The British prime minister has “come out” with a commitment to
gay marriage, arguing that it is not despite being a
conservative, but because he’s a conservative, that he
favors it. He is not the only one to have voiced this idea, but of
course he is by far the most influential since ideas in the heads
of politicians are quickly transmuted into law. What David Cameron
means (but cannot quite say) is that the blatant promiscuity of
homosexual relations might be brought under control if homosexuals
are encouraged to make vows of lifelong fidelity. To which I think
the response should be: fat chance. Of course there are life-long
homosexual partnerships, and these were often socially acceptable
even before they were entirely legal. Just think of Benjamin
Britten and Peter Pears, or Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti.
But any attempt to reconfigure the institution of marriage ought
surely to be founded on statistics rather than individual
instances, and ought to consider what that institution means and
has meant in the history of our communities. To base a radical
change merely on wishful thinking is, in these circumstances, an
evasion of responsibility.
But here is the difficulty. Although the facts about
homosexuality are well enough known, you cannot safely allude to
them. You cannot discuss the radical difference between male and
female homosexuality—the first tending toward promiscuity and
sensual pleasure, the second toward emotional dependence and home
building—without attracting irate accusations of “homophobia.” You
cannot point to the effect on the emotional development of
children, of a culture in which homosexuality is treated as a
legitimate way of life, nor can you allude to the correlation
between male homosexuality and pedophilia. Some writers have gone
public on these issues—Jeffrey Satinover, for example, in
Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (1996)—and paid a
predictable price for it. Others have simply turned a blind eye and
hoped that it will all go away or decided that in any case, in our
promiscuous world, it hardly matters who does what with whom.
But it does matter, and it matters most of all not to you and
me, who are grown up enough to deal with it, but to our children.
This is where the real issue has been fudged in the European
debates and is being increasingly fudged in America. Marriage is
not about endorsing a sexual attachment between adults. It is about
creating the conditions in which children can come into the world
fully protected and with a fair chance of being loved. Marriage
does not exist for the benefit of the present generation but for
the benefit of the next. It is a rite of passage in which two
people set out on a path whose meaning lies not in their present
emotions but in their future family. As in all rites of passage,
the meaning of marriage is not individual but social, and any
attempt to rewrite marriage as a deal between the living is a
negation of its real meaning, as a bond between the living and the
unborn—a bond in which the dead too have an interest. If David
Cameron really were as conservative as he claims, that would be the
language he would use in giving voice to his views about
marriage—the language of Edmund Burke.
As for the relations between the living, it is not as if these
are in any way hampered by the existing legal order. In most
European countries there are already ways in which homosexual men
and women can ratify their relations in the form of “civil
partnerships,” which confer the legal benefits and burdens of
marriage without implying the radical change of status that
marriage has traditionally signified. The activists are not content
with this arrangement, not because it does not provide the security
that true love requires, but because it still implies that there is
a difference between heterosexual and homosexual relations. So
offended are they by this implication that they are prepared to
level the charge of homophobia against anyone who gives voice to
it. In the current climate of opinion in Europe, no politician, no
journalist, and no churchman can risk inviting this charge.
Like other “thought crimes,” homophobia lacks a definition and
has no identity in law; you don’t know how to avoid committing this
crime, since all lines of inquiry might suddenly turn a corner and
land you in the midst of it. The only safe option is to keep your
mouth shut, or else to join the crowd and shout “homophobia” in
your turn at whichever victim has been currently singled out for
persecution. We are already seeing this among the Church of England
bishops, many of whom seem more anxious to avoid the charge of
homophobia than to speak out on behalf of the biblical idea of
marriage. I cannot help thinking that the decision of the
Archbishop of Canterbury to step down is not unconnected to the
inevitable martyrdom that his office would impose on him, were he
to defend the Christian conception of sexual love. On the other
hand, archbishops are made for martyrdom and ought not to avoid
it.
In a way, of course, the Christian view of marriage cannot
really be changed by reforms of the secular law. When, in the wake
of the French Revolution, the state began to take over the business
of authenticating marriages, it did not affect the Christian view
that marriages are made by the Church. Catholics still regard
marriage as a sacrament—in other words, as a relation sealed in the
presence of God, which cannot be undone merely by an agreement
between the partners. The Anglican Church has never decided whether
marriage is a sacrament or not; nevertheless it does not regard
marriage as a secular institution, or a “church wedding” as merely
a ceremonial addition to a deal whose terms are entirely exhausted
by a legal contract. There is hardly a religion in the world today
that does not regard marriage as an existential, rather than a
contractual, move—a step out of this world of self-interested
agreements, into the transcendental realm where commitments are
eternal and consequences unforeseen.
The reason for this is plain. Rites of passage are inherently
religious occasions. They are the “points of intersection of the
timeless with time,” the places in human life where the eternal
meaning of what we are and do is made clear to us. Birth, coming of
age, marriage, and death are metaphysical transitions, which
concern not the individuals involved in them only, but the whole
community of which they are a part. We all have an interest in
them, and our desire to mark them with rituals and blessings is a
deep sign of our commitment to each other and of our desire that
the world should continue along its ancient and authorized path.
That is why, for ordinary people, the introduction of gay marriage
is not simply a matter of terminology but a decision that affects
their whole outlook on the social world. It signifies the
downgrading of marriage from status to contract. Marriage,
conceived in this new way, loses its character as a social
institution, through which the commitment to future generations is
endorsed and made real, and becomes just another temporary
negotiation.
We can hardly deny that things have been moving in this
direction for some time, and that easy divorce has made secular
marriage into little more than a contract in any case. Why then
make such a fuss about gay marriage, which simply completes a
process that has been under way since at least the middle of the
20th century? I suspect that this is the argument that will
eventually prevail, and it will naturally have the effect of
finally excluding children from the equation. Moreover, once that
argument has prevailed it will be difficult to prevent the
extension of marital rights to “polyamorous” partnerships, or to
incestuous relations. It is already somewhat surprising that bigamy
and incest are regarded in most Western countries as serious
crimes. Maybe we have to prepare ourselves for an entirely new
social order, which may be neither social nor a true order, in
which any kind of sexual relationship can be transformed into a
marriage, simply by signing on the dotted line. My suspicion is,
however, that this change, which will be announced as a great step
forward for human freedom, will in fact be experienced as a loss of
true commitments, and a disinheriting of children.
