Anderson on Why Monogamy, Exclusivity and Permanence are Part of Marriage
December 17, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Ryan Anderson, continuing his discussion of what is marriage for Ricochet:
Yesterday’s post explained government’s policy interest in marriage. Government needs to get marriage policy right, because it shapes the norms associated with this most fundamental relationship.
Redefining marriage would abandon the norm of male-female sexual complementarity as an essential characteristic of marriage. Making that optional would also make other essential characteristics—like monogamy, exclusivity and permanency—optional, as my co-authors and I argue in our new book, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. We also show how it is increasingly confirmed by the rhetoric and arguments of those who would redefine marriage (“revisionists”) and by the policies that their more candid leaders increasingly embrace. Indeed, several commentators on Tuesday’s post explicitly jettisoned monogamy, sexual exclusivity and pledged permanence as demands of marriage.
4 Comments
What a load of hooey.
The SSM Virus attacks and then destroys the very foundation or root of the essential meaning of marriage.
The male body alone, or the female body alone, is an incomplete human species.
A male joining to another male is no closer to being a completed human-species than he was before joining.
The committed male-female union is the human-species in its completed form; (with all the organs, possibilities and complexities of the human species within one living entity; or the symbol of such by the union of a man and a woman.) In a healthy society the “human-species in its completed form” must be named. Marriage was its name.
On another note: a healthy and fully functioning “human-species in its completed form” (traditionally known as “marriage”) is the entity that is the most free and liberated from government, and the most capable of breaking free from said government and creating its own government. And this fact might in some cases bother the government in place, the powers that be.
It is marriage that created government; and now the government wants to take over marriage. It is like the science fiction idea of computers and robots, created by man, at one point turning around and taking over man. Its just not right...
Monogamy, exclusivity, and permanence are notoriously difficult for men but of critical importance for providing family stability for children and for society. Marriage unites men with women and helps assure that men are going to remain with the children that are created in the marriage, not create children with women outside of the marriage, and that children have both their mom and dad.
Two men, being incapable of creating life together, have no incentive to be monogamous; moreover, being men, they are largely incapable of remaining monogamous and exclusive. Indeed, many "committed" homosexual couples are not committed exclusively on a sexual basis and agree to allow one another to participate in sodomy with other men.