Category: Cultural Commentaries

Analysis: Marriage and the Presidency

~ Evan Lenow

Robert George is one of my favorite philosophical and political thinkers. He has co-authored a short analysis of President Obama’s recent comments regarding same-sex marriage. George, Ryan Anderson, and Sherif Girgis demonstrate two competing views of marriage in society. The first is the historic, conjugal view as they describe below:

Marriage as a comprehensive union: Joining spouses in body as well as mind, it is begun by commitment and sealed by sexual intercourse. So completed in the acts by which new life is made, it is specially apt for and deepened by procreation, and calls for that broad sharing of domestic life uniquely fit for family life. Uniting spouses in these all-encompassing ways, it also calls for all-encompassing commitment: permanent and exclusive. Comprehensive union is valuable in itself, but its link to children’s welfare makes marriage a public good that the state should recognize, support, and in certain ways regulate. Call this the conjugal view of marriage.

The other option is the revisionist view. They describe this view as:

Marriage as the union of two people who commit to romantic partnership and domestic life: essentially an emotional union, merely enhanced by whatever sexual activity partners find agreeable. Such committed romantic unions are seen as valuable while emotion lasts. The state recognizes them because it has an interest in their stability, and in the needs of spouses and any children they choose to rear. Call this the revisionist view of marriage.

The brief analysis the authors provide is also very important. Here are some highlights:

Now that the president has disclosed his view, he — like all revisionists — must confront some tough questions. And he, like they, will run into a problem. Something must set marriages as a class apart from other bonds. But on every point where most agree that marriage is different, the conjugal view has a coherent explanation — and the revisionist has none.

President Obama, like most, surely thinks that marriage is inherently a sexual union. But why must it be, if sex contributes to marriage only by fostering and expressing emotional intimacy? Non-sexual bonding activities can do that. Why can’t the tender platonic bond of two sisters be a deep emotional union, and therefore a marriage? Or, if marriage is primarily about the concrete legal benefits — of hospital visitation, or inheritance rights — should these benefits be denied two cohabiting sisters just because their bond can’t legally be sexual? To all this, the conjugal view has an answer.

Again, if marriage is essentially about emotions and shared domestic experience, why should it be limited to two people? Newsweek says the U.S. has half a million polyamorous households — where emotions and experiences are shared with multiple partners. Surely three people can be emotionally united, and some say that the variety of polyamory fulfills them as the consistency of monogamy can’t. So if marriage is about emotional fulfillment, why stop at two? The conjugal view has an answer.

Finally, if marriage is distinguished just by being a person’s deepest bond, her number one relationship, why should the state get involved at all in what basically amounts to the legal regulation of tenderness? The conjugal view has an answer. The revisionist has none.

The debate over the nature of marriage is one that will play a key factor in this year’s Presidential election. However, it is not merely a political issue. It is a theological issue. It is a societal issue. It is a human issue.

Please read the full article from George, Anderson, and Girgis. It is well worth your time.

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Ryan T. Anderson, Robert P. George, and Sherif Girgis, “Marriage and the Presidency,” National Review Online, May 10, 2012.

Obama Supports Gay Marriage

~ Evan Lenow

On the heels of the referendum vote in North Carolina yesterday, President Obama came out today in support of gay marriage in an interview with ABC News. Despite the fact that many referendum votes on gay marriage have resulted in huge margins of victories for supporters of traditional marriage (the NC vote was 61%–39% in favor of the marriage amendment), the President has reached his conclusions on the basis of personal experience.

President Obama had the following to say regarding the evolution of his position:

I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

Another telling point he made in the interview is that he previously thought that civil unions would have been sufficient to guarantee rights of hospital visitation and other rights related to marriage. He also expressed concern about infringing on the traditional and religious connotations of the term “marriage.” However, he finally concluded that he needed to stake his claim in support of same-sex marriage.

The President also considers the debate over same-sex marriage to be generational. He recounted that he speaks to Republicans on college campuses who share his views about same-sex marriage despite the fact that they have differing views on other policies.

Another interesting element of the interview is that the President recognizes his departure the historic Christian position on homosexuality. He states:

[Y]ou know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated.

While it may be a subtle acknowledgement, I am thankful to see that President Obama recognizes his views are at odds with the Christian community. In essence, he places his own personal experience above the teaching of Scripture and the church. Unfortunately for the President, this places him in a precarious position for an ethical standard. While he claims to live by the principles of Scripture, he is willing to set aside the standards of his own choosing to make himself and his friends feel better about their own experience. Instead of filtering his views through the lens of Scripture, he has filtered Scripture through the lens of experience.

Such an approach to ethics carries severe risks because the personal experience of individuals can be used to justify almost anything. What happens when the President meets polygamists who are in committed relationships seeking to rear their children? What happens when the President befriends a brother and sister who desire to have their incestuous relationship recognized as a legitimate marriage? If personal experience is our only guide, then we have jumped headlong down a very slippery slope.

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Rick Klein, “President Obama Affirms His Support for Same Sex Marriage,” May 9, 2012.

