I still intend a more systematic treatment on the issues raised by the SSM phenomenon – by which I do not mean “new reasons to attack SSM” – but for the moment I’ll just re-produce another comment at OT, this one at the end of (or as latest as of ca. 1022 PDT 2015.05.08 statement in,) a discussion that took a familiar course: Discussants assigning views to the disagreeable commenter that the disagreeable commenter has not offered, and in the process, in the view of the disagreeable commenter, lending support to the point that the disagreeable commenter meant to make, but which seems to remain largely unheard.
Jaybird: If someone argues “The institution has always been like this” and I, in response, argue “Not in my experience. Not in the experience of my peers either. Our experience is that the institution was completely different than that”, then I will have to have explained to me why I should pay more deference to this thing that I’ve never seen than this thing that I have directly experienced.
That might be an issue for someone who is trying to persuade you to “pay more deference to this thing,” but I’m not trying to persuade you to pay more deference to anything. I also have my doubts that you and I are speaking about the same things, even when we marginally narrow the definition of “marriage” by referring to the “institution.” I am cognizant of the fact that you do not pay deference (or, perhaps, that you do not recognize the ways that you still do defer to the institution in its second-natural manifestations), I am acknowledging that the view is representative in its way, and I am suggesting that it tends to reinforce, not contradict, Shafer’s stronger point or the general justification for Shafer’s argument, which, in my view, goes well beyond the political focus on SSM. [ ((Jeff Shafer: “How Same-Sex Marriage Makes Orphans of Us All at The Federalist.)) ]
The problem with Shafer’s argument, and with his politicization of it, is that he identifies a long-term trend, pointing to an alteration in the human concept or self-concept, with what would be only its latest manifestation in law and politics. It was Dostoevsky who suggested, via the Man from Underground, 150 years ago, that soon we would “contrive to be born of an idea” rather than of parents of flesh and blood. As for when that moment occurred, it might have occurred before the Man from Underground. In your view of marriage (which I think you exaggerate or simplify for effect) as an institution for the protection of mutual masturbatory exclusivity – or perhaps Burt would say exclusivity in “sexplay” – you point to the early 1960s, with the advent of reliable birth control as the key moment when the detachment from a biological-procreative concept of marriage took place. Others would point to easy divorce and abortion on demand, alongside social-economic changes in the composition of the work force under mid-20th century conditions. Others would point to the substantial eradication of childbirth mortality and reduction of medical complications of childbirth, both for infants and mothers, once a leading cause of death and debilitation overall and all the more for young, otherwise healthy women. Others would point to consumer-technological advances of different types freeing those traditionally designated to perform “domestic labor” to other tasks (or to no tasks at all). Still others would point to the exponential increase in the sheer numbers of living human beings: No one can say that a specific number of living human beings at any time is the correct number, or a better number than any other number, but an approximate tripling since the point of inflection reached in the middle of the last century at least puts in doubt the placement of going forth and multiplying at or near the top of the human agenda – a major problem, but also an opportunity, for religious traditions in which it remains there.
Taken from one point of view, the above would represent tremendous human progress, a set of advances whose attractiveness only very few of us are even minimally inclined, must less able, to resist. Yet just as all of those technological advances also facilitate the extinction of species and cultures, the manufacture and deployment of omnicidal weapons, and the potential catastrophic destabilization of the environment, the alteration of the human concept, the pure transactionalization of human relations, the conversion of a web of affiliations organized by blood ties across the generations into a system of human atoms exposed to a massified state may also produce unique dangers or even the worst dangers.
I am hardly the first to point this out, but I don’t happen to think that same sex marriage is in any sense a major source of danger in itself. I think it might even reasonably be viewed as a resource, under the right conditions. I think that many of the people involved in one way or another in that movement or supporting it are our best people or typical of the best in us, and that goes for some of the people with whom I regularly disagree about the subject, but I think that even our best people are as subject to those larger, two-sided trends, and that the tendency of the movement, in the arguments and attitudes of its supporters, reflects that fact.
). Go to our 
It would seem that CK MacLeod’s has become a satellite blog of Ordinary Times–a regrettable turn of events, in my view. Like so much else in contemporary America, it’s an instance of the more noble subordinating itself to the much less so. That you would relinquish your high calling as a thinker and writer in order to become a volunteer webmaster and commenter at OT…
Well, I won’t continue to lament it except to say that your comments there seem to be going over like the proverbial lead balloons with the Social Justice Warriors who make up OT’s commentariat. So much so, in fact, that you appear to feel the need to make an occasional tactical retreat from the lion’s den (or is it sheepfold) comment threads of OT and present your projected comments here rather than there, in order to let the righteous indignation of the lion-hearted SJWs cool down a bit. As you’ve observed, the moral rectitude of that lot is so perfectly pure that it can admit of no taint of compromise: “Give me gay marriage or give me death!”
