Lately several members of my Sunday School class -- I attend a conservative evangelical church that frowns upon homosexuality -- have offered prayers against homosexual marriage, assuming dire consequences for society should marriage be redefined from "one man, one woman for life."
While I sympathize with that view, I think they have ultimately missed the point. In the end, you can't point to gay groups, "activist judges" or political and social liberals for the "redefinition" of marriage. Instead, blame "Romeo and Juliet."
Say wha--?!
We "traditionalists" must understand that marriage in Western culture had long ago been redefined whether we realize it or not -- not the what and who but the why and how.
At issue is "love," or the definition thereof. When you have a marriage culture based primarily on romantic love as ours is, it's only a matter of time before people are demanding to marry someone of the same sex. The gay couples who have gotten "married" recently in San Francisco understand that, offering the justification, "Can I help whom I love?"
Well, perhaps not, if you mean the often impulsive and possessive romantic love -- it wants what it wants, now or sooner -- and of which there is always a sexual component. Given this context, the smitten fictional teenage lovers in that aforementioned Shakespeare tragedy prove to be more subversive to the institution of marriage than most people realize.
Anyone who's ever been "in love" can attest to the intoxication and pervasiveness of romance. Consider the classic movies and theatrical productions that extol its joys; the gushing, syrupy ditties that have become the soundtracks to people's lives; the card shops, candy-makers and "petal-pushers" that bring in a mint around Valentine's Day. But on the other hand, the societal consequences of its overemphasis can barely be overstated.
After all, it's the reason we see such rampant promiscuity and adultery in Western culture even among "traditionalists," who generally -- and ironically -- also subscribe to celibacy outside of monogamy. Only recently did I learn that some of the women who once were active in my church's adult singles ministry, in which I'm a longtime participant, had actually been using birth control, and I know that wasn't at all an isolated situation.
Divorce, and the pain thereof, is another direct result of our culture's stress on romance. Consider these telling words from the popular Earth, Wind & Fire song "After the Love Has Gone": "Something happened along the way / What used to be happy was sad / Something happened along the way / And yesterday was all we had." Too often couples split because the "love" dies, causing permanent distress not only in their lives but those of any children.
But 1 Corinthians 13 (which in another case of irony is recited at many weddings: "Love is patient, love is kind...") speaks not of eros, the Greek word for romantic love. It speaks of agape, which can be reinterpreted as "justice," doing whatever is best for the other person beyond personal feelings of attraction.
In times past (and in many Eastern cultures today), you didn't even select your partner -- that role fell to your relatives, generally parents. Marriage existed not for the sake of personal fulfillment but to maintain and strengthen families and communities; in many cases there were economic components to matrimony as well. Homosexual marriage thus was not only nonexistent but unthinkable.
Take the Biblical story of Ruth, a young widow from the country of Moab who had moved to Israel in dire financial straits, accompanying her mother-in-law Naomi, herself recently widowed. While there, Ruth made a play for Boaz, a wealthy single man who was part of Naomi's clan.
But they had to jump through some hoops, one of which was she inherited some property through her late husband that needed to be kept in the family. As things turned out, the man who by law had the first rights to her "hand" had to withdraw his claim because his own estate would have been jeopardized, so Boaz "did the right thing" by marrying her.
In an article published in the Los Angeles Times several years ago, Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer speculated about his maternal grandparents' marriage based on their prenuptial correspondence during the early 1900s. Singer wrote, "Although my grandparents chose each other, their relationship shared something with the tradition of arranged marriages -- the idea that romantic love is not the key to a good marriage." Singer's grandfather was looking for "the best partner for the household and children" and he appreciated "the clear insight into the worth of [her] character." (Of course, this is a far cry from "Romeo and Juliet" -- and interestingly, he insinuated that each of them actually had homosexual inclinations.)
Did their relationship last, you ask? You betcha -- over 30 years, until his death in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. And their friends remarked that their union was especially strong.
I think Singer's on to something here.
"Their marriage," he wrote, "was built on a sharing and respecting of each other's beliefs and on a sense that they were equal partners in life's journey." This is the agape -- the "justice" -- that goes deeper than mere romance. It seems to me that if your spouse already is a close friend (optimal anyway) and you want the best for him or her, you'll do anything legal or moral to make things work.
Some years ago the band DC Talk, which formed at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, implied in its song "Luv Is a Verb" that love is an action rather than a feeling.
As far as I'm concerned, until that concept is more universally understood, "gay marriage" isn't worth screaming about.
First Published: March 6, 2004, 5:00 a.m.