Defining Marriage in Politics

~ Evan Lenow

Tomorrow is a big day for marriage in North Carolina. The statewide primary election includes a vote on a referendum seeking to place a constitutional amendment on the books defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. This would, in effect, place a ban on same-sex marriages in the state. Heavy hitters from both sides of the spectrum have weighed in to the discussion including Billy Graham supporting the amendment and Bill Clinton speaking against it.

The May 8 vote in North Carolina comes on the heels of other politicos expressing their views on same-sex marriage. Over the weekend, Vice President Joe Biden declared that he is “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage. Biden’s comments stirred quite a bit of controversy among White House staffers since President Obama has yet to make any definitive statement regarding his own position. He has said that his views are still evolving. This morning, Education Secretary Arne Duncan also affirmed his support for gay marriage.

Both the marriage amendment vote and the statements by Biden and Duncan bring to the forefront the discussion of the definition of marriage. In all of these circumstances, marriage is being defined in political and legal terms. In his “Meet the Press” interview, Biden said:

I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.

Biden claims that marriage is about civil rights. These civil rights include inheritance rights, the ability to file joint tax returns, property rights, etc. This line of reasoning identifies the marriage debate as one similar to the civil rights debate of the 1960’s.

The NC marriage amendment reads as follows:

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

This views marriage as a legal contract recognized by the state. It is interesting to note that the amendment allows for other avenues to address property rights of individuals who want to enter contracts that are outside the legally recognized status of marriage.

What neither of these political definitions address is one of the most foundational roles of marriage—the rearing of children. Both theologically and biologically, one of the main ends of marriage is procreation and the rearing of children. In fact, this is a very real public good accomplished through marriage.

In Genesis 1:28, we see that God commands the first man and woman to be fruitful and multiply. In this very first command, we have the institution of one of the ends of marriage—procreation. By implication in that command is the idea that the couple will nurture their own children to maturity until the children can form marriages of their own and repeat the process.

Biologically, we recognize that heterosexual marriages are the only types of marriages that can reproduce their own biological offspring. Thus, homosexual marriages are cut off from accomplishing the task of rearing their own children.

Of course, we must admit that not all marriages include children and not all marriages that do include children are successful at rearing them. However, this does not invalidate this aspect of the argument against same-sex marriage. The biological potentiality of reproduction in heterosexual marriage points to the societal good accomplished by fathers and mothers in committed marriages.

The civil rights argument for same-sex marriage must institute a false limit to prevent the same argument from being used for polygamous, polyamorous, and incestuous marriages. True fidelity to the civil rights argument, by necessity, must include those forms of marriage in the definition. However, most proponents of homosexual marriage desire to stop short of that definition—claiming monogamy is still the ideal.

As we consider the political definitions of marriage thrust upon the public square by referendum and talking heads, we must recognize that there is more to the definition of marriage than just a contractual arrangement between a man and a woman. I have just attempted to demonstrate one aspect of the traditional definition of marriage neglected in recent political attempts to define marriage. A full discussion of a well-rounded definition of marriage is reserved for another time.

Let us not be sidetracked in our understanding of marriage to limit it simply to a domestic legal union recognized by the state. Certainly that is part of the contemporary context of marriage, but there is more to it than that.

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John Frank, “Final poll gives marriage amendment clear advantage,” News and Observer, May 7, 2012.

“Obama Cabinet member Arne Duncan backs gay marriage, one day after Biden comments,” Fox News, May 7, 2012.

The Feminist Idea of Reproductive Justice

~ Evan Lenow

I have already written a few pieces about the Health and Human Services mandate requiring contraceptives and birth control to be dispensed at no charge as part of group insurance plans. I have made theological and political arguments about the issue here. In a piece published this past weekend on The Public Discourse, Mary Rose Somarriba develops a natural law argument against the mandate and exposes the feminist idea of reproductive justice. Here are a few highlights:

For supporters of the recent HHS mandate that forces religious institutions to buy insurance that makes these items free to their employees and students, the cause served is “reproductive justice.” It was as past president of Law Students for Reproductive Justice that Sandra Fluke testified to Congress—as a victim of injustice who, along with her female peers at Georgetown, suffers from not having contraception paid for her in full.

But what is “reproductive justice”? To help answer that question, perhaps we should first ask: Who is guilty of the injustice? For Fluke, it’s her school that “creates untenable burdens that impede our academic success.” But of course it’s unfair to say that an institution, by not covering the cost of some product, implicitly creates burdens for its female students. My employer, by not covering my preferred allergy medicine, doesn’t create my burden of allergies. My allergy problems are internal to myself. They are, so to speak, natural problems I live with, ones I cannot label as someone else’s fault. Unless I were futilely to blame, say, God or nature.

Even though it seems ridiculous to blame nature for this “injustice,” Somarriba argues that blaming nature is exactly what feminists are doing with their arguments for reproductive justice and reproductive freedom. She continues:

But I would argue that underneath it all, advocates of “reproductive justice” do blame nature. Nature is the true obstacle to these women’s idea of justice.

