The Book of Mormon has been compared to a mansion with many unexplored rooms. In recent years a particular wing of this mansion, of which I was previously unaware, has been brought to my attention.
Nephi was one of the last surviving witnesses of the Temple of Solomon. It overlooked the city of Jerusalem when he lived there as boy. The first thing he and his followers did after they established a separate colony in the Americas was to build a replica of Solomon's Temple (2Ne. 5:16). It apparently held its place of prominence in Nephi's heart, but the Book of Mormon only has limited references to Temples. Or so I thought, until recently.
Though there are few direct references to any Temples in the Book of Mormon, there are numerous indirect symbolic, allegorical references, scattered throughout its pages. Here I will provide a few of them to give a sense for this literary device. First, a brief description of the furniture in the Temple of Solomon.
There were ritual stations located in the courtyard of the temple, and inside the building itself. First was the Alter of Sacrifice, essentially a giant smoking barbecue grill with a ramp, where animals were slaughtered to atone for sins, and parts of the animal were eaten. Next was the Brazen Sea, a giant circular tank of water on the backs of twelve bronze oxen. Two giant pillars, Jachin and Boaz, flanked the entrance to the Temple. Inside were ten Tables of Shewbread, where twelve loaves of bread and other utensils, basins, and flagons for eating were set out. Perhaps most recognizable of all, the ten Menorah, a giant gold lamp with seven prongs, burning olive oil as fuel. A small Alter of Incense stood before the veil of the Temple, where the Priest would offer daily prayers for Israel. Next came the Veil, a partition separating the Holy Place from the higher Holy of Holies, embroidered with images of Cherubim (angels). Lastly, inside the Holy of Holies, rested the Ark of the Covenant, God's throne on earth. The lid was decorated with Cherubim, and two giant statues of Cherubim flanked the Ark.
Temple Imagery in the Book of Mormon: Nephi
Rather than address the individual significance of each piece of furniture, I will show that Nephi was familiar with each, and that he symbolically depicted himself as a pilgrim moving through each station of the Temple. He did this by selecting vignettes or imagery from his own life that mirrored elements or qualities of each station of the Temple, and stringing them together in the order of each station in the Temple. It sounds complicated, but once you get a feel for it, you will see how simple, yet ingenious, it is.
2Ne. 4 contains what some have referred to as "The Psalm of Nephi," a poetic lament and prayer of Nephi comparable to the Psalms of the Old Testament. It comprises verses 17 through 35.
Just as the Temple begins with an Altar of Sacrifice, so Nephi begins in 17: "...my heart sorroweth because of my FLESH..." Flesh is burned and consumed at the Altar. "...my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities..." Sacrifices atoned for sin. 18: "...temptations and...sins...do so easily beset me..." 19: "...my heart groaneth because of my sins..."
Now he moves to the Brazen Sea: "My God hath...preserved me upon the waters of the great deep." The Sea was about 7.5 feet tall—deep enough to immerse someone.
The Table of Shewbread appears in 21: "He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh." The image of consuming flesh evokes a feast.
The Menorah is in 23: "He hath heard my cry by day, and hath given me knowledge by visions in the night." Light of day, and visions at night allude to the Temple's own light source.
The Altar of Incense and the Veil both show up in verse 24: "...by day have I waxed bold in mighty prayer before him; yea, my voice have I sent up on high..." (Praying at the Altar before the veil.) The Veil is presented in 24: "...angels came down and ministered unto me." (Cherubim were embroidered on the Veil.)
Cherubim references continue in 25: "And upon the wings of his Spirit hath my body been carried away upon exceedingly high mountains..." The Cherubim statues had wings extending to the walls of the Holy of Holies, and touching each other in the center above the Ark. "...exceedingly high mountains..." refers to the high point in the Temple, the Holy of Holies.
The next verses evoke the Day of Atonement, when the Priest was admitted into the Holy of Holies. The Day of Atonement was a day to "afflict your souls" (Lev. 23:27). Ceremonial "afflictions" included fasting and not wearing shoes, and these privations are reflected in the language of verse 26: "...why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions?" Again in 29: "Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions."
Verses 30 through 35 recreate a conversation that took place between the Lord and the High Priest at the Veil on the Day of Atonement: "...cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation." (The floor of the Holy of Holies was the top of the Temple Mount, a literal rock.) Nephi begins to plead for blessings and eventual admittance in 30: "O Lord, wilt thou redeem my soul? Wilt thou deliver me out of the hands of mine enemies? Wilt thou make me that I may shake at the appearance of sin?" Now he begins to knock on the door in 32: "O Lord, wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me..." In 33: "Wilt thou make my path straight before me!" The path from the outer gate of the courtyard, to the door of the Temple, right up to the door of the Veil, was a straight line...Nephi's "straight and narrow path?" In 35: "...I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me, if I ask not amiss..." Again the rock: "...God, the rock of my righteousness...my rock and mine everlasting God. Amen."
