The Case Against Gay Marriage (and Why Everyone Should Care)

The degenerates' lobby continues its remorseless march through the institutions of American society -- and if you believe certain alt-right bloggers, apparently we're all supposed to not care.

Such is the story from Ferdinand Bardamu, Advocatus Diaboli, Alte, and others. From Ferd:

No really, I don’t care, and neither should you. If you’re expending any serious amount of energy opposing gay marriage, there’s something seriously wrong with your head. Defending the integrity of marriage in America at this point is like defending the chastity of a crack whore. No-fault divorce and feminist family courts, among other things, have so debased marriage that letting gays join the club isn’t going to so much as leave a ripple in the pond. Marriage has been long dead, and all the people in the gay marriage debate are doing is playing tug-of-war with the corpse.

And from AD (a deeply unimpressive and unoriginal thinker whose close connection to Ferd and the alt-right hub that is IMF makes him a useful barometer of whatever horrible thing the alt-right is about to adopt or succumb to):

I have a question-

Why do some people oppose gay marriage?

Given the absolutely pathetic state of heterosexual marriage in developed countries, especially the USA, is it even possible to debase the “institution” of marriage any further? What part of this pathetic institution can you still desecrate?

Have you ever seen shows like Bridezilla? If you think that they are fiction, you have probably never overheard a group of women talking about their upcoming wedding. Here is the unpleasant truth-

‘Empowered’ women have debased heterosexual marriage beyond repair.

Two guys marrying each other might actually raise the state of marriage. In any case, the married life of two guys is likely to be less fucked up than its heterosexual equivalent.

Some commenters at IMF argue that we should focus our efforts on combatting financial fraud rather than wasting it on gay marriage.

First, I agree completely that financial fraud is a very important issue and should be first and foremost in the attentions of our political class, especially because it's a side-effect of our unsustainable and catastrophe-bound monetary system. But that's a condemnation of the left, for distracting us from the issue by harping on about peripheral ones, not a condemnation of the right for resisting them.

Financial fraud stems from the collapse of public morality of which "gay marriage" is part and parcel. Homosexual behavior, to the extent it is self-evidently contrary to natural law, is also part of that collapse. And all morality stands and falls together. There is no sense arguing that one has an obligation to respect justice while arguing that the foundation for that justice -- that is, morality, from which sexual morality also derives -- doesn't exist or is irrelevant, as many alt-right bloggers and readers do.

But they cannot do otherwise, because to do so would be to expose the rank disorder of their own lifestyles. Most of the "game" practitioners at IMF do to unsuspecting women what bankers do to unsuspecting borrowers: they take advantage of their ignorance and simple-mindedness to screw them (literally in the former sense, figuratively in the latter). Thus, their complaints about financial fraud and the injustice propagated by our feminism-mired legal system amount to so much utilitarian argument from self-interest: they have no sound moral basis from which to criticize either, after all, since it would entail criticism of themselves, as well.

To quickly get back on topic, it's worth asking ourselves what the purpose of marriage is. The left says that justice demands that gays be allowed to marry, but obviously that is only the case if it is unjust -- that is, contrary to the purpose of marriage -- that they are denied from marrying in the first place. If "same-sex marriage" is obviously contrary to the essential purpose of marriage, then permitting it is unjust; and if it is not contrary, then forbidding it is unjust. Either way, justice demands some positive position on same-sex marriage: "I don't care" is simply not acceptable, and is in fact a position borne of thoughtless cowardice.

Marriage as both a social and a legal institution historically was understood to arise from natural law: that is, an understanding of the general normative behavior of things which derives not from convention but from nature itself. It's a simple observation to note that men and women's physical sexual configurations exist and are different from one another because some aspect of human nature (specifically, the need to propagate the species by procreation) demands it. Thus the simple reality of physical sex (that is, the male/female dichotomy) points toward some end: procreation.

