David Brooks, the centre-right journalist of the New York Times suggests that
… recessions are about more than material deprivation. They're also about fear and diminished expectations. The cultural consequences of recessions are rarely uplifting.
The economic slowdown of the 1880s and 1890s produced a surge of agrarian populism and nativism, with particular hostility directed toward Catholics, Jews and blacks. The great Depression was not only a time for FDR's optimism and escapist movies, it was also a time of apocalyptic forebodings and collectivist movements that crushed individual rights. (NYT Nov 17 2008)
So we might ask, is this recession going to slow the efforts of those seeking to have same-sex friendships transformed into legalised marriages? Is this recession going to dry up the aspiration of single women to have children, by whatever means? With less money, are we going to see a change to the prevailing ethos of our society? Will there be a change to the way children are viewed, a return to a recognition that life in its entirety, with all the people we come into contact, is nothing other than the gift of the Almighty?
I don't believe that the recession (or depression), all by itself, will change moral trends that have, for a long time, decidedly favoured the current libertarian ascendency. There seems to be too much support mobilised to expect, for instance, that the concerted and decades-long effort to redefine marriage to include homosexual relationships is going to go away because people have less money in their pockets, banks and under their beds.
Let's spend a few minutes thinking about these trends in terms of what was happening during the 1960s in the light of what has happened since. Weren't they the good old bad old liberal days? Wasn't that when personal ethics were strongly influenced by what was said to be a new radicalism? Weren't we, the baby boomer generation, getting our credentials to prove we could offer this country the leadership we knew it so obviously lacked. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
"Marriage" was our destiny. At least that was what we had been taught. Yet, a person's overt commitment to marriage, as an institution, was taken to be a sign that one was overdoing it, a bit "conservative" morally and politically. This was a sign that the person was a bit religious, like his shirt was hanging out. Who would have dared to say that they were enthusiastic about "Father and Son" and "Mother and Daughter" nights held at school? After all, it was argued by the new freedom-loving generation, once you knew that stuff who needed the "piece of paper" to be truly married? If you loved the other person that was a sufficient basis for living together, wasn't it?
It seems now we have a
new generation of progressive libertines, who should not be allowed to forget
the earlier 1960s formulations of their current "progressive"
morality. Then the question about marriage was whether it could begin before
the wedding, before being legally sanctioned, before signing the piece of
paper. Of course, the reasoning went, a piece of paper doesn't make a
marriage! How stupid to suggest that it might!
What mattered was that all one's relationships, including one's sexual encounters, were defined in terms of loving tender friendship. That was the expected normative standard. And so, with that as the era's defined standard for courtship, the progressive generation of the 1960s found themselves advocating a view that could hardly exclude de facto couples from whatever it was that marriage was supposed to be (i.e. apart from the "piece of paper"). And then homosexual partnerships became evident, and so they also became viewed as loving tender friendships. The "radical" and truly libertarian thing was to live together without any need for legal sanction, without any need for "pieces of paper", in loving tender friendships. You didn't need anyone else telling you what to do. Besides, wasn't it unduly obsessive to be exclusive about the "opposite" or "other" sex. Cool it.
But then, in time, one thing led to another, as it has a natural habit of doing, and children were born, and the administration of public law had to adjust, particularly when the welfare state got around to recognising the issue of heterosexual de facto partnerships. Child-endowment was viewed as an inclusive right for all children, rather than merely an economic trickle-down effect of an inked in agreement on any old legal piece of paper. Was not bastardry a thing of the past?
And so, in an ironic twist, the fact of familial or parental responsibility became the key characteristic in defining marriage in political discourse. Children became the common denominator of legally married or lawfully recognised de-facto partnerships. For the purpose of benefit-payments, de facto was seen as merely another form of whatever de-jure meant. And that is also why confusion about marriage as an institution results when one tries to define what marriage is from the status it has within the provisions that regulate welfare state benefits. And that blurring plays its part in the deep-down confusion about marriage that prevails in our society these days.
But what then was the unanticipated consequences of this development for the political definition of homosexual friendships? In the radical fervour of the time, homosexual couples could shelter in the moral shadow of "living together". This meant they could be accepted on the margins as a valid form of loving intimacy. The margins were where "progressive" morality was to be formed "outside" the constrictions of the law. But the initial de facto dismissal of "pieces of paper", was now compromised by a willingness to receive a regular cheque - the libertarian view of heterosexual "living together" was modified. The radical, progressivist lifestyle had been the way to live without any moral opprobrium from one's peers. But then, by contrast, homosexual partnerships found that they were not receiving the benefits of their de facto fellow travellers and were left to feel the onset of social and legal isolation. It was the unintended consequences of a macro-political pincer movement, in which familial responsibilities became the new criterion by which, under welfare state and other provisions, a relationship could be deemed to be a genuine marriage. So, instead of aligning with homosexual relationships as the libertarian morality might have initially suggested (Come on everybody smile on your other), the de facto trend in libertarian public morality allowed itself to be aligned with lawful marriage - for the sake of the children of course. It all came down to whether there were any progeny from the relationship. And so in legal and political terms marriage would be defined blurringly in terms of the children that arrived with the unintended result that it gave privilege to an "essential biological fact of nature" - it showed a public legal bias towards viewing children in terms of the inconvenient presupposition that the conception of a child presupposes the provision of male seed with a female egg in one female womb.
