Gay Marriage, Obama, And The Left

President Barack Obama recently announced his support for gay marriage claiming that his position had evolved.  He conveyed the sense that the decision was painful but ultimately the right thing to do.  He mentioned that he had known gays who deeply loved one another and were as committed to their relationship as any heterosexual couple.  And, so, as an open minded liberal, he was compelled to take this bold step and, in so doing, discard thousands of years of human tradition and experience.

But Obama had traveled down the gay marriage path already when he ordered (unconstitutionally) the Justice Department to stop defending DOMA or the Defense Of Marriage Act, a statute passed by large majorities in both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. 

As a man of the left, none of this should come as a surprise because it is in the nature of the left to subvert bedrock institutions, which, to their way of thinking, represent impediments to amassing greater power and control.  When one is given over to the worship of utopianism, there is little else that is sacred, certainly not institutions upon which the whole of society are based.

It is typical also that the left, which is adept at materializing straw men, has decided to frame the debate as a human rights matter, which is to say that opposition to gay marriage implies opposition to the human rights of gays.  It is a charade.

Gay marriage is, after all, not a “right,” as the left would have it but a defilement of a sacred institution, that of marriage.  The whole notion of “gay marriage” is also irrational, an oxymoron; it is not a "human rights" matter at all.

Gays cannot marry because they are sexually the same.  Whether they love one another and plan to spend the rest of their lives together is immaterial.  Marriage cannot be bent, folded, and twisted to suit personal preferences.  A proper understanding of marriage falls outside the realm of “rights,” for it is a descriptive term, a matter of logic, natural law, and biology.

Marriage, by definition, is between opposite sexes and must be as such.  Gender complementarity has always been a requirement of marriage, in every land and continent and throughout time, and the reasons are not difficult to fathom.  They are rooted in biology, and we are, in the end, biological creatures.

All of our organ systems, digestive, cardiovascular, pulmonary, and so on, are complete within each of us, save one: our reproductive system.  This one system requires a mate of the opposite gender to complete.  The marital act, indeed, is defined as coitus. 

Marriage is consummated by coitus, the union of reproductive organs, between a man and woman.  That this must be is self-evident.  Members of the same sex cannot perform the marital act.  They cannot marry. 

From marriage and the marital act comes the world and all that is within it: civilization, history, culture, science, and so on.

Without the marital act, there are no children, and the universe of relationships that arise from it: parents, children, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, grandparents and grandchildren; it is through the institution of marriage that total strangers are joined to form new families and relations; it is how the two houses of humanity, male and female, unite to bring children into the world.

Marriage is the institution that society wraps around the natural urges of men and women, to civilize the mating process, domesticate men, and to provide a suitable environment for the rearing of children.  It gives society's imprimatur to the relationship, recognizing the lifelong commitment made between a man and woman, and to elevate that relationship and confer special treatment upon it given its critical role to society in creating the next generation. 

Gender complementarity is also not limited to a discussion of genital organs.  Men and women complement each other mentally and emotionally as well.  They each provide unique and indispensible qualities to their marital bond as men and women and to their relationship with their children. 

The traditional, married family is the domestic unit upon which society depends; without it society cannot function and will eventually collapse, hence the need to protect it.  Therefore, traditional marriage is sanctified and given special legal and moral status.  New life cannot issue from the “union” of individuals of the same gender, and therefore it cannot be given equivalent status to marriage, or, for that matter, any particular status at all.  Society has no interest in it, and no public purpose is served in recognizing it.  For issues of inheritance, power of attorney, or other legal matters, domestic partnership arrangements can easily be formed without calling it marriage, no different than for, say, a grandfather and grandson living together and caring for one another, without regard to sexual relations or lack thereof.

To recognize gay marriage (and all the other “models” that would follow) would blur the significance of traditional marriage, desanctify and weaken it, and render it just another life style choice.

It would also disrupt essential norms and legal definitions around which civic life revolves: man, woman, husband, wife, mother, father: such “anachronistic” terms would be banished as “heteronormative” and hence “discriminatory”; it would unleash a storm of litigation against governments, religious institutions, organizations, schools, universities, and the like that may continue to employ such “outmoded” definitions as “husband” and “wife,” now considered "biased" or "bigoted" and therefore illegal.  It would, in effect, overturn the norms of society, legal and otherwise, a truly damaging and frightening prospect.

The matter, in other words, would let loose a host of new problems and unintended consequences, and hence is too fundamental to tamper with.

Gay rights activists often counter that men and women who marry and choose not to have children or for some reason cannot have children should somehow be disqualified from marriage since the standard argument for protecting traditional marriage is its critical role in producing offspring.  And, if not, then the definition of marriage (they argue) should be broadened to include gays.  But, of course, such couples (infertile or elderly couples, say) are included in the matrimonial fold because they are man and woman and therefore fulfill the requirement of gender complementarity.  The marital act or coitus serves not only for procreation but to renew and nourish a loving relationship between a husband and wife. Even couples of childbearing age do not engage in coitus solely for purposes of procreation but to enhance their emotional and spiritual bond with the pleasure of physical union.  Every coital encounter in the context of marriage may not have the goal of reproduction but still qualifies as the marital act.  This, of course, is axiomatic, but for the left, considered unconvincing.  But a man and woman that are married may enjoy the marital act, call it the marital act, whether they intend to have children or not.  Gays are biologically incapable of performing it, and cannot be included.

While gays enjoy the right to free speech, due process, and equal treatment before the law, there is no “right” to transform fundamental institutions to suit elite tastes or enhance gay self-esteem.  Society must tolerate gays but is not obligated to endorse their activities or their goals. 

But Obama and liberals support gay marriage.  Leftists see society as an oppressive, patriarchal, “heteronormative” oligarchy and seek to tear it down.  Traditional married families, furthermore, are autonomous islands that generally perform well enough without government assistance; they are bulwarks of middle class virtues and values, pockets of independence against encroaching government; as such, they thwart the leftist agenda. 

Liberalism thrives on social failure and collapse.  It feeds on broken families and dysfunction.  The destruction of the family has been a long-standing project of the left: welfare programs that incentivize family breakdown, the sexual revolution, feminism, and now gay marriage are tools to overturn the traditional family and the civil society in general that it may pursue its utopian ambitions.

Gay marriage must be resisted as another attempt by the left to uproot the very foundations upon which a healthy society is based.