See the Obergefell v. Hodges opinion here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
The first premise of this Court’s relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.
That is why you fail.
Autonomous individuals don’t get married. They don’t even exist. And, at any rate, any autonomous individuals that might exist are ipso facto dysfunctional in civil society. We all depend, and we all either conform to certain reality-based norms, or we damage ourselves and others in our folly.
This nation takes folly for law, and treats law as folly.
Now, at its highest level.
Lord, have mercy.
On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and made an oration to them. And the people shouted, “The voice of a god, and not of man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died.
But the word of God grew and multiplied.
(source: Acts 12:21-24 RSVCE)
Lord, have mercy.
You got here first, but I had been planning to post a question for you. Do you now think it would be accurate to state that “all marriages” in the United States are based on a commitment to autonomous individualism? I’m hoping this might help me understand your (to me) perplexing social hermeneutic.
And in the fight against gay marriage, do you think that “halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster”?
Interesting.
1) No, but that is an interesting comparison, particularly in light of my stand against the Radner-Seitz “pledge” that was going around in First Things circles. I will mull it and combine the distinction or reflection with my response to your “social hermeneutic” comment, either in comments or a new post.
2) I could see that rhetorical gesture being appropriate in one conversation and inappropriate in another, and I would have to decide situationally whether I thought it was hyperbole or sloppy hyperbole. I would not consider agreeing to any “halfway measure” that denied the basic realities of the situation, i.e., of what marriage is and what no law can possibly change. Doing so would be destructive of lives and souls, and unacceptable. I would not support or approve, but would not feel equally strongly about, some sort of “established household” arrangement which treated permanent domestic combinations as similar to marriages for taxation and similar purposes, though.
I would support, in principle, something like the “established household” approach. See here: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/05/naming-the-realities-of-cohabitation-and-marriage
Right, that is a good example of something that one could at least sit down at the table and talk through without ceding one’s grip on reality in advance. Under certain very narros (and unfortunately unrealistic) circumstances, I could conceive of actually promoting shifting regime interactions to “household” as much as possible. But under any realistic circumstances, I would have to continue to criticize what such a scheme would explicitly countenance, and to urge the faithful to find ways to publicly institutionalize the distinction between such a “household” and marriage. Among the problems would be that this legal “household” regime could have no standing in matters of family law (custody, support, adoption, etc.), or else there is no successful compromise available.
Still mulling your first question.
But at least you do see the value of talking about compromise. Which can’t happen if we begin by denying the possibility of a common good or common reason by saying things like “halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster.”
It is impossible to categorically rule out strong rhetoric in a public debate. I understand your desire, but it does come down to case-by-case analysis. FWIW, I probably agree with you, based on my limited knowledge, that both in science and in rhetoric, Laudato Si overshoots. But to say that is not to establish categorical cans and cannots.
But one does have to get down to what things *are* and *are not*. What commonly happens in discussion, more and more as I become more habitually realist, is that “what it is” and “what we use it for” get conflated–or, rather, that “what it is” questions get answered in “what we use it for” terms.
What I’m getting at with finance–and what we will need to get at with the civil recognition of marriage and its civic consequences–is a question of “what is it” that underlies questions of “can it be good” and “are we using it well or badly” and so forth.
I am willing to be agnostic on “can it be good” until I know “what it is,” but I can see abundant evidence that we are using it badly, and most of the claims I see about what it is and why it is good or bad seem ill-founded. I am concerned, therefore, to identify what is really happenning–at an essential-humanity and civil-society level–when we deal with finance or with the civil recognition of marriage and its civic consequences; I am more concerned with this “what it is” than with whether discovering this will upset someone’s rhetoric. And therefore I will discuss that, and advocate on the basis of that, and what must happen in the way of a modus vivendi must happen in a manner which permits me to discover and affirm and advocate for reality, or it must lead to conflict.
See, your position takes as given that “Wars of Religion” in any sense–including one initiated by a regime intent on neutralizing certain publicly consequential beliefs and practices and the institutions by which they take place in history–are intrinsically evil, or cause for despair, or in some way ultimate Bad Things that we have an insuperable obligation to avoid. I have never agreed with this. I don’t even think it is possible to reason and advocate and work toward peace on such a basis. What I do think is that we ought to reason and advocate and work toward peace on the basis of reality, of the truths of reason and revelation which we have embraced, open to those which we may have missed–and that we ought not to have war if, without stepping off the ground of “speaking the truth in love,” we could have avoided it.
And I think that, if we are serious about this, we will find that the first spiritual necessity is the willingness to embrace martyrdom–to die daily, not in some abstracted or emotivist sense, but to actively make the effort to embrace the possibility that truth will get us killed, ruined, slandered, etc.–and then to proceed honorably and prudently to secure the best results we can. If that means commerce, so be it. If that means tact, great. If that means changing careers, well, we’ll have to figure that out. And so on, until death.
…and, no, I really don’t think it makes sense to try to find some generic language in which to discuss this. It does make sense to learn the language of others and translate, at times, but among Christians we ought to be able to speak with prophetic clarity. And when we face direct opposition, it is all the more important to pass from rationalizations about rhetoric to “take no thought what you will say” and “lean not on your own understanding.”