Good Analysis from the NRO Symposium: What’s Next for Marriage?

from Stand Firm by Sarah

Some really interesting thinking and predictions at the NRO Symposium on the Supreme Court ruling yesterday.  I’m going to quote a few passages from different analysts, but make certain you surf over to read the entire piece:

I was not surprised to see the Defense of Marriage Act struck down. From the beginning, I viewed it as counterintuitive legislation backed by a number of moderates in order to take the air out of a movement toward a constitutional amendment when one could still be had.

First, realize what the Supreme Court did not do. It did not create a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage as it did for abortion in 1973. So these rulings are not a death blow to marriage, as some claim. Think about it: The Supreme Court heard the best arguments same-sex-marriage advocates have to offer, and those arguments failed to persuade the justices to strike down existing state marriage laws and create a right to same-sex marriage. This should encourage us to continue our efforts to secure and protect marriage through civic and legal means.

Now there are three options: Go with the flow and see our society fall apart; go on offense, by convincing the country to dedicate itself to growing the intact (sexually monogamous) family that worships God weekly (a necessary ingredient for the intactness); or carve out in law a totally protected space for the intact married family with children. Only one of these will lead to a stronger, more unified nation.

The big question of the moment is not whether the nation is up for it but whether religious believers (Catholics, Evangelicals, Orthodox Jews, and other people of faiths that embrace intact marriage) are up for the task that beckons. They have all been raised so comfortably and been so cosseted by a government that protected their freedoms that they may take a while to wake up. But the alarm has been ringing loudly of late: All three branches of government have been violating our freedoms in the last few years. We need to rise up, or become frogs in the gradually heating water, going comfortably toward the pleasure-domed demise of a once robust republic.

In that case, you never expected a court of law to do our work for us, to save our marriage culture. Your only question at 10 a.m. yesterday was whether it would leave us the space to do so, or block the way.

The answer was something in between. Five justices have purported to put us on notice. While deliberately coy on state marriage laws, they have decided that we the people — through overwhelming majorities of our representatives and a Democratic president — were wrong to enact DOMA.

Five justices, in other words, held that the federal government’s preference for traditional state definitions was wrong. Then are the states wrong to have those definitions themselves? Not one justice — zero out of nine — drew that implication. Not one justice has voted to command the states — or, through them, the “platoons” of civil society (in Burke’s happy phrase) —- to adopt his or her own view of what marriage is and why we have it. Yet they had the chance to do just that, in Perry.

So the justices have not fully invaded the public square on this issue, but they are at the gates. And that tells us what to do from here.

We know that, throughout history, culture precedes legality. If you want to change our nation’s laws, start with changing our nation’s culture.

The Supreme Court has had its say, and the damage is not as bad as it could have been. We did not get a marriage Roe; the definition of marriage was essentially relegated to the states. Now is the time for conservatives to regroup, focusing on massaging public opinion toward a proper and more holistic understanding of marriage. That entails focusing on more than spousal chromosomes.

Supporters of traditional marriage were dismayed by the Supreme Court’s failure to uphold marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the Prop 8 and DOMA cases. However, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins is rightly relieved that “the court today did not impose the sweeping nationwide redefinition of marriage that was sought.”

So far, twelve states have redefined marriage to allow same-sex unions. A few more may do so, but the vast majority of states will not change their laws or constitutions that limit marriage to one man and one woman.

Sadly, traditional marriage is in decline. Divorce rates are high. Cohabitation is soaring, and it has eroded marriage. Women regard cohabitation as a step toward marriage, but men cohabit to avoid committing to it. Only a fifth of cohabiting couples marry. Pastors perpetuate this problem by marrying cohabiting couples — instead of requiring them to move apart and take a rigorous course in marriage preparation.

The big lie at the heart of the Supreme Court’s decision — that same-sex relationships are the same as real marriages — cannot ultimately gain sway over the hearts of people. It is false, and deep in our hearts we know it. And it will only highlight the contrast between the false values of a corrupted society and legal system, and the true virtues of authentic, loving married couples.
The law is a great teacher, and this Supreme Court decision teaches a lie. But the truth about marriage will continue to be attractive to people, who always prefer truth to lies.

The Bible Belt marrying parson who marries whosoever will show up and rent his church, his day is over. The gelatin-spined neighborhood priest who hitches the cohabiting couple and hopes to see them at church for their children’s first communions, his time is up. In a day when churches must fight for the cultural freedom to define marriage, laissez-faire wedding policies, and the nominalism that goes with them, are done for, and good riddance.

Sure, there will be some nuns-on-the-bus types calling for marriage equality. And we will always have those mainline Protestants who dress up as Evangelicals in order to reach a marketing niche. But the churches won’t capitulate, because we can’t. To dispense with marriage is to dispense with a mystery that points to the Gospel itself, the union of Christ and his church, as the Apostle Paul says to the church at Ephesus.

Again, this will seem freakish and nasty and bigoted. Marriage will decline, and children will be hurt, because the marginalization of marriage always empowers predatory men. But the Gospel flourished in places known for temple prostitutes and gladiator fights, and it still stands. As churches recover healthy marriage cultures, and contrast these with the sexually libertarian carnival around them, there will be a time for a new conversation about men and women, and mothers and fathers, and the meaning of sex and life.

The big news from the decisions is this: The Court struck a strong blow to the “marriage equality” rhetoric. The justices were not persuaded by the “fundamental civil right” and “we are just asking for full citizenship” talking points from the marriage-redefinition folks. That is profoundly significant. It is precisely the argument that the two lawyers arguing the case consistently and routinely made. This Court, the ultimate voice in our nation for guaranteeing the basic civil rights of all our citizens, didn’t buy it, supported in its opinion by some key moderate and liberal justices. It is not the obvious, self-evident conclusion that so many cultural elites, including our president, say it is.

The Washington Post vainly opined numerous times recently (here and here, for instance) that the “political fight over gay marriage is over.” That line of thinking got a cold slap on the cheek yesterday.

The decision on Prop 8 also dramatically sobers the “it’s inevitable” trope. Homosexual marriage is inevitable only if the Court chooses to “Roe v. Wade” it. But the Court chose not to. For now, each state will continue to fight this out case by case, and passionately so. Marriage redefinition is indeed inevitable in some states, such as Massachusetts and New York, because it already exists. It’s not inevitable in states like Wyoming, North Dakota, and Georgia. Far from it. Every state that does not have it today is an open question and our democracy will fight it out.

So both the “marriage equality” and the “it’s inevitable” assumptions should be seen for what they are: political rhetoric, not obvious facts.

Simply put, far too many citizens 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 when thinking about issues like divorce and cohabitation. The redefinition of marriage along exclusively romantic lines happened because of art, not arguments; because of imagination, not debates.

That sort of love is, as even the movies tell us, quite fickle. It won’t hold up under the weighty foundational role marriage must play for a society. Thus the future of marriage depends on our ability to recapture the imagination of our culture with a more robust and stable definition of the purpose and function of marriage.

Still, the fate of marriage doesn’t lie in Hollywood’s making different movies, but in the intermediate institutions that most fundamentally shape our imaginations, especially the home and the church. Between sweeping federal legislation and individuals lie these powerful protections, if pastors and parents will play their part.