The marriage traditionalists are probably too numerous, too stubborn, and too well-entrenched – a majority or large minority depending on how you squint the opinion polls – for the harsh judgments of an opinion elite, or even for a prospective epoch of political, legal, and legislative setbacks, to silence them.  As of now, they consider themselves under attack for believing in, conducting themselves according to, imagining themselves in relation to, ideas that in living memory if not quite the week before last were so consensual that any alternative to them would have generally been taken as absurd (and a little risqué).

For the traditionalists, to acknowledge “marriage equality” would be like re-defining “2 + 2″ as equal to “5.”  They find it mystifying that anyone believes, or pretends to believe, that marriages between two men or two women are really “the same” as marriages between a man and a woman, or that the proposition is somehow close enough to true to allow for equal treatment. The traditionalists do not just believe that the word “marriage” should be taken to refer to the union of a man and a woman, and they do not admit of a distinction between a popular or common usage and a legal one:  They insist, over and over if rarely with explanation, as per instruction from pollsters and spin-sters, that marriage is between a man and a woman – period.  State and the law – so they believe and, perhaps more, so they may intuit without articulating – should reflect this primary denotation, not merely because a one-to-one correspondence between common or traditional usage and the law is generally preferable, but because, to state the apparently too obvious, heterosexual coupling is biologically and organically the basis of human life, making any discounting of it, where not merely a degrading indulgence, both inhuman and morbid, and ominous as a principle of the state.

Put differently, the biological “facts of life,” as natural or animal facts, would be precisely those facts that exist prior to language and opinion, prior to politics and law, prior to everything we know and do as human beings, as embodied selves.  Under the inherited, possibly to be displaced definition – prior to sociological analysis of divorce, adultery, single parentage, and fertility rates; prior to any cataloguing of exceptions; prior to philosophical, historical, critical, and medical-technological de-centerings; well prior to the foul and morally insensate utterances of assorted hacks, demagogues, and pre-philosophical theologians – the word “marriage” has referred to those facts, as the institution through which the web of resulting social relations, all social relations under the heading of “family,” has been organized, and not just physically, but conceptually.

The traditionalists might never say so, but in this context the wedding – ceremony and celebration – must be seen as a fertility ritual, an offer of sacrifice to the tribal god:  The bride’s body is commended to society, as mediated through the family and its next wider concentric circle of relations – “kith and kin” – for the purpose of renewing society, really and concretely re-generating it. The wedding party becomes the social concept itself in microcosm, but not merely that:  It is the social recognition of society itself coming into being in the bodies of the bride and groom.  Just as the heterosexual union produces the individual, it produces, confirms, and constitutes his or her identity, materially and psychologically.  It produces his or her body, and at the same time re-establishes, re-generates, and re-extends the “ties that bind” leading to and re-radiating in all directions from it:  The “blood relation “is (re-)established as the primary relation, the bond upon which all other bonds depend, put forward as at best analogues or imitations.

Under this view neither state nor law nor anything done through or for the state or under the law can be conceived of existing for any other purpose.  Procreation is how people and therefore any and all of their purposes and ideas are brought into the world:  It is the precise point at which the human being is joined, pre-consciously, to the source of life and to that which transcends the individual concretely in society – in religious language the “miracle of creation”; in dialectical materialism the “species-being.” The species-being is the living human correlate to God, and this conceptualization holds as true for atheists as for monotheists, since for the former the totality of humanity correlates only with itself. According to the traditionalist view, precisely because marriage is in this sense sacred, “holy matrimony,” before it is also a civil institution, that civil institution should recognize it as such, not seek a separate or non-committal understanding:  A state that fails to comprehend this fact of all human life would be a state detached from its own reason for being, in a sense from being itself, by disclaiming interest in its own perpetuation.

In this sense “marriage” would not merely refer to a social institution, but to the absolute necessity for which all social institutions exist, and equally the conditions that enable them to exist.  The state and the law would not exist without “marriage.” The state and the law exist for “marriage” – to serve and support it, as its appendages. The state and the law are even explicable as outward dimensions of “marriage.”  Yet the meaning of “marriage” is taken to be even deeper and broader – as a or the ground of meaning:  It is not just that family, as secondary external form of “marriage,” organizes society and therefore the state, or the state and therefore society.  It is already integral to how society sees itself; it organizes the minds and aspirations of individuals in society.  The Hegelian language with which I began this series of posts – marriage/monogamy as an “absolute principle” – gets at this notion:  Procreation, both the sex act itself as well as childbearing and -rearing; society as a network of family networks; and, perhaps most primordially and yet at the highest level of abstraction, the conceptual machinery of synthetic union of opposites, all become the same phenomenon realized in different dimensions – biology, culture, mind.

