Thursday, June 11, 2009

The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage

Interesting insights from the Weekly Standard by way of MereComments:

...When a gay man becomes a professor or a gay woman becomes a police officer, he or she performs the same job as a heterosexual. But there is a difference between a married couple and a same-sex couple in a long-term relationship. The difference is not in the nature of their relationship, not in the fact that lovemaking between men and women is, as the Catholics say, open to life. The difference is between the duties that marriage imposes on married people--not rights, but rather onerous obligations--which do not apply to same-sex love. ...

Well worth the read.

Over at Cathoholic, they have highlighted this article as well:

Schulman writes: "I think that the fundamental objection to gay marriage among most who oppose it has very little to do with one's feelings about the nature of homosexuality or what the Bible has to say about sodomy. The obstacle to wanting gay marriage is instead how we use and depend on marriage itself--and how little marriage, understood completely, affects or is relevant to gay people in love. Gay marriage is not so much wrong as unnecessary. But if it comes about, it will not be gay marriage that causes the harm I fear, as what will succeed its inevitable failure."

He believes that same-sex couples will determine on their own that the benefits accrued in marriage are simply not worth the obligations it imposes. Unfortunately, by the time same-sex couples and the larger culture arrive at this juncture, traditional marriage as an institution could be in even worse shape than it is now. Why? Because same-sex couples will assist in the unravelling of the social constrains and familial obligations that constitute the foundation of marriage as a once sturdy, if occasionally oppressive cultural institution.

and added some addtional thoughts

and they have added some additional thoughts:

One of the best meditations on the manifold obligations and joys intertwined in kinship practices must be an essay by Leon and Amy Kass: "What is your Name?" These two professors at the University of Chicago offer some very interesting insights regarding the deeper significance of 'naming a child' -- one of the primary kinship rituals that underscores parental authority, but also the mother and father's responsibility for the defense, nurture and education of their offspring:

You need to go read the whole thing. Perfect lunch time reading. Let's just hope enough people read it and heed it before its too late.

3 comments:

kkollwitz said...

Thanks for this post, I'm still coming back to it.

kkollwitz said...

That's pretty good. As I was reading Schulman, I was thinking re: regulating women's fertility, "yeah but what about contraception, abortion, etc. effect on kinship?"

Then I go to Cathoholic,....and he's got it covered.

Gay marriage is a symptom of the hetero marriage problem.

eutychus said...

Glad you like it and you're right, "Gay marriage is a symptom of the hetero marriage problem."

A natural extension of "pseudogamy," as Esolen talks about over at MereComments