What Price Marriage? | John S. Hamlon | CWR
“What Price Glory?” is the title of a 1924 play about life, death, and heroism in the trenches of World War I. One of the co-authors, Laurence Stallings, was a Marine sergeant in the famous Battle of Belleau Wood during which the Marines earned (according to American combat reporter Floyd Gibbons) the eternal epithet, “Teufelshunde”—“Devil Dogs.” Stallings was wounded in that battle, eventually losing one of his legs.
This review—“What Price
Marriage?”—points to another kind of war, that of preserving the original
meaning of marriage—the union of one man and one woman as husband and
wife. In the near, and not so
near, future there will be countless skirmishes and many pitched battles
between preservationists and revisionists. The difference is that we who are for traditional marriage
will likely be on the defensive for decades to come. We will not have the chance to shock the opposition with an
offensive as definitive as the Marine advance at Belleau Wood. If the opposition is able to be shocked
at all, it will be in retrospect when it finally recognizes the societal
no-man’s-land it helped create by ignoring the goods inherent in conjugal love:
commitment, exclusivity, procreation, complementarity, and stability.
What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense is, in fact, part of an ongoing strategic offensive, certainly in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decisions on Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The authors—Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George—would eschew the military references. They have taken great pains to keep the dialogue non-confrontational. You will find in their work no button-pushing words, ad hominem attacks, “hetero”/“homo” juxtaposition, or moral/religious arguments. It is straight, transparent common sense. There are no cunning, carnivorous agendas in sheep’s clothing. So, the warring metaphor (if it is a metaphor) is solely mine.
About the authors: Were I ever brought before a civil or criminal court for “hate speech” (in support of traditional marriage), I would want the authors to be my defense team, no question. Their minds are like ginsu knives that can slice through anything from brass pipe to overripe tomatoes. If they learned a modicum of legal protocol, the prosecution would have its hands full.
I have listened to Girgis, seen Anderson, and heard George give a talk in Sacramento. All are professional, beyond intelligent, and unflappable. In addition, Professor George (Princeton University) has a marvelous sense of humor. Even if my case were lost, the listening public would be way better educated about the reality of marriage, and not a little mesmerized.
In What Is Marriage? there are six chapters sandwiched between an Introduction and Conclusion, followed by an Appendix. The text covers 109 pages, all filled with straightforward, down-home thinking. That does not mean it is an easy read—it presumes that the reader’s forebrain has been oiled with Logic 101, Aristotle 202, and Aquinas 303. I am hyperbolizing, somewhat. There are some paragraphs I had to re-read several times to get the gist. But most major points leap off the page and are quite brain-friendly. I shall spotlight a few of those points, and, where appropriate, insert a reservation or two.
Introduction
According to the authors, there are two operative views of marriage today, one existing from time immemorial and the other from the day before yesterday:
(1) The conjugal view “has long informed the law… of our civilization. It is a vision of marriage as a bodily as well as an emotional and spiritual bond, distinguished thus by its comprehensiveness…. In marriage, so understood, the world rests its hope and finds ultimate renewal” (p. 1).
(2) The revisionist view focuses on “a loving emotional bond, one distinguished by its intensity—a bond that needn’t point beyond the partners, in which fidelity is ultimately subject to one’s own desires. In marriage so understood, partners seek emotional fulfillment, and remain as long as they find it” (pp. 1-2).
In the first definition, note well the word “comprehensiveness.” For the authors, marriage is a comprehensive union, meaning “a union of will (by consent) and body (by sexual union); inherently ordered to procreation and thus the broad sharing of family life; and calling for permanent and exclusive commitment, whatever the spouses’ preferences” (p. 6). Such a union, by definition, exists only between a man and a woman.
The central purpose of the book is to show that conjugal marriage laws are rationally grounded. While doing that, the authors argue that marriage is a moral reality—“a human good with an objective structure, which it is inherently good for us to live out.” Their syllogism:
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