Is this some kind of coincidence, or were these numerous parallels intentional? I believe they are deliberate. Notice also that each image evoking the furniture of the Temple is a vignette taken from Nephi's own life and experiences. Perhaps a good name for this literary modality could be "Biographical Temple Allegory."
Nephi Arranges Doctrinal Principles Via Temple Imagery
This format can also be used to convey doctrine—"Doctrinal Temple Allegory." Nephi uses this literary device in his farewell chapters of the Book of Mormon, 2Ne. 31-33. He begins by referring to the “Lamb of God” in verse 4, an allusion to the Altar of Sacrifice. In 5 through 7, he explains the need for the Lamb of God to be baptized. In the old Temple, sacrificial animals were washed with water before being offered. 7 and 8 contain more allusions to sacrifice—“…according to the flesh he humbleth himself…” “…the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove…” Birds could be offered as sacrifices when the one making the offering could not afford a lamb (Jesus’ parents were in this category).
9: “…it showeth unto men the straitness of the path, and the narrowness of the gate, by which they should enter…” The gate of the courtyard, the door of the Temple, and the door at the Veil lined up perfectly, a narrow path. It gives fresh meaning to the familiar phrase of Jesus quoted in 10: “Follow thou me.”
11 through 17 discuss baptism—the Brazen Sea. In 13, Jesus is called “the Holy One of Israel.” Israel has twelve tribes, and the Sea was supported by twelve oxen, one for each tribe. After “…baptism by water…” in 17, we “…are in this strait and narrow path which leads to eternal life; yea ye have entered in by the gate…” in 18. We are now inside the Temple building itself. Before entering the building, one passed between two huge bronze pillars, Jachin and Boaz. Perhaps they are referenced here in 18 as “…the Father and the Son…”
“…after ye have gotten into this strait and narrow path…” in 19, 20 says: “…ye must press forward…having a perfect brightness of hope (Menorah)…feasting upon the word of Christ (Table of Shewbread)…
Chapter 32 begins by speaking about what to do after “…ye have entered in by the way.” Verse 2 explains: “…ye could speak with the tongue of angels…by the Holy Ghost…” This refers to the Cherubim embroidered on the Veil. In 3, Nephi refers back to the Table of Shewbread: “…feast upon the words of Christ…” The Table had twelve loaves of bread upon it, but it also held twelve rocks of incense. These are burned at the Altar of Incense, when the Priest prays.
But first, verse 4 says: “…if ye cannot understand them, it will be because ye ask not, neither do ye knock; wherefore, ye are not brought into the light, but must perish in the dark.” This alludes to being admitted at the Veil. In 5: “…enter in by the way…” More Veil imagery. 6: “…Christ…shall manifest himself unto you…”
Now in 8, we come to the Altar of Incense: “…the Spirit…teacheth a man to pray…” 9: “…ye must pray always…ye must not perform anything unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance…for the welfare of thy soul.”
Chapter 33 takes us to the very end. In 4: “…endure to the end…” In 7: “I have…great faith in Christ that I shall meet many souls spotless at his judgment-seat.” The covering of the Ark of the Covenant is called the Mercy Seat. The Ark is God’s throne on earth.
The next verses contain allusions to the Veil, the place of judgment. 9: “…for none of these can I hope except they shall…enter into the narrow gate, and walk in the strait path which leads to life, and continue in the path until the end of the day of probation.” 11: “…for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day; and you and I shall stand face to face before his bar…”
12 takes us into the Holy of Holies: “…I pray the Father in the name of Christ that many of us, if not all, may be saved in his kingdom at that great and last day.” 13: “Farewell until that great day shall come.” In 14, we get a warning: “…you that will not…respect the words…which shall proceed out of the mouth of the Lamb of God…these words shall condemn you at the last day.” 15: “For what I seal on earth, shall be brought against you at the judgment bar; for thus hath the Lord commanded me, and I must obey. Amen.”
Enos
Another excellent example of this literary form is The Book of Enos. It is only one chapter long, but the entire chapter takes you, symbolically, from the Altar to the Ark.
In verse 2: "...I will tell you of the wrestle I had before God, before I received a remission of my sins." The Altar of Sacrifice is associated with sin, and with beasts, in verse 3: "...I went to hunt beasts in the forest." Sacrificial animals were food for the Priests.
The Brazen Sea in verse 3: "...the words [of] my father...sunk deep into my heart." A deep place to sink.
The Table of Shewbread in 4: "And my soul hungered."
The Menorah in 4: "...I kneeled down before my Maker...all the day long did I cry unto him; yea, when the night came..." He is discussing light and darkness.
