Light On Dark Water

Sunday Night Journal — March 14, 2004

Although I have pretty strong political convictions and
opinions, I have not wanted to spend much time expressing them
here. (If you want to classify my politics, I’m a conservative of more
traditionalist than libertarian bent, and

Russell Kirk’sTen Conservative Principles are
more or less my own.)
This is not because of any reluctance on my part to say
what I think, but because the Internet is filled with intelligent
commentary on all sides of every possible question and I
don’t generally think I have much to contribute to these
debates.

Consider, for instance, the question of homosexual marriage.
It really should go without saying, although of course it does
not, that a Christian is opposed to this strange attempt to deny
and defy reality. I spent a little while earlier today trying to
come up with an analogy for the sheer scope of the revolution
embodied in the attempt to redefine the word
“marriage” to include persons of the same sex, and I
couldn’t come up with anything more striking than the thing
itself. I consider this proposal to be preposterous on its face
as an idea and probably catastrophic as a fact, if it were to be
ordained, as seems entirely possible, by the courts. Yet I
don’t want or intend to put a lot of effort into trying to
articulate the case against it, because other people are doing
that better than I could.

Before saying anything else on this subject I want to point
out that I have a great deal of sympathy for those who feel
sexual and romantic attraction only toward those of their own
sex. I have no wish to make their difficult situation any more
so. The Vatican was denounced by many homosexuals some years ago
when it described homosexual desire as “intrinsically
disordered.” But I thought, and think, this was actually a
fairly kind way to put it. As I understand it the phrase would
include any sexual desire not in keeping with God’s will,
which would mean any desire for anyone other than one’s
wedded wife or husband. Accordingly, I dare say there is no man
(I don’t think I’ll attempt to speak for women) who
has never felt sexual desire that was intrinsically
disordered—that is, directed toward a woman to whom he is
not married. (I include the period before marriage as well. I
suppose there is a distinction to be made between lust and the
romantic attraction which includes sexual desire, and between
lust and a pure appreciation of female beauty that does not quite
turn the corner of desire—otherwise how would anyone ever
fall in love? But I’ll leave these fine points to
theologians and confessors.) To be so constituted (and the
nature vs. nurture controversy is irrelevant here) as to feel
only illicit desire must be a heavy burden indeed. But to
attempt to ameliorate it by redefining the concept of marriage is
a mistake.

One very capable participant in this debate is Stanley Kurtz
of National Review. A couple of weeks ago Mr. Kurtz
provided, in a comment posted on
“The Corner”,
NR’s blog,

a link to a story [sorry, this link is no longer valid -mh 6/22/2010] upon which I cannot resist
commenting. It is by Lisa Duggan, a “professor of Queer
Studies” at New York University, and appears in the March
15 issue of The Nation. Mr. Kurtz is of the opinion that
to redefine marriage so as to include same-sex relationships will
prove destructive to the institution, which as everyone knows is
already pretty shaky. In answer to those who say it will have no
such effect he adduces several spokesmen for homosexuality who
share his opinion, except that they view the administering of the
death blow to “’traditional’ marriage”
and “its privileged status” as a good thing. Notice
those quotes; they are Ms. Duggan’s, and seem to indicate a
hostility to marriage so fierce as to be willing to doubt that
marriage as the union of male and female is in fact
traditional.

I could spend a long time arguing with much of what Ms. Duggan
says, but it hardly seems worth the effort. I think both sides of
this disagreement recognize that argument is almost beside the
point, that the disagreement is too deep and too fundamental for
that. But she makes a proposal that seems to warrant exhibition
as an example of just how deep the disagreement is. She sees no
reason why we should not scrap marriage as we know it for
“a flexible menu of choices for forms of household and
partnership recognition open to all citizens, depending on
specific and varying needs.”

These words provoked an instant and deep revulsion in me, and
I suggest that they ought to do the same to anybody with any
affection for the poor benighted human race, and any knowledge of
human nature. I am less shocked by the proposal for homosexual
marriage itself than I am by the cold and bloodless view of love
and community that are displayed here. Is this to be our future?
Does Ms. Duggan really believe that the torrent of passion that
flows through all we know of the history of the human race will
end finally in the chilled, shallow, and stagnant puddles of
“a flexible menu” for “partnership
recognition?”

This is the voice of someone who could read
Brave New World as a hopeful sketch for a happy future
(except of course that the class system would not be acceptable).
It would be a world with no more declarations of undying love,
no more vows, no more “in sickness and in health,”
no more till “death do us part,” but also a world with no
truly deep connections between persons, just a series of
convenient liasons. It is of course not a world that could ever
exist—human nature would see to that. But it’s hard for
me to see how anyone would even think it desirable.
For the first time in my literary life I am sympathetic to
Blake’s proverb of Hell: “Those who restrain desire
do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.” A
society which could operate happily on Ms. Duggan’s scheme
would not be fit for real men and women to live in. Better the
agony and ecstacy of all the doomed lovers of fact and fiction—Helen
and Paris, Tristan and Isolde, Heloise and Abelarde, Romeo and
Juliet, Dante and Beatrice, Scarlett and Rhett, all the
glory and pain of families happy and unhappy—than
“a flexible menu of choices for partnership
recognition.”