The Future of Marriage
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Original positing: July 25, 2007
The suggestion that marriage is becoming an honorific notion can be used to shed light on the question whether same-sex unions ought to be granted an ecclesiastical blessing of some sort. As I embark on a discussion of this matter, I need to remind myself and my readers that the passage of time changes the context in which we address social and ethical issues like this one. When I was growing up in conservative Calvinist circles in the 1950s and 1960s, homosexuality was not much discussed. My friends and I who attended public schools tended to scoff at homosexuals (called "homos" in those days), thereby engaging in what was later called homophobic behavior. By the time I grew into a sufficiently mature adult to be entrusted with paid employment as a teacher, I had figured out that homophobic behavior and language was not appropriate for me as either a Christian or a teacher; yet I cannot say that I managed to avoid it altogether.
In recent decades, the issue of same-sex unions forced its way onto our radar screens in bits. For example, partners in such unions complained that they were denied certain rights and prerogatives which heterosexual couples enjoyed. It did not take much persuading to get me and hosts of others to admit that something needed to be done. And so the idea that there could be non-marital domestic partnerships in which the two members might both be of the same gender gained more and more acceptance. Other issues arose: pensions employment-related benefits, visitation rights, and recognition at time of death. These all needed to be debated and dealt with. Bit by bit, a new mindset in relation to such matters began to emerge.
Even though I am a philosopher by trade and therefore enjoy theorizing, I cannot say that I managed to think about these questions in any sort of original way. Instead, I surveyed the things that were being said and found first that my mind was changing and secondly that this or that formulation of what we ought to believe seemed about right to me. And so, in launching this essay, I shall not attempt any originality but shall instead appeal to the thinking of two respected leaders to indicate what my general attitude in relation to same-sex unions is.
The first such leader is Stephen Harper, who, at the time of writing, is the Prime Minister of Canada. About a year before assuming that high office, Harper declared:
I support the traditional definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, as expressed in our traditional common law. I believe this definition of marriage has served society well, has stood the test of time, and is, in fact, a foundational institution of society.
In making this statement Mr. Harper was taking issue with the stance of Canada's federal Liberal Party, which championed same-sex marriage. Reflecting the old adage that if it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change, Harper indicated that he was from Missouri, as Americans like to say, when it comes to altering the definition of marriage: "In my view, the onus is on those who want to overturn such a fundamental social institution to prove that it is absolutely necessary, that there is no other compromise that can respect the rights of same-sex couples while still preserving one of the cornerstones of our society and its many cultures."
The general recognition that had already been extended to domestic partnerships left adequate room for the rights of persons of homosexual orientation to be respected, according to Harper. He explained: "We would propose that other forms of union, however structured, by appropriate provincial legislation, whether called registered partnerships, domestic partnerships, civil unions or whatever, should be entitled to the same legal rights, privileges, and obligations as marriage." But he was not saying that the all the changes in laws and workplace arrangements that were needed had already been accomplished and that the issue was therefore dead. He observed:
Many of these types of unions are already subject to provincial jurisdiction under their responsibility for civil law. However, there are issues affecting rights and benefits within the federal domain, and our party would ensure that for all federal purposes those Canadians living in other forms of union would be recognized as having equal rights and benefits under federal law as well. [NOTE harper]
Another source to which I have looked for guidance on these matters is the tradition of political discussion sponsored by the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS) in Toronto, whose first professor of political theory was Bernard Zylstra (1934-86), one of my teachers during graduate school days. Zylstra was succeeded in this chair by Paul Marshall, who was in turn succeeded by Jonathan Chaplin (the chair is vacant at the time of writing). All three were deeply influenced by the political and legal philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd (1894-1977), whose nuanced understanding of the variety of institutions and organizations making up human society has long provided a principled alternative to what I and many others academics with Calvinist roots would regard as oversimplifications of political and legal issues emanating from North America's religious right.
In years past, if I were asked what I thought about the rights and prerogatives that ought to be enjoyed by homosexual couples, I would usually say that I agreed with what Jonathan Chaplin writes about these issues. Hence a few quotations may be in order at this juncture.
The state, argues Chaplin, "... cannot create a virtue or compel right conduct in all spheres of life. Its task is to enforce public justice -- that is, justice only within the public realm, not within every realm." Appealing to work done by the Committee for Contact with the Government (CCG) which acts on behalf of the Canadian wing of the Christian Reformed denomination, Chaplin maintains "... that it is within the state's public justice competence both to uphold the longstanding legal definition of marriage as heterosexual and to provide necessary legal protection for the public, civil interests of people involved in committed homosexual relationships and vulnerable to various kinds of harm."
