With his customary elan and good humor, John Corvino dissects the peculiar logic of a recent National Review cover editorial insisting that marriage is “for” one thing and one thing only, which is, um, “mating,” which implies that paraplegics, like gays, can’t possibly marry, in any meaningful sense of the term, so the law shouldn’t let them.
Or something like that. No, it didn’t make sense to me, either.
I believe that same-sex marriage will prevail. The main reason is not that younger people are more friendly to the idea, though that’s certainly important. Demography isn’t necessarily destiny. Nor is the reason that cultural liberalism is on the march. After all, the younger demographic is turning against abortion, where the harm done to the third party is obvious.
The real reason is that, to a growing number of people who take a common-sense view of marriage (e.g., marriage is a good thing whether you can have kids or not) and who are not burdened with superstitious ideas about homosexuality, the arguments against gay marriage just don’t make sense. NR’s editorial is a case in point.
19 Comments for “Don’t Let Paraplegics Marry!”
posted by John Howard on
I think “mating” means “doing things that might create genetic offspring.” So mating can be a man and a woman having sexual intercourse, or it can be a man and a woman going to a lab and hiring a surrogate to create offspring for them, or it can be a same-sex couple going to a lab to create offspring, but it can’t be orgasmic BJ’s or other things that will not create offspring (though I suppose mating could occur from, uh, drips (sorry))
Paraplegics are allowed to try to mate, they are allowed to do things that might result in offspring. Perhaps they will need assistance, perhaps even stem cell derived replacement gametes and a surrogate mother to carry the resulting mated embryo. Perhaps in ten years there will be other options that will enable them to mate, perhaps by curing their paralysis or repairing their organs. Even if we don’t allow them to use replacement gametes, we still approve and affirm of them conceiving offspring together, in concept. We should not approve and affirm of same-sex couples conceiving offspring together, even in concept, because their mating would be unethical due to the genomic imprinting being the same, and the need for genetic engineering and experimentation.
posted by Amicus on
We should not approve and affirm or license a couple who have hate, disregard, or disrespect for children, to the point that they abuse them.
Indeed, if you take the time to get past the restrictive, limited, and thinly reasoned ‘natural law’ of marriage, you see that the spiritual foundation of marriage and of the responsibility assumed toward children is not rooted in penis-vagina.
posted by Jorge on
We should not approve and affirm or license a couple who have hate, disregard, or disrespect for children, to the point that they abuse them.
Do you think it’s actually possible to dismantle this argument without sabotaging the case against gay marriage?
posted by Amicus on
I wouldn’t try it. I mean, the people I’d like to license “ideally” to have offspring are the ones who will be loving, reliable, committed parents. You?
posted by Carl on
“The real reason is that, to a growing number of people who take a common-sense view of marriage (e.g., marriage is a good thing whether you can have kids or not) and who are not burdened with superstitious ideas about homosexuality, the arguments against gay marriage just don’t make sense.”
I do respect what you have to say on this subject, but I wouldn’t count on anything moving forward on the gay marriage front because an argument might not make sense. These arguments are based on fear, and they tend to work. They are also based on a lot of straight people who don’t really feel that they are doing any big harm by opposing gay marriage even if they are not virulently against the matter. It is a very easy default position to oppose gay marriage, and more often than not, the public will elect those who oppose gay marriage and will go along with most ballot measures against gay marriage or other partnership benefits.
posted by Jimmy on
At most wedding ceremonies I’ve ever attended, and every set of vows I’ve ever heard, I’ve never heard anything with regard to children in those vows. When two people enter into a marriage, the proceedings are about the sanctity of the depth of love that causes people to commit to each each other in such a profound way. THAT is what western civilization has given to the understanding of marriage. We don’t do arranged marriages, we don’t expect a dowery, we let people of different classes marry.
Why? Because we have placed so much sanctity on love. Might sound corny, but it is love between two people that is valued most in the West. This is why we let people marry on a whim; we still believe in love at first sight. We’ve created meccas where passion inflamed people can get married quickly.
It is sad to me that in so much of the debate about marriage and what it means or should mean, the main instigator, LOVE, always seems to forgotten.
posted by Amicus on
JH said: “Oh, and to Amicus’s first comment, I’m not sure what the argument is, because surely he realizes that such a test would be unconstitutional and impractical and arbitrary and draconian and nightmarish, and …”
=======
No. What I’m pointing out is that you have, like many others, looked around and abstracted an “ideal”.
What I’m pointing out is that you have abstracted the wrong thing, penis-vagina, a la Thomas Acquinas; and this leads you and many, many others to wrong statements, assessments, pronouncements, and more. It’s why no one understands your “theology”, intuitively, only highlighted by the challenge from gay marriage.
In fact, the ideal for procreation are two parents who will be loving, reliable, committed to their children. It seems self-evident, to say so.
(At this point, you can read from your queue cards are “parents”, and I will respond.)
posted by Amicus on
“are ‘parents'” s/b “about ‘parents'”
posted by John Howard on
I haven’t abstracted an ideal, I’m making a practical argument about public policy being better served by prohibiting genetic engineering of babies and same-sex procreation. It’s based on the natural fact of sex and the biology of genomic imprinting that makes someone of the other sex necessary to truly and ethically reproduce and have offspring.
