Same-Sex Marriage Is Not About "Rights"

Sailing on The Badger across Lake Michigan

I want to discuss this civilly. May I? 

The same-sex marriage issue is not about “rights.” It’s about the definition of “marriage.” The definition of “marriage” settles the matter of “rights.”

For example, I am the “owner” of a car. I have ownership rights. I have the right to a key to this car, the right to put the key in the ignition and turn the car on, and the right to drive the car. This legal fact (I am the car’s owner, you are not) means you cannot complain that you are excluded from some “right”; viz., the right to drive my car. All this is implied in the definition of “ownership.” If you wanted free access to the cars of other people then you would need to revise the legal definition of “ownership.” But as it currently stands driving other people’s cars without permission is called “theft.”

I do not have the right to drive my car wherever I please. I do not have the right to drive on your lawn, for example, or through your patio door. Should I complain that you or the state are “taking away my right to drive on your lawn” you should reply that no “rights” are, in this case, being taken from me. Legally, there is no existing “right” that I possess that is being taken from me. Legally, I am being denied nothing.

Laws involve definitions. Definitions create parameters. Parameters delineate “rights.” I do not legally have the right to enter your house at night, wake up your children, tell them to put their clothes on, and come shopping with me. How absurd it would be for me to complain that I cannot do this, and argue that some “right” has been taken from me.

In order to civilly discuss issues of marriage, the term “marriage” must be defined from the beginning, elsewise the discussion will go nowhere. If you and I are working off different definitions of “marriage” we will be involved in constant dual equivocation, with me using the term in one sense, and you in another.

This is why the real, primal matter in the same-sex “debate” is over the definition of “marriage.” Those arguing for the legality of same-sex marriages are revising the existing definition of marriage (which, BTW, they have the legal right to propose). We now have two competing definitions. Which are:

Traditional Definition (TD):

Marriage is intrinsically a sexual union of husband and wife, because these are the only unions that can make new life and connect those children in love to their co-creators, their mother and their father (from Maggie Gallagher, in Corvino and Gallagher, Debating Same-Sex Marriage(Point/Counterpoint), p. 95. Oxford University Press.).

Revisionist Definition (RD):

Marriage is the union of two people (whether of the same sex or of opposite sexes) who commit to romantically loving and caring for each other and to sharing the burdens and benefits of domestic life. It is essentially a union of hearts and minds, enhanced by whatever forms of sexual intimacy the partners both find agreeable. The state should recognize and regulate marriage because it has an interest in stable romantic partnerships and in the concrete needs of spouses and any children they may choose to rear. (Ib., p. 99)

If RD is received as law, then of course, ipso facto, gays have a legal right to marry. If TD remains as law, then gays do not have a legal right to marry. And in this case no “rights” are being denied to gays, since by legal definition gays would not have the right to marry.

It is important to understand this. If the core issue is over the legal definition of marriage, then statements like “marriage rights should be extended to gays” and “gays deserve marriage equality” are only euphemisms used to spin an argument in one’s favor. Given TD to say "marriage rights should be extended to gays" is like saying "ownership rights should be extended to all people" (so that my car and your car is our car), or like saying "the right to be called "fish" should be extended to Scandinavians." (I am Scandinavian, and have never felt denied of some right because I cannot identify myself as a fish on my passport.)

“Rights” and “equality” talk is, initially, irrelevant; legal definitional talk is what matters. “Rights” and “equality” are pursuant to legality. Legal definitions, whether of “marriage” or “ownership” or “legal guardianship” or whatever, determine and delineate “rights” and “equality,” not the other way around.

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BTW – I’ve talked with a few people who think the state should not be involved in the issue of defining marriage. I think that is incorrect. If we lived in a perfect world then laws would not be needed. Laws protect; marriage laws (especially TD) protect children’s rights, and spouse’s rights. And just because a father or mother are Christians does not mean (though it should mean) that their children are protected.

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For further study see especially:

Corvino and Gallagher, Debating Same-Sex Marriage (Point/Counterpoint)

Girgis, Anderson, and George, What Is Marriage?

Piippo, "Same-Sex Marriage Is Not About "Marriage Equality"

"Addressing the Two Debates Regarding Same-sex Marriage"

Gay Marriage and Gluttony

Ann Arbor book store

More than once, over the past several years, I've had a Christian object to people such as myself (or Michael Brown, or Wesley Hill, et. al.) who reason that, as we see things, gay marriage is not something God approves of. They point out that there are many things God does not approve of, such as gluttony. Their question is something like this:

"Why single out the sin of homosexuality, when you're not saying anything about sins like gluttony?'

