July 7, 2015
Same-sex marriage was already legal in thirty-six of fifty states when the Supreme Court ruled against the remaining fourteen, declaring in its majority opinion that “the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty.”[1] Appealing to the traditional notion of marriage, Justice Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion, points out that marriage meets certain fundamental human needs, both of the individual spouses and of society as a whole, and as such is a right that may not be denied without compelling cause.
But why has such a fundamental and obvious right only been
recognized in the past few decades? If homosexuality were really natural and
good, why wouldn’t its practice have become part of social life universally—or
in at least some culture other than
our own?
Not even in ancient Greece, where there existed a kind of
institutionalized homosexual pedophilia that could cross the line into pederasty,
was there gay marriage, popular belief to the contrary. Homosexuality was not
even recognized as a permanent condition that could rightly be said to
characterize a person. People engaged in homosexual acts, of course, but such
behavior was recognized for what it is: activity that has no other object other
than purely individual, selfish pleasure. There was no need for the culture to
recognize or protect or create mores and taboos around such unions—as they are
created around other features of social life that are grounded in nature—since
they did not have any socially important purpose (such as procreation). Even in
the case of the socially-accepted older-mentor, adolescent-mentee relationship,
once it fulfilled its purpose (education of the young), the young man would go
on to marry and have children.[2]
No one ever considered the possibility that marriage might be a relationship
contracted between two members of the same sex.
The fact is that America has gone much, much farther than
ancient Greece in accepting sexual perversion as normal. It is unprecedented in
human history, save perhaps for Sodom and Gomorrah. Even those who ought to be
wisest of all, our Supreme Court justices, claim to see nothing in homosexual
relationships that would disqualify them from being recognized as legitimate,
at least a majority of the Justices. This reflects the fact that authentic
morality is no longer part of our essence as a nation, our “constitution” or
way of life in Aristotle’s sense.[3]
As such, our “leaders” will not recognize the truths of morality as inherent in
the Constitution, the written expression of our constitution in the much deeper
sense of that word.
Of course we cannot accept this and move on, as is sometimes
foolishly suggested even by Christians. We would not accept vice and evil in
ourselves as individuals, and a nation is a much greater thing. The cultural
counterrevolution will and must take place in the sphere of politics, no doubt,
in its usual ugly fashion, but far more fundamental and important will be the
fight to make the natural law and morality once again part of our constitution
as a people, part of our fundamental form of life. The process by which it
becomes so will be individual by individual, family by family, community by
community.
This latest phase in the decline of the United States must
be taken as a call for Christians to rediscover the truths of morality and live
them out in their own lives and the lives of their families so that their light
shines before others[4]
as a witness to the truth. America’s journey back to God and His ways starts
with the conversion of our own hearts.
—Doran Hunter
[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/26/whats-in-the-same-sex-marriage-ruling/
[2]
For the ancient Greek view of homosexuality, see Robert R. Reilly’s excellent
analysis, “What Would the Greeks Have Thought of Gay Marriage?” online at http://catholicexchange.com/what-would-the-greeks-have-thought-of-gay-marriage.
[4] Matthew 5: 16.