria, Australia.  De facto couples in this State have almost exactly the same rights and status as married couples (eg, to property and children if the relationship fails, to reproductive technology, to adopt/foster children, to welfare and tax breaks, to inheritance), and the law now says that a same-sex couple can be a de facto couple.

We sowed a wind a few decades ago, when society walked away from God’s plan for sexuality.  Now we reap the whirlwind ...

Important win this evening for Prop. 8 backers.  A three-judge panel of the The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the district court’s ruling, in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Prop. 8, that forced production of proponents’ internal campaign communications relating to campaign strategy and advertising.  Prop. 8 proponents had objected to disclosure of the documents as barred by the First Amendment.  The appellate court reversed, finding the district court’s ruling to be “clearly erroneous.”
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/12/11/0917241.pdf

Reading the responses, I wonder if I might have been misunderstood.  This was my point: “Reserving the word ‘marriage’ for heterosexual couples is an irrelevant waste of time if an equivalent homosexual relationship is set up under another name.”  My fear is that those who do not support gay marriage will support de facto gay marriage under another name.  My fear is that this form of relationship will displace the idea of covenant marriage in the law.  In order to defend marriage, we can’t just defend the form of the relationship that attaches to the word.  We must establish the illegitimacy all other competing sexual organizations - specifically (but not limited to) cohabitation, and homosexual pairing.  It is this later condition that the modern world so emphatically rejects. 

carl

Carl, the me-first society we live in is not going to de-legitimize cohabiting any time soon, and the gays will claim the same, as a matter of “justice.”

This is just more proof of how broken this world is!!!
It should have been in video below but I am sure someone would have complained..but as of now I still have a right to my opinion..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG_j71mNoSs

It takes a lot of chutzpah to predict you will win the game when you are down 31 -0. 

The fact is, people in the street know what marriage is supposed to be, even if there’s wasn’t successful or they never found someone to marry.

Right now, we are in sexual anarchy; everyone is doing whatever they may think most convenient and enjoyable.  Society is cooperating in this anarchy, granting rights regarding property, children, etc to those who are legally married and to cohabiters of all sorts - tho’ with some limitations for those with same-sex attraction.

Proponents of same-sex marriages think that because we are in a society that will not condemn cohabitation that society will in due course accept legalized marriage for same-sex relationships.  However, God created us in such a way that, even in our rebellion, only marriage (as he has defined it) will satisfy our hearts.  We may try rebelling against that, but in time, the chaos and pain that result from defying his design will drive society back to heterosexual marriage as the norm.  It has happened before and it will happen again.  It can take time, and there will be oceans of broken hearts and broken lives - but God will not be mocked.  His design will stand, no matter how we sinful humans try to rearrange it.

Conego, there is indeed a distinction between marriage and Holy Matrimony, the first being a creation ordinance of God, pre-dating all organized societies and regulated by law in organized societies.  The second, Holy Matrimony, is a subset of the first - not a distinct category - being a marriage that is blessed by the Church.  Church and state may cooperate in this, as they do in nations with a heritage of British common law, or they may not, as in many European nations, such as France, where two ceremonies are needed, the first by the state and the second by the Church.  The state may attempt to redefine marriage,as in Massachusetts and a few other states, but it cannot force ministers of the Church to perform any ceremony that they do not wish to do - at least, not yet.  We may yet see the state withdraw the privilege of officiating at marriages from ministers, if we on the whole refuse to have anything to do with same-sex relationships.

I think that the American public as a whole can sense the reality of heterosexual marriage as the true form of marriage, even if many cannot put that sense into words.  The public will resist for a long time.  Perhaps it will capitulate - but as I said above, such a capitulation will not be a lasting one.

There are so many young women who are walking wounded, having been in romantic sexual relationships that did not turn out to be permament.  In addition, there is a growing perception (and I don’t know if this is statistically confirmed) that there are fewer young men willing to commit to marriage.  I wonder if the backlash to the sexual revolutiion will not one day come from heterosexual women.

Why do we assume that heterosexual men are undamaged by the horrors?
Women bear the wounds often as “visible” lacerations.  Men have internal crush injuries.  The may not be visible, but they can bled you out jus as quikly.

Maggie raises some very interesting points and expresses them well (and with winsome humor).  I agree with her that it’s important not to concede the notion that further descent into sexual degradation is simply inevitable.  I suspect Jill is right too, and that there is likely to be some kind of eventual backlash against the extremely loose and amoral sexual practices of our time.  But when and how it will happen I don’t know.

However, regardless, the real problem, it seems to me, is that the Christian Church has by and large rolled over and played dead so often on this whole cultural front.  That is, the salt has largely lost its saltiness, since we’ve allowed ourselves to be so thoroughly conformed to this world and its ways, despite emphatic texts like Romans 12:2.

One of the best things the Church can do to promote a more just and healthy society is to work hard for ways to strengthen marriages WITHIN the Body of Christ.  In order to win the Culture War, we simply must do much better at preparing couples for marriage in the first place, and then encouraging and helping newlyweds and others to build a lasting, healthy marriage. 