Because procreation can naturally occur only in the context of the reality of the sexual dichotomy and because male/female conjugal relations are therefore the basis for the continuity of society and the species, a number of rights and obligations follow. First, because it is good for parents to care for their children (in the sense that nature demands that they do so), parents have both an obligation to care for their children and a right to do so against the claims of society; likewise, children have a right to be cared for, and by their own parents. Marriage law is simply a legal framework within which these rights and obligations are subject to society's impetus -- society, after all, has a vested interest in the care and disposition of children, since raising children is not only a matter of individual good but of the health of the community and the state, as well.

Clearly, then, "love" is not the purpose of marriage. We might say that it is a necessary condition for marriage to operate but not a sufficient one, else it would imply a right to incest that virtually no society has ever recognized. Moreover, there is no compelling reason why the state ought to legislate based on the whims of the human heart; if it were, in fact, the case that marriage law was simply about recognizing love and commitment, that would be a case for abolishing it entirely, not extending it to include others. Obviously, "commitment" is not the purpose of marriage, either, since commitment is not an intrinsically good end in itself. Parents, after all, are generally speaking committed to their children, and children likewise to their parents, but no one would term this relationship a "marriage" (even though it, too, clearly involves love). I'd argue, too, that to say that commitment is the purpose of marriage is rather a non sequitur, since commitment is, by nature, rather causally prior to marriage.

Nor is "consent" a foundation of marriage, except in the sense that it is necessary but not sufficient for it. For one thing, to say that "the purpose of marriage is to consent to be married" is profoundly retarded circular reasoning. For another, to say that consent is a sufficient basis for marriage would mean (a) that there is no compelling reason for the state to limit marriage to two people (which would imply a right to polygamy that no advanced society has, to my knowledge, ever endorsed); (b) that there is likewise no reason to limit marriage to human beings (which would imply a right to bestiality* that, again, no advanced society has, to my knowledge, ever endorsed); and (c) that there is no reason to forbid people from, say, marrying inanimate objects for which they have fetishes (like the neurotic child-abuse victim who recently "married" the Eiffel Tower and apparently masturbates with a bit of fence post for which she's developed an attraction).

Rather, the purpose of marriage is intrinsically bound up with man's conjugal nature. It is impossible to separate it. Marriage is heterosexual sex (although not all heterosexual sex is marriage). Thus, "same-sex marriage" is an ontological non sequitur.

The usual objections to traditional marriage are easily dispatched by an understanding of natural law. Because natural law is concerned with the norms that arise from nature, marriage, too, is normative: that is, because the essence of man and woman is fertile, the essence of marriage is simply the union of a man and woman, even if individual couples may, by happenstance, be unable to have children. A  marriage in which, say, the woman has had a histerectomy and therefore cannot have children may not as perfectly instantiate the essence of marriage as a fertile couple,  but it is nevertheless still a marriage. By contrast, "same-sex marriage" does no such thing because a same-sex union is intrinsically infertile.

Of course, a gay  man can still (hypothetically) have children with a woman. But under the law, he is free to marry that woman if he chooses. The typical leftist response, that people said the same thing about laws against interracial marriage (i.e., "blacks can still marry other blacks") and that opposition to gay marriage is thereby analagous to irrational racial bigotry is, again, a non sequitur: race is irrelevant to the end of marriage; sex is not.

This is what conservatives mean when they say that gay marriage is an affront to the nature of marriage: by treating marriage as any ordinary contract, it reduces it from the status of an organic institution arising from human nature to the level of a manufacturer's warranty on an old air-conditioning unit.

What's most maddening about all this is that gays in no meaningful way had their rights restricted under a traditional marriage regime. As Reason points out (in a pro-gay marriage puff piece that proves decisively that mainstream libertarianism is really just left-wing libertinism), gays were already free to go to churches and exchange rings and vows and even go around for the rest of their lives saying they're "married" and absolutely no one could do anything to stop them. And, of course, if they truly wished to enjoy marriage in a manner consistent with their nature, they could foreswear their homosexuality and  marry someone of the opposite sex. Yet this, apparently, wasn't enough: they demanded not just the freedom to practice their degeneracy but the whole of society's endorsement of it, an endorsement to which they were in no way entitled by natural law or the common good. And by way of their bullying and the sinister judicial warfare of their leftist co-conspirators, they have finally succeeded in getting that endorsement at the expense of all reason, justice, and order.