And so it is that I–a miscreated “white supremacist”, virulent homophobe, anti-Semite, fundamentalist Christian, and all-around fascist sympathizer–am adjudged to be a more benign auditor (along with your one or two other loyal readers, of course–may my sins be no stain upon them!) than the right-thinking, morally hyper-rectitudinous liberal progressives at OT. (And to think I always pay less than $37 for a cup of coffee! Truth is stranger than fiction.)
In any event, CK, I have to hand it to you–I’m impressed with how you’ve framed this issue. You’ve somehow managed to make the utter lunacy of “gay marriage”, “same-sex marriage” (SSM), sound eminently reasonable, while at the same time treating traditional marriage (aka marriage)–what you term the “procreative concept” of marriage–with all the observational detachment of a cultural anthropologist carrying out field research on the culinary practices of Polynesian cannibals. In fact, I’m about half-convinced that this rhetorical frame can do service in a manifold of other settings and thus do a world of good in maintaining the non-stop forward progress of our Western utopias.
For example–to speak of culinary practices…
Despite all the momentous progress and progressive momentum of our never-been-better modern age, there remains a regnant prejudice against High-Quantity Eating (HQE). Anti-HQE sentiment no doubt derives from the infiltration of certain religious fundamentalisms that arrived in Western culture with the coming of Christianity. These religious fundamentalisms gave rise to a “sustenance concept” of eating, a concept of eating which intensified with the increasing Christianization of Europe in the Dark Ages. Then, HQE began to be stigmatized as sinful “gluttony” and the HQE community–slurred as sinful “gluttons” and subjected to intensive persecution–was forced to go underground, into the shadows.
In pre-Christian classical antiquity, however, HQE was not only tolerated but even embraced. Some ancient thinkers and statesmen–among them, the Emperor Nero–held that HQE was more noble than the sustenance concept of eating, precisely because it was divorced from such coarse utilitarian aims as “sustenance” and “nutrition”. HQE was believed to nobilize the eater due to its exclusive focus on the pleasurable aesthetic sensations of taste, without regard for base considerations of physical health or bodily limitations such as the finitude of the stomach. Such limiting concepts were thought to be the purview of lowly proletarians and slaves–and with that in mind, the Roman nobility went on to create the famous vomitoria which permitted the flourishing of vibrant HQE lifestyles and practices. The proletariat and slave caste alone occupied themselves with the imaginary consolations of priestly Christianity and its narrow and joyless “sustenance concept” of eating.
The sustenance concept of eating with its correlative phobia against HQE carried over into our own time as a prejudice against “over-eating”, a modern reformulation of the medieval “gluttony” slur. While few today would have recourse to such retrograde anti-HQE slurs as “sinners” and “gluttons” to characterize members of the HQE community, HQErs are yet abused with terms like “overeaters”, “fatsos” and “pigs”. At the same time, with the decline of Christian-inspired prejudice and bigotry, there is a growing awareness that HQE possesses an inherent validity of its own (in many ways superior to a utilitarian, religiously-derived “sustenance concept” of eating) and constitutes an essential component of a vibrant and diverse society–taking its rightful place alongside Thai restaurants, Islam, and Somali refugees in the vibratingly ever-diversifying Western liberal progressive utopias.
What’s more, anti-HQE prejudice disproportionately impacts the much-beleaguered-on-every-front African-American Community (AAC)–particularly its females–and we all know that whatever disproportionately impacts the differently-abled AAC must never be countenanced, not even for one millisecond. It’s bad enough that the AAC is being subjected to ever-increasing racist calls to obey the law like everyone else (normonormativity), without further adding to their historic burden of woe by slurring the hindquarters of AAC females as “gigantic mutha f***in boo-tays”. Thankfully, many members of the AAC are beginning joyfully to appropriate the slur–much as they have done with the so-called “n-word”–thereby effecting an empowering self-emancipation from bigotry and prejudice.
Nevertheless, I do think we ought to tread with caution when it comes to full-fledged incorporation of HQE lifestyles into our civilization which has for so long been oriented toward a narrow “sustenance concept” of eating. While I personally think that HQErs comprise a valuable resource for our diverse multicultural society, one can never know the unintended consequences that might ensue from an over-hasty reformation of our historic concept of eating. I would recommend a gradual transition from the sustenance concept of eating to full HQE equality, in order to avert any prospect of unintentional systemic catastrophe that an overnight change might bring about.
[Howls from the OT commentariat: “Out with this pestilent fellow! How dare he express the least misgivings about HQE equality! There’s no place for such bigotry and hate here at OT! If this miscreant wants to express such irrational, unscientific phobias as this–then let him do so at CK MacLeod’s, the last refuge of every scoundrel!]