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Greenfield: The Deconstruction of Marriage
Sultan Knish blog ^ | Wednesday, April 15, 2015 | Daniel Greenfield

Posted on 04/15/2015 4:58:04 PM PDT by Louis Foxwell

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

The Deconstruction of Marriage

Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog

The only question worth asking about gay marriage is whether anyone on the left would care about this crusade if it didn't come with the privilege of bulldozing another civilizational institution.

Gay marriage is not about men marrying men or women marrying women, it is about the
deconstruction of marriage between men and women. That is a thing that many men and women of one generation understand but have trouble conveying to another generation for whom marriage has already largely been deconstructed.

The statistics about the falling marriage rate tell the tale well enough. Marriage is a fading institution. Family is a flickering light in the evening of the West.

The deconstruction is destruction. Entire countries are fading away, their populations being replaced by emigrants from more traditional lands whose understanding of the male-female relationship is positively reactionary. These emigrants may lack technology or the virtues of civilization, and their idea of marriage resembles slavery more than any modern ideal, but it fulfills the minimum purpose of any group, tribe or country-- it produces its next generation.

The deconstruction of marriage is not a mere matter of front page photos of men kissing. It began with the deconstruction of the family. Gay marriage is only one small stop on a tour that includes rising divorce rates, falling childbirth rates and the abandonment of responsibility by twenty and even thirty-somethings.

Each step on the tour takes apart the definition and structure of marriage until there is nothing left. Gay marriage is not inclusive, it is yet another attempt at eliminating marriage as a social institution by deconstructing it until it no longer exists.

There are two ways to destroy a thing. You can either run it at while swinging a hammer with both hands or you can attack its structure until it no longer means anything.

The left hasn't gone all out by outlawing marriage, instead it has deconstructed it, taking apart each of its assumptions, from the economic to the cooperative to the emotional to the social, until it no longer means anything at all. Until there is no way to distinguish marriage from a temporary liaison between members of uncertain sexes for reasons that due to their vagueness cannot be held to have any solemn and meaningful purpose.

You can abolish democracy by banning the vote or you can do it by letting people vote as many times as they want, by letting small children and foreigners vote, until no one sees the point in counting the votes or taking the process seriously. The same goes for marriage or any other institution. You can destroy it by outlawing it or by eliminating its meaningfulness until it becomes so open that it is absurd.

Every aspect of marriage is deconstructed and then eliminated until it no longer means anything. And once marriage is no longer a lifetime commitment between a man and a woman, but a ceremony with no deeper meaning than most modern ceremonies, then the deconstruction and destruction will be complete.

The deconstruction of marriage eroded it as an enduring institution and then as an exclusive institution and finally as a meaningful institution. The trendy folk who claim to be holding off on getting married until gay marriage is enacted are not eager for marriage equality, they are using it as an excuse for an ongoing rejection of marriage.

Gay marriage was never the issue. It was always marriage.

In the world that the deconstructionists are striving to build, there will be marriage, but it will mean nothing. Like a greeting card holiday, it will be an event, but not an institution. An old ritual with no further meaning. An egotistical exercise in attention-seeking and self-celebration with no deeper purpose. It will be a display every bit as hollow as the churches and synagogues it takes place in.

The deconstruction of marriage is only a subset of the deconstruction of gender from a state of being to a state of mind. The decline of marriage was preceded by the deconstruction of gender roles and gay marriage is being succeeded by the destruction of gender as anything other than a voluntary identity, a costume that one puts on and takes off.

Destroying gender roles was a prerequisite to destroying gender. Each deconstruction leads naturally to the next deconstruction with no final destination except total deconstruction.

Gay marriage is not a stopping point, just as men in women's clothing using the ladies room is not a stopping point. There is no stopping point at all.

The left's deconstruction of social institutions is not a quest for equality, but for destruction. As long as the institutions that preceded it exist, it will go on deconstructing them until there is nothing left but a blank canvas, an unthinking anarchy, on which it can impose its perfect and ideal conception of how everyone should live.