Alte, a Catholic, comes closest to making sense here:

Yeah, I don’t care either. Notice I have not been reporting on it. It’s all irrelevant. Legal marriage is totally and permanently dead. Over. Done for. The RCC needs to stop defending it, and start boycotting it.

Take a stand on something, Mother Church.

If the church hadn't already completely surrendered in the cultural war, it'd have arrested this trend years ago -- for instance, by excommunicating all the pro-gay "marriage" Catholic politicians for scandalizing the public, and perhaps even absolving married Catholics of their moral obligation to obey the legal terms of their marital contract, which has been absurdly renegotiated without any respect to their own conditions. The wages of Vatican II is moral confusion and impotence.

If the right (even the alt-right) follows suit and lays down its arms because gay marriage is "irrelevant," they will forfeit preemptively every battle to come. If morality -- including the justice that the bankers' gross criminal behavior demands -- is all a matter of personal subjectivity and irrational value judgments (a concession automatically made by declaring one's uninterest in the sanctity of the marital institution), then there is no such thing as justice, and therefore no reason to care about its violation. Seriously, can you even think of any reason to care that is not somehow related to natural law? By giving up on this, you surrender all rights in perpetuity to complain that modern society is not organized to your liking. Not that most of the alt-right would ever do anything but complain, anyway.

What happens next? These few inches being grudgingly conceded, the relativist left will proceed to demand the next several miles. Within a decade, there will be a concerted movement to compel state recognition of polygamous relationships, probably spearheaded by some celebrity degenerate, most likely in the form of expanding "civil union laws" to allow multiple-person contracts. (Ultimately, people united under such laws will be folded into marriage law by Supreme Court fiat). To the extent legalized polygamy is opposed by the left at all, it will only be because of its continuing association with the Mormons, although that may not prove to be too strong a consideration since it would demand just as equally censure of some Muslims. Prohibitions against bestiality and certain forms of incest will probably be eased (don't believe me? At least one leftist paragon is already on board). No doubt the future will be one in which people are permitted to sign contracts in life to sell their corpses after death to necrophiliacs, or allowed to donate their bodies for that purpose in a manner similar to how they're currently permitted to donate their organs.

And why not? If you divorce "marriage" (indeed, the sexual act itself) from its procreative context, all manners of absurdities follow. There is nothing except personal distaste stopping one from rationalizing those absurdities as "good." And personal taste, as the devolution of attitudes toward homosexual behavior just these last ten years suggest, is subject to revision.

*Of course, the libertarian (who sees consent as the basis for all social interactions and cannot even conceive of a nonconensual arrangement) will respond that we forbid bestiality because the animal doesn't consent. But we do not get animals consent before we kill, cook, and eat them, or sheer their excess wool to make clothes, or test hygiene products on them. Animals are by nature subordinate to man, and thus in his interactions with them it is his consent alone that ought to matter. Even this, I think, would be outrageous: to claim that consent can legitimate just any interaction with an animal. Man has a duty to cultivate the capacities that are essential to his nature, and one of these capacities is compassion, which obviously requires that animals be treated, if not necessarily with the "respect" that would accrue to a human person, certainly with no more violence or cruelty than would be justified.

**The liberal will argue that this is a "slippery slope fallacy," betraying in the process his total ignorance of rhetorical principles. The slippery slope argument is not a fallacy in and of itself; it is fallacious only when it rises (or falls, rather), to the level of a non sequitur because no clear logical relationship is demonstrated between the present act and the forewarned future ones. I have clearly so demonstrated a relationship: if sex does not exist for the purpose of procreation, and if marriage does not exist to attach society's impetus to the intrinsically fertile heterosexual relationship, then there is literally no compelling reason whatsoever to impose any further limitations on what sexual behaviors may be tolerated.

Comments

[Xamuel]

I couldn't get through the whole 2500 word post, but from what I skimmed, it seems you spent a very long time to repeat the old slippery slope argument (and bash some good people along the way).

