For a variety of reasons, not the least being the state government's refusal to do anything about daylight saving in Brisbane, so that at this time of year the sun is actually making it all bright and cheery (ha!) by rising at 4.45am, I am not getting enough sleep lately.
Maybe this is why I was having a peculiar dream last night in which I was busy investigating a rice throwing poltergeist which seemed to be connected with some bodies buried under a building, except that when I dug them up they weren't real bodies at all but dummies, which then led me to suspect that some engineers I knew were behind it all, and so on.
Usually, I can work out pretty quickly what it was that I had recently watched or read that caused me to have a jumbled dream, but I can't remember reading anything about poltergeists for quite a while. I suppose I idly think about the personality deficiencies of engineers I have known from time to time, though.
Anyhow, to continue the jumbled theme of this post, I note that time devoted to the internet is actually interfering way too much with my vague attempts to make money lately. I'm going to attempt to insist on limiting posts to the evenings for a while. Maybe this software will help in my task.
Meanwhile, please admire the giant playground robot in the last post, and tell me if you have seen anything better.
11 comments:
I saw a very large dinosaur slippery slide in New Zealand in an idyllic park next to a lake but was too lazy to photograph it.
Apropos of previous posts and not wishing to intrude on paid work, I'm interested to know why gay marriage bothers people. I'm not sure why it should be a problem, but I'm sure you can tell me.
Hey, I thought one of the benefits of being a conservative was that it meant I never had to explain a fondness for institutions being just the way they are.
But slightly more seriously, the fact that such a question is asked (especially from someone like you with a church-y background) still floors me, as it seems to contain the assumption that what is virtually a completely novel social construct thought up in the last 30 years or so is just, well, something so obviously right that those who query it are the ones who have to do the explaining.
And I do mean novel. I see from some quick Googling today that some anthropologist group in the US put out a statement saying that marriage has been wildly different in all societies and gay marriage is just another change. However, I think the only examples they give of anything resembling it was from some tribe in Africa where two women could set up house together, and the Native American thing where what we would probably call transgender men could be taken as a wife. It was hardly a compelling set of examples of the idea ever being commonplace. (And besides which, we don't judge the morality or appropriateness of practices by the fact that some group somewhere has done it before.)
But before I continue, I am curious as to the extent that you seemingly think that it "should not be a problem", otherwise I could waste a lot of effort on answering a position which you may not in fact hold.
For example, are you allowing for it as a purely secular thing which you think the Churches should simply keep their noses out of? Or do you feel the Churches have no right to not accept gay relationships, and should get into the wet Anglican thing of blessing their unions?
I'm sure the Catholic church at least is wrong about most issues relating to sexuality. This not surprising as old celebate (I hope) males are the wrong people to ask.
I just can't get excited about about telling a couple that seriously seeks to make a sacrament of their long term relationship that God says you can't. The sacrament for a couple doing that is called marriage and I think it should be encouraged.
Our views on marriage are very situational and have greatly varied over time and culture. I remember that series called Millenium that investigated cultures around the world and found all sorts of weird (to us) marriages - was there one in Tibet with woman having multiple husbands? I seem to recall it.
The official views of all sorts of "marriages" should be treated with suspicion as they reflect only the elites. Other forms existed for the masses and the unchurched.
I gather celibacy worked well in the church until it was taken seriously! The accepted and tacitly ignored relationship between the Italian priest and his housekeeper has entered folklore.
As for committed gay relationships they may well be a newish phenomenon but you wonder about the number of nuns, and priests for that matter, who were running from their sexuality when culture did not allow such relationships to be thought.
I also wonder why people get upset about it - I don't see that it detracts from other sorts of marriage.
So I suppose that's my question - what am I missing that upsets people about it?
I think it is a "line in the sand" sort of thing. The progress over the last 50 years has been to decriminalise gay sex, then to punish discrimination, then to give gay relationships the same financial benefits as marriage (well, nearly), and now in some States to say that we will re-define marriage itself so that they can call themselves "married". That last step is just one too far for many people, including me.
I don't have time to go into the grounds of my objections in more detail today, but I think Roger Scruton does pretty well in explaining the sense in which people argue that it is bad for marriage as an institution.
You say that marriage and culture is situational, and it has been, but I find it remarkable that with rare exception, no other culture has ever thought that same sex marriage made sense. What has changed, and is inadequately acknowledged, is the Western popular understanding of human nature, sexuality, and the "neediness" of people to feel their life choices endorsed by everyone else. (And I mean life choice in the sense of choosing to live in a relationship, rather than just taking a same sex lover.)
As I have noted recently, in old societies where bisexuality and pederasty were unexceptional, it seems very likely that they still would have thought gay marriage a funny idea.
Pointing to the situational sexual ethics can be used to argue that "anything goes, there are no absolutes here, and let's just legislate for what seems to keep people happy". I point to the fact that views change to try to get people to be sceptical about the idea that their current view of sexuality, marriage and ethics is more advanced or better than those that have gone before it (which is in fact the hidden assumption in most progressive's view of sexual ethics and marriage now.)
And finally, are you sure you feel the call of the Archbishop of Canterbury getting stronger? Your inclinations seem to run strongly in their direction!
Last paragraph was meant to say "...are you sure you don't feel the call..." but you probably guessed that.