Under this understanding we might argue that the traditionalists support and are seeking to protect the establishment of a notionally transcendent idea of marriage that is sooner or later a religious idea.  Whether this position is “constitutional” at whatever level, or even “democratic,” would be at most a secondary concern, since human life and transcendent meanings would precede constitutional democracy.  Human life and reproduction are the ultimate “constituting power” without which there would be neither “constituted” law nor “constituency” in the first place.

The marriage progressives should at least recognize this expectation of a political superstructure whose character aligns with ethical, moral, and philosophical principle.   The progressives, the gay activists most of all, have made it clear that they, too, attach a value ineffably beyond whatever immediate practicalities (hospital visitation rights, property law, adoption, etc.) to having their self-ideal embodied in, validated by, and actively acknowledged and extended by the state and its operatives.

(next: what’s next)

Prior to a discussion at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen blog on Friday, the last time I publicly admitted respect – not quite the same as “support,” but destined to be taken that way – for the views of marriage traditionalists was February. A popular young member of the political twitterati, while reacting to the California appeals court victory of pro-equality forces against the forces of “H8,” offered a by now common view on the underlying question:

There are many strong arguments (both legally and socially) against abortion, even though I disagree. I see none against marriage equality.

February 7, 2012 11:29 am via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@amaeryllis

amaeryllis

I suggested to her that presuming the lack of any serious argument on the other side actually diminished her side’s political accomplishment. In short order, she “blocked” me from her twitter feed, sweeping me up with other presumed H8′ers who she claimed were pestering her that day.

Partly with that pseudo-experience in mind, I refrained from replying when a couple of weeks later, on the occasion of Governor Chris Christie’s veto of New Jersey’s marriage equality bill, another popular young liberal tweeted a similar assertion:

The non-bigot explanation of why Chris Christie vetoed gay marriage. Someone please provide.

February 18, 2012 3:45 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@attackerman

attackerman

Professor-talkhost Melissa Harris-Perry uses the same terminology even more frequently and presumptively, asserting that opposition to marriage equality must be taken as inherently bigoted:  “Bigotry,” she flatly states,”is the only basis for denying marriage equality.” As one rightwing critic reacting to Harris-Perry put things, on the day of the President’s pro-equality statement, “On Tuesday, Obama was a bigot. As of today, he isn’t.”

Though I presume @attackerman’s (Spencer Ackerman’s) request was made in good faith, I am skeptical that an answer would actually be heard, not when attitudes are so hardened, and not when any dissent can be taken as aid and comfort to the enemy. The parallel reaction to the President of observers like Erik Kain, also at The League, merely dismisses traditionalism as utterly obsolete, embarrassing and contemptible, if not beneath contempt:

Why didn’t the president come out in favor of equality several years ago?

Because he plays his cards close to his chest, of course. Because he gambled and it paid off, but he gambled with the lives of vulnerable members of society and he did so for paltry reasons. At least he did come out on the side of angels, but he waited for an opportune moment to do so.

Kain seems to be asserting that there never was or could be – or perhaps that “several years ago” there ceased being – any intellectually and morally sound case for hesitation on the issue.

Yet peremptory charges of bigotry, among the harshest words in our national vocabulary, retain a further social-political meaning:  of proscription.  The bigot is the individual whose beliefs are so contrary to the fundamental commitments of an egalitarian culture that they are not and cannot be worthy of serious discussion, but only of scorn and ridicule – or, for those whose political sensibilities are still impaired by remnant sympathies, of mandatory confession, self-criticism, and disassociation.

Taken seriously, the charge of “inherent bigotry” means that it is not just the marriage traditionalists who are to be shamed, but anyone who refuses to condemn them, or to condemn those who would refuse to condemn, and so on…

(confession to follow)

Marriage, and essentially monogamy, is one of the absolute principles on which the ethical life of a community is based; the institution of marriage is therefore included as one of the moments in the foundation of states by gods or heroes.

Elements of the Philosophy of Right, § 167, GWF Hegel

The rise of marriage equality as a political project must reflect, and likely foreshadows, truly fundamental alterations in human circumstances.

With the backing of 94 MKs, Netanyahu will present a far more solid antagonist for Obama or any other external or internal doubting Thomases in the coming months.

