In a recent discussion, a commenter referred to the "non sexually integrated" marriage.
This was an earnest attempt to represent what I had actually said. But it was a misrepresentation -- even if in error rather than deliberate calculation.
Integration of the sexes is at the core of the social institution of marriage. It does not standalone. It is combined with the provision for responsible procreation. Both are essentials of the marriage idea. This is what gives marriage its coherency -- as a social institution of civil society.
Splintering that core into bits and pieces may be useful for those who'd replace the marriage idea with something else, as SSMers are wont to do, but, as with dissecting a frog, it tends to kill the living thing under the knife.
An individual can, on his own, become sexually integrated. That is, he can integrate his sexuality (and here I am not limiting sexuality to talk of sexual orientation) into his personality as a whole. Yes, there are mature adults who are not sexually integrated. But that is not what I was speaking about.
But we can start there and make a point: To become sexually integrated is to become a whole person. The marital relationship, as a type of relationship, it is made whole by integrating the sexes (and here I am not limiting integration to sexual behavior).
Marriage, as a type of relationship, unites the sexes -- that's understood by enforcement of the legal requirement for participation by both sexes in each conjugal union. That is an essential from which much else follows. And this is not a standalone, as I said, for it is intertwined with procreation: the set of principles and practices that comprise reponsible procreation begins with the first principle that each of us, as part of a procreative duo (again a whole procreative unit), is responsible for our offspring. Uniting the sexes in a sexual type of relationship is part and parcel of the societal preference for the unity of motherhood and fatherhood.
SSMers would rather search for exceptions (and dwell on apparent rather than actual exceptions) instead of seeing the coherency of the whole. The way that social institutions become undone is through the loss of coherency. Put simply, if marriage is made to mean everything, then, it would mean nothing.
Yet the exceptions rule SSM argumentation.
Some marriages do not beget children. Ahah! The provision for responsible procreation is not an essential, they declare. Some marriages use third party procreation technologies. Ahah again! The unity of fatherhood and motherhood is not an essential, they assert. Some marriages are sexless. Ahah once more! Integration of the sexes is not an essential, they announce.
But when discussing the marital type of relationship we are not pecking through the millions of grains of sand that comprise the beach; or the countless drops of water in the sea. We are not defining marriage on a case-by-case basis. For to approach it that way is to treat marriage as something other than a social institution. It is missing the forest for the trees. It is not how reasonable lawmaking is done, either. It is not how one conducts a rational exploration of a social good and the potential for a conflcit of goods.
When it comes to sex, the SSM campaign's argumentation and rhetoric makes it irrelevant -- except for the arbitrary emphasis on homosexuality and gay identity.
The marital type of relationship is not accorded its special status because it is definitively heterosexual. Categorizing sexual orientation is not a consideration: there is no homosexual criterion for ineligiblity and no heterosexual criterion for eligibility. Marriage is neutral, already, on this aspect of the SSMer's complaint against marriage law.
Yet SSMers demand that the homosexual type of relationship be granted a special status on par with marital status precisely because of the homosexual emphasis. Not because of equality of persons but rather because of a demand that gay identity politics -- elevating group identity -- must take precedence over the core meaning of marriage itself.
SSMers try to dodge this problem in their approach. They work slavishly to make marriage mean less and less. They trivialize marriage. They heap scorn on the very notion that we are discussing a type of relationship that entails a core meaning, essentials, that differentiate the it from other types of relationships -- before labels are attached and before a licensing scheme and special status are accorded it.
No, marriage is just what the law says it is. And the law is wrong to say it requires the man-woman combination. That's the extent of their thinking, really. They smother this with generous servings of homosexual emphasis and identity politics.
When husband and wife unite sexually, they become a single unit -- a procreative type of unit -- and thus are related one to the other. When, as is customarily happens, they conceive children together, they are clearly related as mother and father of their offspring. If unconsummated, the marital relationship is subject to annulment; if the unity is infringed upon, it is subject to adultry as grounds for dissolution; if extramarital procreation occurs, the marital presumption of paternity is subject to a legitimate challenge. These are connected by the same two-sex sexual basis of marriage.
The nature of human procreation is two-sexed, not sex-neutral. The fact of relatedness has a bearing on eligilbility. Societal concern for integration of the sexes (and thus the natural formation of the family) and provision for responsible procreation (and thus showing preference for the natural family as a simple matter of justice for children) justifies, however imperfectly some may claim it to be, the boundaries of eligiblity based on degrees of consanguinity and affinity.
