"Marriage is Single" (but looking for love)

[steepholm]

A week ago, Cardinal Keith O'Brien made himself a laughing stock by comparing same-sex marriage to slavery (it's worth clicking on the link at the bottom, just to hear John Humphrys unable to contain his flabbergastedness - and also to forestall any suspicion that the Cardinal's words might have been "taken out of context"). He also said - which is a big fat lie - that it would be a denial of human rights, because the Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. (Article 16 is the relevant one, if you want to see for yourself that it says no such thing.)

Another week, another Cardinal. Today, the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, came on the Sunday programme (starting 36.40) to talk about a letter to be read in Catholic churches this morning. He wasn't quite as entertainingly kooky as O'Brien, because he resolutely refused to talk about what he found objectionable in same-sex marriage. However, what he said in failing to address the point was quite telling. First, came a tactical retreat: "Precisely the point of this letter is to say that [marriage] doesn't belong to the Church". But this was only a feint, preparatory to claiming it anyway: "It is a question of our understanding of human nature, and that's why the proposals by the Government that we can split marriage into a civil reality and a religious reality fails to address the fundamental understanding that marriage is single".

Of course, he's 175 years too late to prevent the legal existence of non-religious marriages in this country. Since his mission was to avoid talking about the nature of marriage (and hence why same-sex couples shouldn't have it), this rather begged the question.

His next tactic was to suggest that, because some gay people don't want to get married, none of them do. Okaaaaay...

Next, he affirmed the Church's passion for equality, flourishing the Separate But Equal line that has such a notable pedigree in the history of civil rights.

And then - inevitably, somehow - came the Ridiculous Analogy of the Week. As a way of explaining how treating people equally was distinct from treating them the same, he pointed out: "an insurance policy for someone who's eighteen and driving a fast car is not the same as for somebody of my age."

Edward Stourton wasn't quite as dumbounded as John Humphrys had been, but he came close. Having spent the week fruitlessly pondering any conceivable sense in which same-sex marriage could usefully be compared with slavery, am I now destined to spend next week wondering what it has in common with higher insurance premiums for younger drivers - and in what way insurance differentials are any kind of example of treating people "equally"?

On the whole, I think not. When the next Cardinal comes along, I'm switching over to Heart FM - where the real love is.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

They are making behaving abominably over this: the same old hetero-normative, patriarchal nonsense that they've clung to for the last few centuries and that, I suspect, they realise is now at its last prayers. Some of the early churches were less stupid and far less prejudiced.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

They appear to confuse "right" with "privilege". And no, I have not yet heard them offer any explanation of why marriages between straight people would be diminished by marriages between gay people.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Article sixteen does talk about men and women, so he may be pressing on that. But notice that it doesn't talk about "a man" and "a woman," so on his reading it allows for two-way polygamy. (Of course the preamble talks about "men and women" in the same way: it's clearly a phrase which applies to all humans, with reparatory acknowledgement of the history of at least one fundamental exclusion from that category.)

[drasecretcampus.livejournal.com]

"Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family". I'm not sure that necessarily means a marriage has to have one of each, and, yes, does seem to allow for several of either. I can't remember, incidentally, whether this is before UNESCO suggests that we abandon race in favour of ethnicity (in a 1950 document, as I recall).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Unless the Cardinal is claiming that gays and lesbians aren't men and women, I think he's on pretty thin ice.

Another possible reason for using the phrase "men and women" in this Article (as opposed to "everyone", as is more usual in the rest of the Declaration) is to indicate that the right to marry is restricted to adults. Whether that's what the writers had in mind, though, I don't know any more than Cardianl O'Brien does - so we'd better stick with what they actually wrote.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I'm the one skating on thin ice here, because I'm not going to listen to the whole thing, but it wouldn't be unreasonable of the cardinal to suggest that when the authors of the UDHR wrote "men and women" here, they had one of each in mind.

However, acknowledging that, it must also be noted that 1) the article doesn't actually say that, which might be hairsplitting; 2) even if it did say that, it's not defining marriage, it's outlining the limits of universal human rights. Which leaves two questions begged: 1) must we prohibit rights not on the list?, and more importantly 2) have not the rights that would go on such a list changed in the past, and thus may they not do so again in the future?

From the quote in the written article, I see what the cardinal is getting at with the slavery comparison. He means something morally noxious in the mind of the observer. But, if so, he misses the point that the reaction in the mind of the observer was only an effect, not the cause, of the moral noxiousness of slavery.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good points. I'd only add that 2a)) is the reason 1a) isn't really hair-splitting. The purpose of the Article is, as you say, to assert the right of men and women to marry, not to define whom they can marry. The framers need not have had any particular combination of people in mind in asserting that right, and since they didn't specify any, it's no good the Cardinal saying that in some strange way they did, because he thinks they would have if they'd thought of it. In effect, of course, it's now the Church which is standing in the way of the right as written.

[sheenaghpugh]

I think, on the whole, I won't be taking advice on sex and marriage from elderly celibates.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

I do kind of hate to see "elderly" and "celibate" as symbols of immorality though. What wrong with these people is the power and values they hold.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it is merely to suggest that, to use the language of Republicans talking about poor people who supposedly pay no taxes, they have no skin in the game.

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Yes, I understand that, and I certainly don't mean to sound as if I'm defending those particular people who hold that power. They may not have skin in the game (I don't know that expression but am here learning it from you :)) but their fault is their actions and morality, not being old or being celibate.

