Same-sex marriage as pushed by liberals is in direct conflict to enumerated protections in the Constitution. In Massachusetts, and now it is happening in Illinois. The oldest (in the nation), most successful foster and adoption care organization has closed its doors because they would be forced to adopt to same-sex couples. Lets peer into who this would affect:
“Everyone’s still reeling from the decision,” Marylou Sudders, executive director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), said yesterday. “Ultimately, the only losers are the kids,” said Maureen Flatley, a Boston adoption consultant and lobbyist. (more on RPT & WT)
Here is a RECENT story regarding Philadelphia and the harming of foster families and children for this cultural Marxist religion:
Ever since the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, we’ve been seeing myriad broader implications from the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell. From wedding cake bakers to event planners, if you dissented from the new regime you could have your livelihood taken from you. Now, the inexorable logic of Obergefell is bearing down on religious organizations that do social welfare work, as conservatives predicted.
Last week, a group of foster families in Philadelphia asked a federal court to end a new municipal policy that prevents Catholic Social Services from placing children in foster homes. Catholic Social Services is one of the largest and highest-rated foster agencies in Philadelphia, but because it adheres to Catholic teaching on homosexuality and does not place foster children in same-sex households, the City of Philadelphia is cutting them off.
City officials are doing this despite a massive shortage of foster families in Philadelphia. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing the foster families, issued this summary of the case last week:
In March 2018, the City of Philadelphia put out an urgent call for 300 new foster families. Despite the desperate need for homes for the 6,000 children in Philadelphia’s foster care system, the City then abruptly barred Catholic Social Services, one of the most successful foster agencies in the city, from placing any children. The City’s actions mean that foster homes are sitting empty and loving foster parents are unable to serve at-risk children, simply because the City disagrees with Catholic Social Services’ longstanding beliefs about marriage.
Philadelphia will terminate its contract with Catholic Social Services at the end of June unless the agency abandons the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage. Never mind that no same-sex couple has ever complained about Catholic Social Services, or that the agency refers couples with whom it cannot work to one of 26 other agencies in the region.
Never mind that Sharonell Fulton, a plaintiff in the case and a foster parent who has cared for more than 40 children over 25 years (including the two special-needs siblings currently in her care), depends on Catholic Social Services and says she cannot continue fostering children without the agency’s help.
Never mind that Philadelphia isn’t alone in its foster care crisis, that foster families are in short supply across the United States. In just the past few weeks, local news outlets have chronicled foster family shortages in Missouri, Colorado, Texas, Indiana, Washington, and Illinois. In Michigan alone, more than 13,000 kids are waiting for placement in foster homes.
Never mind all that. The only thing that matters to municipal officials in Philadelphia is that Catholic Social Services must bend the knee and abandon its deeply held religious beliefs…..
As you can see, these marriages hurt many heterosexual persons as well as children in finding families and are not just a “Live-And-Let-Live” scenario.
And “religion/religious institutions” are specifically protected via that founding document, the Constitution — gay marriage is not. Which is why many of the conservative gay men and women I know rejects the agenda by the Left in this push. There are other areas this affects the heterosexual, as do all “special rights” and not “equal rights.” But the above example should show this is not a neutral idea.
The formal effect of the judicial decisions (and subsequent legislation) establishing same-sex civil marriage in Canada was simply that persons of the same-sex could now have the government recognize their relationships as marriages. But the legal and cultural effect was much broader. What transpired was the adoption of a new orthodoxy: that same-sex relationships are, in every way, the equivalent of traditional marriage, and that same-sex marriage must therefore be treated identically to traditional marriage in law and public life.
A corollary is that anyone who rejects the new orthodoxy must be acting on the basis of bigotry and animus toward gays and lesbians. Any statement of disagreement with same-sex civil marriage is thus considered a straightforward manifestation of hatred toward a minority sexual group. Any reasoned explanation (for example, those that were offered in legal arguments that same-sex marriage is incompatible with a conception of marriage that responds to the needs of the children of the marriage for stability, fidelity, and permanence—what is sometimes called the conjugal conception of marriage), is dismissed right away as mere pretext. 1
When one understands opposition to same-sex marriage as a manifestation of sheer bigotry and hatred, it becomes very hard to tolerate continued dissent. Thus it was in Canada that the terms of participation in public life changed very quickly. Civil marriage commissioners were the first to feel the hard edge of the new orthodoxy; several provinces refused to allow commissioners a right of conscience to refuse to preside over same-sex weddings, and demanded their resignations. 2 At the same time, religious organizations, such as the Knights of Columbus, were fined for refusing to rent their facilities for post-wedding celebrations. 3
Now, the above examples do not have to be the case. Civil-unions can co-exist alongside marriage and religious institutions if the Left isn’t in control of the culture war. Which is also why many gay men and women stand arm-and-arm with people against same-sex marriage and exploitation or twisting of nature (the “genderless” agenda). Gay Patriot eruditely points out that it has been done, and when done correctly, can be a wonderful thing:
In New Hampshire, for example, then-Governor Lynch vetoed a bill passed by the legislature recognizing same-sex unions in his state. He was personally opposed to gay marriage. After the veto, responsible voices reached out to him and helped craft a religious liberty clause to tack on to the legislation. With that amendment in place, the legislature voted again; the governor signed the new law. Same-sex couples would get the benefits of marriage. And religious groups had a guarantee that they could continue to define marriage in accordance with the dictates of their faith.
