This whole gay marriage thing has me flummoxed. Thoughts and streams of logic keep running through my mind. But in any argument against gay marriage, if you bring up religion they say separation of church and state. If you say tradition they bring up the tradition of slavery which was obviously evil and rightly done away with. All valid logical rejoinders.
But I think I’m clear on at least one point. Forget about rights. Forget about all the arguments. It’s a question of semantics. It comes down to the word “marriage.”
Here’s the question: Are men and women different? Or are they interchangeable? If they are different then the union of a man and woman should be labeled one thing and the union of two same-sex partners another thing. It’s really that simple. Does the lifelong joining together of a man and a woman intent on producing children and raising them, merit its own word?
If homosexuals and a number of judges from some blue states want the word “marriage” to apply to the joining together of homosexuals, then what new word should the union of heterosexuals be given?
Isn’t the difference between the two things substantial enough to merit a different word?
Now, you can argue that love binds both homosexuals and heterosexual unions together but if we agree that the sexes are different then the union between members of opposite sexes should have one word while a union between two people of the same sex should have another. It’s simple clarity of language.
Now obviously, to another point, marriage was an institution geared towards the reproduction of the species. Here’s a shocking fact, the only reason the human species still exists is because two people of the opposite sex often get together to create and raise a child. I think that fact alone makes the institution of marriage merit its own word. That word, of course, has been and should remain “marriage.” Homosexual unions do not have this reproductive capability.
Now, opponents of this logic would argue that reproduction alone can’t be exclusionary because some marriages don’t create children. So they argue that any conjoining of two (soon to be “or more”) people in love constitutes a marriage. But that is besides the point. Yes all marriages don’t create children but only the joining together of two people of the opposite sex can create children.
Thirdly, the word “marriage,” by definition, is the joining together of two disparate entities. Boy/girl are different. Boy/boy is the same. Now, of course, you can argue that each boy is different, but in language we must have generalities or else we won’t be able to communicate. But there is certainly a difference between the two unions.
So no matter how you slice it, the joining together of a man and a woman is different than two people of the same sex joining together.
If homosexuals have co-opted the word “marriage” which had been used for thousands of years to denote one thing, I ask what will be the new word we heterosexuals get to describe our very different union?
May 21, 2008 at 3:06 am
I would hate to surrender the word, but how about “matrimony”, which by etymology has to do with “the making of mothers”? That would reflect our Catholic perspective.
May 21, 2008 at 3:14 am
Great post, Matthew! I don’t think we should have to give up the word “marriage” either, but if we did, I agree with Irenaeus–matrimony, or holy matrimony, would be a good place to start.
But the other problem is that all kinds of words will have to be changed in the “brave new world” of gay marriage. I wouldn’t be surprised if the eventual goal was to remove completely from the language any word or expression having any innate gender connotations.
Of course, the gay-rights people could ask the ICEL for help with this…
May 21, 2008 at 3:47 am
“Jimmy and Bobby, sitting in a tree;
K-I-S-S-I-N-G (that was tough to type!);
First comes lust, then comes “marriage”;
But God is mocked when His will’s disparaged.”
Marriage should be left alone and reserved for one man and one woman. Let them dust off and redefine wedlock instead, if it comes to it.
May 21, 2008 at 4:10 am
larryd with the kindergarten rhymes. I like it.
May 21, 2008 at 4:11 am
Seems to me I already have my license which is called a “marriage license.” Unless they want to issue everyone who is married a new license with a new game, just tell the homosexuals to get their own damn word.
May 21, 2008 at 4:40 am
Not sure this argument is going to work on the secularists, Matthew. In fact, I’m not sure it would even work among most Christians.
First, the goal of secularists for decades has been to pretend that real differences are non-existent. Differences between people are, at best, inconsequential. At worst, they are tools for oppression. The perception of differences is merely the result of corrupt, male-dominated social engineering.
Second, the separation of reproduction from marriage is virtually universally accepted now. Many couples enter into marriage with no intent of having children, and many couples who fully and happily intend to have children never intend to marry (this is actually becoming the pattern in Europe, especially France, as I’m sure you’ve read). In the minds of moderns, the only purpose of marriage is to fulfill the desires, however temporary, of each individuals entering into the marriage. If you mention children as a purpose of marriage to most moderns, even Christians, I suspect you’re going to get one of those “what planet is this guy from?” kind of looks.