The sentence casts Netanyahu as Jesus Christ or at minimum an apostle, and in a certain way it’s almost right, especially following ex-Shin Bet chief Diskin’s attack on the Israeli leadership as “messianic,” more generally in light of the peculiar Dual Covenant structure of the Israeli-American, Jewish and Christian Zionist, alliance. The concept of revelatory sacrifice may even be the best frame for understanding potential Israeli action, yet also any withholding of action, against Iran. If the effect is more maddening than practical or helpful, it may be because the whole predicament is already so tragically mad, something Morris probably understands, or at least understood, as well as anyone.

Perhaps reflecting the same madness, one Tablet commenter writes confidently about “[t]he American people and the U.S. Congress” refusing to “allow a president to punish Israel for eliminating what Israel believes is an existential threat.”  Whether or not this observation is true, the forces of history, as Morris’s words perhaps unintentionally remind us, refer to higher powers than America’s. The very existence of the Jewish state can be taken as this reminder in blindingly plain sight.

Any decision for war remains a decision to exchange one set of uncertainties for another set. On the alliance question taken separately, U.S. support might even survive an Israeli strike viewed as premature and unsuccessful, but it’s just as possible that any strike, even one at first considered fully successful, would prepare the end of the American political consensus on Israel.

For Anam Cara, all of the photos used on the site were client-supplied, as well as most of the text, which had to be edited a little.  Also, for the first time I specifically optimized a version for iPhone.  Otherwise, this one is simpler than Scott’s, and I made life a little easier for myself by using the WordPress platform from the beginning, and customizing from there, instead of making the whole thing “by hand.” It should also make further expansion much easier if the client decides to add bells, whistles, and other extras.Still have to solve some glitches on Internet Explorer 8, so, if you’re using an obsolete browser at work or something, you may get some weird results on the “When We Do It” page.

Wright Turn Only is in some ways a very standard “portfolio” site.  What makes it a little bit different is that it’s a site for a man, Ray Wright, who lost his sight to a degenerative disease some years ago, but has discovered, since having gone completely blind, a love of wood-turning.  How he works is described on the “Turning in the Dark” page.  So my guiding objective was to express something like “feel of the wood, in inner light, emerging from darkness.”

Even more than Anam Cara, WTO was built from a Word Press theme then heavily customized – mainly simplified on the level of coded layout, before addition of my own photography of Ray’s pieces.  I wish I could say that the very nicely done image “image gallery slider” was my own creation, but I can’t:  It was created by one designs as part of their free “Minimatica” theme, and I haven’t modified their basic approach to it.

Almost all of the software tools I use – for photo-editing, coding, and the rest – are Open Source.  Most of what a client is paying for on a job like this is experience and facility using the amazing stuff that other people have developed and put out there for free.  That and renting my computer and camera I guess.

It takes remarkable upper-lip musculature to sneer in such circumstances. But some do manage. “Let Them Eat Cake,” says one progressive commentator about the report — hardly an outlier.

Forgetting, then, that most American poor really do eat cake. Also forgetting that the very notion of the poor eating cake was unthinkably absurd for all of human history. That’s why it became a catchphrase — because it was absurd. And yet our poor eat cake while talking on a video phone and watching their choice of movies on a flat-screen TV.

“Let them eat cake” was taken as a catchphrase not because the idea of the poor ever eating cake was an “unthinkable absurdity,” but because it expressed the total lack of empathy on the part of a queen for her starving subjects.  Kuznicki’s reading reflects the same syndrome in its assumptions about who the poor are in a system that cannot be understood except as a global one.  The flat screen that the American “poor” person is enjoying in the imaginary depiction was likely assembled by someone far away and unknown, someone who, along with his or her family, is very likely a much better representative of today’s poor, or at least of that segment inducted into wage slavery. To the small extent such people even exist for the American libertarian, whose ideological rejection of “government” corresponds to a determined rejection of the principle of the whole, they simply do not because they cannot matter, just as the hungry poor of France were “unthinkable” to the Queen (not that social liberals do very much better in any meaningful sense).  It’s one example of what such exercises in rigorously non-dialectical materialism have to leave out in order to make a traditional defense of free market liberalism – “it’s so productive!” – internally coherent.  The argument wins out, on the basis of something like the Rawlsean compromise (in brief, as long as the poor benefit materially, let the wealthy continue to grow wealthier), but remains sustainable only within artificially defined borders without which its appeal to the pure selfishness of an utterly empty self would be exposed not just in its self-insignificance, but in relation to what must be destroyed to keep it materially if not morally alive – at least until the day that the absurdity by whatever unthinkable and therefore totally unexpected way impinges on it as though from the outside, the externality revealing itself as always having been internal after all.