This understanding and firm stand against the progressive agenda is needed, especially from the gay community. One astute post on the matter points out that the views of what constitutes marriage within the LGBT community are varied and wide:
The reasons for gay objections to same-sex marriage are varied. Some are moral, some political, some religious. Some gay individuals believe that marriage should not be state-sanctioned at all; that it should be a purely civil matter. Others believe that if the government subsidizes marriage with financial benefits, it should subsidize marriages that promote the traditional nuclear family with a mother and father. Still others take a more stereotypical view, and claim that homosexual relationships are more about sex and lust than love.
Whatever the rationale, it’s important to note that homosexuality is a sexual orientation, not a social or political group – opinions among LGBT individuals are as varied as LGBT individuals themselves. As same-sex marriage becomes more commonplace across the U.S., don’t automatically rely on gay men and women to support it.
Which is why many gays are against this relation being celebrated as equal to that of the heterosexual underpinnings of society, see number six for some more examples.
Take note that if the Left had their way… we would not have Miss Biles blessing us with presence:
When 19-year-old Olympian Simone Biles does her signature move, the “Biles,” crowds go crazy. Fans may adore the 4 foot 9 inch, three- time world all-around champion, but no one is as proud as her parents. Simone’s parents have been with her from the early days of seeing her tumble in their living room to witnessing her rise as one of the world’s greatest athletes. What makes Simone’s family unique is the fact that her committed and loving parents are also her grandparents.
Simone was born to a drug addicted mother. Her mother’s abuse placed Simone and her siblings into the foster care system. When Simone was three years old, her maternal grandfather Ron and his wife Nelly took her, her younger sister Adia, and two older siblings into their home. The children remained with their grandparents temporarily for two years until their mother lost parental rights. At that point Ron and Nelly adopted Simone and her sister Adia and Ron’s sister adopted the two older siblings….
[….]
Simone’s story proves that reality. Even without her great accomplishments, she is valuable simply because she is a person. If she was never adopted, remained in foster care and eventually aged out of the system, she would be just as worthy of living. In our excitement over the life of this amazing overcomer, let’s remember those who are currently in the system. If we care for these children, they can be our champions for tomorrow.
“We oppose gay adoptions – the only family is the traditional one,” said legendary fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana of Dolce & Gabanna in an interview with Panorama, reported The Telegraph.
Dolce told the Italian magazine that procreation “must be an act of love” and added, “You are born to a mother and a father – or at least that’s how it should be.”
Children born through in vitro fertilization (IVF) “I call children of chemistry, synthetic children,” said Dolce. “Uteruses for rent, semen chosen from a catalog. Psychiatrists are not ready to confront the effects of this experimentation.”
A statement that ordinarily would cause controversy has fanned vitriolic flames, because the pair making this statement are a gay couple who dated for 23 years (and broke up in 2005.)
“I am gay, I cannot have a child. I guess you cannot have everything in life,” Dolce said. “No chemical offspring and rented uterus: life has a natural course, some things cannot be changed. One is the family.”
Gabbana added: “The family is not a fad. In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging.”…
“Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually” Abba Eban
Sad. Democrats will roll over — again — a protection enumerated specifically in the Constitution, that is, religious freedom. Breitbart reports:
☕ The Colorado government, now completely run by Democrats, has done an about-face regarding civil unions for gay couples. Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a bill allowing same-sex civil unions roughly a year ago after the same idea went down to defeat in what was then a Republican-led House. But last November Democrats won the House, having control of the Senate already, and the new alignment allowed the bill to be passed. It will go into effect May 1.
Most of the Republicans in the state government held fast against the measure because they wanted religious exemptions granted to those who oppose same-sex unions. Although churches are exempt, businesses and adoption agencies are now subject to the new law.
