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.
“I guess the more precise question is: “What is your position on government marriage?”
Agreed.
That’s the question.
Marriage is a civilization issue. It has been one man/ one woman for a very long time.
Everything else is just that; everything else.
That young people believe something at the present moment, doesn’t mean that it will be that way for ever. Times change.
Once, they worshipped Elvis.
But everyone knows that The Who is the greatest rock band of all time.
If it had just stayed a Federal benefit distribution scheme, it would have still worked. But family courts turned marriage into an asset distribution scheme that destroyed men and children through divorces filed mainly by women. When straight men wisely started opting out, gays stepped in to fill the void.
I don’t care what they say, I know it’s perverted.
A man and a woman joined together by God is how I would define it.
And I would vote accordingly.
Marriage is one man = one woman. When it ceases to be that, the institution becomes meaningless. Just another step in the Communist plan to destabilize Western Civilization and the U.S. in particular.
ConservaTeen has two friends who are gay, they love Trump because of the Borders and his AmericaFirst views. I'm not a Social Conservative like some of you are, I'm an AmericaFirst and Fiscal Conservative.
True...Young people grew up seeing gays on TV and at schools. It isn’t an issue...
I don’t get point of considering marriage a religious institution. It seems to me that all marriage is essentially civil marriage. It is a contract that covers a couple’s fidelity to each other, as well as the responsibility for children, the allocation of property in the event of death or divorce, and other rights. Clergy are acting as clergy when they conduct a wedding, but they are also functionaries of the state who witness the couple’s public vows and sign off on the license. The primary difference between a wedding conducted by a judge and one by a member of the clergy is one does not have prayers and the blessing of God, and the other does. Where there would be a difference is in Catholic and Orthodox Christian weddings, which are considered sacramental and bestow a permanent and sanctifying grace, just as any sacraments do.
I haven’t said anything about homosexual marriage. I have just never understood the argument that marriage is a primarily religious institution. It is a religious institution only if the couple has a religious ceremony. If marriage is a religious institution, then who handles divorces?
Maybe this argument is a way of having homosexual civil marriage but protecting religious bodies that don’t perform homosexual weddings? It seems to me that the protection is already there in the First Amendment. Religious bodies and clergy have complete discretion as to whom they will marry, although they might eventually have to fight for that.
You realize gay marriage was just a stepping stone ? Once you sanction one perversion it’s onto the next. These people will not go away. And they have said so. “Our struggle has just begun”. The whole transgender crap we are in the middle of today is a direct result of sanctioning gay marriage.
Yes, it is. And in ten years the transgender ideology will be, too. Do not expect Republicans to act any differently regarding transgenders than they have towards gay marriage. Remember, it is the "go slow" party. It moves at a different speed but in the same direction as the Democrats.
‘A man and a woman joined together by God is how I would define it.’
two atheists could not be married, then, in your perfect world...?
Disgusting fags....
Karl Rove and W used gay marriage as a wedge issue to win election.... W was elected to stop faggot marriage and the slippery slope we’re facing now.... but we got faggot marriage anyway even thought we voted against it
I’m STILL waiting for them to come up with a definition of “consummation”.
No it isn’t.
If we do not root it out, then God will.
Opus?
with my current lifestyle
So he admits its a choice.
A pox on him and his ilk.
Mortal sin perversion, not conservative, regardless of age.
NR represents those folks who think conservatism is conserving the latest leftist gains.
:-(
This is all dangerously irrelevant. There can be no national gay-marriage law. Whatever it said would be unconstitutional. Marriage is not a Federal matter--it's not even mentioned in the USC.
Therefore it's one of those shiny objects that the USC says the Federal government must not touch--to be left "to the States, respectively, or to the people."
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