Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish) has some good questions for conservatives today:

[Heidi]

Only The Right Kind Of Symbolic Sex

Robert P. George argues against marriage equality in the WSJ:

Opponents of racist laws in Loving did not question the idea, deeply embodied in our law and its shaping philosophical tradition, of marriage as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life. This unity is why marriage, in our legal tradition, is consummated only by acts that are generative in kind. Such acts unite husband and wife at the most fundamental level and thus legally consummate marriage whether or not they are generative in effect, and even when conception is not sought.

Of course, marital intercourse often does produce babies, and marriage is the form of relationship that is uniquely apt for childrearing (which is why, unlike baptisms and bar mitzvahs, it is a matter of vital public concern). But as a comprehensive sharing of life—an emotional and biological union—marriage has value in itself and not merely as a means to procreation.

My italics. And who would disagree? But if non-procreative sex can consummate a heterosexual marriage, then why not a homosexual one? I covered all this at length in Virtually Normal, and it comes down in the end to an assertion that heterosexuality be privileged in civil law because it is the norm. Buried behind this is an unscientific notion - derived from Aquinas - that the universe is somehow perfectly gendered into two opposite and complementary halves. No one with any knowledge of contemporary biology or evolution could agree with this. And if Aquinas were alive today, he wouldn't either. He was interested in truth as the source of doctrine; not doctrine as the source of truth.

<snip>

It also seems to me to be important to ask George what he proposes should be available to gay couples. Does he believe that we should be able to leave property to one another without other family members trumping us? That we should be allowed to visit one another in hospital? That we should be treated as next-of-kin in medical or legal or custody or property tangles? Or granted the same tax status as straight married couples? These details matter to real people living actual lives, real people the GOP seems totally uninterested in addressing.

<snip>

I repeat to conservatives: we know what you're against, in healthcare, energy, counter-terrorism, taxation, gay rights, abortion. What are you actually for? How do you intend to actually address the questions of our time and place? And if conservatism cannot do that, what use is it?

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[Fumesucker]

1. Sully has no problem seeing how screwed up our laws are when it comes to sex..

I find his views on a great many other things just whacked..

I prefer pundits I agree with more often, Sully only gets things right about marriage and sex because he has skin in that particular game.

[Heidi]

2. True, but that doesn't make him less right on this issue.

I think the last paragraph, though, hits the nail on the head. (Good morning, Fumesucker! :hi: )

I repeat to conservatives: we know what you're against, in healthcare, energy, counter-terrorism, taxation, gay rights, abortion. What are you actually for? How do you intend to actually address the questions of our time and place? And if conservatism cannot do that, what use is it?

[Fumesucker]

3. I guess I didn't make my point very well..

I don't have much respect for people who can see injustice when it is aimed directly at them but are blind to equal or worse injustice aimed at others.

It's *easy* to see injustice aimed at yourself.

And good morning right back at ya', Heidi..

[Heidi]

5. I agree with you on that point.

:thumbsup:

[MrModerate]

4. Even if you buy the notion that heterosexual marriage is inherently "best" . . .

What society in history has tried to impose an "only the best" standard on human relationships?

None, because in the collective, societies realize that "the best" is both impossible to define with confidence and impossible to attain with consistency. So societies allow a wide range of less-than-perfect relationships because -- after all -- a functioning relationship is "best" when compared to a nonfunctioning or dysfunctional one.

And to tie the validity of relationships to the possibility of reproduction (symbolically or otherwise) is simply disgusting. My wife and I were unable to reproduce together (our children are adopted), but no one ever challenged the validity of our marriage. The same is true of our heterosexual friends who simply declined to reproduce. Most people agree that the continuation of the the human race is something that, as a species, we have a right to pursue -- but whether any one individual propogates another is utterly irrelevant.

In Grundytown, in the Prigworld that America has become, we're still drawing a bright line between shitty heterosexual relationships and exalting and transformative homosexual relationships and saying one can be blessed and the other not. It's frankly repulsive.

[Heidi]

6. That's an interesting insight.

And as an adopted person who also is child-free by choice, I agree 100 percent.

Mornin', Mr¨Moderate. :hi: