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Marriage
is not on trial. Only the validity of homosexual love is on trial.
Not
in the history of the Supreme Court has there been such anticipated cases: the
pile up of hundreds of amicus briefs, the media attention, the sermons, the
commentaries have fueled a national "marriage fever". Outside the
Court, public visitors have been waiting an astounding six days (an Obamacare public
waited for a mere three days in comparison). For the first time, the Court has
agreed to expedite broadcasting the oral arguments - they will be available
within hours.
There
will be analytical commentaries going on for the rest of the week, to be
sure.
But
what, really, is on trial? Is it marriage? Is it same-sex marriage? Is it
homosexuality?
Or
is it love?
"What's
Love Got To Do With It?"
Ah,
tradition. It marks everything as the best, the most sacrosanct. The problem
with citing something like traditional marriage as ALWAYS being, as Archbishop
Cordileone put it, a "total community of love," however, is to
forfeit thousands of years of history altogether in favor of the modern view of
marriage. Even in the Bible, there is only duty in marriage, not love and
certainly not requited love: women's feelings were never featured. Of course,
you have the love of Jacob for Rachel, but that relationship also involved her
sister, Leah, and two handmaidens to procreate the twelve tribes of Israel. And
as for history's great love affairs, well, Anthony and Cleopatra never got
married. So for the first millennia of history's marriages, the most popular
wedding song might be "What's Love Got To Do With It?"
Legitimacy
The
reason for most of history's marriages was twofold: the security of property
and the legitimacy of offspring to inherit such property. Illegitimate children
were written off, even sold into slavery. Few were raised in the status of
legitimate children. The concept of good parenting was contained in how much a
man left his heirs - primarily male heirs. Female inheritance is also a
relatively new concept.
Our bodies have meaning. The conjugal union of a man and a woman
is not a factory to produce babies; marriage seeks to create a total community
of love, a "one flesh" union of mind, heart and body that includes a
willingness to care for any children their bodily union makes together. Archbishop
Cordineone , Archbishop of San Francisco.
Archbishop
Cordileone's attempt to define marriage is an epic FAIL when one looks at how
man has defined marriage by his actions: "a total community of love"
including "a willingness to care for any children" is closer to Leave
It To Beaver than Jacob and Rachel.
Morality
Once a
Religious Right wag quipped "The' love that dare not speak its name' has
become the' love that won't shut up.'" The in-your-face strategies of the
country's gay communities have caused a fierce push-back from its "social
conservatives." Right-wing media emanating from organizations like The
Family Research Council and The American Family Association have portrayed gays
as "disordered", "Nazis", and "pedophiles"
spreading AIDS and dying in diapers. Their rhetoric has been toned down
slightly for the national media, but they still demonize by clinging to
Biblical stances, considering homosexuality to be "unnatural,"
"chosen" (therefore mutable) and "immoral." The only
mitigating rhetoric they offer: "we don't hate homosexuals, we just don't
like their destructive behavior." But insisting that someone could love
someone without expressing it in a physical manner is, to a degree, to negate
that love, or make it less valuable. This they know, but insist that
heterosexual love is superior because it intends to beget children.
They
don't seem to know human nature very well. Morality, you see, gets in the
way.
So the
two contests are not about marriage, but rather about whether homosexual love
has value equal to that of heterosexual love. The Religious Right has lobbied
the Court (with media and amicus briefs) with the reasoning that it isn't
because it is immoral and therefore damaging to society.
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