My response is: Because I hear no significant voices with the Christian community arguing for and advocating gluttony as God-approved. That gluttony is not a God-behavior is a non-issue. Were someone to promote it as an intrinsic good, then some of us would want to respond. To think we should not respond, and just keep our mouths shut, would be  unreasonable and unfair.

It is precisely because there are those within the Christian community who advocate gay marriage as acceptable that many of us choose to respond. To muzzle us at this point feels mean-spirited and oppressive. We are being culturally forbidden to disagree. To accuse us of being "hypocritical" because we defend a biblical view of sexual morality while not paying as much attention to sins like gluttony is to commit a tu quoque fallacy. 

I want a civil dialogue. For how to do this, see Princeton jurisprudential scholar Robert George's The Clash of Orthodoxies: Law, Religion, and Morality in Crisis.

A final note: for years, in my church, I have preached through the biblical texts, verse-by-verse. In that way everything eventually gets addressed.

And, BTW, Michael Brown has recently published his book on his battle to overcome gluttony - Breaking the Stronghold of Food. 

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My two books are...

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

Same-Sex Marriage is Not About "Marriage Equality," But About the Definition of 'Marriage'

Holland State Park (Michigan)

Time to lighten up about this, at least as we discuss. To have a civil discourse about same-sex marriage means laying aside ad hominem abusives and other logical fallacies of irrelevant premises. So here we go!

The current gay marriage issue is not really about “marriage equality.” “Marriage equality” is a euphemism. It’s actually about “marriage redefinition.” The issue is about the definition of “marriage.”

Pro-gay-marriage advocate John Corvino seems to define “marriage” like this:

“Marriage is the institution in which people live out the commitment … to have and to hold; from this day forward; for better or for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish; until death do us part.” (Corvino spends many pages defending why he is not thrilled about defining the term. See Corvino and Maggie Gallagher, Debating Same-Sex Marriage (Point/Counterpoint), p. 41. This is an excellent book to read to see the legal arguments from both sides.)

But note this. If “marriage” is what Corvino seems to think it is, then of course there is no problem with same-sex marriage. And the issue is not “marriage equality,” since by definition any persons (two or more, which Corvino admits) can make and live out this kind of commitment. Anyone meeting this definitional criterion has a “right” to be married. Of course!

But if “marriage” is legally defined as between a man and a woman, then of course the “right” to be married is reserved for opposite sex partners who make the stated commitment. It would then read this way: “Marriage is the institution in which a man and a woman live out the commitment…” If “marriage” is defined this way, by law, then same-sex partners have no more right to be married than a 10-year-old has a legal right to vote. The 10-year-old should not complain that voting is being "denied" to them, since legally they have no right to vote. Or, I have the legal right to leave my computer, get in my car, and drive.  Should anyone tell me I cannot do this, it would be they who are violating the law.

The issue is not really about “marriage equality” or denying people the “right” to be married. The discussion stands or falls on the definition of “marriage.” The question “Should same-sex couples be allowed to marry?” is like, legally, the question “Should 10-year-olds be allowed to vote?” If Corvino is correct and we change the legal definition of “marriage” then of course, legally, same-sex couplesmust be allowed to marry. But talk about "marriage equality” is only relevant and irrelevant on whatever definition of “marriage” we take.

Here's an imaginary dialogue:

X - Gays cannot be denied the right to marry!

Y - But if "marriage" is legally defined as between a man and a woman, then gays are being denied nothing.

X - Then we must change the definition of "marriage" to include gays.

Y - If that happens then gays will be denied nothing again, since by legal definition they have the right to marry.

As Princeton’s Robert George et. al. state: “What we have come to call the gay marriage debate is not directly about homosexuality, but about marriage. It is not about whom to let marry, but about what marriage is. It is a pivotal stage in a decades-long struggle between two views of the meaning of marriage.” (Girgis, Sherif; Anderson, Ryan T; George, Robert P. What Is Marriage?: Man and Woman: A Defense, p. 1)

CAN YOU BE GAY AND CHRISTIAN?

I was recently with Michael for three days at our HSRM conference. He showed us this video, which well represents my views.

Consolation and Desolation: How to Discern the Voice of God

Downtown Monroe

How do we discern that the voice we hear is God’s and not merely our own, or that of our culture? I think it is a learned ability. 

We abandon ourselves to the movement of God’s Spirit. It’s like floating in a tube down a river, allowing the current to transport us wherever it will. Sometimes we hold tight as we shoot the rapids. Sometime we float, moved by the gentle flow. Both floating and rapid-shooting require submission. We do not control the speed or the direction. We trust that the river is taking us where it wants, at its pace.[1]

Discern-ability involves what the Bible calls “discernment of spirits.”[2] 1 John 4:1 instructs us to "test the spirits to see if they are from God." 