What this will do is shut down adoption religious agencies, which are the most successful at finding families for children, will have to shut down like in Massachusetts and in Illinois. When they had to shut down in Massachusetts many decried this as hurting the kids, which is what ultimately happens when rights are trampled on. Families are hurt:
“Everyone’s still reeling from the decision,” Marylou Sudders, executive director of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (MSPCC), said yesterday. “Ultimately, the only losers are the kids,” said Maureen Flatley, a Boston adoption consultant and lobbyist. (http://tinyurl.com/a5ypfle)
You see, when the left is in control of this movement, they lay waist. Which is why conservative and libertarian minded persons, gays, and the like would want to try and frame the debate as Civil-Unions that allow religious institution to adopt to whom they wish (even if that is hetero couples only), and not create — like in Canada — the diminishing of religious views as hate crimes. As was pointed out in a review of same-sex marriage’s impact in Canada: “When one understands opposition to same-sex marriage (SSM) as a manifestation of sheer bigotry and hatred, it becomes very hard to tolerate continued dissent (http://tinyurl.com/bx9zjaa).
Conservative gays are allowing the left to control this movement, and they should reject it until calmer heads can influence it. The left is famous for knee-jerk reactionary legislation. And for gays to applaud this passage shows — much like Ann Coulter showed in her town-hall with libertarians, all these young libertarians asked about was weed, and SSM:
…Instead of creating alliances with fiscal conservatives, libertarians would rather tell people that libertarianism is about “pot and gay marriage” in order to garner the attention of the youth. The result of making libertarianism about social issues is that there are therefore people, who claim to be libertarians, that do not understanding the philosophy of libertarianism in the slightest.
[….]
The audience booed Coulter for stating the obvious truths about the travesty of the modern libertarian movement. To demonstrate her point, there was another high-profile guest of an entirely different political persuasion who received applause. When Dennis Kucinich entered the stage, he was applauded. When Kucinich advocated for government regulations in order to save the world from the global warming catastrophe, parts of the audience applauded. When Kucinich mentioned how evil profits were for banks and health-care corporations, parts of the audience applauded…. (http://tinyurl.com/aoj3lwq)
Gay men and women that think they are advancing a right that is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, as opposed to religious freedom, are tearing their rights up bit-by-bit. And it’s sad to see.
The left hates religion, and soon to follow, like in Massachusetts, is an attack on gender. The left tries to legislate control of weather (climate taxes), and now gender (no-distinction, nature or God is of no consequence to their thinking — the ultimate narcissists). You see, religion teaches ideals. And the left and left leaning libertarians do not like ideals. And it is precisely these ideals that the Constitution was written in, and when these ideals are rejected, the Constitution crumbles:
Even if one does not necessarily accept the institutional structure of “organized religion,” the “Judeo-Christian ethic and the personal standards it encourages do not impinge on the quality of life, but enhance it. They also give one a basic moral template that is not relative,” which is why the legal positivists of the Left are so threatened by the Natural Law aspect of the Judeo-Christian ethic.
Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 35.
It is this movement based in a Rousseau’lian worldview that pushes this positivism. I wrote about this in 2006:
…Homosexuals like to argue that, since people are by nature free to choose, the choice of sodomy should be protected, at least as much as any other choice. However, the fact that people are free by nature to make choices does not mean that any choice they make is good or that all choices should be equal before the law. Some people choose to steal and lie. Some abandon their children or their wives or husbands. Some sink into the grip of drugs. Some evade the draft at their country’s need, or abandon their duty in the face of battle. These are bad choices, and when they are made, the rest of us must bear part of the cost. These things are wrong in a constitutional democracy, as much as they are wrong anywhere else.
On the other hand, liberal societies recognize that all sins cannot be, and must not be, punished under the law. A state powerful enough to do that is too powerful to control. That is why we are cautious in a free country, about telling others what to do. That is why Presidents often appeal to us to be upright, moral citizens, but they do not bring charges against us unless we break the law.
Still, we must not forget that democracies have the greatest in the practice of virtue by citizens, because in democracy the citizens themselves are the rulers. So it is that George Washington, one of the greatest moral examples in history, said in his First Inaugural Address: “There is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness…”
A liberal society might, then, find it prudent to ignore homosexuality. It might well deem it unwise to peer into private bedrooms. However, this is not the issue before us. Today the demand is that homosexuality be endorsed and promoted with the full power of the law. This would require us to abandon the standard of nature, the one standard that can teach us the difference between freedom and slavery, between right and wrong.
Once we abandon the standard of nature, what is to forbid us from resorting to any violation of nature that we please? Why should we not return to slavery, if we find it convenient? Or the practice of incest or adultery or cannibalism? Without an understanding that there is a higher law that limits human will – whether divine law or the “law of Nature or Nature’s God” which we can grasp through our reason – there is no basis to prohibit any activity. Anything becomes possible (which is why some [me included] refer to murder and homosexuality in the same stroke of the pen/keyboard, this analogy is now detailed in a more exhaustive manner above).
In fact, the rights sought by homosexual activists are not natural or constitutional rights (for the best chapter on this subject – why homosexuals should be fighting to keep the traditional definition of family – I suggest the book Relativism: Feet Planted Firmly in Mid-Air). They are the special rights granted ethnic minorities by affirmative action policies. These special rights would force businesses, schools, and virtually every institution in the land, public and private, to open their doors to homosexuals, and allow lawsuits to be brought against those that refuse….
