Marriage and Imagination: After the Supreme Court
By _John Stonestreet_
(http://www.christianpost.com/author/john-stonestreet/) , Christian Post Guest
Columnist
June 28, 2013|9:24 am
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court overturned Section 3 of the Defense of
Marriage Act, extending benefits to same-sex married couples.
What you've heard from the media, which isn't actually the case, is that
the Supreme Court struck down DOMA altogether. It didn't. Other than Section
3, it still stands. So it could have been worse.
Still, the most troubling aspect of the DOMA case were the words chosen by
Justice Kennedy in the majority opinion. Words like "disadvantage,"
"stigma," "degrade" and "humiliate" made his meaning plain. The only reason
not to
approve of same-sex marriage is hate or bigotry.
However, Kennedy also wrote that the regulation of marriage "is an area
that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States."
And in its ruling on California's Proposition 8, the Court rejected the
opportunity to deliver a sweeping national Roe-like decision on marriage.
So for now, the political definition of marriage is yet to be decided, as
my guests on BreakPoint This Week from the Heritage Foundation and the
Alliance Defending Freedom carefully explained. Come to _BreakPoint.org_
(http://www.breakpoint.org/bp-home) to listen in.
But what do these decisions mean for us? As we often say around here,
politics is downstream of culture. Given what the current cultural definition
of
marriage is, the political one will soon follow, unless it is challenged
and redeemed. This is where the battle must be waged
How we collectively imagine marriage as a culture is at the heart of this
battle. As I wrote yesterday at National Review, Americans "cannot imagine
marriage to be anything other than the government's endorsement of romantic
love. Even many opponents of same-sex marriage share this fundamentally
wrong definition."
Since the dawn of human culture, marriage has been primarily about the
procreating and raising of children and the continuation of the family and
society, not romantic love.
What's more, I wrote, this re-definition of marriage "happened because of
art, not arguments; because of imagination, not debate." Ask someone,
Christian or non-Christian, about what love is and their answer will largely
be
the product of what they've seen on television or in the movies. Boy meets
girl, or other boy. They "fall in love" and what happens afterwards, whether
marriage or cohabitation, is merely an expression of that "love."
Ironically, even as the movies tell us, that kind of "love" is fickle.
People "fall out of love" all the time, often for reasons they can't even
explain. There's no way this kind of "love" will hold up under the weighty
foundational role marriage must play for a society.
That's why, as I wrote, I think "marriage in America has been on an
unsustainable trajectory for quite some time." The only way to correct that
trajectory is to recapture the imaginations of our culture with a more robust
and stable definition of the purpose and function of marriage. And folks, it's
not that we lack these arguments. It's that they're not being heard.
The task of recapturing imaginations belongs primarily to the intermediate
institutions that most fundamentally shape our imaginations: the family and
the Church.
Both must stop being squeezed out of territory that is rightfully theirs.
Given the current trajectory of marriage, I'd suggest national same-sex
marriage is likely, but I certainly do not think it's inevitable. The Court
left room for citizens to work at the state and local levels. And this is
good news, and it reflects the potential for the best kind of change: from the
ground up, not the top down.
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