No man can impregnate another man. No woman is impreganted by another woman. No one-sexed arrangement can sexually consummate as a marriage with coital relations. Same-sex sexual behavior is irrelevant to the marital relationship. The lack of the other sex is highly relevant, however, regardless of what an all-male or an all-female arrangment might do, or not do, sexually.
But the search for exceptions is what SSMers do when they are uncomfortable dealing with the actual disagreement that is at the heart of the conflict between their SSM idea and the marriage idea.
Infertile couples! Marriages that do not produce children! Besides, there is no legal requirement that the husband and wife engage in sexual behavior together! These exceptions and that lack of compulsion can only mean that fertility is not an essential and that children are not essential and that sexual relations is not essential.
Ooops. If the sexual embrace is not essential, whence arises the homosexual emphasis in the pro-SSM complaint against the marriage law?
SSMers routinely treat marriage as a sexual type of relationship. And they assume, against their own guidance, that SSM would be a sexual type of relationship. Well, marriage is a sexual type of relationship as per the sexual basis for consummation, annulment, adultery, and the marital presumption of paternity. These are coherent sets of legal expressions, and cultural expressions, of the core meaning of marriage; the two-sexed sexual basis justifies the marriage law and justifies the boundaries drawn for eligibility.
But SSMers will shrug and say that most SSMs would be sexual even though there is no legal requirement for that. And not requirement for homosexual orientation, to boot. But by saying "most" they concede there must be exceptions. They just don't care about the exceptions. And yet exceptions destroy the general shrug -- or rule -- according to pro-SSM guidance on how to think about these things. Their own argumentation would contradict their emphasis on homosexuality.
Either this guidance is profoundly flawed and ought to be discarded, as I think most reasonable people would agree, or it is intrinsic to the case against the marriage idea and for the SSM idea. Well, SSMers will attack the marriage idea with unreasonable notions, left right and center, and think themselves very competent in guiding society on how to regard the marriage law. I do not think most of them have the intellectual honesty to concede how unreasonable is their approach, since that has rewarded them in some jurisdictions. So they'd rather be expedient and stick with the unreasonable guidance that brought them to the dance.
However, that would render SSM a nonsexual type of relationship, at law. It destroys their supposed objections to SSMs between consenting related adults -- for same-sex sexual behavior is deemed an illegitimate basis for lawmaking on marriage. They couldn't make it mandatory even if they wanted to. And sexual orientation is also deemed an illegitimate basis for lawmaking -- so the SSM law cannot be shaped to favor this or that sexual orientation and yet that is what the SSM campaign demands on behalf of homosexuality and gay identity.
SSM is a sexual type of relationship, obviously, SSMers will insist; but the lack of a legal requirement and the many exceptions that do not fit "most" SSMs stands against treating SSM as a sexual type of relationship, at law. The tradition of romance does not save their homosexual emphasis on same-sex sexual romance; pro-SSM guidance has rejected tradition as a legitimate basis for lawmaking on SSM.
In a future blogpost I will discuss how the SSM idea is segregative both in terms of sex and in terms of sexual orientation. For now I will close by observing that the defense of a social institution is inherently more challenging that the attempts to deconstruct it. To destroy coherency, and then to announce the gates are busted down, that's the strategy of the SSM campaign. Some of the more common attempts are immature repetitions of "why not?" and others are earnestly and radically reductionist. Given the many contradictions and splits within the pro-SSM side, it takes mountainous heaps of gay identity politics to cover up the cracks in the SSM idea itself. The SSM idea lacks coherency in the first place.
But if marriage, at law and in the culture, were to lose its coherency, what would replace it? Well, the SSM idea, shorn of its homosexual emphasis and its heavy reliance on gay identity politics, is simply a call for instituting provisions for designated beneficiaries. That is not defined by sexual orientation; it is not definitively sexual either; and it is far more just than bending the law to the demands of identity politics. And, not unsurprisingly, it is a form of nonmarriage that can exist, and has long-existed, concurrently with the special status accorded the marital type of relationship.
Yet, for the SSM campaign, what gives the SSM idea at least the superficial appearance of coherency is something extrinsic to the call for treating various types of nonmarital relationships with equal compassion and assistance in their own right. The assertion of the primacy of gay identity politics is the thing that glues together the incoherent bits and pieces that comprise the argumentation and rhetoric of SSMers in courtrooms, legislatures, and other public forums -- including those in the blogosphere.
A "non sexually integrated" person can become sexually integrated outside of marriage -- and without engaging in sexual behavior for that matter; but the marital type of relationship cannot remain "marriage" without integration of the sexes.
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