Equality is merely a pretext for deconstruction. Change the parameters of a thing and it ceases to function. Redefine it and expand it and it no longer means anything at all. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but if you change 'rose' to mean anything that sticks out of the ground, then the entire notion of what is being discussed has gone and cannot be reclaimed without also reclaiming language.

The left's social deconstruction program is a war of ideas and concepts. Claims of equality are used to expand institutions and ways of living until they are so broad as to encompass everything and nothing. And once a thing encompasses everything, once a rose represents everything rising out of the ground, then it also represents nothing at all.

Deconstruction is a war against definitions, borders and parameters. It is a war against defining things by criminalizing the limitation of definitions. With inclusivity as the mandate, exclusivity, in marriage, or any other realm, quickly meets with social disapproval and then becomes a hate crime. If the social good is achieved only through maximum inclusivity and infinite tolerance, then any form of exclusivity, from property to person to ideas, is a selfish act that refuses the collective impulse to make all things into a common property with no lasting meaning or value.

As Orwell understood in 1984, tyranny is essentially about definitions. It is hard to fight for freedom if you lack the word. It is hard to maintain a marriage if the idea no longer exists. Orwell's Oceania made basic human ideas into contradictory things. The left's deconstruction of social values does the same thing to such essential institutions as marriage; which becomes an important impermanent thing of no fixed nature or value.

The left's greatest trick is making things mean the opposite of what they do. Stealing is sharing. Crime is justice. Property is theft. Each deconstruction is accompanied by an inversion so that a thing, once examined, comes to seem the opposite of what it is, and once that is done, it no longer has the old innate value, but a new enlightened one.

To deconstruct man, you deconstruct his beliefs and then his way of living. You deconstruct freedom until it means slavery. You deconstruct peace until it means war. You deconstruct property until it means theft. And you deconstruct marriage until it means a physical relationship between any group of people for any duration. And that is the opposite of what marriage is.

The deconstruction of marriage is part of the deconstruction of gender and family and those are part
of the long program of deconstructing man. Once each basic value has been rendered null and void, inverted and revealed to be random and meaningless, then man is likewise revealed to be a random and meaningless creature whose existence requires shaping by those who know better.

The final deconstruction eliminates nation, religion, family and even gender to reduce the soul of man to a blank slate waiting to be written on.

That is what is at stake here. This is not a struggle about the right of equality, but the right of definition. It is not about whether men can get married, but whether marriage will mean anything at all. It is about preserving the shapes and structures of basic social concepts that define our identities in order to preserve those very concepts, rather than accepting their deconstruction into nullification.

The question on the table is whether the institutions that give us meaning will be allowed to retain that meaning. And that question is a matter of survival. Societies cannot survive without definitions. Peoples do not go on existing through the act of occupying space. The deconstruction of identity is also the destruction of people.

And that is what we are truly fighting against.


TOPICS: Government; History; Politics; Religion
KEYWORDS: greenfield; homosexualagenda; sultanknish
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To: stephenjohnbanker
Population control is a factor to some leftists, but this is to destroy the family,and religion, and leave homosexuals blameless in public for their evil lifestyle.

It's a devilish plan to destroy mankind.

41 posted on 04/15/2015 6:43:01 PM PDT by oldbrowser (We have a rogue government in Washington)
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To: Louis Foxwell

Thanks for the suggestion. I mentioned this in a comment on his blog.

I think Greenfield is an amazing social analyst and writer, but someone so prolific is bound to miss a point here and there. That said, he may have hired an editor (or had one volunteer). His essays are a bit tidier, grammatically, than they used to be.


42 posted on 04/15/2015 6:46:00 PM PDT by Tax-chick (I'm a radical feminist. Galatians 3:28)
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To: Louis Foxwell

Yet, some people marry. And do what is right.