I would argue that when it comes to honoring procreation, a far bigger problem is the fact that we don't value it economically: currently, having a kid is a horrible, horrible decision financially, and that has nothing to do with marriage, even less with gay marriage. As a collapse writer, I'd think you'd home in more on that and less on what's really a huge non-issue.

This is one of the things that really pisses me off about the religious right. They had their time in power during the Bush administration, and they claimed to champion "family values" by demonizing gays. Meanwhile they utterly ignored much bigger threats to the family.

At least when you rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, the deck chairs get rearranged. You're trying to rearrange individual cushions on those deckchairs.

[Proph]

Having children has never not been financially burdensome; by every account it is less burdensome today, when our extensive welfare network has practically rendered the family unit obsolete.

To the extent that the collapse of Western society stems largely from a collapse in Western morality (from which everything else detestable, from the general evilness of our political class to the shameless fraud of the bankers to the rank moral and intellectual degeneracy of our youth, naturally follows), I see no reason why I should shy away from observing the obvious disorder of homosexuality. As I wrote above, to complain about the injustices of financial fraud while disregarding the natural law basis of justice in the first place is to invite all manners of absurdity into our world.

For what it's worth, I am in no real meaningful sense a "religious right" person, although I have considerable sympathy for the Catholic Church and should probably simply sack up and commit to it already. I had never attended a church service before about a year ago, and have attended only two or three in that time, generally in the company of others. My argument against gay marriage proceeds from natural law (the historical basis for all Western morality), not revelation.

[Dan]

Should we also deny senior citizens to marry?

[Proph]

Obviously not; that would be contrary to the spirit of marriage.

[Fed-Up Far-Right Winger]

"This is one of the things that really pisses me off about the religious right. They had their time in power during the Bush administration, and they claimed to champion "family values" by demonizing gays. Meanwhile they utterly ignored much bigger threats to the family."

Xamuel here's the deal (I'm assuming you're a liberal completely ignorant of far-right opinion aside from what you read on leftist media outlets and your left-wing head):

I'm part of this "boogeyman religious right" and "packet of extremists" that you leftists often cry about and scream and in you case you didn't notice Bush was a NEOCONSERVATIVE. Sorry but what "bigger threats" to the family?

Where did we "demonize" and bash "gays"? Is it about seeing homosexuality and transgenderism as immoral? WHY DO YOU LEFTISTS HAVE SEIZURES AND SEE THINGS THAT WE REACTIONARIES CLEARLY DON'T???

You ugly leftists have the guts to demonize LIBERAL "CONSERVATIVES" like BUSH as "far-right" and then turn around and talk how we "aren't doing enough"? HECK NO!!!

Bush was NOT a traditional conservative. Bush LOVED racial liberals and social liberals despite your mantra to the contrary. Amazingly that fact NEVER entered your left-wing brain.

Typically far-left wingers like you continually twist everything. You say that gender and sexuality doesn't matter in marriage but oh it does.

Then being so far-left you think that liberal "conservatives" are "far-right". You've been seriously drinking. No sorry taking many drugs.

"I would argue that when it comes to honoring procreation, a far bigger problem is the fact that we don't value it economically"

Marriage isn't just about economics. Its about transcendence.

Note: Sorry Xanuel if I took out all my heat on you. I had to take it on somebody and I'm just SICK and TIRED of leftists and liberals trying to analyze and twist far-right opinion. That and their penchant for seeing liberal "conservatives" as "extremists".

[Fed-Up Far-Right Winger]

"**The liberal will argue that this is a "slippery slope fallacy," betraying in the process his total ignorance of rhetorical principles. The slippery slope argument is not a fallacy in and of itself; it is fallacious only when it rises (or falls, rather), to the level of a non sequitur because no clear logical relationship is demonstrated between the present act and the forewarned future ones. I have clearly so demonstrated a relationship: if sex does not exist for the purpose of procreation, and if marriage does not exist to attach society's impetus to the intrinsically fertile heterosexual relationship, then there is literally no compelling reason whatsoever to impose any further limitations on what sexual behaviors may be tolerated."

You think that liberals will hear you?