And it’s not “abstracting an ideal” to argue that all people should have an equal right to marry and procreate with their spouse, that’s defending a basic human right, and also warding off government regulation and commercial exploitation and environmental damage that would come from stripping the right to use our own unmodified genes from our marriages.
What is “abstracting an ideal” is the fantasy of Postgenderism, that in some abstract perfect world, people don’t have fixed genders and can have healthy perfect children with anyone of either sex, with no harm to the environment or use of resources or cost to the public or loss of other people’s rights. That’s mean spirited. Transhumanism is based on a disgust and disrespect for humanity, a moral disapproval of breeders who are not perfecting the gene pool and caring for their precious children with enough attention to their eugenic glory. Transhumanism (especially Libertarian Transhumanism) is mean-spirited and abusive.
You should all try caring more about actual gay couples raising children who don’t have federal recognition and don’t have any state recognition, and who don’t care about some abstract right to procreate together, they are offended that you are obsessed so much by it.
posted by Throbert McGee on
Corvino wrote:
Thomas Aquinas himself (i.e., one of the most prominent expounders of “Natural Law” moral theology) anticipated the objection that genitals aren’t the only body parts that can be put to multiple uses. He observed that most people don’t call it “immoral” or “disordered” to walk around on one’s hands even though it’s “contrary to nature”, and allowed that some people, by analogy, would not call it immoral to
use the genitalsejaculate semen for non-reproductive purposes. (NB: It wasn’t even “misuse of the genitals” in general that Aquinas was concerned with, so much as “misusing semen.”) And having anticipated this objection, Aquinas tried his damnedest to justify his insistence that jizzing on the ground or on a woman’s tits or in another man’s mouth was a sin, but walking on your hands instead of your feet, although manifestly contrary to the natural purpose of hands, was somehow not sinful.And by “tried his damnedest,” I mean that, damn him, he didn’t even try. Aquinas’s answer, in just two Latin sentences, boils down to “walking on one’s hands isn’t harmful, but non-reproductive ejaculation is incompatible with the preservation of the species.” (Aquinas himself might have had an inkling of how weak this argument is, because right after this he skips directly to the Scriptural quotations to bolster his case.)
posted by Throbert McGee on
By the way, I would strongly encourage everyone with an opinion on same-sex marriage to read chapters 122 – 124 from Book Three of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles (loosely, “How to Win an Argument with Bible-Rejecting Heathens” — the Latin Gentiles here signifies “all non-Christian peoples except for Jews, who are grandfathered in”)
Ch. 122 — THE REASON WHY SIMPLE FORNICATION IS A SIN ACCORDING TO DIVINE LAW, AND THAT MATRIMONY IS NATURAL
Ch. 123 — THAT MATRIMONY SHOULD BE INDIVISIBLE
Ch. 124 — THAT MATRIMONY SHOULD BE BETWEEN ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN
These “chapters” are quite short and all three can be read in a few minutes. But it’s worthwhile taking more time to digest them, because Aquinas’s arguments and premises continue to shape the thinking of many people who oppose same-sex marriage.
posted by Amicus on
JH,
You have indeed abstracted an ideal.
You argue, as do others, that we offer up marriage licenses to those who we know cannot and will not reproduce by ‘natural insemination’ (the sterile, the elderly, parapalegics), because they could “in concept” (your terminology), i.e. they have the form required, the “ideal” biological form, the appropriate abstraction.
What I’m saying is that you and others, in haste to bring the argument to a predisposed end, perhaps, have the wrong abstraction, a conclusion which is laid plain if you examine the spiritual foundation of marriage. In spirit, we talk metaphorically, spiritually about the Church as ‘the bride of Christ’, and so forth. Gender is ‘symbolic’, not literal, if it is present at all. There is no penis-vagina. There is an oath, that has nothing to do with biological impetus, etc.
From this, it is fairly easy to conclude that the “ideal” for who should procreate are those who will be loving, reliable/responsible, committed parents.
The rest of it all comes after that, the biology and so forth, and there may be other ideals to consider as well, but if one gets the notion wrong at the start, one will have poorly informed the rest of the considerations, without doubt.
You can see why my analysis leads to a better ideal than yours. Ideally, you are sanctioning bad parents, licensing them, simply because of the biology of forms. What’s worse, you are defending that ideal, even with that horrible license to abusive parents, against allowing or affirming others who would be loving, reliable / responsible, committed parents, namely gay couples. In your ideal, you would preference bad, nongay parents, over stellar gay parents, a clear indication of prejudicing form to function.
As for transhumanism, I don’t think that is what is implied by gay couples who seek children, on quite the grand scale that some make it out to be. Why? Because their action in doing so has reference to their own group, not to the broader society. Put more simply, to be gay and to have kids is not to make a grand, normative statement about all child rearing. It’s better understood as an “exception”, as 1% of all couples and self-limiting, too.
posted by Jorge on
(Aquinas himself might have had an inkling of how weak this argument is, because right after this he skips directly to the Scriptural quotations to bolster his case.)