St. Ignatius believed the dynamics of spiritual discernment involve "consolation" and "desolation." Consolation is the sense that this is good, this is right, and God is present in this. Desolation is the loss of sense of God’s presence, that something is not right about this. A sense of consolation can be an indicator that this is from God; a sense of desolation can indicate that this is not from God.[3]

This is so helpful to me! I have found that these senses regularly accompany times of discernment. When I experience a “peace that passes understanding,”[4] it can be a sign that God is leading me. When I feel barren or empty, I judge this as not from God.

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[1] This analogy is from Ruth Haley Barton, Pursuing God’s Will Together.

[2] 1 Corinthians 12:10

[3] I owe this insight to Barton, Ib.

[4] Philippians 4:7


***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing:

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

In Conflict, Speak for Yourself

Downtown Monroe

Linda and I are home from a great week at our annual HSRM conference, plus four days of vacation in Holland, Michigan.

We did a workshop at the conference called "How to Counsel Struggling Relationships." One point we did not make is: When in conflict, speak for yourself. Do not bring other people into it.

Let's imagine persons X and Y are having a problem with something person Z does. X goes to Z, but Y does not. So far, so good, in the case of X.

X confront Z, but adds, "Y is upset with you, too."

Not good.

If Y is upset with Z, they need to lovingly confront Z themselves, instead of using X as their messenger.

When in conflict with someone, speak for yourself, not for others. 

***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing:

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

And, Linda and I are talking about co-writing our book on Relationships.

Freedom from the Need to Be Glorified

Butterfly in my backyard

"Our desire to be successful, well liked, and influential becomes increasingly less important as we come closer to God’s heart."

- Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life, p. 17

As we get transformed more and more into Christlikeness (Galatians 4:19) Christ becomes prominent, and "I" decrease into the background. In the language of Gestalt psychology, Jesus becomes "figure" and I become "ground." 

More and more all we want is for Christ to be magnified. We are not disappointed that he gets the attention because we are free from the need to be glorified. This freedom is realistic since, as Dag Hammarskjold once wrote, "reputation increases, ability decreases." (Hammarskjold, Markings)

For lovers of Jesus this is far from a letdown.

***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing:

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

And, Linda and I are talking about co-writing our book on Relationships.

The Distinction Between a "Career" and a "Vocation"

Holland, Michigan, sunset (7/2/18)

Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor under FDR from 1933 to 1945, distinguished between a "career" and a "vocation." A vocation is a calling. For her, it was a calling from God. David Brooks writes:

"If you do it for God, you will never grow discouraged. A person with a deep vocation is not dependent on constant positive reinforcement. The job doesn’t have to pay off every month, or every year. The person thus called is performing a task because it is intrinsically good, not for what it produces." (Brooks, The Road to Character, Kindle Locations 970-972; emphasis mine.)

In one particular extended and difficult time of her life Perkins cultivated her vocational calling by spending much time in silence at a retreat center, eating simple meals, working in the gardens, and praying. She wrote:

“I have discovered the rule of silence is one of the most beautiful things in the world,” she wrote to a friend. “It preserves one from the temptation of the idle world, the fresh remark, the wisecrack, the angry challenge…. It is really quite remarkable what it does for one." (In Ib.)

Silence, prayer, and simplicity before God nurtures and fuels one's vocation. With a calling comes a sense of "felt necessity," an "I must do this for a greater reason than my own happiness." Brooks writes:

"A person who embraces a calling doesn’t take a direct route to self-fulfillment. She is willing to surrender the things that are most dear, and by seeking to forget herself and submerge herself she finds a purpose that defines and fulfills herself. Such vocations almost always involve tasks that transcend a lifetime. They almost always involve throwing yourself into a historical process. They involve compensating for the brevity of life by finding membership in a historic commitment." (Kindle Locations 1014-1017)

Here Brooks quotes Reinhold Neibuhr:

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness." (Kindle Locations 1018-1022). 


***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing:

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

And, Linda and I are talking about co-writing our book on Relationships.

Where There Is Unity, There Is God's Blessing

Holland, Michigan

How good and pleasant it is
    when God’s people live together in unity!

² It is like precious oil poured on the head,
    running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
    down on the collar of his robe.
³ It is as if the dew of Hermon
    were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
    even life forevermore.

Psalm 133:1-3

When I was in a fraternity, as an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University, there were campus "fraternity games" every spring. The different fraternities challenged each other in athletic events. One of them was the tug-of-war.

