I posted this elsewhere, but it seems appropriate to post it here, too:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/ ... Y8bHc70_oB
This is the most important line in the article and what is so infuriating to me:
The question is whether we will grant to them the same basic recognition we grant to other adults: that love makes marriage, and that the right to marry is exactly that, a right.
How has this not been the center of discussion for years? It's just obvious that it is not true that "love makes marriage." That's just a false premise. I realize that we have accepted that as a society. I argue we formally accepted in on January 1, 1970, when Ronald Reagan signed the country's first no-fault divorce bill into law in California. But regardless, this is what we should have been talking about for the past ten years--not that God defined marriage and not that it's in the Bible and not that the court doesn't have the right to redefine what a word has meant for millennia or other such things. All true as far as they go, but totally beside the point. When we implicitly grant the premise that love (understood in the popular sense of the word--romance and commitment) makes marriage, then we have given away the farm. Gay people can enter into a mere "love-contract." And you know what? So can groups. But that's not what makes something a marriage.
The problem is that heterosexuals themselves agree with the principle. They want their own "marriages" to be nothing more than love-contracts, that way they can get in and get out easily. They marry someone because they love them. They can put off kids or refuse to have them as long as they want. Kids get to be viewed of as a byproduct, sometimes happy and sometimes not, as a choice, that maybe comes along with the union. They get to look at marriage in a selfish manner, as if it is just designed to answer their own existential loneliness (which, by the way, points to much deeper theological problems--a sort of idolatry--inherent in the popular view). Or let me just quote our illustrious Justice's (to use the term with ironic looseness) on the matter: "Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other." And if that is all marriage is, then Kennedy is right.
But of course, that's not all that it is. That's not even what it primarily is. And how many people have been on the various news and radio stations addressing this real and central problem. In all the years I have been following this, I never once ever heard this point made. Yes, I've seen it discussed in various corners of the internet, but on a popular level? Never. In fact, I have a friend who is very socially conservative and a political activist who was shocked when I told him last night about this argument. The thought never occurred to him. He was convinced that marriage was, in fact, a private love-contract (something his libertarian leanings on economic matters made easy for him to assume). Now, this man has been following political news more closely than any of us have for about ten years. He knows many major Republican operatives on a first name basis. So I hold him up as an example of our failure--of my failure--in how we have been and are approaching this issue. And now we see the consequences.
You accept a lie, and its consequences will play out over time. There is no question of if. It is only a question of when. And the truly sad part is that we have yet to see all the consequences of this particular lie play out.
fdit:
I'd encourage anyone take a look at
this article, as it is purportedly written by a gay man who recognizes the basic truth what I'm saying here. Bottom line: we either get to this point our we'll continue down this road, further erode the family, and therefore further erode society itself.
The math suggests that if he spent just ONE day with each wife, it would take him nearly TWO YEARS to do so. And that's not counting concubine time
. I'm guessing he had trouble with even knowing all of their names. Of course, many of them were no doubt political marriages in which he barely had any contact with them. And if they all had credit cards, no wonder he needed such immense wealth.
Really, how did Solomon even have the energy to administrate a kingdom - or the TIME to???!!!