The CCG had addressed various possibilities in terms of the sorts of arrangements that could conceivably enjoy official government recognition. Chaplin comments: "Among the options canvassed by the CCG, my own strong preference would have been for the 'registered domestic partnership,' including but not at all confined to same-sex couples (indeed not defined as conjugal at all), rather than the 'civil union' which is intended specifically for same-sex couples and confers virtually identical legal status as marriage." [NOTE chaplin]
In expressing his preference for "registered domestic partnerships," Chaplin was moving the debate about non-traditional unions away from the notion of sexuality as essential to defining the bond between the persons joined in such a union. In making such a move, he was entirely in line with sentiments of my own which actually predate the more recent debate about the legitimacy of same-sex unions. That persons who have no blood relationship to one another should be allowed legally to form some sort of family analogue and should be recognized and respected in taking this step has long been a conviction of mine. In stating this conviction just now, I did use the term "family," even though I am aware that some "defense of the family" organizations would protest. Later in this series of essays I will explore the question whether a domestic partnership between a man or a woman in which there is little or nothing by way of a sexual bond or union can be labeled a marriage. Some defenders of traditional marriage will answer this question with an emphatic NO. Marriage, they believe, is always grounded in a sexual bond between a man and a woman.
In my title I promised to address the contentious question of whether "same-sex unions" should be "blessed." In my day-to-day role as a professor at Redeemer University College (located in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada), I do not often encounter such language; indeed, I don't hear all that much about the issue at all. It is more in my role as a church member (my local parish is affiliated with the Anglican Church) that the issue confronts me. And while I am only a minor participant in the Anglican debate underway in Canada, I have taken a position, and it is in the NO camp.
I fear that my NO, which does have some significant philosophical overtones, will not be easily understood. Hence a word of explanation is in order.
It appears to me that the Anglican debate on same-sex unions is not properly framed. When we are asked to vote either yes or no, it is not clear that what we are assenting to or opposing, as the case may be. On the one hand, I commend the Anglicans of Canada for being willing to debate a contentious issue in a public way and for patiently enduring criticism from both sides. (Anglicans are too conservative in the minds of many Humanists who have no respect for the Christian tradition, while they are too liberal in the minds of many Christians in other denominations with more of a fundamentalist bent.) And so Anglicans wind up taking a lot of heat. Does their debate also generate a lot of light? Does it illuminate the issue?
I am not convinced that it does. It seems to me that no adequate distinction is made between (i) same-sex unions as an example of the "registered domestic partnerships" of which Chaplin speaks and (ii) same-sex unions intended to be understood as full-fledged marriages. If the long-term objective is to use the slogan "the blessing of same-sex unions" to redefine marriage and remove the heterosexual element from it as necessary to its constitution, I remain firmly opposed. But if the intention is to ask whether the church -- which does have a long history of blessing this, that and the other thing -- can also find it in its heart to recognize "registered domestic partnerships" and to celebrate faithfulness in the context of such partnerships, that's a different story. Moreover, I would consider it a much smaller issue. But this is not yet to say that I am willing to endorse a policy of "blessing same-sex unions" even understood in the latter sense.
From my Dutch Calvinist upbringing I have learned to fear any parading of the national flag in church. Now, the Dutch Calvinists in the Netherlands have a long history of loyalty to the House of Orange, and so in their churches it is nothing unusual to pray for the Queen. In Anglican churches one also prays for the Queen -- but a different one, the one who rules in England and is in theory the head of the Church of England. Now, it is a weakness of the Anglican tradition, in my judgment, that it gets too cozy with the government, and then with the national military forces, and so on. Lessons that might have been learned from the struggles of the Christian churches in Germany during the Hitler era are by and large lost on people in the Anglican tradition. All of which is to say that I would advocate a little less in the way of blessing this and that and the other thing. That persons are encouraged come forward for a blessing as an alternative to taking communion is a wonderful tradition and practice within Anglicanism. But the local Tim Hortons coffee shop needs no official blessing from the church -- not even if Starbucks has moved into the neighborhood to provide some competition!