Ten men lined up on two sides of a creek. They gripped a thick rope. They dug their heels in, leaned back, and tried to pull the other fraternity team into the creek. I loved watching this! These were big, strong guys, some of whom were on NIU's football team. One fraternity brother stood next to them and coached them, shouting to pull together, in unity. The winning team was the strongest, most-united team. Sheer strength was not enough to win this contest. There had to be a united pulling-together.

It is the same with Real Church. Sheer giftedness is not enough. There must be humble submission to one another, a united pulling-together. The Church wins when we pull together in the same direction, since God's blessing pour out on unity.

We see this in Philippians 2:1-2, one of the most beautiful unity-passages ever written. It says:

Is there any encouragement from belonging to Christ? Any comfort from his love? Any fellowship together in the Spirit? Are your hearts tender and compassionate? 2 Then make me truly happy by agreeing wholeheartedly with each other, loving one another, and working together with one mind and purpose.

Belonging to Christ.

Love.

Fellows in a ship together.

Tenderness.

Compassion.

Wholehearted agreement.

One another.

Working together.

One mind and purpose.

We pull together, for the same cause, the cause of Christ. We experience God's favor and blessing.

***
See also 

In Essentials Unity, in Nonessentials Liberty, and in All Things, Love.

***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing:

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation

Christopher Hitchens Against Abortion

My son Josh, taking a photo of me

More than sixty million abortions have been performed in America since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Now, perhaps, the way is clear to stop the slaughter of the innocents. Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced his retirement. When it comes to engraving the sexual revolution into our basic law, Justice Kennedy has provided the key votes, and often the rationales. Now he is leaving.
- R. R. Reno, "Overturning Roe V. Wade"

The late atheist Christopher Hitchens wrote an essay in Vanity Fair against abortion. Here are some quotes, with some parenthetical comments inserted. (Hitchens, "Fetal Distraction," February 2003) 

Remember that Hitchens was pretty much his own person and didn't much care whether his views were shared by others, to include other atheists. (See, e.g., The Faith of Christopher Hitchens.)

"I claim an absolute right to be interested in the condition of the human fetus because … well, I used to be one myself. I was in my early teens when my mother told me that a predecessor fetus and a successor fetus had been surgically removed, thus making me an older brother rather than a forgotten whoosh. I hope the thought of this hasn’t made me unusually self-centered, or more than usually so. And I’ve since become the father of several fetuses, three of which, or perhaps I had better say three of whom, became reasonably delightful children."

[Some abortion advocates liken the fetus to an appendix, or a tumor. Hitchens responds.] "If we need to remove an appendix or a tumor from our own personal spaces, then it’s nobody else’s *** business. I used to cringe when I heard this, not so much because in the moral sense fetuses aren’t to be compared to appendixes, let alone tumors, but because it is obvious nonsense from the biological and embryological points of view. Babies come from where they come from. The diagram of a vacuum-suction abortion in Our Bodies, Ourselves gave the female anatomy in some detail but showed only a void inside the uterus. This perhaps unintended concession to queasiness has since become more noticeable as a consequence of advances in embryology, and by the simple experience of the enhanced sonogram. Women who have gazed at the early heartbeat inside themselves now have some difficulty, shall we say, in ranking the experience with the planned excision of a polyp."

[Hitchens responds to the pro-abortion idea of "viability."] "Now and then there would be a tussle over whether it [the fetus; even the conceptus] was a fully “human” life, but this was casuistry. What other species of life could it be? Some states even announced laws on fetal personhood, conferring the moral equivalent of citizenship on every fertilized egg, thereby presumably extending to it the warm embrace of the equal-protection clause and voting rights at age 17¼.
That the most partially formed human embryo is both human and alive has now been confirmed, in an especially vivid sense, by the new debate over stem-cell research and the bioethics of cloning. If an ailing or elderly person can be granted a new lease on life by a transfusion of this cellular material, then it is obviously not random organic matter. The original embryonic “blastocyst” may be a clump of 64 to 200 cells that is only five days old. But all of us began our important careers in that form, and every needful encoding for life is already present in the apparently inchoate. We are the first generation to have to confront this as a certain knowledge."

[Human life begins at conception. But of course! It's not nice to take another human life.] "For the theologically minded, this provides what they never much desired before: a scientific confirmation of “life from conception” morality."

The rest of Hitchens's essay is interesting as he obviously distances himself from theism, is guilty of some red herrings, and engages in appeal-to-pity reasoning re. human beings who are conceived as the result of rape or incest.

***
Hitchens's reasoning has similarities with Baylor University philosopher and jurisprudential scholar Francis Beckwith. See my Beckwith post - Beckwith's Logical Argument Against Abortion.

***
My two books are:

Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing:

How God Changes the Human Heart

Technology and Spiritual Formation