One way this liberal narcissism rears its head is that no longer are we trying to find a family for the child through adoption… the child is the tool to make a gay-couple feel like a family. And to do this they must chase out of the business the most successful at finding families for the children. Sad.
I will put the Rabbi’s Second Part first, truncated a bit (will not include the Conclusion). After which I will put portions of his First Part below the Second. The entire article is worth reading, I was impressed with the input from the Rabbi… what a great addition to the ongoing discussion.
Part Two Rabbi Bernheim shows that in this debate there is a confrontation between two worldviews. On the one hand is the worldview of the LGBT activists who wish to deny sexual difference and replace fixed sexual identity with a chosen sexual orientation, in service of the project of destroying marriage. On the other is that of the biblical vision of the irreducible difference between man and woman and of their complementarity, a constitutive difference that opens up transcendence.
Part One Rabbi Bernheim offers an analysis of arguments advanced by those who favor a law establishing homosexual marriage, first giving the argument that we hear for it and then what we often neglect to say.
LGBT activists wish to deny sexual difference. One of their tools is “gender theory.” First used by feminists in their struggle for sexual equality, gender theory was taken up by homosexual activists in their fight against sexual difference. In the 1960s, Anglo-Saxon feminist movements denounced the social differences that persisted between men and women based solely on sexual difference. Their ideas gave birth to the notion of “gender,” which can be defined as the social role attributed to each sex. Gender is relative to norms and standards that determine what is considered masculine or feminine. In other words, it defines the difference and the social hierarchy between men and women as a function of their sex. Such gender norms are supposed to be the systematic basis for male domination over women.
Whereas sex is a matter of biological difference between men and women, gender refers to social differences based on these sexual differences. Gender could therefore be described as the social dimension of sexual difference. Theories that confine individuals to certain roles, jobs, or images, such as “the man at work and the woman in the home,” are thus denounced as oppressive.Gender theorists believe, as Simone de Beauvoir said, that “one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman” by assuming certain “gender characteristics” that are, for the most part, cultural constructions that these theorists denounce. One is born “neuter,” and it is society that imposes a male identity on each man because of his masculine sex and a female identity on each woman because of her feminine sex, with all the inequalities implied in this difference.
These theorists do not define the individual by his or her sex (man or woman) but by his or her sexuality (homo-, hetero-, etc.). They tend to efface the biological and anatomical dimension that separates the two sexes in order to see only multiple genders, dictated by culture and by history. Since they consider sexual difference to be a social and cultural construction and therefore artificial, feminist movements denounce existing social relationships and demand a culture capable of protecting women. One implication of this protection is the renunciation of heterosexuality.
The most radical theorists go further: They express the wish to eliminate all disparities between men and women and to achieve perfect equality between them. Since they believe there can be no difference without inequality, they demand the end to sexual difference between men and women. (What a paradox it is, in a society where we swear by nothing so much as the acceptance of difference, to perceive difference as a problem. But there is no antinomy between difference and equality; the opposite of equality is not difference, and equality is not contradicted by sexual difference.)
Since these theorists presume that sexual difference is the enduring cause of the submission of the woman to the man, equality necessarily implies the end of sexual difference. Thus it appears that the final goal of the feminist revolution is not only to have done away with the privilege of masculinity but also to eliminate the very distinction between the sexes. If gender is a pure social construction, then all social representation of sexuality is acquired and artificial. In this way, little by little, sex understood as a natural category is put in question and sexuality itself as a natural given is relativized.
Queer theory pushes gender theory to its extreme point and blames as heterosexist the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm and therefore superior to other sexual orientations. Once heterosexuality has lost its self-evidence, all forms of sexual construction become possible. Queer theory demands the creation of a new anthropology that would not be subject to “obligatory heterosexuality” or to “the self-evidence of heterosexuality,” with the aim of returning to some earlier stage before the existence of sexual or “gendered” difference. It wishes to have done with the “gendered” perception of the individual and with all “gendered” usage of words, so that “man” or “masculine” might designate a feminine body and the body itself is no longer understood as a given reality. Being only a social construction, sexual identity no longer in any way determines the psychic constitution of the individual. Thus there is no point in taking it into account.
In the place of sexual identity, which is considered a thing of the past, queer theory proposes the notion of a “sexual orientation” chosen by each individual based upon the gender that somehow defines his or her interior being. By distinguishing the sexed (sexuality as a given fact) from the sexual (sexuality as a behavior), queer theory defends the idea that one can be physically masculine but psychologically feminine, or the reverse. It follows that, independent of one’s biology or sex, one can experience desires that are homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual.
