Bracketing Morality — The Marginalization of Moral Argument in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

Bracketing Morality — The Marginalization of Moral Argument in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

The brilliance of this book lies in its careful distinction between two rival views of marriage — the conjugal view which defines marriage as “a bodily as well as an emotional and spiritual bond” which sustains the world through the creation and nurture of children, and the revisionist view, which defines marriage as “a loving emotional bond, one distinguished by its intensity, with no reference to a duty beyond its partners. The conjugal view, based in the function of the family and the nurture of children, points to lifelong fidelity. The revisionist view points to a relationship based on emotional intensity in which the partners remain “as long as they find it.”

This argument is vitally important, even essential, to any conversation about marriage in our modern context, for it points far beyond the issue of same-sex marriage to the prior assaults on conjugal marriage brought by no-fault divorce and the replacement of personal responsibility with mere personal autonomy. Sadly, the revisionist view of marriage is embraced by millions of heterosexual couples, married and unmarried, but it is essential to the very idea of same-sex marriage.