Cross in the road

A gay judge set aside the vote of California's electorate on same-sex marriage and made this statement during his judgment: "Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage." In the last two minutes, historically speaking, the essential condition for marriage --at least one man and one women-- has been overcome and rendered contingent.

Marriage has taken many forms in history, to be sure: multiple wives, occasionally and rarely multiple husbands, differing roles, rights, powers, options for fidelity or not, options for divorce or not, etc. But what has suddenly become non-essential is the one thing that was always true.

Well, a person with a vagina is now International Mr. Leather, so I suppose anything is possible.

I support the creation of civil unions so that people like gays and lesbians can avail themselves of protections and benefits that make sense for a "marriage-like" relationship. With the sacred incantation of the phrase "separate but equal", this option has been kicked to the curb. Even though many, even most, Americans would agree to it. And while I have no trouble judging some of the relationships of committed gay and lesbian couples I know as superior to some of the traditional marriages I know, that does not mean that the institution of marriage, the union of man and wife, is no different and no better, no more important than a same-sex union. Without stable marriages between men and women, society is in huge trouble. No such problem ensues if gay marriage does not exist.

And I find the judicially-loaded process of working this conflict out to be unhappily reminiscent of Roe v Wade and its legacy of bitterness.

 

                   Sign in the Castro

Legislative process takes longer but has the cultural and moral weight of speaking for the majority. Is it really possible to ignore the fact that one man, one gay man, overturned the will of millions of citizens because he felt he had superior knowledge and insight? This oracle also declare that multimillennial basic condition for marriage was now irrelevant.

Before I became aware of the text of the decision, my first thought about it was that it was one more sign of the deep trouble about archetypal gender that we have in the West. I cannot believe that the male-female difference and dynamic is anything other than crucial to both species and societal survival. Messing with it brings about unpredictable consequences. And the last forty years of feminism has damaged men and manhood. That is my problem with homosexuality, its alliance with androphobia. And this decision gives me reason to suspect I have been right.

Postscript. Can a man be a mother? Can a woman be a father? A mother can give a kind of fatherly love to a child, but it's not the same as a father giving it. Just isn't. A man can be motherly but can never be a mother. I guess part of my conservative nature is recognizing that there givens into which we are born, realities, archetypal structures, that simply are, regardless of what we think or feel about them. And unlike many of my contemporaries, I think that gender is one of them.

Marriage requires husband and wife. A woman cannot be a husband. A man cannot be a wife. And with two husbands...what is that? Perhaps something like marriage, even very close, but not the same thing.

Back in the fourth century, Christians struggled mightily over a single letter, an iota. Was Jesus Christ of the same substance as God or of a similar substance? Was he Divine or sorta divine? Homo-ousios or homoi-ousios? 

I understand and honor the desire of some same-sex couples to have their relationships recognized and honored and protected, but I still can't wrap my head around the idea that a man and women who marry and two men or two women who bond together for life are the same. Marriage-like, but not marriage. I'm sorry to say it, knowing guys and women like that, --wishing for a connection like that myself!-- but a man can't be a mother and two husbands don't make a marriage.