Dear Hannah,
Although I've witnessed several horrible marriages in my life, there was
really only one time I ever felt forced to attend a wedding, and it involved a
woman I very much adore marrying a man I never fully trusted. I spoke at
the wedding, and did a damn good job at it. I even bought a gift for this
couple despite the fact that I knew he'd ruin everything and I'd be out a good
chunk of money. At the very best the wedding cost me my dignity and my
money. At the very worst it caused the poor bride a broken heart and a
divorce. And shy of shoving her fiancée off a cliff, there was nothing any of us could do to stop it.
Alongside the other horrible weddings I've attended, this has brought me to
realize that marriages have always been very personal things; things we
disagree about just as often as we agree. Fathers have been known to
begrudgingly watch their daughters marry men who aren't "good
enough;" past lovers have been known to watch with broken hearts.
And throughout the process we've always learned that love, being
oftentimes unreasonable, has given us many reasons to be upset at lovers.
We simply disagree that whatever they see in someone else actually exists
at all. Which is why we are not trying to marry that someone else
ourselves.
We can be thankful this is the case. If our distaste for other
marriages leads us to think distasteful things, it is the reason we're all here
today. Were everyone to have an unreasonable prejudice in favor of the
same person (or what's otherwise known as a crush), love would more
closely resemble a war. The whole world can barely contain themselves
over gasoline, and so it isn't so difficult to imagine much worse if we all
fell in love with the same woman. And so we find that if there's anything
we can agree upon, it's that nearly everyone else's marital decisions are
disagreeable. If we were any more oblivious to the permanent things of
human nature (heaven forbid), we could almost be led to forget that a hundred
years ago, our great-grandparents were all fiercely debating the utility of
eugenics -- or, to put it in the most easily digestible form, they argued about
whether anyone should be in marriages we don't personally approve of.
The outcome of eugenics became plainer than daylight, at first to sensible
men like Chesterton, and thanks to Hitler soon to everyone
else. The "we" that everyone always assumed was himself
suddenly began to look like everyone else, because everyone suddenly became
interested in keeping the opposite party from breeding. We simply began
labeling the people we thought were less educated than us, less pleasant than us, less
attractive than us -- less wealthy than us -- undesirable; and
if undesirable, then unfit for reproduction. And the uncomfortable
truth of the matter is that, lying deep beneath each and every one of us we
found a little tyrant, displeased with our neighbors and their displeasing
choices, ready -- if we can't overpower them by coercion or persuasion -- to
simply rob them of the only thing the poor, the outcast, and the intellectually
undeveloped can lean upon when everything else seems to have gone completely
wrong. And that is to have a lover and a family.
If this doesn't prove that marriages are controversial in themselves then
it proves nothing. A marriage is an acquisition of a lover so honorable
in theory and so fragile in the face of so many differing interests and
opinions, that it requires backing by law. Old lovers return
in fits of nostalgia. New aspiring lovers are around every corner.
Daughters and sons make terrible decisions, and mothers and fathers are forced
to watch them make them. And through all of this we hear that single
statement, that speak now, or forever hold your peace -- a
formality steeped in the recognition not only of the momentousness of the
moment and the necessity of an exit, but of the possibility and likelihood of controversy.
A recognition that any man or woman may object for any reason (and I mean for
literally any reason at all) -- and that he has a right to do so, because our
reasons are as varied as our interests, and lovers are frequently responsible for making
terrible decisions.
That the plain fact of marital controversy has been so widely accepted and
thus almost entirely forgotten for centuries is of little consequence to the
uncivil champion of gay marriage. Claiming an interest in equal rights,
he bullied for more than any straight man or Christian ever bargained for (or even ever dreamed): that
his marriage should be beyond the reach of criticism, beyond the right of
refusal -- not even of the passive bystander or of the parent or of the past
lover, but of the man who marries us; not in the houses of our friends, but in
the churches of the priests and parishioners we personally offend. To
some men this may be titled equality; just as some men in Lincoln's time
preferred to call the cause of slavery their liberty.
And we are quick to misuse our words, because we are quick to misuse our
neighbors. Romance has always been responsible for bringing the best and
the worst out in all of us; and we have often been led by the left (despite the
fact that they stole the idea from Christians) to believe that love wins.
But let the leftist remember that if our affections are capable of making us do
kind things, they are equally capable of making us do evil. We may almost
say that the only time we can be hateful is when we are loving. It was
Hitler's love of Germans that caused him to trample Jews. It was the
Roman's love of Rome that make him enslave the Greek. The communist's
affection for the distraught took the last of what they had and threw them into
gulags. Romantic affection caused Amnon
to rape his sister Tamar, fatherly affection caused King David to pardon Amnon, and brotherly affection for Tamar caused Absalom
to try to kill King David. Our affections cause us to ruin
our neighbors and countrymen, drives some men to incest, others to patricide --
still others to acts of war and atrocity and robbery and tyranny. And it
is our love for gays -- sometimes righteous and other times backward -- that leads us to be hateful of and
tyrannical toward men who would otherwise only be fellow citizens with a
passive opinion.
To clarify my position, there can be no man harmed in America because two
men choose to marry. But there can be much damage done to people and to
principle when two men can force others not only to accept their romance,
but to marry them. There is a way for both Christians and gay men to live
in harmony, and it is, first, for Christians, beyond the walls of their own churches,
to not be able to obstruct a marriage between two members of the same sex. The second is for two members of the same sex to never force Christians to facilitate their
marriages. If marriage is inherently controversial, then let us be charitable; and if we cannot be charitable, then at the very least let each of us be tolerant.
Your father,
-J
Quite profound!
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