Bush still pushes anti-gay marriage amendment
President Bush chose to use his weekly radio address to promote a
constitutional amendment to "protect" marriage from gays. No doubt this
plays well with his base, and puts Kerry on the spot, but Bush is finding himself on the wrong side
of history on this divisive issue. A great deal is at stake in this matter. The union of a man and
woman in marriage is the most enduring and important human institution,
and the law can teach respect or disrespect for that institution. If
our laws teach that marriage is the sacred commitment of a man and a
woman, the basis of an orderly society, and the defining promise of a
life, that strengthens the institution of marriage. If courts create
their own arbitrary definition of marriage as a mere legal contract,
and cut marriage off from its cultural, religious and natural roots,
then the meaning of marriage is lost, and the institution is weakened.
The Massachusetts court, for example, has called marriage "an evolving
paradigm." That sends a message to the next generation that marriage
has no enduring meaning, and that ages of moral teaching and human
experience have nothing to teach us about this institution. Popular
rhetoric no doubt, but sadly mistaken on fact. The Massachusetts court
was, no matter what we think about "activist judges", right on marriage
being an evolving institution.
Until quite recently, marriage was an ownership contract, making a
woman the property of a man, or, more precisely, transfering ownership
from the father to the husband. Naturally, then, it was considered
proper for a man of certain wealth to own several wives. Christianity
did not ban polygamy at first, but it gradually became unacceptable.
The concept of spousal rape is much newer. It would have been
incomprehensible just a few centuries (some places, decades) ago to
perceive that a wife had the right to refuse intercourse, no matter the reason. Neither do we have to
move far back in time to find that the law and society accepted and
sometimes encouraged men to use violence against their wives. Domestic conflict was
considered off-limits to law enforcement until a short time ago.
Finally, divorce, the right to end a failed or even violent marriage
by both women and men is a new development that radically changes its
nature. We could also mention interracial marriages, women owning
property, and many other questions where society has thankfully evolved.
In reality, the love marriage, where both man and woman freely choose
who they marry, is a quite new invention. If that doesn't change marriage
from its "roots", what does? This rhetoric about "protecting" marriage is begging the question about
what threat exactly it would pose to married men and women that the same
rights and the same piece of paper are offered also to people of the same
sex. It is effective propaganda to frame the question as if traditonal
marriage is threatened by more people embracing it. It is rhetoric
which has no foundation in facts and reality, just like pretending that
marriage is an unchanged institution is without a firm foundation in history.
10:20:51 PM 
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