43 posted on 04/15/2015 6:54:54 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: oldbrowser

These are some truly evil people.


44 posted on 04/15/2015 7:01:21 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (My Batting Average( 1,000) (GOPe is that easy to read))
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To: sitetest

Fewer, however, than in many earlier time periods. They don’t have to eliminate natural marriage to bring about societal chaos: just chip away a big chunk. That was done with non-marital childbearing a long time before homosexuality and gender-madness became the height of fashion.


45 posted on 04/15/2015 7:01:36 PM PDT by Tax-chick (I'm a radical feminist. Galatians 3:28)
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To: Tax-chick; Louis Foxwell

” I think Greenfield is an amazing social analyst and writer, “

Yep. I read them all.


46 posted on 04/15/2015 7:03:03 PM PDT by stephenjohnbanker (My Batting Average( 1,000) (GOPe is that easy to read))
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To: Tax-chick
Dear Tax-chick,

Don't burst my bubble. LOL.

My future daughter-in-law was received into the Church this Easter Vigil, and for now, I have hope.


sitetest

47 posted on 04/15/2015 7:09:45 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: sitetest

May your hope be rewarded abundantly, starting with your “future” daughter-in-law’s becoming your actual daughter-in-law.


48 posted on 04/15/2015 7:13:12 PM PDT by Tax-chick (I'm a radical feminist. Galatians 3:28)
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To: Tax-chick
Dear Tax-chick,

Well, there are many a slip between cup and lip, but these two seem pretty serious.


sitetest

49 posted on 04/15/2015 7:16:15 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: sitetest

Best wishes. I hope they make it to 50+ years.

None of my kids is serious ... or even casual, I think. Anoreth has her career and dog, and “People who want to be my boyfriend.” Bill has school and a job. Tom has friends who play Dungeon and Dragons. Elen has six brothers and thinks males are disgusting. Etc.


50 posted on 04/15/2015 7:19:13 PM PDT by Tax-chick (I'm a radical feminist. Galatians 3:28)
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To: Louis Foxwell

Dear Daniel, I think the article is speaking truth. I think it is explaining a real problem. But it needs to be boiled down to a cutting soundbite. That’s something conservatives need to help batter down the doors of the SCOTUS. Hillary repeated the left’s mantra about homosexual marriage “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against people because of who they love...”

We disagree with it, but it encapsulates their position and clubs their opposition, all in one short line.

“Defining concepts controls our thoughts, and we are allowing others to define the critical institution of marriage.”

Just doesn’t ring, does it? Even though it’s true.


51 posted on 04/15/2015 7:21:16 PM PDT by xzins (Donate to the Freep-a-Thon or lose your ONLY voice. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: Louis Foxwell

bump for later


52 posted on 04/15/2015 7:26:35 PM PDT by Albion Wilde (The greatest danger facing our world: the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons.-Netanyahu)
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To: Tax-chick
Dear Tax-chick,

Thanks.

Although he despaired of the mission when he first went off to college, my older son has always been very marriage-minded. He just figured, there would be no nice, chaste, friendly Catholic girls interested in marriage.

He was wrong.

They lined up.

Some of them were willing to change their religion.

Marriage-minded men can be quite popular in some circles. Especially when they're witty, tall, handsome, and moderately kind.

His younger brother is likewise interested, but went to college a year early, and although there are any number of young ladies who flirt with him mercilessly, I think it will be next year before the fedora-wearing, trench-coated college radio station jazz DJ comes into his own, shedding mathematical cool wherever he goes, garnering extra accolades for being the younger brother of his older brother.


sitetest

53 posted on 04/15/2015 7:44:33 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: sitetest

I wonder if the problem is that my children think marriage means ten kids and a lot of rice and beans. Anoreth and Bill have high-end taste in cars. They both want to work in automotive marketing.