Toward that end, I heartily recommend the fantastic work of (evangelical ex-Episcopalians) Mike and Harriet McManus, the founders of Marriage Savers, a nationawide, church-based movement to strengthen marriages.  In particular, I love their simple but effective idea of helping every church to train and mobilize “mentor couples” that can meet with and counsel couples in those crucial first two years of marriage, when many relational patterns are set.  It really works!!

If we Christians shored up marriage within our churches, it would have an incredible, IMMENSE impact for good on our society.  The ripple effects would be far-reaching.  Therefore, we need to get our own house in order, THEN take on the deep-rooted problems in the wider culture.

David Handy+

Inevitable like in a death and taxes way?

Amen to Cónego (2).

I am not a priest but a lawyer, and Cónego is right in the center of the target.  We often confuse the secular rules that beset our lives with those of the church, that sadly often do not beset our lives.  Cónego has spoken to the heart of the issue.  Marriage is not a creation of the state.  The state only recognizes marriage in whatever form it chooses, and this recognition bestows “legal” rights on the parties.

In one sense the recognition of legal rights between parties in a marriage contract is no different from the state’s recognition of the “legal” rights of a business contract, a real estate contract, or any other contract.  What sets marriage apart is the church.  Marriage derives its very nature from a source that predates the state, and this is so in all societies, not just ours.  Therefore, if marriage finds its genesis in a source that is pre-state, marriage exists without the state.  Therefore, what recognition the state gives to marriage is simply a recognition of something that alredy existed.

What we have today is an attempt by some to make the state the creator of marriage and thus the final arbiter of what is marriage.  This “spirit of the age” in which we live seeks to make the state the beginning and end of all things—to take the place of God altogether.  In the US, this socialistic movement has gained strong support from gay sympathizers by appealing to the least common denominator in society, self.  This is at the heart of our struggle as Christians, the way between self and surrender to God.  While we struggle with this conflict within (Rom. 7:7-25), those who are ruled by self interest have no trouble with this conflict.

I thank God that there are still priest, pastors, elders, bishops, and Christian teachers like Cónego who understand the difference.

I may be way out of line with this, but I’m trying to remember when we stopped using quotation marks with the term gay “marriage.”

Wise words, Immortalitas.

[16] Immortalitas Equestris

I am not a priest but a lawyer

And therefore will your soul be eternally condemned.  Take heart, though.  You will be at least one level up from the Marketing people.  In the meantime, that was a good post.  Especially this:

Therefore, what recognition the state gives to marriage is simply a recognition of something that already existed. 

What we have today is an attempt by some to make the state the creator of marriage and thus the final arbiter of what is marriage. 

A very clear and concise summary.  I shall remember that.

carl

Carl, is there a level reserved for bloggers?

[20] Br_er Rabbit

[I]s there a level reserved for bloggers?

Only the bad ones.  You know, like those who have brought such turmoil onto God’s chosen instrument - the Episcopal Church.  I suspect that Matt Kennedy is toast seeing as he is the Meanest Blogger Ever.  However, the harmless inoffensive maternal dolphin-like bloggers should be just fine.

carl

Immortalitas Equestris (16), thank you for your kind words.  For what it’s worth, I have put what I believe into practice a few times, and presided at Sacramental marriages that the County Clerk knew nothing of. Each of the cases involved seniors who’d outlived their spouses and found a new person with whom to share the last years of their lives, but because of the ways in which US laws and regulations have been written, would have ended up losing their pensions or possibly their homes if they were to get ‘legally’ remarried. I’ve known a lot of such couples who’ve chosen to simply live together (I was a hospital and hospice chaplain post-military, and so spent a lot of time with the elderly); these, though, were people who, because of their Christian faith, were unwilling to live together outside the bond of Marriage, but couldn’t marry and survive financially.  I cleared such services with my bishop, of course, (he said that these were ‘pastoral exceptions to the general rule’) but as I said before, I don’t remember being hired by the County Clark’s office to be a ‘marriage functionary’.

It wouldn’t be difficult for clergy who desired to simplify things for the couple to just pay ten bucks to become a Notary Public, and “do” the civil ceremony after the religious one (when the register is being signed, add another, secular sheet of paper around for signatures, then afix your seal), thus keeping the two separate without forcing the couple to have a separate civil ceremony, given that the ‘civil ceremony’ needn’t include more than “You gotta license?. Okay, do you… And do you… I now pronounce you… Next?”.  [In any one I were to do, that last ellipse would ‘husband and wife’, whatever state law says about the possible varieties of corporate or individual mergers.]

Sorta on topic, but I found the recent election of a lesbian as mayor of Houston to be kind of scary. Portland, Or., I can somewhat understand - but Houston, Texas? ‘Ol Sam must be spinning in his grave.

I think it is an excellent opening post by Carl 12-11-2009 at 04:41 PM I agree, sexual matters are increasingly seen as private and individual rights.

In the UK legislation has civil partnerships for same sex couples as opposed to marriage for mam and woman. However most of the pro-gay supporters call it marriage and some of the media is starting to as well. The pro-gay supporters frequently refer to the law allowing same sex relations and objecting to anyone who disagrees whilst at the same not acknowledging the law concerning the difference bewteen civil partnerships and marriage.
So two reasons why same sex relations will be considered, we are dealing with people with no regard for anything apart from it, or anyone elses view apart from it, and a determination to educate the younger generation about a sexual oreienation that cant even repoduce a younger generation.