And so a sense of "exclusion" has emerged for the "homosexual community". Where has this sense of "exclusion" come from? Has it been generated by the "mainline community". I don't think so. Homosexuality is now widely accepted as a prevalent form of friendship that does not compromise a person's citizenship. This is so, even if a majority do not promote homosexuality as a preferred form of friendship. Could not the root of homosexual sense of exclusion be found in its libertarian roots? Does not its current cohesiveness as a civil movement derive in part from its historical connection with the libertarian movements of the 1960s when "progressive" meant embracing on the margins? Does it not now inherit its isolation, at least in part, from the ongoing break-up of that "progressivism" which was found untenable when children arrived on the scene?
And so we are witness to this world-wide movement which claims to be a "civil rights movement" to expand the legal definition of marriage, and therefore make marriage "inclusive" of such friendships. But the felt "isolation" of this homosexual movement has not not caused by a denial of civil rights. It is rather that the previous lauded "marginal" position outside the constrictions of legal definition is no longer an attractive choice.
So, whereas previously, the progressive libertarianism of the 1960s generation was poised to sneer at a commitment to "the marriage piece of paper", now the legality of marriage is aspired to by the next generation of libertines who demand not only the right of marriage for all couples who elect to tie the knot in a homosexual way, but that marriage itself be an institution which must henceforth be the creature the State. And further, such (Statist) reform must occur if the recognition of human rights is to be a pillar of a society that does not discriminate on the basis of sex or sexuality. (Except of course that marriage is not a civil right at all. Marriage is not created the state. We can discuss that on another occasion.)
It should be said that in the interim period, the progressivist moral line was carried along on a feminist trajectory and came to mean defining family as a mother and her children with a free-willing (asteroid) male viewed as an optional extra in legal or de facto terms. The social solar system for a while revolved around a sun-goddess as mother.
But now however, we face the radical expansion-of-choice-libertarianism, which demands the redefinition of marriage in order to include homosexual relationships. Otherwise marriage is not an "inclusive" institution. One wonders whether rights ideologues are actually charging that marriage itself is a violation of human rights because it requires a discrimination on the basis of sex.
But the legal and political ambiguities are only going to be magnified and are not going to be solved by following this crazy "progressivist" route. The attempt to live by "progressive" policies, continually searching for the next civil rights movement to justify one's a priori shouting at the world, is to live with eyes tight shut and to ignore the commitment to public justice that has propelled civil rights movements hitherto. The demand for "gay marriage" is a world-wide attempt that now tries to justify itself historically by claiming an emancipatory genealogy with the abolition of slaves, with the emancipation of Catholics and Dissenters, with the emancipation of women, and the equality for all races, to the emancipation of whatever "community" can be crystallised into a powerful movement to keep the progress progressing. And so the gay marriage lobby represents to itself the next stage except that this stage is an historicist tail-chasing movement based on an empirical mistake. To put it simply: homosexual friendship is not marriage.
So, it is probably worthwhile thinking about what would happen if there were to be wholesale reform of marriage laws around the world to accommodate these demands. What would follow should such laws be passed? I'm not suggesting they should be and there have been tragic legal errors in the past - consider the legal definition of a slave as "chattel" and how long that took to overcome.
And what might be the next step in this ideological movement of emancipation? Let's not be fooled: all post-modern persiflage aside, this idea of emancipation obtains its idolatrous "powder" from the same old Enlightenment commitment to human autonomy.
Could the next stage in this "progress" be a demand for the emancipation of the sperm? I joke not. Maybe we are already seeing moves in that direction? Dollars for young men's ejaculations. Do we not see and hear the chant of the apologists for such "choice", helped along by neo-liberal rights ideologues - "What do we want? XY Chromosomes? When do we want them? Now!" Does this sounds like the conception of a new world order of slavery to you? Free range sperm? Are we called to turn our DNA and our seed into chattel?
Nurturing Justice is published with a rather
well-founded suspicion that Christian people have been lulled into a false
sense of security. Have we allowed ourselves to assume that the institution of
marriage will be maintained by a majority of citizens? If so, we should think
again. We should not assume that a Christian view of the marriage institution
is compatible with the way Islam, Buddhism in its many forms or Hindu
spirituality view marriage. It is certainly not Communist, nor is it something
that arrived with the unfolding of Humanism and its various derivatives, even
if liberalism and socialism have tried to incorporate a Christian view of
matrimony. We should look again at the New Testament's teaching that marriage -
as a monogamous lifelong bond of a man and a woman - is sustained by none other
than Jesus Christ Himself. And that, in time, should also mean finding a fresh
way to promote loving friendships, chaste courtships, faithful marriages and a
non-obsessive (and non-consumerist) understanding of ourselves as men and women
with bodies in a complex society that the Almighty is intimately concerned
about. To say it again, the important thing is what the prophet told God's
ancient people. That is also our duty, the "doing of justice, the loving
of mercy and the humble walking with your God" (Micah 6:8).
Nurturing Justice
encourages a sustained
Christian political contribution by affirming our God-given calling to give
shape to public justice and avoid the empty myths and contradictions of human
autonomy. A Christian understanding of these myths, as they are accepted and
enshrined in changes to the law, requires a comprehensive political philosophy,
one that finds its point departure for seeking justice in the gentle and
merciful rule of Jesus Christ, the ruler over all of the earth's political
regimes.
November 2008 © The contents of this email are
copyright. Documents may be photocopied or retransmitted in their entirety but
not otherwise reprinted or transmitted without permission. "Nurturing
Justice" is a project to encourage Christian political reflection based
upon wise and loving civic participation. Comments are welcome and should be
sent to bcwearne@ozemail.com.au