The same-sex union debate gets used by people on the NO side in two separate and distinguishable ways. There are some who wish to preserve the traditional definition of marriage as involving a man and a woman: their NO strikes a blow for preservation. But there are also some who are looking for a socially acceptable way of articulating their desire to see homosexual persons and activity pushed back into the closet, so to speak. The NO camp is therefore an uneasy alliance between groups with separate agendas.
A primary argument in the arsenal of the NO camp, in my judgment, is its appeal to certain trends in Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and Anglican theologies in which we find talk of some sort of sacramental dimension to marriage. (Just what this sacramental dimension amounts to is explored in a later essay in this series.) The Roman Catholic emphasis on the sacramental side of marriage is well known. That such thinking also exists in Anglican circles is not as well known, and not all Anglicans have been of this mind. Yet it has been part of the Anglican tradition for a long time: I would appeal here to the thinking of Jeremy Taylor (1613-77). [NOTE taylor]
The YES camp, it seems to me, is proceeding too much from what amounts to a secular understanding of marriage as just a contract or arrangement between two human beings -- not all that big a deal. If there is no potentially sacramental aspect to everyday life, [NOTE naugle] the idea that a sexually-grounded and monogamous cohabitation arrangement between two persons of the same gender could -- by some human decree -- be made into an instance of what the Judeo-Christian tradition calls marriage becomes more plausible, in my judgment. But as one who has come to the Anglican tradition by choice rather than by birth, I am not eager to surrender the possibility of understanding everyday life in sacramental terms.
This series of essays will also explore the growing movement toward privacy in our culture. One implication of this emphasis, for many people in our society, is that sexual unions and arrangements are the business only of the persons directly involved in them -- you should never have to answer the question of where you sleep, or with whom. Some people who stand in the NO camp when it comes to the blessing of same-sex unions are inclined to look to the privacy tide for support, even though they are loath to embrace the privacy emphasis in its application to certain other questions and areas of life. Their attitude seems to be: Why can't homosexuals just keep their sexual allegiances strictly to themselves? I think back to the attempt made by President Bill Clinton to solve the "gays in the military" issue right at the beginning of his presidency. What eventually emerged was the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. Couldn't such a policy be used in the churches? Could we not make it a matter of etiquette that you never ask someone about his or her sexual orientation? If a pair of men show up at church together and report the same living address in the church directory and you start to wonder whether they are homosexual, you bite your tongue -- it's none of your business. Likewise, any homosexual couples in the church ought to keep their sexual orientation and proclivities to themselves. We won't ask them about it, and they are advised not to blab about it. If everyone followed these rules, we would have peace.
I don't believe such advice would work for the church. Sexual love between two persons has both a private and a public aspect to it. I was first married at the age of 20, back in the days when the blessing of same-sex unions never got discussed. My recollection of that wedding day has faded somewhat over the years, but I rather doubt that I gave any thought to homosexual couples at the time. My second wedding took place not that long ago, when I was 55 years of age. I remember enjoying the wedding and its public aspect, in part because I wanted the wedding guests to see how much I loved Janet, my bride. Indeed, I even made a speech during the ceremony! (There was no opportunity for a speech in the modest reception we had planned.) After the wedding and the reception came the private aspect of our union: I wanted to be alone with my bride. Now, throughout the course of the day, I did occasionally think of how these things are different for homosexual persons who love one another: Can their love be confined to a "closet"? Should it be? Or does it demand public recognition -- by the government in the form of "registered domestic partnerships," and by the church through some liturgical innovation that does not back away from the traditional Christian understanding of marriage as a lifelong union of one man and one woman? [END]
NOTES
NOTE chaplin
"Three dimensions of the same-sex 'marriage' issue," published in Christian Courier, July 7, 2003, page 19.
NOTE harper
Harper published these views in an article in the Ottawa Citizen that came out on February 18, 2005. I am quoting from Lloyd Mackey's discussion of these matters in his book The Pilgrimage of Stephen Harper (Toronto: ECW Press, 2005), pp. 175-176.
NOTE naugle
See David Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), see pp. 44-52. For some commentary on the sacramental dimension of which Naugle speaks so tellingly in connection with Eastern Orthodoxy, see my comments on his book in the
second essay in my Reformational History series:
NOTE taylor
See Edmund Newey, "Jeremy Taylor and the Theology of Marriage," published in Anglican Theological Review, Spring 2002. Online findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3818/is_200204/ai_n9069722
© Theodore Plantinga 2007
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