"At least when you rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, the deck chairs get rearranged. You're trying to rearrange individual cushions on those deckchairs."

And then Xamuel the resident liberal mocks you that we are arranging "individual cushions". No we're not. Some of us are trying to arrange deck chairs but others are trying to jump off the ship thanks to the mess that you liberals have given us. I count myself as a ship-jumper. I believe that legal marriages are corrupted with liberalism beyond current repair. The only difference is that I believe that IMF is completely wrong (that "gay marriage" is supposedly meaningless) and that I agree with many parts of this post.

[Fed-Up Far-Right Winger]

One of the things that REALLY has started to anger me is how leftists do this "double-think" like Xamuel. They spread immorality and deviancy and then see themselves as "protectors" of "goodness". Many leftists like Xamuel even have the guts to see us as "changing cushions on deck chairs" (yeah right!). They go around saying that reactionaries haven't done good enough. )=

Liberalism is truly evil.

[Fed-Up Far-Right Winger]

Sorry for all of my rants on this blog. I seriously lost it and can't tolerate much anymore. ):

[Fed-Up Far-Right Winger]

Liberals are just really stupid. They think that the "religious right" is out there to get them and has much power (neither is true) and that Bush was an "extremist fascist" (not true either).

I mean I'm a far-right Christian and I think that we are small in influence. I see a LOT of heresies in the Chritian Church and a LOT of LIBERALS.

I mean how to leftists do this? Don't they realize they have about say much of the power today?

How do they see liberal "conservatives" like Bush as "far-right"? Where do they come up with the "religious right" boogeyman like Xamuel?

This is what irritates me most about leftists. Demonizing liberal "conservatives" as far-right and creating mostly imaginary "movements of extremists conservatives with vast influence".

[Fed-Up Far-Right Winger]

I mean doesn't Xamuel realize how many "conservatives" are liberal in ideology at their core in modern politics?

[Fed-Up Far-Right Winger]

Sorry for all of my posts again. Xamuel really pissed me off in his post and since he's liberal I took it out all on him.

[Chang]

I believe some liberals whom criticize far-right wingers as ignoring no-fault divorce are completely off the mark because quite frankly liberals themselves have lead to the mess we have today and reactionaries have done all that they can. Now whom is responsible for divorce? Liberalism. What sector of liberalism exactly? FEMINISM. Traditional conservatives fought feminism and we lost the fist war therefore frivolous divorce has been legalized. And what's happening today? Far-right wingers STILL criticize and oppose feminism (and liberalism in general). The slippery slope is quite real Xamuel and no there are no "bigger threats to the family" from what your twisted mind has come to conclusion. I love it when liberals criticize no-fault divorce to smear their opponents and ignore completely that the sacred cow of FEMINISM has lead to it.

[Eris Guy]

The libertarian who supports homosexual "marriage" believes he advocates for freedom from oppressive moral codes, but actually repudiates his own morality. Without the abolition of laws compelling the recognition of marriage as uniting two persons in one, the creation of homosexual "marriage" will coerce and compel people who do not believe in perverse and corrupt forms of "marriage" to obey and been seen to obey laws at war with their own mores, morals, traditions, religions, and customs. They will be unfree, and made unfree by phony "libertarians" who use true libertarians as fellow-travelers and dupes to achieve their totalitarian ends.

[M]

Hi Proph,

You're a solid writer; however, this post doesn't really introduce much new to the gay marriage debate, which more or less tends to boil down to a theory of natural rights/marriage as an institution of procreation versus individual rights and freedom.

I'll suggest a couple of things you may not have considered. You look to gay marriage as a microcosm of a bigger issue, namely the triumph of individual rights and freedom over authority, tradition, natural rights, and God. I would suggest instead that the current state of affairs IS natural to human nature given technological progress, which enables traditional structures such as the nuclear family, marriage, sexual monogamy, etc to erode - these structures evolved because they were necessary to survive; now, at this given moment, they are not nearly as much, so people become much more individually centered. We can sit at home and live on welfare and watch the Daily Show and eat bon-bons; no need to do anything. How can you argue against this from a natural rights perspective? You might say that this path is completely unsustainable, and I agree, but note that the unsustainability argument is entirely different than relying on a fallicious natural vs non-natural argument.