Immediately in the same sentence: "...I did still raise my voice high that it reached the heavens." Praying at the Alter of Incense before the Veil. He prays for himself, then for his people (verses 9 through 10), then for his enemies (11 through 18). He continues voicing his concern for them in 19 through 20, then for his people again in 22 through 24, and back to himself in the last three verses. (Possibly an example of chiastic literary symmetry.)
25: "I began to be old..." 26: "...I saw that I must soon go down to my grave..." He is going home to his Maker.
Finally, he takes us to the Veil in 27: "And I soon go to the place of my rest, which is with my Redeemer; for I know that in him I shall rest. And I rejoice in the day when my mortal shall put on immortality, and shall stand before him..." He takes us with him into the Holy of Holies: "...then shall I see his face with pleasure, and he will say unto me: Come unto me, ye blessed, there is a place prepared for you in the mansions of my Father. Amen."
Again, here is an author of the Book of Mormon, painting himself as a High Priest moving through the Temple of Solomon. There are other uses of this mode of allegorical speech in the Book of Mormon, but I will leave these few examples standing for now.
Rather than opine about why Nephi and others used this literary device, I will simply say that, to me, it is more evidence that Joseph Smith was a true prophet, and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It adds another layer of depth to the text, another wing to the mansion.
[Update, 27 August 2013: See another article about allegorical Temple imagery in the Old Testament.]
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Marriage Debate—Neglected Points
I hesitate to even add anything to the maelstrom of hateful words surrounding the subject of gay marriage. Nevertheless, I feel I have several things to say on the subject that, if not new, certainly remain almost totally unexpressed in the mainstream media.
Why Government Intrusion?
As I scan the possible justifications for lending government support to what seems at first to be a purely private contract between two people, it occurs to me that the only good reason for the government to endorse a marriage is because marriages between men and women are the best source of something that governments cannot provide for themselves: the next generation of law-abiding, well-adjusted, physically, socially, mentally, emotionally healthy, contributing citizens. No institution yet contrived can match the ability of marriage in this regard. It is the right horse to bet on—the success of marriages between men and women translates into the overall success of society at large. If it were not for the potential to beget children, there would be no reason for the government to extend benefits to married couples at all.
Yes, not everyone who gets married has children. Nothing else the government pays for or sponsors yields perfect results either. Roads crack—do we stop paving them? Statistically speaking, it is a safe bet that newlyweds are A. Able to beget children, and B. Planning to do so at some point. As such, the success or failure of their relationship will have lasting consequences. The children they have will be more likely to contribute to society if the marriage succeeds, and more likely to be a burden if it fails. One child can become an eighty year burden or an eighty year benefit to society, and the success of the parents' marriage is the main factor determining which of these outcomes society will be forced to deal with later on.
There are always exceptions to such rules, but laws meant to govern 300 million people should be based on aggregates, general trends, reliable heuristics, and statistics, not on glowing exceptions. Therefore, it does make sense for representative government to offer incentives to men and women who get married to each other to stay married. The purpose of codifying marriage is not to fulfill some imaginary right to have one's romantic relationships endorsed by the government; it is to channel heterosexual relationships into permanence for the benefit of their offspring, and, by extension, everyone else influenced by those children throughout their lives.
Equal Rights
One assertion by the pro-gay marriage advocates is that they are being denied "equal rights" (forgive my scare quotes). Do we have the "right" to get married? Marriage is not a right, but a privilege granted to individuals who meet qualifications of fitness. There are other examples of this. For instance, a blind or crippled person may want to be a firefighter or soldier, yet be denied the privilege because they lack specific qualifications. The purpose of funding firefighters through tax dollars is to fight fires, and anyone whose body does not meet certain standards is denied the privilege. If it were a right, there would be wheelchair ramps in fire stations for firefighters who are incapable of sliding down the pole. The government pays firefighters, but that does not mean everyone has an equal right to be employed as a firefighter; stringent qualifications must be met by those who wish to pursue the profession. This arrangement benefits everyone, not just those who fight fires.
Equal Privileges, Then?
Just because you do not want to exercise a privilege or right does not mean you do not have it. I choose not own any guns. (I find the idea of owning a device designed to end human life uncomfortable.) But that does not mean I do not have equal rights with the people who do own guns. It also does not mean I am entitled to some compensation for my un-exercised rights in the form of new rights. (The freedom to drive at 20 miles per hour over the posted speed limit would be my first choice.) Similarly, just because a person does not prefer to marry someone of the opposite sex does not mean they do not have the privilege of doing so. Anyone can get married to anyone of the opposite sex, and any children that come from that relationship become their legal stewardship. There is no law preventing adults marrying adults of the opposite sex based on sexual orientation (or anything else, for that matter).
