Well, last week I promised you guys an update about my new job, so here it is. LOVE IT! I'm not a huge fan of all the paperwork that I have to do, but working with the girls is fantastic. It is also quite challenging from time to time (I AM working with with mostly adolescent girls from less than wonderful home environments), but the hardest parts are also the most rewarding. I got my first paycheck yesterday and laughed that they paid me for doing work I would have gladly done for free: it's a job and the Gospel all rolled into one! My only complaint is that I don't get to go to work more often.
Ok, blood may be a strange topic of conversation, but I'm going to bring it up momentarily. We all know that blood banks always have a shortage of blood in this country, and given the fact that we're fighting wars in two countries and the world is dealing with one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent history, it seems like a very good time to donate blood. Thinking this, I went to the local blood bank last month to give a pint or however much they take out. I haven't had any problems recently with my nervous system/heart condition that makes me pass out, so I was relatively certain I could donate without any problems. And I figured that even if I did pass out, they'd have me lying on a table so it wouldn't really matter. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case. Long story short, I got lightheaded/blurry vision while they were testing my iron content, and they wouldn't let me donate. The annoying thing is that the next day I got hit in the face with a racquetball racquet and bled all over the court without getting so much as dizzy (I even had to pick flecks of racquet paint out of my face with a pair of tweezers); I think it's just something about my fingers that freaks me out when they stick them. Anyways, I just want to encourage eveyone that doesn't have a medical condition preventing them from doing so to go give some blood. It's just a good idea.
Here's a topic of mutual interest that might be worth discussing. I'd like to know what you guys think about it, anyways. I have a slightly longer version of this piece, so if you'd like a little more meat on the argument just send me an email and I'll send you the 1000 word version.
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17 comments:
I have to REGISTER?!?! Come on, man, I'm too lazy.
Coye, what is the topic? I'm not willing to register for a local paper. I get enough spam already.
Sign in as "FCHeard" and use the password "3747502"
Surely you people know how to sign up with a fake name and email address. I mean, seriously, is this the level of respect we give our friend Coye (who wrote the article, if that will provide motivation...)??
Oooooh, Coye... good article. Nothing less than I would expect from a Wheaton philosophy major T6er! Or as Kenshin would say, "Sasuga!" However you spell that.
Regarding your article: I think that you oversimplify the meaning of marriage in its secular sense. It is not merely a convenient formalization of any cohabiting relationship. If you and I were to share an apartment in Texas because we were pennyless college graduates, would you want us to take advantage of the rights of our common law marriage? I wouldn't, because marriage is a weightier institution than that. It is not simply a religious bond. That is its essence, of course. It is a spiritual image of Christ and His church. But God also created the man/wife bond as a societal structure. Families are the foundation of society, regardless of religious creed or lack thereof. A large aspect of your argument depends on a absolute secularity of marriage and a government blind to any religious definition of marriage. Can't the definition of marriage be supported as "man and woman, husband and wife" by more than just religious beliefs? I think one could make the argument that it's only been in the last 50 years that anyone in history has supported same-sex couples as heads of a family unit. The same-sex marriage issue is not just a matter of the individuals' freedom of choice in lifestyle, but a matter of the fiber of society.
At risk of opening a very large can of worms, I think I need to question the contention that "Every citizen of the state must be guaranteed the same rights granted to its other citizens." First, I am not convinced that homosexuality is to be regarded on equal standing as heterosexuality. If it is something of a individual choice (and I assume that no one regards heterosexuality in this way) then why should we give those individuals basic marriage rights? I'm also trying to think of some other examples where we do not give equal rights to all citizens. The first (but also weak) example I can think of is the drinking age.
My last comment is that secular or not, doesn't the society choose what it will and will not stand? We put limits on public nudity and obscenities and on what can be broadcast over television or the airwaves. There are limits to the morality we can legislate, but isn't all legislation a codification of some sort of shared morality?
Oh! Coye, I'd be interested to know if you got any responses to your article from the Amarillo community. What'd the readership have to say?
Coye, Congrats on the publication. You are my superior when it comes to logical arguments, and you prove it once again with this article, but I'm going to respond to it anyway since I am skeptical of some of your points. I think some of what I say will be repetitive of Adam, but I actually came up with this before he posted, and I don't want to rewrite.
Our governments do not have a state religion and do not hold the power to declare a true marriage (in the spiritual sense) valid or invalid, but our spiritual beliefs should influece our political stances. While states cannot grant marriages in their true spiritual sense, their legislation can influence if and when people enter a true marriage. Therefore, we should care what a state legislates regarding marriage. Ideally, I would say that a secular state should not legislate anything regarding marriage. But that's not the big issue in the case of the homosexual unions.
