Posted on 08/07/2022 6:00:40 PM PDT by Ennis85
When a significant number of House Republicans voted for a recent bill to recognize same-sex marriage at the federal level, those who most vocally made the case for the legislation were the younger members, especially Kat Cammack of Florida.
The split in the GOP vote, with 47 voting in favor and 157 against, mirrors the divide within the wider conservative movement. At Young America’s Foundation’s National Conservative Student Conference last week, several students spoke to National Review about their receptiveness to a national gay-marriage law. But their views incorporated a respect not only for religious freedom but for the religious institution of marriage itself.
Garrison Allen, who’s about to enter the University of Iowa law school, distinguished between marriage as a religious practice and as a simple union created for tax benefits. “Generally, I think that gay marriage should be legalized,” he told NR, “at least, in the governmental sense, while at the same time, we should respect religious institutions’ beliefs and not force them to be involved with gay marriages if they don’t choose to do so.”
Similarly, Catholic University of America junior Alexander Diaz, who is gay, while recognizing that he likely never be allowed to marry within the church, said he values “what the Catholic Church teaches on humility and service, and everything else that it shares.” He added, “So, even though the church doesn’t necessarily agree with my current lifestyle, I still think that the church has a lot to teach not just myself, but all members of the community.”
“My opinion is that marriage is a strictly religious institution,” said University of North Georgia sophomore Daniel Jackson. “It’s not something that the government should be involved in at all, and so these legal definitions of marriage, I think they ought to go away.” Jackson would be open to a “common-law marriage” available for both gay and straight couples, so long as it were left up to the states, he said.
Their views are out of step with conservative-movement orthodoxy. YAF’s official position, for example, is opposition to gay marriage, said spokeswoman Kara Zupkus.
“We understand that there’s a diversity of opinions on it within the conservative movement,” she said, “and, of course, we’re not going to shun someone or look down on them for being gay. But our position is that [marriage] is kind of a fundamentally religious institution, and that should not be redefined.”
Speakers at the conference echoed YAF’s views. Chief among them was Princeton professor Robert P. George, who, on a panel with Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, defined marriage as “the relationship that brings together a man and a woman in a permanent and exclusive bond as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children born of that union.” The state has a particular interest in endorsing and regulating marriage, distinct from other religious ceremonies that are private, such as baptisms or bar mitzvahs, because of its capacity to produce children, he argued.
While the students’ views are different from those of more long-standing members of the conservative movement, their reasons for holding them have nothing to do with the Left’s expansive conception of rights. For Diaz, a federal recognition of same-sex marriage would reflect the rights guaranteed in the 14th Amendment. “The Constitution is not à la carte, you can’t just pick and choose which rights you want to defend,” he told NR, quoting Cammack’s defense of the Respect for Marriage Act when it first passed the House. (Though the freshman Florida congresswoman spoke at the conference, her remarks did not include commentary on gay marriage, and her speech was cut short when House members were called for a vote.)
Diaz and Allen, who is also gay, both articulated their belief that extending marriage to same-sex couples is a way of encouraging them to adopt a more traditional lifestyle.
“You are actually protecting a traditional institution, which is marriage,” Diaz said, “even though it may not be the traditional definition of marriage. Nonetheless, it is a traditional conservative institution, and thus, through the process of gay marriage, you have, essentially, gay people accepting a conservative idea.”
As Allen sees it, gay marriage can help further the government’s interest in preserving family structure. If gay people do not have the incentive of marriage, “what ends up happening is this kind of countercultural sexual revolution that we see today, which is highly immoral and leads to a lot worse decisions,” he said.
Others, such as Jackson, believe that the government’s sanctioning of marriage — gay or straight — has led to a degradation of the institution.
“I do think that marriage should be returned to the private sector,” he said, “and consider this also: The divorce rates are through the roof. And, as someone who has come from a recently broken household, I think that it would be helpful if we as Americans, conservatives, and Christians took marriage more seriously and not just as some legal contract that can be broken or vacated at any time.”
Though they do not hold the traditional conservative position on gay marriage, these students’ justifications for their beliefs are based on a thoughtful application of conservative ideology. They do not take their inspiration from the left-wing mantra of “if it feels good, do it,” or libertine notions of individual freedom. The Left has cheapened the institution of marriage by conceiving of it as just another way to express one’s personal preferences. But these young conservatives are careful not to fall into that trap. Their positions deserve consideration, as they will play a role in the future of the conservative movement. Wherever they take it, they will be guided by principle.
National Review supports GloboHomo now. It’s not a conservative outfit.
Once government turned marriage into a benefits distribution scheme, it was only natural that everybody would want to get in on the deal.
Call it whatever you want...but it’s not marriage.
The government cannot remain neutral on the definition of marriage.
If it refuses to define marriage as between one man and one woman, as is the usual, long recognized definition, it is by default defining it as anything goes, which is also a definition of marriage.
They cannot escape defining it. All they can do is choose which definition they will go with.
National Who Cares.
Bill Buckley is spinning.
Like it or not, gay marriage is now well-established. That horse is not just out of the barn. It’s out of the barn, down the pasture, and over the fence.
Opposing gay marriage is not a place to spend political capital. It’s not a hill to die on.
Trump doesn’t win in 2016 if Gay Marriage was still up in the air. He never even had to address the issue. And I am almost certain he would have come out for it, if pressed. Social Conservatives would have abandoned him in droves if he did.
It is impossible to separate government from religion. Religion teaches us about morality and government passes laws that enforce morality. It has always been so. The old saw that says you can’t legislate morality is a fallacy.
Now that the majority in the West have turned away from God and His laws, and replaced their religion with a new one that worships man, traditional religion and government are on a collision course.
He’s right about this. A marriage is the only contract under U.S. law that can be unilaterally broken by one party — even years after it has been signed.
Imagine selling a home today, and then having the buyer come back in 20 years and tell you he wants you to buy it back from him just because he doesn’t want to live there anymore.Even worse — imagine a U.S. court ruling in his favor and forcing you to buy it back from him at a price determined by the court.
Real estate law would cease to exist if such a thing happened even once — let alone in 25% to 50% of all home sales.
THAT is the farce that the government has made of “marriage” over the last 100+ years.
OK...I’ll grant you that I am an old fart. BUT...if there is truly a generational divide on this question among conservatives, it will submit that one side of that dichotomy is morally wrong, and likely morally bankrupt.
The irony is that those “marriage” agreements would have been more enduring and legally enforceable than the disaster that has become marriage laws in the U.S. today.
But that is then defining marriage as anything goes.
Its positions like “gay marriage is not a hill to die on.” is the reason why you now have this s**t like mainstreaming of gender fluidity, sex-change therapy for kids and children being handed over to sexual predators.
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1556151934322720768
Wake up and smell the coffee. It already was “anything goes” decades ago.
The young should recall what God says.
Yes, I know.
I am not against gay marriage, I am against the supreme court making up the “right”, the same as they made up the right to an abortion.
If people want gays to marry, simply vote for people who will pass state laws to that effect. It’s that simple.
Define “Marriage”.
> mainstreaming of gender fluidity, sex-change therapy for kids and children being handed over to sexual predators <
That’s the hill to die on. That’s what we should be concentrating on.
I suppose one could argue that it all started with gay marriage. Maybe so. But that tree is too well-established. It’s not going anywhere. It just isn’t. So, let’s concentrate on keeping it pruned back.
(Poor analogy, I know.)
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