Queer theory thus invites the individual to leave behind the straitjacket of “manhood” or “womanhood” that he did not choose and express himself according to his self-perceptions. For example, a person who is male biologically and “gendered” as a woman could have heterosexual desires and thus live with another man. From this point of view, the sexual orientation chosen by the individual would never be definitive and could vary over the course of one’s life. If gender is constructed, it can thus be deconstructed. Femininity and masculinity become simple roles that one can choose to take on or to reject, to parody or to exchange as one wishes. Women, men, heteros, homos, bisexuals, or transsexuals . . . . In this merry-go-round of genders, sexual identities are replaced by individual expressions, which are ceaselessly created and recreated in relationship to one another. What is authoritative is no longer an individual’s sexual identity but his sexual orientation.
A Tammy Bruce Quote
Even if one does not necessarily accept the institutional structure of “organized religion,” the “Judeo-Christian ethic and the personal standards it encourages do not impinge on the quality of life, but enhance it. They also give one a basic moral template that is not relative,” which is why the legal positivists of the Left are so threatened by the Natural Law aspect of the Judeo-Christian ethic…. these problems don’t remain personal and private. The drive, especially since this issue is associated with the word “gay rights,” is to make sure your worldview reflects theirs. To counter this effort, we must demand that the medical and psychiatric community take off their PC blinders and treat these people responsibly. If we don’t, the next thing you know, your child will be taking a “tolerance” class explaining how “transexuality” is just another “lifestyle choice”…. After all, it is the only way malignant narcissists will ever feel normal, healthy, and acceptable: by remaking society – children – in their image…. and now all manner of sexual perversion enjoys the protection and support of once what was a legitimate civil-rights effort for decent people. The real slippery slope has been the one leading into the Left’s moral vacuum. It is a singular attitude that prohibits any judgment about obvious moral decay because of the paranoid belief that judgment of any sort would destroy the gay lifestyle, whatever that is….
It is in the name of tolerance that defenders of queer theory demand social recognition for all forms of sexual orientation, but tolerance in this case is nothing but a Trojan horse in the fight against heterosexuality, a social norm that they judge to be an obsolete imposition, since it is built upon sexual difference.
This fight clearly aims at the current model of the family, which is felt to be a form of social conditioning and an obstacle to the expression of the activists’ “deep self”—that is, their gender. Medicine and law will have to adapt themselves to these personal expressions of sexuality. If an individual who is physically masculine can in fact be psychologically feminine or the reverse, and if it is the will of the individual and no longer nature that determines sex, then why not institutionalize the union of two people, whoever they might be? And, in particular, what would be the point of refusing to confide children to such a couple, since all the different models are considered equivalent?
Faced with such a series of demands, we are justified in asking whether the activists’ purpose is not finally the destruction, pure and simple, of marriage and of the family as these have been traditionally conceived. With this aim in mind, homosexual marriage and the right to adoption for same-sex couples appear as nothing more than a means for exploding the foundations of society, making possible all kinds of unions, finally liberated from an ancestral morality, and therefore definitively doing away with the very notion of sexual difference.
The Biblical Vision
The complementarity between man and woman is a fundamental principle in Judaism, in other religions, in some nonreligious intellectual traditions, and in the organization of society, as well as in the opinion of a very large majority of the population. For me, this principle has a biblical basis. Others will find its foundation elsewhere. Here I will concentrate on the biblical view, not to the exclusion of other views.“So G-d created man in his own image, in the image of G-d he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). The biblical account grounds sexual difference in the act of creation. The polarity of masculine–feminine pervades all that exists, from clay to G-d. It is part of what is given primordially and what guides the respective vocations—the being and the agency—of man and woman. The duality of the sexes is part of the anthropological constitution of humanity.
Thus, every person is brought sooner or later to recognize that he possesses only one of the two fundamental versions of humanity and that the other will remain forever inaccessible. Sexual difference is thus a mark of our finitude. I am not the whole of humanity. A sexed being is not the totality of the species; it needs a being of the other sex to produce its likeness.
Genesis finds the similarity of the human being with G-d only in the association of the man and the woman and not in each one taken separately. This suggests that the definition of a human being is perceptible only in the conjunction of the two sexes. Because of his sexual identity, each person is referred beyond himself. From the moment a person becomes conscious of his sexual identity, he is thus confronted with a kind of transcendence. The person is required to think beyond himself and to acknowledge the independent existence of an inaccessible other—that is, of one who is essentially related to himself and desirable yet never wholly comprehensible.
The experience of sexual difference thus becomes the model for all experiences of transcendence; it designates an indissoluble relation with an absolutely inaccessible reality. On this basis we can understand why the Bible so readily uses the relation between man and woman as a metaphor for the relation between G-d and man: not because G-d is masculine and man is feminine but because it is man’s sexual duality that most clearly manifests an unsurpassable otherness within the closest relation.