Fluke might not put it this way, but radical feminists who cling to terms like “reproductive justice” and “reproductive freedom” are really trying to beat the cards that nature dealt them. They want sexual license outside the scope of what nature provides as the healthiest course—sex with one person for a lifetime. They object to the reality that sex can naturally lead to babies, creating burdens that research shows they’d be best suited to bear with the help of a husband. Underneath sexual liberationists’ wish to overthrow patriarchal traditions of marriage and religious institutions’ principles of sexual ethics, there seems to be a wish to overthrow the most stubborn foundation of all—nature herself.

The conclusion of the article is that reproductive justice and reproductive freedom are manufactured “rights” that have no grounding in nature nor the Constitution. Somarriba writes:

So, getting back to our original question: What is “true reproductive freedom”? If it means absolute sexual license without consequences such as pregnancy and children, then it has the unfortunate attribute of never before existing in history. It’s not a freedom that women have ever fully exercised; it isn’t one that was possessed by women at some time but was taken from them and thus needs to be safeguarded from violators.

Nevertheless, terms like “reproductive freedom” and “reproductive justice” are the rallying cries of such advocates. For Hoffman and her comrades, unwanted pregnancy is an unjust imposition on women who are sexually active. Technology such as contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization have nearly evened the scales of reproductive justice—even if not completely; as long as women have had to pay for these things, they’re still being treated unjustly.

The article is an interesting read and worth your time.

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Mary Rose Somarriba, “The Battle Against Nature’s Sexism,” The Public Discourse, April 20, 2012.

For my other articles on the so-called “contraceptive mandate,” visit https://evanlenow.wordpress.com/tag/contraception/.

Is Atheism Ethically Rational?

~ Evan Lenow ~ 14 Comments

Yesterday morning the local Dallas-Fort Worth Fox affiliate (KDFW, Fox 4) ran a story about a local group of atheists who are sponsoring some billboards in the DFW Metroplex targeting families and children. The billboards promoting the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason are specifically timed to be up during the Easter season and proclaim, “Our families are great without religion.” This same group focused advertising campaigns toward African Americans during Black History Month and paid for ads on the sides of Fort Worth buses leading up to Christmas that read, “Millions of Americans are good without God.”

With freedom of speech and freedom of religion in this country, the DFWCoR is certainly free to hold such beliefs and even to advertise to potential constituents. In the marketplace of ideas, however, we need to ask the question: Are their claims rational? Specifically of interest to me is whether or not their ethical claims are rational.

On their website, the DFWCoR makes the following claim:

For the religious community, we want them to realize that, although nontheists reject the supernatural, we share with them compassionate human values that most religious believers embrace. In most ways, we are like them, hard working, tax paying, moral citizens who care deeply about our families, our communities, our state and our country.

My question is on what basis and from which foundation do they reach the same “compassionate human values” that religious believers hold? For most “religious believers,” be they Christian, Jewish, Mormon, or even Muslim, they draw their morals and values from a source they claim to be divinely inspired. For Christians, we believe that the Bible is God’s inspired Word and that He communicates to us His expectations for our lives and our ethics.

Atheists, on the other hand, reject any supernatural source of revelation regarding ethics, morals, and values. At best, they rely upon their own reason to reach the conclusion that certain values are desirable or even (dare I say) required. Thus, an individual’s reason becomes supreme in the formulation of ethics.

This is not a new position. John Frame discusses the historical evidence of this position as he writes:

[T]he Greek philosophers sought to understand the world without reference to religion or tradition—and certainly without reference to the God of Scripture. Their chief authority was human reason, functioning independently of revelation and tradition. That view of reason I describe by the phrase rational autonomy.

The problem with such rational autonomy is that it is not inerrant. There are times when reason fails the individual or the society. Rather than blaming human reason for error and thus acknowledging that it is incapable of determining morals, the Greek philosophers blamed the universe. Frame notes:

Their most common answer was that if reason itself is our ultimate guide, then its failures must be failures, not of reason itself, but of the universe. The problem is not the knower, but in what he seeks to know; not the subject, but in the object of knowledge. We fall into error because the world in which we live is in some measure unknowable. . . .  But then the philosophical task proves impossibly difficult, for no rational account can be given of an irrational universe. Thus appears the rationalist-irrationalist dialectic.

Here we see the problem with a purely rational approach to ethics. When reason fails, the error has to be blamed on someone or something. If one were to blame reason, then the entire rational system breaks down and is proven worthless for ethics. If one blames the universe, then the rational person cannot rightly say that the universe is knowable; therefore, reason is incapable of reaching authoritative conclusions about a universe it cannot know.

At the end of the day, rational autonomy is inconsistent at best and most likely incoherent as an ethical system. The DFWCoR cannot rightly claim that they hold to the same “compassionate human values” that religious believers hold unless they reach a conclusion about those values on an irrational basis (tradition or divine revelation). So that leads us to the question: Are their families great without religion? If by great they mean upholding such “compassionate human values” believers hold, then the answer is no.

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Dionne Anglin, “Atheist Ads Target Families, Children,” KDFW Fox 4, March 26, 2012.

Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason, http://www.dfwcor.org/.

John Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2008), 73.