If practicing homosexuality is a sin, then a monogomous, committed homosexual relationship cannot be a marriage in the eyes of God. I would argue that sexual relations of any sort outside of true marriage is a perversion of what God created as good. But state laws granting civil unions do not strike me as perverting sex and marriage any further and thus are not immortal, unless the laws encourage people who otherwise would not pervert marriage to do so. Answering whether civil unions for homosexual couples encourages additional homosexual practice is a question that I think would need to be answered when talking about whether civil unions are moral or immoral.
Coye did hit on another important factor. What about rights? People should have the right to determine who they share custody of things with and who inherits stuff, etc., but I think that most of us agree that certain human actions cause people to waive certain rights. Should homosexual action cause parties involved to waive certain rights?
Coye's piece suggests no, because spiritual beliefs should not influece a secular government. However, don't the spiritual beliefs of the people in a republic inevitably influence the government? I suspect that Coye may be right on the issue of such discrimination being wrong, but I would like to hear someone argue whether or not such discrimination would be wrong given a non-secular Christian influenced government since I suspect that no government is completely secular. I know that my suggestion could be considered a straw man; but if my proposed twist can be defended, I think Coye's position would be much better defended.
Phew, I should stick to economics. This stuff is not my regular realm, and philosophy 101 and no ethics courses only take me so far.
Eh, you're better off never having taken an ethics course. Anyways...
OK, first I need to clarify something that Strauss brought up. I do think that the government must remain entirely secular if it is to protect religious liberty, but I do not believe that the religious beliefs of citizens shouldn't affect their civic action. (A secular state must allow its citizen's religious beliefs to play a part in their civic life; otherwise it is not a secular but an atheist state.) In fact, the reason I am against banning homosexual civil unions is a religious belief about loving my neighbor. One purpose of this argument is demonstrating why loving my neighbor leads me to this civic action (opposing such bans).
Strauss also said that state mandates do affect the spiritual sense of marriage; I simply disagree with that idea. I do agree, however, that ideally there would be no legislation regarding marriage (although practically this is impossible-- we need legislation guaranteeing the rights of people in certain kinds of relationships). Think about this: inheritance laws and hospital policies grant me certain rights because of my relationship with my father (I would be heir to his property and could visit him in ICU), but they do not make me any more or less his son.
As far as homosexuals forfeiting civil rights-- should someone lose full standing as a citizen for heterosexual infidelity? For masturbation?
Children are not granted full rights as a citizen, but that is because they have not fully developed their capacities as persons. They receive full standing when they mature into adults.
It seems that civil unions have to do with property and legal rights; they have nothing to do with sex. Even under present law, people get married for convenience and never have a sexual relationship (W.H. Auden did so with Thomas Mann's daughter). I see no reason why Adam and I couldn't agree to enter into a contract which mutually grants a special sort of access to one another's property and person. Of course, he would have to get the contract annulled before he entered into another civil union with his wife.
Adam raised a question that I really wish I knew how to answer: are there secular reasons that the state should prefer committed heterosexual unions over homosexual ones? I don't know? At present, I have not seen any such reasons presented. A large part of this issue has to do with burden of proof-- which side do we take as the default until proven otherwise?
If I have oversimplified the secular sense of "marriage" by making it interchangeable with "civil union", then what is the richer meaning in the government's granting of marriage privileges? (I haven't researched this, but I expect to find government liscensing of marriage coinciding historically with a woman's right to own property. I should look that up.)
Well, there's a few things to work through. I really appreciate you guys taking part in this conversation; it's something that I'm still trying to think through clearly, and "iron sharpen's iron", as the teacher said. Please keep up the conversation; I feel like it is an important thing for us to understand these days.
Oh, Adam, I only came across one letter to the editor in response to my column. It really confused them that I could be a Christian and not want to curtail the rights of homosexuals; in fact, they were so confused that most of the sentences in their letter weren't even complete thoughts. On the other hand, all the clergy at my church made positive comments about it.
Um, my last post really doesn't exemplify this AT ALL, but I think we might have more profitable discussion if we work with the different parts of the issue one at a time (as much as possible, that is). I have a hard time managing these huge chunks of conversation all at once.
Then, you should pick a subsection that you want to deal with first.
How about the two senses of the word "marriage": what is the relationship between the spiritual "two becoming one flesh" and the governmental liscensing and recognition of marital unions? That could also include trying to work out exactly what the governmental action entails. You, Adam, and I have all touched on this in comments already, so we should be able to start working towards a better understanding together. (And everyone else is welcome to jump in, too.)
Please, please, please, please, please-- I wan't to have this conversation! I really appreciate Adam and Strauss raising some issues related to my column because I have had virtually no constructive feedback. I think this is very important, and I'm trying to work through all of this stuff in my head, and I need other people who can help me. There just aren't many people in Amarillo I can have this discussion with, so I REALLY want to talk about it here. PLEASE!