"Equal Rights" Evades Responsibility
In this context, the phrase "equal rights" as employed by same-sex marriage advocates contains a false premise. By clamoring for "equal rights," gay marriage advocates are actually asking for new rights, or privileges, that did not previously exist. Acknowledging this fact would be very inconvenient for them. First, it would require admitting that they are asking America to redefine marriage, which means tearing down the narrower traditional limits of the legal definition, and expanding them to include gay couples. If we are redefining marriage to include other relationships besides a man and a woman, this also means setting NEW LIMITS—explaining what relationships besides heterosexual and homosexual relationships deserve to be defined as marriages, and which should be excluded.
Another rhetorical slight-of-hand maneuver is to refer to all laws defining marriage as one man-one woman as a "ban on gay marriage." This imparts the stench of prejudice to proponents of such laws. But defining marriage as one man and one woman only is not engineered as a snub to homosexuals; it also excludes polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia, and a host of other relationships from legal recognition as marriage. Since it is not yet socially acceptable to stand up for these more festive variations, gay marriage proponents will not mention their exclusion by accurately describing the full intended effect of such laws. It is not anti-homosexual; it is pro-heterosexual monogamous marriage, and excludes everything else, whether it is shielded behind the sandbag barricade of fashionable political correctness or not.
What Is Not A Marriage?
Redefining marriage necessitates setting up new boundaries of exclusion as well. Creating new boundaries to exclude others is a responsibility no one in the same-sex marriage camp has taken up, at least not publicly. None of the proponents for redefining marriage have taken the time to explain which relationships, under their proposed new legal definition, do NOT qualify as marriages. Polygamy, polyandry, polygyny, polyamory, bestiality, pedophilia, paraphilia, etc.—why are these NOT qualified to be marriages? Corporations, can they adopt or not? Can parents marry their children? Why or why not?
Attempting to answer these sticky questions would require Solomonic wisdom, be a painstaking task to legislate clearly, and leave gay marriage proponents smelling of the same stodgy self-righteous fuddy-duddyism and hypocrisy they paint their opponents as having. How hypocritical of them to tell some guy he cannot marry his truck, or his horse. Who will clean up the mess of poorly-defined boundaries? Someone else, apparently.
When the attempt to legally define marriage is driven by something other than procreation and the rearing of the next generation of healthy, intelligent, law abiding citizens, then all logic for excluding any relationship from the definition of marriage goes out the window.
Judicial Prestidigitation
The false cry for "equal rights" also sidesteps another inconvenient obstacle. Whether they choose to exercise the privilege, any adult can marry another adult of the opposite sex in America. New privileges, a change in the laws, are what gay marriage proponents are really asking for. In America, new laws are created through grinding legislative, not streamlined judicial, channels. The tedious and clunky representative legislative process is circumvented by judges who legislate from the bench through broad or spurious interpretations of laws. They invent new rights where none previously existed out of thin air via vague, sweeping interpretations, because this is the quickest avenue to legalizing same-sex marriage. It is unethical, undermines democracy, turns judges into monarchs, and makes a joke of representative government. One or two judges overturn a ballot referendum by millions of people who constitute a legal majority of voters? Is this America?
Reiteration
The only reason I can see for governments to support marriages at all is the unrivaled potential of successful man-woman marriages to produce contributing citizens. All people have to deal with the consequences of these relationships, good or bad, so it behooves representative government to support them in attempting to establish permanence and offer them benefits. Returns are reaped in the form of universal benefits to society, namely, the next generation of productive citizens. No such universal benefit is derived from defining any other form of relationship as a marriage, or by extending the benefits associated with marriage to such relationships.
Marriage is not a right, but a privilege extended by the government to men and women because their relationships have enormous impact on the future of the country, for good or ill.
Everyone enjoys equal privileges under the current system, whether they choose to exercise them, or prefer not to.
Gay marriage advocates have side stepped the responsibility to come up with a well-defined new legal version of marriage, falsely claiming that their definition is already embedded somewhere in current laws, and needs only proper recognition for full expression and endorsement. This indicates a lack of forethought or concern for the consequences of their demands on society at large.
Adoption
What about letting gay couples adopt? (A marriage license would instantly bequeath that option.) Could they benefit society that way? Adoption is a necessary safety net, not a trampoline or a hammock. It is less effective than having a man and a woman raise the child they conceived. Issuing marriage licenses to couples should be based on the apparent biological fitness of the couple to make new citizens. (While draconian means would be required to assess this with certainty, noting that the applicants for the license are a man and a woman dramatically increases the likelihood that they will be fertile.)
Children learn more by example than by words. What implicit message are we sending to children when we endorse the absence of one or both biological parents? Will boys learn that their proper role is to contribute DNA and leave others to care for their children? Society is already bearing an enormous load from such delinquency. If same-sex marriage were legalized, dead-beat dads (and mothers) would suddenly be cloaked with an aura of generosity, national heroes in a civil rights battle instead of irresponsible adults.
