Now that the American Supreme Court has mandated all 50 states to redefine marriage, Northern Ireland seems to be the only patch of territory in the North Atlantic which does not legally recognise same-sex marriages. It would be easy to declare ourselves besieged by secularism and to issue dire apocalyptic warnings. But we believe that the case for conjugal marriage can still receive a fair hearing. It isn’t ridiculous to suggest that sexual relationships between men and women are important for our future and, therefore, we need an institution to suggest some norms for those relationships. So, instead of a jeremiad, we simply offer three thoughts in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling.
First, a British judge has ruled that the biblical sexual ethic, as traditionally conceived, is “worthy of respect in a democratic society, is not incompatible with human dignity and is not in conflict with the fundamental rights of others.” Furthermore, the judge’s ruling carries an implicit warning for employer’s tempted to discriminate on the basis of “stereotypical assumptions” about evangelical Christians and their beliefs. So everyone should recognise that one can affirm the biblical definition of marriage without being a mindless bigot or an intolerant homophobe.
Second, while we don’t counsel despair, we would hope that revisionists would avoid triumphalism. Some politicians seem to have replaced the norms supplied by tradition or religion with the norms suggested by opinion polls and focus groups. With due respect to President Obama, it was melodramatic and crassly invidious to celebrate the Supreme Court’s judgement by declaring “Love Wins”. That tweet seemed more worthy of Mills and Boon than John Stuart Mill. The issues are a tad more complicated: many fibres are woven together to make up the fabric of marriage; the institution plays many roles. We need to discern which are important, which are essential and which are merely incidental. Confetti and speeches are nice; but they are hardly necessary.
Yes, marriage is about love; but all of our relationships should be about love. Jesus even taught us to love our enemies. And the state would have no stake in the marriage business if it were simply about romance. To honour a romance, you write a poem, not a law. But the state should be interested in protecting families: this is why it recognises and protects marriage.
Now, every family is a large, complicated web of relationships, and roles are not simply defined. This allows families to adjust and respond to tragic circumstances. Sometimes a grandmother must act as a mother to her grandchildren; often two single aunts, or two single uncles, have combined resources to raise a child in one household. Sometimes, no child is involved: they simply provide companionship for one another.
In fact, given the flexibility inherent in the term family, if this debate had simply been about legally recognising different households as families, and extending the rights of marriages to those households, I would have no objection. This might even allow the state to tackle the crisis in providing foster homes and homes willing to adopt.
But however much honour and respect these households deserve – and no matter how much support they should receive from the state – we would never dream of calling the adults “married”. So what makes marriage distinctive? At the heart of every family there is a relationship between a man and a woman. Whatever our technological advances, a child cannot exist unless sperm and ovum meet.
With the advent of reproductive technologies, the relationship between the man and the woman might be little more than an impersonal, anonymous financial arrangement. Still, without that man and woman a new life would not be possible. We might try to obscure the facts of life with elaborate legal fictions but these stubborn simple, biological facts remain. Progress cannot write “male” and “female”, or “mother” and “father”, out of human nature.
It is also an inescapable fact that children seek to know and love their biological parents, and feel an acute loss when they can do neither. For better or worse, we feel a great attachment to the people who gave us our life and identity; all other things being equal, we need our parents to be as committed to one another as they are to us.
Our world is less than ideal: not every child will receive what they are owed. All the more reason, then, to help every child we can. The desire to nurture our own children is deeply etched into our nature: it takes considerable amorality to override this programming. Yet it takes guidance and encouragement to turn those instincts into unconditional love.
Every child should learn who gave them life; to know that the measure of love is not feeling and passion, but sacrifice and perseverance. Every person must be taught that the next generation depends on a man and a woman learning to love one another. It seems to us that this is the purpose of marriage; it is essential to its meaning. So when a man and woman vow to live together in a life-long, exclusive sexual relationship we protect that relationship and honour it as marriage. If romantic and erotic relationships were not linked to procreation there would simply be no need to single out exclusive, life-long sexual relationships for special treatment.
Third, the Supreme Court has sided with a secular social and intellectual revolution which is deconstructing marriage. Now, before conservatives call up the minute-men in righteous indignation, they should take a moment to acknowledge that both right and left wing political movements have contributed to this revolution. The unconstrained free market cannot recognise religion or tradition, so contraception and reproductive technology are readily available to everyone on demand. A laissez faire approcach to contraception, with easy access to abortion, has lead to a divorce between sexuality and procreation; procreation and sexual relationships are further torn asunder when reproductive technologies are available to everyone with a cheque book.
When faith and virtue are no longer treasured sex becomes thoroughly secularised. In this new intellectual climate, marriage can no longer valued as a union with transcendent meaning. It becomes merely one example of what social theorists call a “pure relationship”.
“Pure relationships” are defined by the partners, and not by law, community or tradition. Such love affairs have no value over and above the value the partners attach to it; such relationships exist solely to meet each partner’s needs and will naturally dissolve when one partner is no longer satisfied. Marriage is now simply one more type of living arrangement, with no inherent dignity or purpose. And the logic of the market says that it should be made available to every consumer, no matter who they wish to team up with. This is just what results when you strip society down to the free market.
In the Christian scriptures, marriage is not about our designs and plans. Marriage is part of a larger design; it is a way of life that has a specific place in God’s plan for the human race. In marriage romantic and sexual love find a transcendent purpose and a deeper significance.
Marriage is a status and an office; it is a calling to be a link in the chain of the generations. Every marriage reminds the world that men and women were made for one another, that every child will have a mother and a father, and that every mother and father should be fully and completely committed to one another in a faithful, exclusive relationship. The Supreme Court missed the message of marriage; now it is up to the Church to show it to the world.