Uhhh, that’s how a priest theologian is supposed to argue a point. Out of many possible authorities, a citation of God’s word is the strongest. The ultimate explanation for any black-and-white moral position on how a Christina should conduct himself is “because God said so.” If he believed his argument to be weak, he would be using little Scriptural reference and more mundane arguments.
I’ll admit Cardinal Ratzinger’s treatment of same sex unions goes a lot further, but there was more dissent at the time. The weaknesses are the same.
posted by Throbert McGee on
But the argument I was talking about is from Summa contra Gentiles, a work in which Aquinas strives to minimize his reliance on scriptural quotes and couch his arguments in secular terms as much as possible. (Loosely, the title means “A Concise Guide to Arguing with Bible-Rejecting Heathens” — the Latin Gentiles here signifies “all non-Christian peoples except for Jews, who are grandfathered in”).
So, in Ch. 122 of Book Three from contra Gentiles, Aquinas spends some time developing the secular arguments against fornication and in favor of matrimony — for example, appealing to observations of birds and wild beasts to argue that polygamy makes sense in species where the young are able to fend for themselves relatively soon after birth, but less so in species where the young remain dependent on parental care for a long time. But by comparison, his treatment of “illicit emissions of semen” is quite abrupt and poorly developed:
Ch. 122 — THE REASON WHY SIMPLE FORNICATION IS A SIN ACCORDING TO DIVINE LAW, AND THAT MATRIMONY IS NATURAL
Incidentally, Aquinas specifically cites Lev 18:22 (“A man shall not lie with a man as with a woman”) to demonstrate that Scripture opposes “illicit emissions of semen”, but that’s his only reference to homosexuality — he doesn’t otherwise discuss it as a type of fornication.
And Chapter 124, by the way, is titled (cough) “THAT MATRIMONY SHOULD BE BETWEEN ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN” — though, admittedly, he is only concerned with arguing against polygyny and polyandry among heterosexuals, and does not consider same-sex pairing even as a hypothetical case.
posted by Jorge on
Christina>>Christian. Don’t ask.
posted by John Howard on
Wow Amicus, you are actually saying that gay people and only gay people should be allowed to use reproductive technology, and that only “loving” people should be allowed to procreate offspring? By “loving” I am sure you mean pro-gay, right? And “abusive” would be a religious or anti-gay parent, right? I knew this sentiment was common in eugenicist gay transhumanist beliefs, but usually people keep it hidden. Thanks for sharing your scary beliefs.
posted by Amicus on
As long as one admits that there are good and bad parents, then I’m not worried.
I didn’t limit reproductive technology just to gays (clearly the nongay infertile could be allowed, handled as an exception).
I haven’t said anything about wholesale eugenics or the vexing practical problem of determining who non-abusive parents are.
Penis-vagina is one answer to that vexing problem, it’s the imperfect implementation of an ideal. Unless you see it in that frame, one risks taking it for something it is not.
I will go further and suggest that, historically, it was also the Chruch’s _political_ tool, to fight politically (wrongly?) the transhumanist beliefs and other philosophies that were a challenge. But, they got carried away, and swept too much in by failing adequate recognition for gay couples, ended up too rigid, ended up with a lingering injustice. (Indeed, it is the Church that is being tested, in all this, not the gays…)
posted by Throbert McGee on
Returning briefly to Aquinas’ arguments about matrimony in Book Three of Summa contra Gentiles, I would also draw attention to Ch. 125:
THAT MATRIMONY SHOULD NOT TAKE PLACE BETWEEN CLOSE RELATIVES
What some readers may find surprising is that Aquinas argues against incestuous marriage without making a single reference to the biological effects of inbreeding — since, as a 13th-century writer, he may have been more or less unaware of these effects. (The genetic harm of close-kin matings can be subtle and hard to see without observing entire populations over generations of regular inbreeding.)
Instead, he argues that the emotions engendered by sex are incompatible with the sentiments that are proper between siblings, or between parent and child. For example, siblings are supposed to be publicly respectful towards each other, but it would be impossible for a brother and sister to authentically respect each other if she knew that he had a needle-dick, and he knew that she barks like a dog when she comes. (That’s not the EXACT form of Aquinas’ argument, but it’s what he’s getting at.)
ANYHOW, the reason I bring this up is that I see in this chapter a potential rebuke to those who would propose the compromise that gay couples and elderly neighbors and caregivers for retarded adults could all “share” Domestic Partnerships as a common legislative solution, while reserving Marriage for heterosexual couples. (In fact, the NRO editorial seems to be leaning in exactly this direction — tacitly endorsing DP laws so long as gay couples aren’t the only beneficiaries. And in this respect, NRO is at odds with many religious conservatives; for example, the Vatican says that obedient Catholics must oppose DP law just as fervently as they oppose SSM legislation.)
But you could draw on Aquinas’ reasoning in Ch. 125 to argue that since gay couplings involve “carnality,” it would be improper and socially confusing to call them by the same name and under the same legislation that is used for platonic domestic partnerships, as between two heterosexual widows who own a house together.
posted by John on
Thank you Throbert, I’ll never read Aquinas quite the same way again.