Natural functions and marriage

[sw85]

Just came across a great article by Jim Kalb about marriage, specifically aimed at addressing one of the annoying arguments for gay “marriage”:

Over at MarriageDebate.com Maggie Gallagher has been dealing with one of the standard arguments for “gay marriage,” that there can’t be an essential connection between marriage and procreation because after all 70-year-old women are allowed to marry even though they can’t have babies.

…

It seems to me the argument presented by the “gay marriage” advocates isn’t opportunistic, but faithfully reflects the technocratic point of view now commonly identified with rationality itself. On that view, to say marriage has to do with the continuation of the species is to say that the relationship between marriage and having babies is like the relationship between an auto shop and fixing cars. Of course it’s not, so on that view no essential function can be found for marriage other than allowing people who feel connected to formalize their relationship. That’s the only result marriage brings about in each and every case, so that (the argument goes) must be its rational purpose. Such a view also seems to avoid an inhuman “biological machine” theory of sex that people believe would otherwise follow.

The argument would make sense if we were fundamentally technological beings whose lives consisted in the adaptation of means to whatever ends we happen to choose. That’s not so, though. What we understand ourselves to be has to do with qualities and relationships that are at once more subtle and complex and more stable and enduring than the technical requirements for choosing goals and bringing them about.

In fact, the fundamental social relationships that define who we are are based on not on technical rationality but on what might be called functional identities. One thing that defines me, for example, is nationality: I am American. The reason nationality matters is that it involves mutual promotion of the common good, and so has necessary functional aspects. Nationality means, among other things, that I should obey the laws, do my part to promote the common welfare, defend the country against its enemies, and so on. Nonetheless, I had the same nationality when I was a newborn and would have it if I were insane or on my deathbed. I would still be American if I became a traitor, and our allies during wartime do not become American even though they protect America from her enemies.

Nationality, then, doesn’t depend on actual performance or ability to perform certain social functions even though it has to do with those functions. It defines me as someone who characteristically would do and would want to do such things—conditions permitting—because of what I am, not as someone who happens to be in a position to do them just now. The fact nationality has to do with the characteristics that define us rather than specific cause and effect is what makes it a motivator that can be relied on. It is because it has to do with essential qualities that it goes deeper than the particular accidents and circumstances of life.

Being a man or woman, and being married, are like having a particular nationality only much more so, since sex has been around much longer and touches us much more deeply than nationhood. Marriage is constituted by what the participants and their relationship are understood to be. Being a man or woman is basic to what one is. The sexual union of a man and woman touches them deeply and by natural design—even if not in every case—produces children. Those things are far too basic to the pattern of human life to ignore or treat as purely technical matters. Marriage thus recognizes, orders and supports natural functional identities that we can’t help but feel and that can’t help but guide our actions, and thereby makes possible an orderly and reliable system for the connection of human beings to the social order and the continuation of the species.

Kalb has elsewhere criticized the radically technocratic view of human life that characterizes leftist understanding, e.g., in his “The Tyranny of Liberalism,” a great book.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

I read the title of this thread and expected it to be one of those “Do you leave the bathroom door open when you pee?” questions. Or even one like “My wife keeps walking in on me in the bathroom, I hate it but she says its no big deal”.

 

[R1ch4rd]

I read the title of this thread and expected it to be one of those “Do you leave the bathroom door open when you pee?” questions. Or even one like “My wife keeps walking in on me in the bathroom, I hate it but she says its no big deal”.

If she walks in and says “it’s no big deal” he’s justified in leaving the seat up

 

[atheistgirl]

Nationality, then, doesn’t depend on actual performance or ability to perform certain social functions even though it has to do with those functions. It defines me as someone who characteristically would do and would want to do such things—conditions permitting—because of what I am, not as someone who happens to be in a position to do them just now. The fact nationality has to do with the characteristics that define us rather than specific cause and effect is what makes it a motivator that can be relied on. It is because it has to do with essential qualities that it goes deeper than the particular accidents and circumstances of life.

One of the best arguments I’ve come across for homosexual marriage

Sarah x

 

[MilesVitae]

I’m disinclined to blame the argument “that there can’t be an essential connection between marriage and procreation because after all 70-year-old women are allowed to marry even though they can’t have babies” simply on a technocratic world-view. I think that conservatives, in general, present their own position incompletely and, thus, misleadingly when they argue that there cannot be homosexual marriage because one of the purposes of marriage is procreation. The manner in which our position is typically presented, I think, certainly gives the impression that the reason we consider a homosexual couple unable to marry is simply because that particular couple will not be able to procreate - which is not our position - and, as such, our acceptance of the marriage of infertile couples seems inconsistent.

 

[sw85]

One of the best arguments I’ve come across for homosexual marriage

Sarah x

How in the world do you construe that as an argument for gay marriage?

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

How in the world do you construe that as an argument for gay marriage?

Because sexuality is a fundamental part of who a person is?

 

[sw85]

Because sexuality is a fundamental part of who a person is?

Sex and sexual complementarity are fundamental parts of who a person is (i.e., they arise from human nature, which is what Kalb is talking about). If by “sexuality” you mean “sexual orientation,” then no it isn’t. It’s a social construct invented for politically-motivated reasons, which is why the phrase didn’t exist historically until about five minutes ago.