It is significant that, in the Bible, sexual difference is mentioned just after the affirmation of the fact that man is in the image of G-d. This means that sexual difference is embedded in this image and thus blessed by G-d. Sexual difference must therefore be understood as a fact of nature infused with spiritual intentions. This, we think, is indicated by the fact that in the seven days of creation, the animals are not presented as sexed beings. What characterizes them is not the difference between the sexes but the difference of orders and, within each order, the differences among species: There are the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the earth, etc. All living beings are produced, according to the repeated refrain, “after their kind” (Gen. 1:21). In this account, sexuality is not mentioned except in the case of mankind, for it is precisely in the loving relation, which includes the sexual act by which man and woman “become one flesh,” that the two fulfill their proper end: to be in G-d’s image.
Sex is therefore not an accidental attribute of the person. Genitals are the bodily expression of a sexuality that affects a person’s whole being—body, soul, and spirit. It is because man and woman perceive themselves as different in their sexed being, while they are both equally persons, that there can be complementarity and communion. “Masculine” and “feminine,” “male” and “female,” are relational terms. Masculine is masculine only insofar as it is oriented toward the feminine—and, through the feminine, toward the child; and this holds true for every instance of paternity, carnal or spiritual. The feminine is feminine only as oriented toward the masculine; and, through the man, toward the child—in every case, then, toward the maternal, whether carnal or spiritual.
The second account of creation deepens this teaching by presenting the act of creation of the woman in the form of a surgical operation by which G-d extracts the one who will become Adam’s companion from what is most intimate to him. Henceforth, neither man nor woman will make up the whole of humanity, and neither one will know all that is human. This expresses a double finitude: I am not everything; I am not even all that is human; and I do not know all that is human: The other sex always remains partly unknowable to me. This double finitude implies that self-sufficiency is impossible for a human being. This limitation is not a privation but a gift that allows for the discovery of the love that springs from wonder in the face of difference.
Through desire man discovers sexual difference at the heart of nature. “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.” Openness to this other leads to self-discovery as complementary difference: “She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” In Hebrew, “one flesh” refers to “the One,” Ehad—the divine name par excellence, according to the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is G-d, the Lord is one.” It is in this union, which is at once carnal and spiritual, a union made possible by difference and by complementary sexual orientation, that man and woman reproduce, in the created order, the image of the One G-d.
As a counterpoint, the third chapter of Genesis presents sin as the refusal of limitation and therefore of difference: “For G-d knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be as gods, knowing good and evil.” “The tree of knowledge of good and evil”—“the tree of knowing good and knowing evil”—symbolizes precisely the two ways of apprehending the limit. First, “good knowing” respects otherness and accepts the fact of not knowing all and consents to not being all. This way of knowing opens toward love and therefore toward “the tree of life” planted by G-d in the middle of the garden. Second, “evil knowing” refuses limits and difference. It eats the other in the hope of reconstituting the whole within the self and of acquiring omniscience. This refusal of the relation of otherness leads to greed and envy, to violence, and ultimately to death.
Isn’t this what is implied in the notion of gender: the refusal of otherness, of difference, and the demand to take on sexual behaviors independent of sexual difference, the first gift of nature? Is this not, in other words, the pretension to “know” the woman as the man, to become the whole of humanity, to emancipate oneself from all natural conditions, and therefore “to become as gods”?
PART ONE
Homosexual marriage in the name of equality?
What we hear: “Homosexuals are victims of discrimination. They must have the right to marry, the same as heterosexuals.”
What we often neglect to say: From the fact that people love each other it does not follow necessarily that they have the right to be married, whether they be heterosexual or homosexual. For example, a man cannot marry a woman who is already married, even if they love each other. Likewise, a woman cannot be married to two men on the grounds that she loves both of them and that both want to be her husband. A father cannot marry his daughter, even if their love is uniquely paternal and filial.
Of course, we understand the wish of people who are in love that their love be recognized. Still, there are strict rules defining what kinds of unions can be recognized as marriages and what kinds cannot. Thus “marriage for everyone” is only a slogan, since after the authorization of homosexual marriage the law would maintain forms of inequality and discrimination that would continue to apply to those who love each other but to whom marriage is not available.
The argument for marriage for all conceals a split between two existing visions of marriage. According to one worldview, which I share with a great number of people, both believers and nonbelievers, marriage is not only the recognition of a loving attachment. It is the institution that articulates the union between man and woman as part of the succession of generations. It is the establishment of a family—that is, a social cell that creates a set of parent–child relations among its members. Beyond the common life of two individuals, it organizes the life of a community consisting of descendants and ancestors. So understood, marriage is a fundamental act in the construction and the stability of individuals as well as of society.
According to another worldview, marriage is an obsolete and rigid institution, the absurd legacy of a traditional and alienating society. Is it not paradoxical to hear those who share this worldview raising their voices in favor of homosexual marriage? Why do those who reject marriage and prefer free unions demonstrate alongside activists in favor of homosexual marriage?