It does not make sense to me to bring couples who are admittedly unable to have children into a system that exists for the purpose of managing the consequences of procreative decisions. Why subsidize that which is unproductive? Do we want more adoption, or do we want policies meant to encourage procreative responsibility? Do we want people signing up for parenting duties with the admission, right out of the gate, that children they raise will be missing one or both biological parents? If there are three or four people who could each be construed as a child's legal guardian, could resulting conflicts over custody increase the burden on the legal system and social services?
In passing, we should note that all logic and reason behind having a set number of parents or guardians disappears when gay marriage is endorsed. When marriage and guardianship are functions of biological parentage, two is the obvious number. If we are no longer using biological parentage to assign custody, why not have three, four, or any other number of equal legal guardians? Because it's unnatural? If biological parentage is not the benchmark for assigning guardianship, what aspect of a relationship IS? Is it sexual attraction? Financial solvency? The age and intelligence of the potential guardians? Why not let GM or GE adopt children? If we are trying to imitate nature for the children's benefit, let's go all the way and declare one man and one woman to be each child's legal guardian.
While adoption is a necessary safety net that can produce great individuals, and is preferable to the alternative of burdening the state with the expense of institutions to care for orphans, it does not work as well as letting a married man and woman who begot the child raise that child together. It does not make sense to promote a new, inferior institution as an equal or replacement for its extant superior. That which is subsidized flourishes, and it makes sense to pour resources into the statistically superior institution of one man, one woman marriage than gay marriage, or other variations.
Mormon Polygamy A Justification For Gay Marriage?
There is another talking point here, commonly bandied about by gay marriage proponents, that deserves some attention.
I am a Latter-day Saint, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, has played an active roll in defending the "one man, one woman" legal definition of marriage. The Church has been charged with hypocrisy, since polygamy was practiced by two percent of its members on frontier America during the late 1800s. But it was an unconventional means to a similar end as traditional marriage. According to Brigham Young, probably the most famous polygamist in the history of America, "This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives [polygamy] was revealed, that the noble spirits who are waiting for tabernacles [bodies] might be brought forth ("Journal of Discourses," 4:56 (Sept. 21, 1856))." He asserted that if children are born into good homes to good families, "...the righteous [will] increase, while the unrighteous shall decrease and dwindle away..."
My point is that even the underlying cause for the practice of one man having more than one wife among Mormons in the late 1800s was to beget children, and raise them to be contributing members of their community. It was a church assignment to engage in polygamy, and men who could not support more than one wife and her children were not expected or even allowed live this way. It was not a casual social convention designed to gratify male lust. While the States were engaged in the ugly business of prosecuting a civil war, the Mormons were multiplying and building up a society on the American frontier. Polygamy was meant, in part, to facilitate this process. I am descended from some of them, and my cultural inheritance has been one of sobriety, self-restraint, public service, and tolerance for other creeds.
By contrast, those who are clamoring for "equal rights" are demanding to use a public facility (marriage) while at the same time asserting that what they do is no one's business but their own. But the point of marriage is to make an otherwise private contract a public issue, since the potential for procreation affects the entire community. Far from being a sign of bigotry, criticism of a potential union is sometimes welcomed. It is traditional in many marriage rites for the one performing the ceremony to ask the audience to offer protestation, actually calling for evidence regarding impediments to the fitness of the couple. Legal marriage is a matter of public record. Those who marry run the risk of public disapproval. Does a non-heterosexual couple need public endorsement to engage in anything they choose behind closed doors? Does anything they do affect the general welfare? The effects of their behavior are so limited that to bring their relationship under public scrutiny is both pointless and perverse, a kind of forced voyeurism.
A procreative motive, and concern for the benefit of society at large (rather than more private, selfish motives) separates polygamy as practiced by late 1800s Mormons from gay marriage.
Altar and Sacrifice
Finally, a word about my generation's perceptions of marriage in general. I think the symbolism of the altar is lost on people today. An altar is a place to make sacrifices, not an ATM or a slot machine. It is true that marriage has benefits, but review the vows that many couples make when they get married, and see the sacrifices side by side with the positives: "...for richer or for poorer"..."for better or for worse"..."in sickness and in health..." You get a spouse, but you "...[forsake] all others..." "Till death do us part" is also lost on a society that considers open discussions of the inevitability of death uncouth. One of you is going to have to bury the other, and the idea is built into typical marriage vows.
Is it any wonder that many couples write their own vows, rather than making these traditional promises? This also denotes an erosion of marriage, a lowering of the bar.
Marriage between a man and a woman involves sacrifices as well as benefits. It makes sense to extend privileges and support to men and women who promise to make this sacrifice, because successfully kept commitments at the altar form the bedrock of society. Children derive great security, and a sense of identity, simply from witnessing their parents treating each other well. This security is foundational to individual character, and the love demonstrated by parents is later reflected in the benevolent and loving actions of their children.
