Posted by
TheChair on Sunday, August 10, 2008 11:21:11 AM
Perhaps nobody has better explained the reasons to oppose public acceptance of same-sex marriage than Harry Jaffa, professor emeritus from Claremont McKenna's School of Government, and now Distinguished Fellow of conservative think tank, the Claremont Institute. Jaffa is most famous for his writings on Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, but he writes prolifically on nearly any subject that could affect the American way of life. He is the rare political philosopher who cares about the actual consequences of ideas. I'm going to begin sharing excerpts of things he has said about same-sex marriage and about associated ideas. This first excerpt comes from Claremont Review of Books, a 1991 book review, where Jaffa examined a book entitled Gays/Justice: A Study of Ethics, Society and Law, by Richard Mohr.
http://www.claremont.org/publications/pubid.484/pub_detail.asp Jaffa debunked the homosexual author's moral relativism and then explained the bedrock reasons--moral principles--that civilization cannot abide publicly endorsed homosexual union. Key excerpts:
Consider that a man is a species-being, and the species to which he belongs — the species that defines his nature — is both rational and social. Man cannot live at all — much less live well — except by the mutual protection and mutual support of other human beings. Morality refers to those rules that mankind has learned, both from reason and experience, are necessary for surviving and prospering. The inclination of many men — what we might call the inclination of their lower nature — to take their sex where they find it and ignore the consequences, must be subordinated to their higher nature, which includes the interest of society (and the interest of nature in the species). For in no other species are the young so helplessly dependent for so long. Hence the importance, even for survival, of the laws both moral and civil governing the institution of marriage and of the family. We know that the relaxation of these laws leads to disorder, disease, and death, no less surely in the most advanced cultures than in the most primitive. But the good of the family is not merely self-preservation and survival, but the higher good — the happiness — of all its members, including those whose original horizon may not have extended beyond immediate gratification.
Morality must be based on man's "higher nature," which necessarily includes that behavior that is best for the species, not just the individual. A moral man must therefore bridle his personal passions, not only for society's happiness, but also for his own. Jaffa goes on to explain the moral kinship of incest and homosexual union; both are bad because they are bad for the human family and for human happiness. All else that's bad gets cursed too... the easy divorce culture, adultery, and gay bathhouse behavior.
The dissolution of the family is at the root of nearly all the social problems afflicting contemporary American society. The high rate of divorce is making emotional cripples out of children at all levels of society. And the children of divorce become divorced themselves at much higher rates than others. Crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness, venereal disease, low educational achievement, lack of job related skills, inability to function well on jobs, all of these things — and many more — are due at least partly to the disintegration of the traditional family. And at the root of the disability of the American family is the ethic that says that sexual gratification is and should be only a matter of personal preference and personal choice. The traditional family, the embodiment and expression of "the laws of nature and nature's God," as the foundation of a free society, has become merely one of many "alternative lifestyles."
Those of us who realize all this and advocate to preserve traditional marriage often hear, "Yes, but modern science makes up for some of these consequences." Jaffa counters:
The reigning assumption is that it is the function of science to emancipate human behavior from the restraints of nature. But it is by no means clear that is possible in the long run. There was a time in the 1960's when antibiotics appeared to have conquered syphilis. Together with the the birth control pill, this seems to have promoted an increase in heterosexual promiscuity. It would certainly seem that nature had an interest in the morality that is conducive to the family, and punishes behavior inimical to it. I would suggest therefore that the quest for a cure of AIDS, unaccompanied by any attempt to modify the behavior out of which AIDS was generated, is ultimately futile. I would venture to suggest that if a cure for AIDS were discovered tomorrow, it would not be very long before a new venereal disease would make its appearance, just as herpes did in the 60s and AIDS did in the 80s. What is needed above all is not a medical miracle cure but a moral and behavioral change.
Ronald Reagan said facts are stubborn things. Jaffa teaches that nature is a stubborn thing. Happiness is only possible in conformance with it.