Whichever worldview you hold, it is clear that what is going on behind the slogan of “marriage equality” is a substitution: An institution fraught with legal, cultural, and symbolic significance would be replaced by a de-sexed legal category, thus undermining the foundation of individuals and of the family. In the name of equality and the struggle against discrimination, should we suppress all references to sexual difference in relations between citizens and the state, beginning with the marriage ceremony and the family records that issue from this ceremony?
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Homosexual parenting in the name of love?
One Adopted Woman Speaks
Dawn knows from personal experience that the environment in which a child is raised matters. Her story delivers a provocative, gripping, no-holds-barred account of what it was like to grow up with a homosexual father, his partners, and a chronically ill and passive mother. Candidly, transparently, yet respectfully, Dawn raises the blinds on a home shrouded in secrecy, conflict, confusion, and abuse.
What we hear: “What is most important is love. A homosexual couple can give much love to a child, sometimes even more than a heterosexual couple.”
What we often neglect to say: To love a child is one thing; to love a child with a love that provides the necessary structure is another. There can be no doubt that homosexuals have the same capacity to love a child and to convey this love as do heterosexuals, but the role of parents extends beyond the love they feel for their children. To reduce the parental bond to its affective and educative aspects is to overlook the fact that the parent–child bond is a psychological vector of fundamental importance for the child’s sense of identity.
All the affection in the world will not suffice to produce the basic psychological structures that address the child’s need to know where he comes from. For the child establishes his own identity only by a process of differentiation, which presupposes that he knows whom he resembles. Thus he needs to know that he issues from the love and the union between a man, his father, and a woman, his mother, thanks to the sexual difference between them. Even adopted children know that they originate from the love and the desire of their parents, even when these are not their biological parents.
Father and mother represent a genealogy for the child. The child needs a clear and coherent genealogy in order to find his place as an individual. What has always and will always constitute our humanity is the capacity for language in a sexually differentiated body and as part of a genealogy. To identify a child’s parentage is not only to indicate who will raise the child, with whom he will have affective relations, and who will serve as his adults of reference. It is also, most important, to situate him in a generational chain. The chain guarantees each individual a place in the world in which he lives, for he knows where he came from.
Today we face the immense risk of irreversibly scrambling the chain of generations. Just as one cannot destroy the foundations of a house without the house collapsing, one cannot reject the foundations of our society without putting that society in danger.
“Homosexual parenting” is not parenting. The term itself was invented to mitigate the impossibility of homosexuals’ being parents. This new foundation, invented to promote the legal option of giving a child two “parents” of the same sex, is part of a fiction. Neither marriage nor parenthood has ever been based on the sexuality of individuals but rather on sex itself—that is, on the anthropological distinction between man and woman.
Thus, by abandoning the man–woman distinction in favor of the heterosexual–homosexual distinction, homosexual activists demand not parenthood (paternity or maternity) but the right to some new abstract parental status that reduces the role of the “parent” to the exercise of certain functions such as education. This overlooks the fact that, even in the case of adopted children, to be a parent is not only to educate the child but also to recreate lines of paternity and maternity.
We must therefore strongly reaffirm that to be a father or a mother is not merely an affective, cultural, or social function. The term “parent” is not neutral; it involves sexual difference. To accept the term “homosexual parenting” is to strip the word “parent” of its intrinsic bodily, biological, and fleshly meaning.
The Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents and Future Parents has proposed several substitutes for the term “parent” depending on the various functions to be performed: “stepparent,” “co-parent,” “homo-parent,” “mother to another,” “biological parent,” “legal parent,” “social parent,” “second parent,” etc. It seems unlikely that a child could manage naturally to find a stable meaning in relation to all such terminologies.
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Adoption to protect the right to a child?
What we hear: “Homosexuals are victims of discrimination. Just like heterosexuals, they must have the right to have children.”
What we often neglect to say: The right to a child does not exist. The desire to have a child in no way establishes the right to have a child, neither for heterosexuals nor for homosexuals. The wishes of an infertile heterosexual couple may not be honored if conditions are not optimal. For example, one may judge that a young and healthy couple is better suited to have a child than an older couple in fragile health. If a right to a child for homosexual couples were recognized, then all heterosexual couples denied children would feel themselves victims of discrimination in one way or another and would have grounds for claiming the same right.
There is no question of denying the suffering experienced by homosexual couples owing to their infertility—a suffering they share with heterosexual couples who cannot procreate. Such homosexual couples now demand that their suffering be recognized and alleviated. But no one has the right to be relieved of suffering at another’s expense, particularly when this is to the disadvantage of the weak and innocent. Their suffering is not a sufficient reason to give them the right to adopt.
