Thursday, January 6, 2011

R. R. Reno, John C. Zmirak Skewer World of Make-Believe

Lots of good writing around the web about the ideology underlying counterfeit "marriage." Back in 2009, good Bishop Wenski of Miami:

"...characterized the 'culture wars' as a conflict about 'the understanding of man and his relationship to truth and reality.'

One side, which, he argued, includes homosexual marriage advocates, 'holds that anyone can essentially create his or her own reality. This side holds for a radical autonomy by which truth is determined not by the nature of things but by one's own individual will.'

This position, in the bishop’s view, is a 'recipe for tyranny.'

Today, R.R. Reno has a good article in First Things "Marriage and the Liberal Empire", expanding on this. Excerpt:

"Whatever one thinks of the morality of homosexual acts or the role of same-sex relationships in society, this contrast strikes me as telling. Most who defend traditional marriage hold that our body of law should recognize the reality of marriage, while liberals tend to take the view that our legal system creates the institution of marriage, and therefore can reshape and recreate it as the democratic majority (or in this case a judicially empowered minority) sees fit.

In this distinction between recognizing and creating we can see the fundamental metaphysical question at stake in the same-sex marriage debate. Are there any stable and authoritative social realities—such as marriage—prior to or more fundamental than the legal artifacts created by the modern liberal state? Or is the Leviathan of the modern state the singular source of social reality?...


Creating and never recognizing—it’s a vision of political life that fills me with foreboding. After all, the human person, like the institution of marriage, is (thank God) pre-political, to be respected not remolded, recognized rather than subjected to redefinition.

But just as liberal theory so easily takes up and refashions marriage, I fear that an imperial liberalism will soon be underwriting a redefinition of parenthood and reproduction—the very origins of the human person and thus the inner fabric of our humanity. Not a happy future."


John C. Zmirak, writing over at Inside Catholic in an article called, "Frog-Marching us into Sodom" notes how far this has gone:

"You think you're a woman trapped in the body of a man? Instead of trying to cure what is clearly a delusion, we will have a team of surgeons remake your flesh to fit your fantasy. I've also read of a man who thought he was "really" a tiger, who found plastic surgeons and tattoo artists willing to undo nature's "mistake."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bishop Wenski's alleged view that "homosexual marriage advocates hold that anyone can essentially create his or her own reality" is in the same bowling league as strawmen like "Catholic bishops molest children and deny the Holocaust". There may be SOME same-sex marriage advocates, or SOME Catholic bishops, or SOME same-sex marriage opponents who say/believe/do such things, but they would be a fringe minority not representative of the vast majority of the members of those groups. It would be irresponsible and indeed calumnous of Bishop Wenski (or whoever) if he were speaking in regard to some quirky fringe minority in the name of the majority who do not hold such a belief. Bishop Wenski should know better than to say such scandalous things, even if it serves as a convenient strawman for him to vent his frustrations upon.