[sheenaghpugh]

I don't see their celibacy and advanced age as a symbol of immorality; I see it as a badge of incompetence to comment on sexual matters of which, presumably, they know nothing. In the same way that I won't be taking advice on finance from bankrupts.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Well speaking as a straight, married woman, I can't say that my withers are unduly wrung at the thought of gay folks having the same right to choose marriage that I had if that's what they want. However, it they take the Catholic church as an ad for the brand, they may well think twice. My own marriage was a civil affair so none of any religious group's damn business (although I am a Quaker).

Oh wait! I forgot! I'm trans- so I'm the spawn of satan according to this same group of elderly celibates.

They removed the horns and tail at the same time as the rest got sorted out......... :o)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

They removed the horns and tail at the same time as the rest got sorted
out

I'm sure they make lovely conversation pieces. :)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Aye! I keep 'em on the mantelpiece :o)

[rozk.livejournal.com]

They are very fond of making a metaphoprical link between the relationship of man and wife, and that between Christ and the Church. Accordingly, their objection to same sex marriage is that it opens that metaphor out to all sorts of fleshly possibilities they do not want to have to think about.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Metaphor doesn't seem to be their strong suit, does it? That one does seem to enshrine a particularly patriarchal conception of marriage - assuming that the relationship of the Church and Christ is of the "He for God only, she for God in him" variety.

Something I don't understand (and it may or may not be connected with this metaphor) is the way they harp on about how marriage is for the procreation of children - as, for instance, here - yet raise no objection to the marriage of women past childbearing age, men who've had vasectomies, etc etc. Having said that, I'm not sure what the offspring of Christ and the Church would look like, so maybe that's a totally separate hang-up.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I have seen a feeble defense offered for that last point. It is that, even if a heterosexual couple cannot actually procreate, at least theoretically they can. Leaving aside any other points, the coldness of the comfort this offers to heterosexual couples who want to procreate but find they can't is entirely typical of the Church.

I'm sure this comes from the same mental bin as the argument that priests must be male because they must resemble Christ. To which I have always liked supergee's response, which is that he resembles Christ more than the Pope does, being bearded and Semitic.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That does sound like a very 'theological' argument - i.e. one wholly unconnected to people and their lives. But I must admit I struggle to see in what sense procreation is theoretically possible for a woman who has had a hysterectomy - except in the sense that it might have been possible if circumstances had been different. But then, a gay couple can equally well say that if circumstances had been different (e.g. one of them had been a woman and they'd both been straight) then they could have procreated too! Not only that, but some gay couples can procreate - where one of them happens to be a trans man, for example. Does the Church bless such a union?

All this is alas utterly unconnected with what I understand to be the ethical principles behind Christianity, which are more concerned with venerating love than with holding an angelic breakdance contest on the nearest pin.

I've heard that argument about Christ, but more on the grounds that he only picked men as his disciples than that he himself was male. But the general principle holds - albeit I missed the 'Jesus picks his team' scene in the Gospels, and it seems to me that Mary Magdalene, for example, is as central to Jesus's group as Matthew (in many ways her male equivalent, coming from a despised profession). That being said, the fact is that, as you say, he only picked Jews. More, he only picked first-century Jews.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

I don't have any difficulty seeing the theological argument whereby a woman with a hysterectomy, or even a woman naturally infertile, is a "potentially" fertile woman in the way that a gay man is not. But that is a theological argument, with all the pinhead-dancing and disconnection from the reality of life implied by that adjective. In particular, I suspect it says nothing about how such women feel about their fertility, especially ones who would want to be fertile.

Bringing in trans introduces even more pitfalls into the theological worldview. The reactionary view I've seen is that you are what God made your body (by which they mean "your genitals", since contradictory secondary sex characteristics are ignored in this worldview) to be, and the heck with anything else God may have done with your mind, hormones, etc. This means that a trans man, even a post-op one, is by their standards a woman, and if he is going to marry a cis person, that person must be ... a man! And thus we see anti-trans phobia wrapping itself around its own arseplug and promoting what, to everybody else, looks like same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, if you are what God made your genitals to be, then what are intersex people? If in that case the doctor gets to assign you, then why doesn't transsexual surgery count? Is there an age limit? (Probably the answer is: "la la la, I can't hear you, intersex does not exist") Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to proscribe.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to proscribe.

Word/Verbum/Logos.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Now, if only I'd had the wit to figure out some way to make it rhyme.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I begin to wonder why 'the church' however defined, has always been so uncomfortable with the story of the Prophet Yeshu bar Joseph (this may give you a clue as to my own relationship with him- I am, after all, a Quaker of Jewish ancestry :o) and the woman of Samaria at the well.

It's a shame that Mary of Magdala is a composite of more than one person, not a single individual.

[sheenaghpugh]

Actually they did use to object to married couples continuing to have sex after the menopause, on the ground that conception was no longer possible.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Even if they closed their eyes and pretended they were doing it with Jesus?

Actually, that makes sense, given the whole Augustinian "sexual pleasure is sinful" line. But it's still a mystery why they allowed post-menopausal women to marry, if the potential for procreation is an essential component.

[sheenaghpugh]

Maybe "it is better to marry than burn"?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

One of St Paul's more sensible comments, in my view - but one that's quite incompatible with the "marriage is for the procreation of children" line now being touted by the Men in Scarlet.