The general lack of understanding that marriage is difficult as well as rewarding, a blessing as well as a sacrifice, is probably what accounts for most of the failed marriages of this generation. A selfish generation views the institution of marriage from the what's-in-it-for-me vantage point. When the choice comes between staying together and sacrificing, or divorce, many choose divorce.
Uniting two different people, a man and a woman, for the remaining duration of their lives, is difficult, specifically because they are different. Different in temperament, psychological make-up, desires, and physiology. The convention of legally prescribed marriage acts as a scaffolding to bolster this relationship. As the average lifespan of Americans grows, the enormous question of whether the next generation will be a blessing or a burden to their country looms large, and supporting marriage between a man and a woman will help ensure that the next generation is emotionally grounded, mentally stable, and ready to take the place of their parents in society.
Why Government Intrusion?
As I scan the possible justifications for lending government support to what seems at first to be a purely private contract between two people, it occurs to me that the only good reason for the government to endorse a marriage is because marriages between men and women are the best source of something that governments cannot provide for themselves: the next generation of law-abiding, well-adjusted, physically, socially, mentally, emotionally healthy, contributing citizens. No institution yet contrived can match the ability of marriage in this regard. It is the right horse to bet on—the success of marriages between men and women translates into the overall success of society at large. If it were not for the potential to beget children, there would be no reason for the government to extend benefits to married couples at all.
Yes, not everyone who gets married has children. Nothing else the government pays for or sponsors yields perfect results either. Roads crack—do we stop paving them? Statistically speaking, it is a safe bet that newlyweds are A. Able to beget children, and B. Planning to do so at some point. As such, the success or failure of their relationship will have lasting consequences. The children they have will be more likely to contribute to society if the marriage succeeds, and more likely to be a burden if it fails. One child can become an eighty year burden or an eighty year benefit to society, and the success of the parents' marriage is the main factor determining which of these outcomes society will be forced to deal with later on.
There are always exceptions to such rules, but laws meant to govern 300 million people should be based on aggregates, general trends, reliable heuristics, and statistics, not on glowing exceptions. Therefore, it does make sense for representative government to offer incentives to men and women who get married to each other to stay married. The purpose of codifying marriage is not to fulfill some imaginary right to have one's romantic relationships endorsed by the government; it is to channel heterosexual relationships into permanence for the benefit of their offspring, and, by extension, everyone else influenced by those children throughout their lives.
Equal Rights
One assertion by the pro-gay marriage advocates is that they are being denied "equal rights" (forgive my scare quotes). Do we have the "right" to get married? Marriage is not a right, but a privilege granted to individuals who meet qualifications of fitness. There are other examples of this. For instance, a blind or crippled person may want to be a firefighter or soldier, yet be denied the privilege because they lack specific qualifications. The purpose of funding firefighters through tax dollars is to fight fires, and anyone whose body does not meet certain standards is denied the privilege. If it were a right, there would be wheelchair ramps in fire stations for firefighters who are incapable of sliding down the pole. The government pays firefighters, but that does not mean everyone has an equal right to be employed as a firefighter; stringent qualifications must be met by those who wish to pursue the profession. This arrangement benefits everyone, not just those who fight fires.
Equal Privileges, Then?
Just because you do not want to exercise a privilege or right does not mean you do not have it. I choose not own any guns. (I find the idea of owning a device designed to end human life uncomfortable.) But that does not mean I do not have equal rights with the people who do own guns. It also does not mean I am entitled to some compensation for my un-exercised rights in the form of new rights. (The freedom to drive at 20 miles per hour over the posted speed limit would be my first choice.) Similarly, just because a person does not prefer to marry someone of the opposite sex does not mean they do not have the privilege of doing so. Anyone can get married to anyone of the opposite sex, and any children that come from that relationship become their legal stewardship. There is no law preventing adults marrying adults of the opposite sex based on sexual orientation (or anything else, for that matter).
"Equal Rights" Evades Responsibility
In this context, the phrase "equal rights" as employed by same-sex marriage advocates contains a false premise. By clamoring for "equal rights," gay marriage advocates are actually asking for new rights, or privileges, that did not previously exist. Acknowledging this fact would be very inconvenient for them. First, it would require admitting that they are asking America to redefine marriage, which means tearing down the narrower traditional limits of the legal definition, and expanding them to include gay couples. If we are redefining marriage to include other relationships besides a man and a woman, this also means setting NEW LIMITS—explaining what relationships besides heterosexual and homosexual relationships deserve to be defined as marriages, and which should be excluded.
Another rhetorical slight-of-hand maneuver is to refer to all laws defining marriage as one man-one woman as a "ban on gay marriage." This imparts the stench of prejudice to proponents of such laws. But defining marriage as one man and one woman only is not engineered as a snub to homosexuals; it also excludes polygamy, bestiality, pedophilia, and a host of other relationships from legal recognition as marriage. Since it is not yet socially acceptable to stand up for these more festive variations, gay marriage proponents will not mention their exclusion by accurately describing the full intended effect of such laws. It is not anti-homosexual; it is pro-heterosexual monogamous marriage, and excludes everything else, whether it is shielded behind the sandbag barricade of fashionable political correctness or not.