The child is not an object of rights but a subject of rights. To speak of a “right to a child” instrumentalizes and objectifies the child. In the current debate, the child as a person, as a subject, is absent in the arguments of those who demand adoption for homosexual couples. This absence allows adults demanding rights to avoid asking about the rights of the child, what the child might need, and whether the child might prefer having a father and mother instead of two parents of the same sex. This is a case where our carelessness borders on cynicism. The right of the child is radically different from the right to the child. The former right is fundamental. It consists in particular in giving the child a family in which he will have the best chance to have the best life.
Adoption to help the children waiting to be adopted?
What we hear: “Thousands of children are waiting for adoption, and it would be better for them to be adopted by a homosexual couple than to remain in an orphanage.”
What we often neglect to say: The adopted child needs a father and mother even more than other children. At the deepest level, viscerally, he desires to find a place close to the basic cell that gave him life: a father and a mother. The adopted child is burdened by the simultaneous traumas of abandonment and of the family’s double identity. Even more than other children, this child needs a clear sense of a biological chain. This is because he or she has no sense of being the fruit of a loving union. He was not desired, he has no one’s eyes, and he cannot recognize himself in any member of his new family.
It is common for the adopted child to reject one of the two sexes. It is therefore important that the child be able to identify with two parents of different sexes: with his mother, because he needs to be reconciled with the woman; and with his father, in order to know the presence of a man, without whom his mother would not have been able to have a child.
Money Quote
Adoption exists to provide the child a family, and not the reverse.
Homosexual adoption thus risks aggravating the trauma of the abandoned child, for the generational chain would be doubly broken: first in the reality of the child’s abandonment, and second, symbolically, in the fact of the homosexuality of the adoptive parents. Do we have the right to ask a child who has already been wounded by his past to adapt to the affective situation of his parents, a situation that is very different at once from that of the great majority of other children and from what the child aspires to rediscover? Is it the adopted child’s responsibility to adapt to the affective life choices of his or her parents?
Adoption exists to provide the child a family, and not the reverse. Adoption is intended to address the child’s hardship. It is thus essential to clearly discern the intentions of every couple that submits a request for adoption: Is the child to be adopted for himself, or to satisfy the couple’s need? Does the couple want to remedy the child’s hardship, or does it seek a remedy for its own pain in not being able to have a child? To be sure, a couple would not adopt a child if it did not feel the need to do so. Nevertheless, we must be sure that the child’s interests come first, as this is stated in our family law: Every child has the right to a family—first of all to his own family, and, failing this, to a family suited to become his own by adoption. This is why it is necessary to remind ourselves that desiring a child is not sufficient grounds for adoption, and that apparently simple solutions based on compassion are not always good solutions: Much harm can be done in the name of the good.
New forms of homosexual parenting to create equality?
What we hear: “The meaning of parenting is evolving, particularly thanks to medically assisted procreation. The law must take account of such developments.”
What we often neglect to say: The lesbian and feminist association LesBienNées (The Well-Born) gives the four forms homosexual parenting would take following its legal authorization: “It can be the result of a family’s recomposition with a partner of the same sex following a heterosexual union. It can come about within a system of co-parenting in which gays and lesbians agreed to have a child who will be raised cooperatively between the two households. It can also be the result of an adoption. Or, finally, it can be the result of artificial insemination or of a medically assisted procreation.”
LGBT activists seek to advance the idea that any limits on the rights of “parenting” would be a violation of the principle of equality and thus an injustice, thereby setting aside the fact that a child is always born of the union of a man and a woman—even if this union may sometimes be medically assisted. These activists demand the consistent application of the principle of equality to leverage their cause, in particular in the case of medically assisted procreation for lesbian couples.
These new forms of homosexual parenting have opened the door to a frightening array of possible combinations. For example, a lesbian might donate an egg to her partner, who would then be inseminated and carry a child for the couple. The sperm might be provided by a couple of male homosexuals who would then function as co-parents for the child, who would thus have four parents. Such combinations and others are now a reality. These invented combinations give rise to two demands. The first is to legitimize them because they already exist. The second is the creation of a universal right to any such combination, on the grounds that access to these means of reproduction in foreign countries is expensive and therefore a source of inequality.
It is well understood that, in many domains of life, an infraction—that is to say, a failure to respect a prohibition—cannot be sufficient grounds for lifting the prohibition that has not been respected. In other words, the reality of certain facts is not sufficient to create a legal reality. This holds as well for the new forms of homosexual parenting.
It is also clear that what is at stake in medically assisted procreation and in surrogate pregnancy goes far beyond the mere question of homosexual parenting and far exceeds what is provided for in French family law. It is essential, therefore, that the subjects continue to be treated in the proper framework of the law of bioethics and that this framework not be taken hostage by demands aiming to erase all sexual difference in our society.
A side-note for the new listener/reader. I post sources of news and views that are not conservatively Christian [see my BIO page]… the following viewpoint is a great example. Although ReasonTV produces some great stuff, one must keep in mind their mainly libertarian/free thought [atheist] viewpoints that under-gird their reporting. Everyone operates from a worldview, even ReasonTV.
