Today and yesterday, America’s Supreme Court began the long process of considering the question of same-sex ‘marriage’ in two cases that will have implications for every family living in America.
The two days of arguments so far have seen all the usual simplistic and superficial arguments. We’ve been told that gay marriage is necessary to bring equality, that the possibility of procreation is irrelevant to marriage because some heterosexual couples are infertile, and that without gay marriage homosexuals are being denied equal protection under the law.
As I’ve been following the debate, it struck me that behind all these questions is another more subtle issue that far too few people have recognized, namely the normalization of homosexuality and the normalization of the concept that marriage is simply the union of two persons in a committed relationship.
Lawyer Ted Olson, representing those in favour of same sex marriage, let the cat out of the bag when he told the Supreme Court yesterday that “marriage…is a matter of status and recognition.” Yes, same-sex couples want to get access to the same tax breaks and financial benefits of those in a real marriage, but this tends to be secondary to their more basic goal of changing how we think about homosexual activity. Indeed, by being able to call a same-sex relationship a ‘marriage’ we will be granting it unprecedented status and recognition in society. Another way to make the same point would be to say that we would be normalizing homosexual activity. This is also a point that Andrew Sullivan made in his book Virtually Normal: An Argument About Homosexuality. He concludes the book by arguing that changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples would have a humanising and traditionalising effect on homosexuality.
Whatever else these cases may be about, therefore, they are about changing our concepts of what is normal by further reinforcing shifts that have already taken place in our collective normalcy fields. In a follow-up post I will explain what a normalcy field is and how this sheds insight into what is going on in the same-sex ‘marriage’ debate.
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Isaiah 5:20 Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Psalm 52:3 You love evil more than good, Lying rather than speaking righteousness
[…] but normalization. He said, “marriage…is a matter of status and recognition.” (See my ‘Normalizing Perversion’ and ‘Normalcy Fields and Homosexual […]