What Is Not A Marriage?
Redefining marriage necessitates setting up new boundaries of exclusion as well. Creating new boundaries to exclude others is a responsibility no one in the same-sex marriage camp has taken up, at least not publicly. None of the proponents for redefining marriage have taken the time to explain which relationships, under their proposed new legal definition, do NOT qualify as marriages. Polygamy, polyandry, polygyny, polyamory, bestiality, pedophilia, paraphilia, etc.—why are these NOT qualified to be marriages? Corporations, can they adopt or not? Can parents marry their children? Why or why not?
Attempting to answer these sticky questions would require Solomonic wisdom, be a painstaking task to legislate clearly, and leave gay marriage proponents smelling of the same stodgy self-righteous fuddy-duddyism and hypocrisy they paint their opponents as having. How hypocritical of them to tell some guy he cannot marry his truck, or his horse. Who will clean up the mess of poorly-defined boundaries? Someone else, apparently.
When the attempt to legally define marriage is driven by something other than procreation and the rearing of the next generation of healthy, intelligent, law abiding citizens, then all logic for excluding any relationship from the definition of marriage goes out the window.
Judicial Prestidigitation
The false cry for "equal rights" also sidesteps another inconvenient obstacle. Whether they choose to exercise the privilege, any adult can marry another adult of the opposite sex in America. New privileges, a change in the laws, are what gay marriage proponents are really asking for. In America, new laws are created through grinding legislative, not streamlined judicial, channels. The tedious and clunky representative legislative process is circumvented by judges who legislate from the bench through broad or spurious interpretations of laws. They invent new rights where none previously existed out of thin air via vague, sweeping interpretations, because this is the quickest avenue to legalizing same-sex marriage. It is unethical, undermines democracy, turns judges into monarchs, and makes a joke of representative government. One or two judges overturn a ballot referendum by millions of people who constitute a legal majority of voters? Is this America?
Reiteration
The only reason I can see for governments to support marriages at all is the unrivaled potential of successful man-woman marriages to produce contributing citizens. All people have to deal with the consequences of these relationships, good or bad, so it behooves representative government to support them in attempting to establish permanence and offer them benefits. Returns are reaped in the form of universal benefits to society, namely, the next generation of productive citizens. No such universal benefit is derived from defining any other form of relationship as a marriage, or by extending the benefits associated with marriage to such relationships.
Marriage is not a right, but a privilege extended by the government to men and women because their relationships have enormous impact on the future of the country, for good or ill.
Everyone enjoys equal privileges under the current system, whether they choose to exercise them, or prefer not to.
Gay marriage advocates have side stepped the responsibility to come up with a well-defined new legal version of marriage, falsely claiming that their definition is already embedded somewhere in current laws, and needs only proper recognition for full expression and endorsement. This indicates a lack of forethought or concern for the consequences of their demands on society at large.
Adoption
What about letting gay couples adopt? (A marriage license would instantly bequeath that option.) Could they benefit society that way? Adoption is a necessary safety net, not a trampoline or a hammock. It is less effective than having a man and a woman raise the child they conceived. Issuing marriage licenses to couples should be based on the apparent biological fitness of the couple to make new citizens. (While draconian means would be required to assess this with certainty, noting that the applicants for the license are a man and a woman dramatically increases the likelihood that they will be fertile.)
Children learn more by example than by words. What implicit message are we sending to children when we endorse the absence of one or both biological parents? Will boys learn that their proper role is to contribute DNA and leave others to care for their children? Society is already bearing an enormous load from such delinquency. If same-sex marriage were legalized, dead-beat dads (and mothers) would suddenly be cloaked with an aura of generosity, national heroes in a civil rights battle instead of irresponsible adults.
It does not make sense to me to bring couples who are admittedly unable to have children into a system that exists for the purpose of managing the consequences of procreative decisions. Why subsidize that which is unproductive? Do we want more adoption, or do we want policies meant to encourage procreative responsibility? Do we want people signing up for parenting duties with the admission, right out of the gate, that children they raise will be missing one or both biological parents? If there are three or four people who could each be construed as a child's legal guardian, could resulting conflicts over custody increase the burden on the legal system and social services?
In passing, we should note that all logic and reason behind having a set number of parents or guardians disappears when gay marriage is endorsed. When marriage and guardianship are functions of biological parentage, two is the obvious number. If we are no longer using biological parentage to assign custody, why not have three, four, or any other number of equal legal guardians? Because it's unnatural? If biological parentage is not the benchmark for assigning guardianship, what aspect of a relationship IS? Is it sexual attraction? Financial solvency? The age and intelligence of the potential guardians? Why not let GM or GE adopt children? If we are trying to imitate nature for the children's benefit, let's go all the way and declare one man and one woman to be each child's legal guardian.
