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Memo: Hard Thought Leads to Clear Thinking
12/17/2003

I've been wondering, more and more over the past couple of years, whether those pushing the progressive envelope are pushing it not only beyond what society will accept, but past what rational thought will allow. Maybe I would do better to say, "I've been hoping," although my experience has certainly been that, as I've honestly considered such issues as gay marriage and sexual liberty, my opinion has grown increasingly conservative — increasingly traditional.

It seems to me that, as the cultural questions that we face push closer toward basic lines of assumptions, we will be forced to reevaluate and reassert the underlying justifications for beliefs that had just been common sense. Having done so, some people will accept the implications of progressive thinking, and others will reject previously accepted notions on the basis of newly clarified reasoning. My prediction is that the former group will decrease as the implications of their positions become more stark and more inherently objectionable.

In a must-read essay, Jennifer Roback Morse refocuses the gay marriage debate on the more basic question of sex:

Many people celebrate the uncoupling of sexual activity from both of its natural functions, procreation and spousal unity. But by doing so, we have capsized the whole natural order of sexuality. Instead of being an engine of sociability and community building, sex has become a consumer good. Instead of being something that draws us out of ourselves and into relationship with others, our sexual activity focuses us inward, on ourselves and our own desires. A sexual partner is not a person to whom I am irrevocably connected by bonds of love. Rather, the sexual partner has become an object that satisfies me more or less well.

Just as challenged opposition to gay marriage will have a strong tendency to expand toward opposition to easy divorce, challenged belief in the importance of marriage will likely tend to expand toward belief in the necessity of sexual propriety and society's right to contribute to its construction. My longer-term hope is that the tide won't turn too far, as people think only deeply enough to begin calling on government to "fix" such problems as infidelity and premarital sex. The next stage of expansion ought to be toward remembering that government is only one institution in society and one influence on individual behavior.

It's a huge project that we face, at this time in history. Perhaps too huge; too big for us to address on our own, that's for sure.

Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:18 PM EST