#LoveWins, human society losses

(I am again attaching an article of Robert Z. Cortez, a friend of mine. It has to do with the same-sex marriage decision of the US Supreme Court.)

BY now no one has not seen those rainbow-colored #LoveWins memes. Or those rainbow-colored hearts that Twitter tacked on to the hashtag to celebrate the victory of same-sex marriage in the Land of the Free.

Yet there was neither victory for love and marriage, nor victory for America in the Scotus decision. What that 5-4 Supreme Court decision did, in the words of marriage scholar and author Dr. Ryan Anderson, was “to short-circuit the democratic process… to put a stop to the national discussion we were having about the future of marriage.” For this, the decision meant a supreme loss for human society.

Why so? First, because in place of a sturdy and obvious definition that has served civilization well since the dawn of human history, the majority has replaced it with their own veneer and traditionless definition of marriage and a confused idea of marital love. And that, according to Chief Justice Roberts, without “even a pretense of humility.”

I certainly do not want to demean the love that exists between the homosexual couples who have sought, in the words of Justice Kennedy, simply “to find (marriage’s) fulfillment for themselves… not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions.” Yet, we know that ardent longings for fulfillment are not enough to change the nature and purpose of marriage. Indeed, longings cannot change the nature of anything.

And homosexual love, no matter how noble it may be, no matter how eternal it possibly could, indeed, no matter how desirous of marriage it is, simply is not and cannot be marital love. It may be a reflection of a human being’s basic need, but the fulfillment of that need in the homosexual person is not homosexual “marriage”. This is not dictated by bigotry; this is dictated by the nature and purpose of marriage.

Whatever that fulfillment may be, it should be admitted, is something that still needs to be truly discerned. It is something that needs to be pinned down and specified soon. In fact, expediting the process to do that may be the positive thing that will come out of this whole experience. This demands a sincere effort from everyone in society in terms of honest research and open discussion. But what is evident is that it is not to force the lie that in marriage biological complementarity does not matter, and that “mothers and fathers are interchangeable.”

Marital love is “the fullness of self-surrender, the completeness of personal commitment” manifested by a total openness to the begetting and raising of children. This means that marital love, although an end in itself, really does have a purpose: to stabilize marriage for the sake of the children. Marriage, in the words of Chief Justice Roberts, “arose in the nature of things to meet a vital need: ensuring that children are conceived by a mother and father committed to raising them in the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship.”

Marriage, then, demands complementarity all the way down to the biological, because it is there for the purpose of first begetting, then stably raising, children as far as it is possible. The so-called “personal complementarity” proposed by Catholic theologians Michael G. Lawler and Todd A. Salzman to justify gay marriage just doesn’t make the cut. Above all because it is bogus: personal complementarity ought to include biological complementarity. Human persons are, after all, bodies as well as spirits.

Sadly, instead of correctly and truthfully interpreting the natural law and the Constitution, as proper Supreme Court Justices ought to do, the sentimental reasoning of the majority limited them instead to propping up wounded self-esteem or helping seemingly hapless people find their way out of a lonely wood. Indeed, for a while, reading Justice Kennedy’s words, I thought I was reading a Hollywood script.

But what’s worse about the majority’s decision is not that it’s going to inspire a host of movies with this theme next Oscar season. It’s that it has replaced America’s strong democratic pillars – marriage and authentic democratic processes – with a “wobbly stick of a social experiment.” As a consequence, hatred and chaos loom somewhere over the rainbow. Where’s victory there for America?

Justice Alito wrote that the decision “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy.” Indeed, we know this is already happening. The day after the decision, one tweet from Stevie J West read “I have never seen hatred like the kind spewed from the frothing mouths of the ‘tolerant’ left. #LoveWins unless you dare to disagree.”

And the hatred will not end with speech. Indeed it hasn’t and hadn’t, even way before the decision came out.

People who hold deeply seated beliefs about marriage as it was always been understood have been litigated, summoned to courts, sacked from jobs, kicked out of school, and unjustly fined simply for living out a reasonable belief supported by more than 2,000 years of history. Moreover, despite traditional marriage believers doing them good service, the “tolerant left” would even demand from them not to express their beliefs in their own business premises.

Marriage perversion will follow. Ethicist Christian Brugger wrote as early as two years ago that “if we concede this type of Orwellian power to change meaning, then the possibilities for future redefinition remain open-ended.” And now it has come true. Hardly had the Supreme Court come out when promoters of legalized polygamy are gleefully rubbing their hands in preparation for assault. And after this, Brugger adds, marriage will go “beyond adults, and beyond humans. If we think otherwise, we’re naïve.”

Further, the “pot of golden marriage equality” at the end of the rainbow will not bring peace even to the LGBT community. Chief Justice Roberts warns, “There will be consequences to shutting down the political process on an issue of such profound public significance. Closing debate tends to close minds. People denied a voice are less likely to accept the ruling of a court on an issue that does not seem to be the sort of thing courts usually decide.”

Even considering just these points, this much is clear: America has lost in this decision. And because much of the world looks up to America and its model of democratic process, human society has lost as well.

It is thus imperative that America find its way back to enshrining both the truth of marriage and the truth of its democratic process, so it becomes once again the beacon it has been to the world.

Just don’t expect Justice Kennedy to lead the way. For he said the marriage “institution—even as confined to opposite-sex relations—has evolved over time”; yet if you ask him where it’s evolving to, it’s a sure bet he can’t tell you. Thankfully, there are, I believe, enough Americans of goodwill to lead and even more to actually make this happen–not without shedding blood, sweat, and tears.

As for the rest of the world who are just about ready to spring and follow America’s lead down this slippery slope, please. If only for the sake of leaving our societies a sane and orderly place for ourselves and for our children, let’s not do anything rash. Please pause and think a bit more.

Don’t follow America. In this decision, she is mistaken.

(Robert Z. Cortes is a PhD student in Social Institutional Communication at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce, Rome. He has an M.A. in Ed. Leadership from Columbia University, N.Y.)