Bob Hunt
May 21, 2008 at 5:34 am
In the world we live in everything is sacred so nothing is sacred. The word sacred has no meaning anymore.
Pretty soon the word marriage will have lost its meaning, too. Homosexuals will be “married”, polygamists will be “married”, pedophiles will be “married”.
Once someone’s started down one of these mental slippery slopes it’s difficult to pull him/her back up. Logic is hard to stomach if you’re a relativist because you have to assume absolutes. I find that I have to go back until I find some common ground in order to even hold a discussion on any controversial topic. This is very time consuming and boring to people in a soundbite world.
My husband has a stack of Christopher West’s “Good News About Sex and Marriage” in the car. He hands them out to friends and acquaintances when he thinks there’s an open mind willing to read about TOB.
We keep praying and remembering we might lose a few battles but God has already won the war.
May 21, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I say we change the word for marriage to homophobia. See if they try to co opt that one!
May 21, 2008 at 2:42 pm
While we’re at it, how will the world try and redefine “consummation?” How does one consummate a same-sex marriage? The mind reels….
May 21, 2008 at 4:02 pm
A foreign friend, speaking English, twice used the term “partner” to refer to a legitimate wife. Both times I was expecting to meet a male, same-sex “wife” (blick). It can be subtle, but words DO count.
Try getting your average contracepting-Catholic-married-couple to understand that there is NO difference, in the eyes of God, between the kind of sex they are having and the kind of sex their gay neighbors are having. OUCH! These “open-minded” people have a hard time with the reality of that.
Kate
May 21, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Matthew – I took your reply to be encouragement, and I’ve started a new feature at my blog: Nursery Rhymes For a Post-Christian World.
And here’s two new words for so-called gay marriage: Mantrimony and Femlock.
May 21, 2008 at 7:54 pm
I fear your argument for a distinct word for marriage as traditionally understood won’t be too convincing for advocates of same sex marriage. Since the term makes no reference to, say, the colour of the skin of the people involved or other aspects of their bodies, why should it make any reference to their sexes? You would have to argue that the difference between being male or female is of another kind than that of being black or white.
May 22, 2008 at 11:52 am
How about we call gay marriage “off shore drilling” and then they won’t want to do it anymore.
May 23, 2008 at 7:09 am
I have tried this argument at a couple of sites with no takers.
The usual approach to legal marriage seems to miss that the purpose of marriage laws is to confine sexual activity within that lifelong bond of a man and a woman.
What has been destroyed step by step can only be reimplemented in its entirety, “itself and true,” however ugly that appears to most Americans.
It is probably a waste to nitpick about utter nonsense: does a pointless, ineffectual law such as Californian marriage discriminate against just another meaningless and ineffectual coupling?
May 23, 2008 at 8:51 am
Boy, can I sympathize with you’re being “flummoxed”. When this debate was at a fever pitch in Canada, I sat at my computer for two days trying to get to the heart of just why I was so opposed to homosexuals usurping the word “marriage” – without resorting to “religious” arguments which hold no water in a secular society. Here’s my reasoning. Civilization doesn’t just happen. It requires nourishment and inspiration, especially by governments. Because the elevation and revering of heroism and self-sacrifice is so effective at accomplishing that goal, it is puzzling and disturbing to see governments devaluing marriage and undermining family life – the most potent civilizing influence of all. In a self-indulgent time such as ours, parents more than ever need to perceive that their commitment to the next generation is valued. The term “marriage” is one small indicator of that esteem – a simple symbol representing our conviction that a union open to the possibility of new life with its inherent responsibility and sacrifice is deserving of special status. Those heterosexual couples who can’t have children or who marry later in life, don’t destroy the symbolism. Exalting their union still illustrates the fact that we as a society cherish the potentiality of new life – the idea itself – and that we believe neither a mother or father is redundant in the nurturing of that new life. We have been bullied by judicial activism and media sermons into thinking that anything less than equal access by all is discriminatory. Reserving “marriage” for committed heterosexual relationships is not discriminatory. It is a pedestal – a recognition by society that not only the sacrifice, but the very symbolism of propagating and nurturing the species must be elevated. No country should feel guilty in distinctly honouring a relationship with such awesome significance.