I should have also said "that their current view... is necessarily more advanced or better..." etc.
I not sure that gay couples would feel the need to have their life choices validated by "everybody else" if "everybody else" let them get married if that was how they wanted to proceed.
It is not a matter of anything goes at all. This goes to the heart of critiques of relativism. Relativism does not mean anything goes at all. It means that all behaviours are situational but come up against the fact that your own actions are capable of harming others and this is the limit on free will. Sin is what separates and harms the relationship between people that give us one of the few glimpses of God in our human life. Making their relationship sacramental is the opposite of sin.
I just don't see how allowing gay marriage harms straight people. I don't suspect that you think that decriminilasation and financial redress were a bad thing.
In this matter, it is a matter of respecting difference. If society has got past the notion that the only allowable relationship is the man in charge and the women subservient, that both feminism and same sex relationships challenge, then that is for the good.
If to achieve this tolerance they get up my nose a straight male then that is my problem and legislation should not help me out.
btw High Church Anglicanism is very attractive but I would agree with too many things there for me to be truly happy. Remember I left the Presbyterian Church because there was at least a liberal facet to Catholicism.
A couple of points in response:
* the "anything goes" comment was relating specifically to marriage and relationships, especially relating to the issue of why governments and churches should have an issue with polygamy, eg.
* I suspect most conservative church people are somewhat like me: decriminalisation was sensible, practical policy; anti-discrimination laws were OK to an extent, but are starting to make me uncomfortable if they are now telling the Church that it can't run things the way it wants (eg in Britain with the Catholic church and adoption); financial equality is somewhat grudgingly accepted, as it is the State now treating all relationships as equal in a way that previously only marriage held sway, but if we are going to treat de facto straight couples as if they are married, well, you've started down the slippery slope and it's hard to stop; but going the whole hog and redefining marriage to include same sex couples, nope.
* you seem to have given much more thought to sacramental theology than I have, but (naturally) I am sceptical about extending something that's been around for 2000 odd years to a situation that is entirely novel.
* With the exception of its teaching on contraception and masturbation, both of which have involved some creative interpretations of scripture to guess what God or Jesus would have thought of these, I would have thought that the essence of Catholic teaching on sexuality was simply the sex belonged within marriage, and this was not really deserving of controversy.
To maintain that the quality of the relationship between people sexually involved is the sole determinant of whether their sexual acts should be considered "sinful" or not is enormously tempting, but one can think of examples which ought at least give you hesitation about accepting it as the primary criterion. (Incestuous but loving relationships between sterile couples is probably the best example. If it absolutely certain that a baby cannot be born - a hysterectomy for example, or even gay brothers - on what grounds, in your view should the Church resist giving them its blessing?)
Perhaps I would say that I generally take an agnostic view that how the totality of a relationship will be viewed in a final judgement before God is not something knowable.
But that doesn't stop me from accepting both the cultural inclinations of most of the world and Church teaching that gay relationships do not share the same fundamental quality as heterosexual ones, and (without even worrying about whether they are "sinful" or not) do not deserve recognition by State or church as marriage.
By the way, don't get too annoyed by "slippery slope-ish" nature of the point about incest. Of course basic biology means that there is no realistic prospect of legal recognition of incestuous relationships ever being a popular idea.
But nonetheless, you do get cases of incestuous relationship which are said by the parties to be loving, and to outsiders (if it weren't for the sex,) they would agree and have no problem.
It's perfectly valid to ask, then, how this fits into the issue of how to think about the role of sex and love in relationships. In the (admittedly culturally very unlikely, but not impossible) situation that a couple who is in an incestuous relationship disclosed it to their priest, but told him that, as it was simply an expression of the love between them, they did not consider it sinful, how should the priest react?
Why, in theory at least, cannot such a relationship have the benefit of being made "sacramental"?
Studying sacramental theology is useful in disabusing any thought of consistency in the application of all the sacraments over the history of the Church so I'm not at all sure I agree to an appeal to continuous tradition here. I am very attracted to organic conservatism (which is a good reason for liking Tolkein, but I digress)and the wisdom of how communities arrange things needs to be respected. I have problems where power relations are reinforced by imposed structures which are then defended by conservatives to supposedly avoid the slippery slope into anarchy. Certainly the current improved place of women in western marriage has little precedent yet seems to be just.
If I'm going to draw lines I'm happy to be pragmatic and say incest, polygamy etc are not on.
Beyond the biological lines in the sand that I'm happy to draw of there is any chance of reproduction in incest, I think the power relationships involved have to be unhealthy. I can't see how something as delicately poised and difficult as human relatiuons can survive the power inequalities of incest, even brother-sister I suspect.
Now I could also use that argument about most the marriages between grumpy old men and Filipino women that I see in my practice - that's cultural incest.
Now I'm getting grumpy.
This thread is safely down your posts and can be abandoned I suppose but I have been forced at least to set limits - I'm obviously unlikely to be convinced that our lines will coincide. Gay marriage doesn't seem to bother power arrngements worse than straight unions, and seems to acknowledge current reality in a pragmatic and respectful way. ...and it doesn't destroy marriage as an institution - that job is being done by shallow Western society in general.
Here is what harm- Sodomitical pseudo-marriages can do:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47924336080
It is basically about using the state to force acceptance of dysfunctional behaviour.
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