First, legal and ecclesiastical embrace of homosexual unions is more likely to undermine the institution of marriage and produce other negative effects than it is to make fidelity and longevity the norm for homosexual unions. We will come back to this later.
Second, and even more importantly, homosexual unions are not wrong primarily because of their disproportionately high incidence of promiscuity (especially among males) and breakups (especially among females). They are wrong because “gay marriage†is a contradiction in terms. As with consensual adult incest and polyamory, considerations of commitment and fidelity factor only after certain structural prerequisites are met.
The vision of marriage found in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures is one of reuniting male and female into an integrated sexual whole. Marriage is not just about more intimacy and sharing one’s life with another in a lifelong partnership. It is about sexual merger—or, in Scripture’s understanding, re-merger—of essential maleness and femaleness.
The creation story in Genesis 2:18-24 illustrates this point beautifully. An originally binary, or sexually undifferentiated, adam (“earthlingâ€) is split down the “side†(a better translation of Hebrew tsela than “ribâ€) to form two sexually differentiated persons. Marriage is pictured as the reunion of the two constituent parts or “other halves,†man and woman.
This is not an optional or minor feature of the story. Since the only difference created by the splitting is a differentiation into two distinct sexes, the only way to reconstitute the sexual whole, on the level of erotic intimacy, is to bring together the split parts. A same-sex erotic relationship can never constitute a marriage because it will always lack the requisite sexual counterparts or complements.
By definition homosexual desire is sexual narcissism or sexual self-deception. There is either (1) a conscious recognition that one desires in another what one already is and has as a sexual being (anatomy, physiology, sex-based traits) or (2) a self-delusion of sorts in which the sexual same is perceived as some kind of sexual other. As one ancient text puts it, “seeing themselves in one another they were ashamed neither of what they were doing nor of what they were having done to them†(Pseudo-Lucian, Affairs of the Heart 20). The modern word “homosexualâ€â€”from the Greek homoios, “like†or “sameâ€â€”underscores this self-evident desire for the essential sexual self shared in common with one’s partner.
I am not talking merely about what some prohomosex advocates derisively refer to as an “obsession with plumbing.†I am talking about a fundamental recognition of something holistic, an essential maleness and an essential femaleness. Why else would 99% of all persons in the United States (97% heterosexual, 2% homosexual) limit their selection of mates to persons of a particular sex? Why else do so many “gays†claim exclusive attraction for persons of the same sex rather than, say, gender nonconforming persons of the other sex? All this indicates a basic societal admission that there is an essential and holistic maleness and femaleness that transcend mere social constructs.
In this connection, too, it is interesting that homosexual men, even those who bear effeminate traits, usually desire very “masculine†men as their sex partners. Why? Undoubtedly many desire what they see as lacking in themselves: a strong masculine quality. Such a desire is really a form of self-delusion. They are already men, already masculine. They are masculine by virtue of their sex, not by virtue of possessing a social construct of masculinity that may or may not reflect true masculinity. They need not seek completion in a sexual same. Rather, they must come to terms with their essential masculinity.
In sum, why is “gay marriage†wrong? Most importantly, the idea of “gay marriage†is an oxymoron and a rejection of a core value in Judeo-Christian sexual ethics. Marriage requires the two sexes to reconstitute a sexual whole. By definition same-sex erotic attraction is predicated either on the narcissism of being attracted to what one is as a sexual being or on the delusion that one needs to merge with another of the same sex to complete one’s own sexual deficiencies. Arguing that we should grant marriage status to homosexually inclined persons to avert promiscuity is like insisting that we grant marriage status to adult incestuous or polygamous unions to promote relational longevity. It doesn’t address the main problem with this particular kind of sexual immorality.
But “gay marriage†is also wrong because it will more likely weaken the institution of marriage than moderate the typical excesses of homosexual behavior. The dominant rhetoric of “gay marriage†severs marriage from childbearing and, not surprisingly, leads to more out-of-wedlock births in the population as a whole. The fact that relatively few homosexual couples will get married precludes from the outset any major positive impact on homosexual behavior. Those that do get married will still experience extraordinarily high rates of outside sex partners and divorce, owing to the absence of complementary male-female dynamics. The result will be a further devaluation of monogamy and permanence for the institution of marriage.
Finally, “gay marriage†will bring about the ultimate demise of structural prerequisites for marriage (for example, as regards “plural unions†and adult incest) by making affection the ultimate trump card; increase the incidence of bisexuality and homosexuality in the population and thereby expose more young persons to their negative side-effects for health; and lead to the radical abridgement of the civil and religious liberties of our children, to the point of prosecuting any public expressions of misgivings regarding the active promotion of homosexual practice.
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