Addtionally, I would suggest something which might be considered radical: that morality is intrinsic to human nature and is physically felt in the human body as a feedback loop. Specifically, someone who commits an immoral action or has an immoral thought pattern is going to have physical sensations that arise in the body; the vast majority of people choose to ignore the symptoms and agitation which arises (which is why I mentioned the agitation that focusing on race differences causes you in my last comment), but the body feedback loop is what shows us what is right or wrong. If you look at spritual (not religious) traditions which arise spontaneously and independently throughout the world, as, for example, Ken Wilber has done, you will notice that they independently reach many of the same conclusions about the nature of man. Following this train of thought, it is the individual's body feedback loop which is the path to truth - when you do something morally correct, it feels right and sound in the body, and when you do something morally incorrect, it feels wrong and unsound in the body. If you accept this premise, then what follows is that the focus on individual rights and freedom in and of itself is NOT inherently wrong; it is the focus on individual rights and freedom FOR THE SAKE of being able to do whatever you want, when you want (subjective morality) that is truly wrong. A focus on objective morality through listening to the body is not, and this is where society should, in an ideal world, be evolving toward.

[tony]

the reason that the alt-rightists "don't care" is due to their inability to face the issue and also due to their laziness. to oppose it will upset the apple cart. they are primarily hipster-nihilists who feel a faux transcendence in the illusion of power they feel from saying "i just don't care maaaaaan! f-k it bro! whatever duuuuude, i just wanna get laid maaaaaaaaan."

[Nick Saurer]

Proph, it seems you are a talented writer, but I do have a few questions, and I want you to take them to heart, rather than calling me a "liberal idiot"
1. The way you speak of homosexuals gives me the impression that you consider them as "less than human". What gives you the right to say such things?
2. You speak of the sanctity of marriage, yet in this day and age, divorces are happening more and more often. How could giving homosexuals the right to marry degenerate the idea of marriage any further?
3. Religion shouldn't factor into your argument. No matter what you do, you cannot get everyone to think like you. This shouldn't be an argument of "the bible says this", this is an argument of basic human rights. You aren't above anyone, and whatever your religion says, marriage is a union between two consenting adults, no matter the gender. How can you deny one's natural right?

[Proph]

Hello Nick, and welcome to the blog. To address your issues:

1. If I considered them less than human, my argument against gay "marriage" and gay sex generally (which concerns human nature) would not apply to them. I'm free to dislike whoever I want, provided I do not neglect my duties.

2. Homosexuals do not have a "right" to marry that can be given to them. That was rather the point of this post. The "right" to marriage is simply the inverse of the duty to use one's sexual faculty in a manner consistent with its procreative end -- hence there can be no such thing as gay "marriage," which is why I put sarcastic quotation marks around it all the time.

3. I question whether you read my post. You are the first person to make reference to the Bible with respect to it.

I challenge you to think about what you call "basic human rights"; they are an irrational and metaphysically baseless construct made up by leftists. I wrote a post to that effect here: http://collapsetheblog.typepad.com/blog/2011/10/whence-rights.html. There are no rights which are not furnished by natural law; natural law quite clearly forbids homosexual behavior; hence, there is no right to homosexual behavior, much less to have that behavior subsidized by the state.

Your claim that "marriage is a union between two consenting adults" is simply begging the question. It is an assertion, not an argument. I am saying that it is more than that: that consent is not enough and has never been enough, and moreover that "marriage as consent" simply destroys the rationale for having marriage in the first place.

Finally, with respect to religion generally, I was a deist when this post was written. I converted to Catholicism a few months later; this conversion did very little to affect the substance of my argument against gay "marriage," which I still endorse today. Hence it is clear that this is not an explicitly religious argument. Even if it were, the claim that "religion shouldn't factor into it" only follows if my religion is false. If it's true, then it's true even if people disagree with it, and the fact that people disagree with it proves nothing except that those people are ignorant and wrong. And ignorance entitles people to precisely nothing.

Hope this clarifies things for you.