54 posted on 04/15/2015 7:48:49 PM PDT by Tax-chick (I'm a radical feminist. Galatians 3:28)
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To: sitetest

Tom wears a fedora. Bill was offered a modeling job at a cool store, I forget which one. The pay wasn’t enough to make it worth the gas money.


55 posted on 04/15/2015 7:50:35 PM PDT by Tax-chick (I'm a radical feminist. Galatians 3:28)
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To: Tax-chick
Dear Tax-chick,

I don't think it has much of an effect. Although we only had two, we know a lot of large families. I'm thinking of one - seven kids. Father's an underpaid college professor, the mother homeschooled all seven. Four have either graduated from, or are in college.

They're not all grown, but they're getting there. The first two graduated college and couldn't wait to get married. They had their husband picked out by the end of freshman year. And they married the two poor fellows.

They were married last June, one of them just had her first baby (10 months - we counted). The next child is ambivalent toward marriage. For now. She's experiencing freedom in college - nothing too crazy - but wants to enjoy it before settling down. The next is bound and determined to be a nun. The younger three seem happy with the idea vaguely of growing up, finding someone right, and settling down.

Each one evaluated their family differently. Some of the children just want to marry, have lots of kids, just like mama and papa, and live in a cramped old house and be a big, happy family. Some of the kids would like to explore, see what the world is like. Get to eat steak. Travel.

In other large families, I see this sort of diversity. It takes a while to develop. But we see kids who want to marry and settle down and do what mom and dad did, we see a fair number of vocations, even where we see kids who are ambivalent about their means and circumstances growing up, they seem to appreciate having been from a large, close-knit family.

In some ways, these larger families seem more diverse to me. My sons are like guided missiles - one-track minds. They want to marry, they want families, they want what mom and dad have, only lots more of what mom and dad have. My future daughter-in-law might not go for 10, but they're hoping for five or more. She comes from a small family, too. It's like, my kids know they're on an “endangered species list” and so are much more oriented toward procreating their way off the list. But kids from large families seem to assume that someone will eventually marry and have kids, so the pressure's not on any one child.

There is one family that we know, they have fourteen or so, I've lost track. Generations are starting to overlap.


sitetest

56 posted on 04/15/2015 8:12:58 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: Tax-chick
Dear Tax-chick,

My older son picked up wearing strange hats in high school. He regularly wore a pith helmet to school, which often provoked strange conversations with teachers. My younger son adopted the fedora habit as a consequence. He wears it very well. He's grown his hair out this year, a bit. This makes his older brother angry, as he thinks the younger one “gets away” with all sorts of stuff.

But life was more difficult for my younger son. Many more trials.

If he wants to wear a fedora and grow his hair out a little, I can live with that.


sitetest

57 posted on 04/15/2015 8:24:15 PM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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To: Louis Foxwell
Gone as in ZAPPED!

You're gullible.

At least as of last week.

Yeah... you pronounce me "gone" after my post #26 on that thread.
After which I posted several more times. So in addition to gullible
I'm guessing you aren't too bright either.

Or you wouldn't be posting so many duplicates, huh?

58 posted on 04/16/2015 4:46:44 AM PDT by humblegunner (NOW with even more AWESOMENESS)
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To: sitetest

My mother paid Tom to get his hair cut last fall. She wanted a picture that showed his face, when he turned 18.

As Jamie-our-hairdresser was clipping away, Tom was calculating how much it would grow before he goes back to his summer camp job this June. Apparently his overgrown Beatles ‘do was considered way cool by the young Boy Scouts.

Yesterday he was telling me he wants to get some better clothes, which makes me wonder if he’s somehow met a girl. I started to ask if he’d also like a haircut, but he cut me off before I got three words out.


59 posted on 04/16/2015 4:49:08 AM PDT by Tax-chick (I'm a radical feminist. Galatians 3:28)
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To: humblegunner

I searched your name several times and received the notification that your account had been suspended or banned.


60 posted on 04/16/2015 5:52:12 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (This is a wake up call. Join the Sultan Knish ping list.)
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