SULLIVAN, ROUSSEAU, AND SSM: John Coumarianos

...Second, what is so interesting about Sullivan's defense of gay marriage is the romantic or Rousseauian view of marriage in which it is grounded. This is a view of love and marriage based on sexuality out of which more serious or "spiritual" things grow. This view has arguably failed the institution it sought to sustain, and Burke basically called it pornographic. Rousseau did his best to prevent the breakdown of marriage in the wake of the individualism of Hobbes and Locke. He was right to notice their neglect or thin discussions of marriage and the potential for the disintegration of the family. But he approached the subject (as he did all others) from the same "ontological" basis that Hobbes and Locke did (the state of nature teaching), and it is doubtful that this approach, leading to the modern notion of romantic love, ultimately succeeded in supporting marriage. Romantic love, by itself, may be just to weak to support marriage.

When Sullivan isn't trying to wax poetic on romantic love and the pleasures of domestic life, he relies on a kind of liberal argument that homosexuality is the same as heterosexuality and should be treated as such politically. Sullivan unfairly compares racist bigotry and the opposition to interracial marriage to an unwillingness to elevate homosexual relationships to the same or equal status as heterosexual marriage -- as if an aversion to a certain skin color is the same as trying to distinguish between and rank serious activities, some of which produce children. To seek to distinguish between the two acts and the meanings implied by them is to risk incurring the brand of bigot from Sullivan. But we should resist this kind of terror tactic seeking to stifle thought and promote closed-mindedness.

...As long as children need their fathers, both economically and otherwise, the heterosexual family remains a special institution. ...

Obviously, there is too much here to include in a blog post. But one wonders why Sullivan argues so strenuously that heterosexuality and homosexuality are simply the same. His is a willful attempt to deny inquiry into the larger meanings of the acts. We live in an amazingly tolerant country. To push tolerance of homosexuality, however, to "sameness" as heterosexual marriage in the eyes of the political community is both utopian and corrosive of honest discussion around the meanings of man's deepest longings.

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posted by Eve at 2:06 AM | link

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