False Premises

South Carolina amended its state constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman.  I am still not sure why this requires a Constitutional amendment - a dictionary, a world history course, or a biology textbook should any of them be sufficient.  But here - especially with that last - we reach a problem.

After fighting for "sexual liberty" and so forth for lo these many years now, the liberal left has reached the point where suddenly they cannot talk about sex within the one context it has always been approved because the biological facts of sex ruin the case for their cause du jour - "gay marriage".  Two men cannot have a kid.  At this point, the homosexual lobby is falling back on rhetorical silliness.  I have been told to "stop focusing on the sex" - what, are we to be repressed now?  I thought that was bad - and realize that marriage involves more than just sex.  Love, affection, friendship, and so forth are the keys.

Speaking historically, we could (sweeping generalization here!) say this is largely a legacy we owe to the ideals of the late Medieval courtly ("romantic") love affair - usually very much extra-marital, whether or not merely Platonic (and mostly not) - being co-opted by various people and applied to marriage.  This is not a bad thing by itself.  Even on Biblical grounds, we are told that, "It is not good for man to be alone."  (Yes, I am a bachelor.  Obviously I think the statement is a generality.)  Even without children, marriage is a good thing.  But when passion is the measuring stick and the expected number of kids is 1.4 or something, we see where the argument for homosexual marriage comes from.  Two children per family will not maintain the human race or the culture producing them; clearly something else has become more important.  (To say nothing of divorce.)

If this is the only criterion, that "two people love each other very much", then of course there is no reason to object to homosexual "marriage", especially as a civil institution.  It is little more than a formality, an affirmation, a legitimizing token - the $500 tie, as it were, to proclaim that here stands a wealthy man.

So I find it impossible to get extremely upset by the "gay marriage" lobby and its nonsense, because it is a symptom, not really a cause (and Paul's description in Romans of the progression of cultural decline and depravity is consistent with this view, if not specifically laying it out).  The other reason I find it hard to get upset about it is that I am still somewhat bemused by the phenomenon.  It is somewhat like arguing with a fifth grader, and not just any fifth grader, but the fifth grader who had somehow never heard the rhyme that runs,

First comes love, then comes marriage,
Then comes the baby in the baby carriage.

Banal and terrible verse, of course, but at least it knows the order in which things naturally work - the order which makes homosexual "marriage" not an abomination so much as an absurdity.