While adoption is a necessary safety net that can produce great individuals, and is preferable to the alternative of burdening the state with the expense of institutions to care for orphans, it does not work as well as letting a married man and woman who begot the child raise that child together. It does not make sense to promote a new, inferior institution as an equal or replacement for its extant superior. That which is subsidized flourishes, and it makes sense to pour resources into the statistically superior institution of one man, one woman marriage than gay marriage, or other variations.
Mormon Polygamy A Justification For Gay Marriage?
There is another talking point here, commonly bandied about by gay marriage proponents, that deserves some attention.
I am a Latter-day Saint, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, has played an active roll in defending the "one man, one woman" legal definition of marriage. The Church has been charged with hypocrisy, since polygamy was practiced by two percent of its members on frontier America during the late 1800s. But it was an unconventional means to a similar end as traditional marriage. According to Brigham Young, probably the most famous polygamist in the history of America, "This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives [polygamy] was revealed, that the noble spirits who are waiting for tabernacles [bodies] might be brought forth ("Journal of Discourses," 4:56 (Sept. 21, 1856))." He asserted that if children are born into good homes to good families, "...the righteous [will] increase, while the unrighteous shall decrease and dwindle away..."
My point is that even the underlying cause for the practice of one man having more than one wife among Mormons in the late 1800s was to beget children, and raise them to be contributing members of their community. It was a church assignment to engage in polygamy, and men who could not support more than one wife and her children were not expected or even allowed live this way. It was not a casual social convention designed to gratify male lust. While the States were engaged in the ugly business of prosecuting a civil war, the Mormons were multiplying and building up a society on the American frontier. Polygamy was meant, in part, to facilitate this process. I am descended from some of them, and my cultural inheritance has been one of sobriety, self-restraint, public service, and tolerance for other creeds.
By contrast, those who are clamoring for "equal rights" are demanding to use a public facility (marriage) while at the same time asserting that what they do is no one's business but their own. But the point of marriage is to make an otherwise private contract a public issue, since the potential for procreation affects the entire community. Far from being a sign of bigotry, criticism of a potential union is sometimes welcomed. It is traditional in many marriage rites for the one performing the ceremony to ask the audience to offer protestation, actually calling for evidence regarding impediments to the fitness of the couple. Legal marriage is a matter of public record. Those who marry run the risk of public disapproval. Does a non-heterosexual couple need public endorsement to engage in anything they choose behind closed doors? Does anything they do affect the general welfare? The effects of their behavior are so limited that to bring their relationship under public scrutiny is both pointless and perverse, a kind of forced voyeurism.
A procreative motive, and concern for the benefit of society at large (rather than more private, selfish motives) separates polygamy as practiced by late 1800s Mormons from gay marriage.
Altar and Sacrifice
Finally, a word about my generation's perceptions of marriage in general. I think the symbolism of the altar is lost on people today. An altar is a place to make sacrifices, not an ATM or a slot machine. It is true that marriage has benefits, but review the vows that many couples make when they get married, and see the sacrifices side by side with the positives: "...for richer or for poorer"..."for better or for worse"..."in sickness and in health..." You get a spouse, but you "...[forsake] all others..." "Till death do us part" is also lost on a society that considers open discussions of the inevitability of death uncouth. One of you is going to have to bury the other, and the idea is built into typical marriage vows.
Is it any wonder that many couples write their own vows, rather than making these traditional promises? This also denotes an erosion of marriage, a lowering of the bar.
Marriage between a man and a woman involves sacrifices as well as benefits. It makes sense to extend privileges and support to men and women who promise to make this sacrifice, because successfully kept commitments at the altar form the bedrock of society. Children derive great security, and a sense of identity, simply from witnessing their parents treating each other well. This security is foundational to individual character, and the love demonstrated by parents is later reflected in the benevolent and loving actions of their children.
The general lack of understanding that marriage is difficult as well as rewarding, a blessing as well as a sacrifice, is probably what accounts for most of the failed marriages of this generation. A selfish generation views the institution of marriage from the what's-in-it-for-me vantage point. When the choice comes between staying together and sacrificing, or divorce, many choose divorce.
Uniting two different people, a man and a woman, for the remaining duration of their lives, is difficult, specifically because they are different. Different in temperament, psychological make-up, desires, and physiology. The convention of legally prescribed marriage acts as a scaffolding to bolster this relationship. As the average lifespan of Americans grows, the enormous question of whether the next generation will be a blessing or a burden to their country looms large, and supporting marriage between a man and a woman will help ensure that the next generation is emotionally grounded, mentally stable, and ready to take the place of their parents in society.
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