Coye, You should just the article devoid of the other musings, along with this new begging. I've been meaning to give you another response, but I've been pretty busy with switching jobs and other stuff.
Coye--I too will respond... by tonight. Right now I am grading some papers during my office hours, and then I have to read the Communist Manifesto, but a response is on the way!
Well, to restart this conversation, I would like to begin by responding to those who have already offered their thoughts, in no particular order. I was struck as I read Adam’s post by this statement: “Can't the definition of marriage be supported as "man and woman, husband and wife" by more than just religious beliefs? I think one could make the argument that it's only been in the last 50 years that anyone in history has supported same-sex couples as heads of a family unit. The same-sex marriage issue is not just a matter of the individuals' freedom of choice in lifestyle, but a matter of the fiber of society.” On the one hand, I agree completely: it indeed has been only in the last 50 years or so that people have begun thinking about the rights of homosexuals vis a vis property rights. However, I do not think that this is a necessary disqualification of the practice. After all, it is also only in the last 100 years or so that non-Whites became part of the European/colonial discourse on “human rights,” and women haven’t fared particularly well historically on the issue of equal rights, either. The idea that because a certain perspective hasn’t existed until very recently it is somehow suspect is one that we need to put pressure on, I think.
I also maintain some reservations about the idea of homosexuality as a choice, even though I know many of you will disagree (and I am not even sure what I think about this). I grant that there is no scientific evidence confirming or disproving a link between brain chemistry and sexual orientation, but I cringe when I consider the very real possibility that at some point in the not too distant future, a link will be discovered. What will the church do then? Dennis Okholm (formerly of the Wheaton theology dept.), in a class in which we were considering the Christian doctrine of sin, offered the following perspective: we know from Scripture that the fall affected not just humanity, but the whole of creation. Paul talks of creation groaning as it waits for the time when it will be restored to its former glory. So why can’t we, as Christians, acknowledge that sin has become fully interpolated into the very fabric of the universe—there is, quite literally, nothing that has not been tarnished by the introduction of sin into the world. It would be plausible, therefore (and I am still paraphrasing Okholm here) that things like brain chemistry have been twisted by sin such that some human beings are born with a propensity toward a sexuality that is unacceptable to God. This is tricky, I know. We would then have to do some complicated theological reflection on what exactly it means for God to create people who cannot express their authentic sexuality in keeping with orthodox Christian practice. (End Okholm) But is this, after all, so far fetched? We accept the idea that alcoholism and other propensities toward sinful behavior can be inherited. We are all born as enemies of God, as creatures who hate what is right and love what is evil. Does homosexuality have to be partitioned off into a separate category of sin, somehow different and more debased than any other? If anyone wants to argue with this line of thought, perhaps I will dig out my notes and see if I can more accurately report Okholm’s position.
And that brings me to the fundamental contradiction in this debate. Adam (along with others in the Christian community, or even more broadly, the conservative community) argues that our society is built on a foundation of heterosexual marriage, and allowing marriage to expand to include any thing else will erode our society. And there is something to this idea of the family unit as a basic structure, if we are thinking as political scientists. To quote Adam again (and Adam, I quote you because I want to interact with what you say): “But God also created the man/wife bond as a societal structure. Families are the foundation of society, regardless of religious creed or lack thereof.” However, if we maintain that some permutation of the nuclear family is a basic building block of society, I think it is clear that we are in some serious trouble. More than 50% of marriages end in divorce. (Even in Christian relationships and this is really the tragedy. I think we need to differentiate between our reflections on this topic within the body of Christ and within American culture. These are two very different things. If the church really wants to preserve the “sanctity” of marriage, whatever that means, it ought to do something about the rampant divorce rate within its own family—that would, however, obviously require us to criticize ourselves, repent, and change our own behaviors. It is much easier to attack the “other,” in this case gays, rather than cleaning up our own act. Humans are nothing if not hypocritical). So, if the argument is that allowing gay marriage or civil unions will erode the basic building block of society, we’d better look out in the harbor, because that nuclear family is already on its way out to sea.
Ok, I wanted to get in on the discussion, and respond to some things while I have time (or, more accurately, am avoiding my real work), but the way I’ve done it here did not confine itself to the sort of unified topic that Coye and others have suggested. Sorry about that. Maybe next time.
It turns out that I only responded to Adam--but Coye and Andy, you'll be next!
Hey, let's do what Strauss suggested and move the discussion to a more recent post. I'll put a link back to this post so it will be easy to access this part of the conversation, but it will be easier to keep up if there is a post on the "front page".
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