The Curious Case of Orangutans and Organic Sexuality
If you caught the live broadcast (March 4) of the California Supreme Court hearing oral arguments for and against California’s Prop 8 you witnessed the pageantry of political expediency and moral equivocation in motion. At the same time, there emerged from the blur of posturing a barely clear thematic overlay of sincere people flailing about for a solution like a drowning man grabbing at fistfuls of air wishing to catch a life preserver that wasn’t there.
In the end, political posturing won the day; there was just nothing real to hold onto.
The Court signaled that it probably would uphold Prop 8, while not invalidating gay marriages already on the books; in short, it will offer a convoluted decision leaving a conundrum in place—whatever that may mean!
But this is just the point. The Court bore witness to its own loss of meaning as a symptom of a larger social malaise: the essence of what it means to human escapes us.
That it is not crystal clear that gay marriage is an abomination to God, an affront to humanity, and a denial of the fundamentals of humanness is proof of a societal darkness leaving us as ignorant of ourselves as an orangutan is of table manners. Impulse, appetite, and opportunity remain our constant companions in darkness, hounding ghosts of a civility that once was, making a mess that makes even the biggest monkeys proud but leaves humans retching their guts out in a gutter along a trail to nowhere.
Not civil enough any longer to know what humanness is, let alone have the courage to state it clearly, the Court grasps at what is merely momentarily opportune—the will of the voters— to avoid saying what should be stated clearly: that marriage is more than impulse, appetite, and opportunity—hormones, hunger, and a handy partner—which is what raw sexual drive is, hetero or homo. Marriage requires the richness of—dare I say it?— pure human sexuality, not in the sense primarily of holy but just untainted, unadulterated, and organic: human sexuality in its natural state forming an integral element of the whole; human sexuality serving its vital role distinguishing male from female in a vital union from which marriage springs.
Given this, contrary to vulgar opinion, marriage is neither polygamous or gay. As argued (in part) in previous posts, the natural state of human sexuality in its essence is bipartite monogamy. Marriage, then, becomes the visible, tangible, legal, and societal expression of human sexuality consisting of male and female in an exclusive union. It follows that when you pervert marriage you pervert what it means to be human.
Courts may never say this; by the same token they undercut all they do say about humanness, from human rights to hate crimes because apart from correctly defining the essence of humanness in marriage they have no definition of anything human; they can only lump us together with the orangutans and monkeys, applying impulse, appetite and opportunity as an imitation of the rule of law in what is in fact a lawless society.
There is more than one way to pervert this humanness, of course; and so-called “gayness” in itself does not, anymore than singleness does. One can be fully human and gay (if for the sake of argument we grant gayness), as one can be fully human and single; in which case, the very act of refraining from sexual intercourse fully reflects one’s humanness in reverence for the meaning of the sexual act. But one cannot be fully human and engage in sodomy, adultery, fornication, or other sexual perversion straight or gay. The moment one engages in sex outside the natural state as defined by God one jumps into the food fight with the orangutans and monkeys, running from civility, denying what it means to be human, and rejecting one’s own essential identity.
We will come back later to argue God-ness. Here—so that we do not talk past one another—we merely note in the reference above "as defined by God" the futility of engaging in sensible conversation about this or any other subject apart from God as the ultimate reference point for such a conversation. If God is not in the conversation with us, then conversation can be no more than a utility for self-deception, manipulation, and obfuscation in the name of proving anything or nothing. In short, apart from God in the conversation we talk nonsense. Witness the California Supreme Court in session, March 4, 2009. (or see, Dallas Willard on Correspondence Theory of Truth, or see Gary Madison on Rorty, Derrida, and Gadamer)
The point here is humanness is more than impulse, appetite, and opportunity no matter how good these may feel at any given moment or even continually; animals follow impulse appetite and opportunity, humans do not. Humans corral these, rule over them, and in doing so, rule all else; when this understanding is lost, human dominion is, too.
Created in the image of God as male and female, as male and female humans should rule the creation; to the degree that they do not we see chaos reflected in something amiss in the basic moral structure of what is real. Notice, I did not say in the basic "physical" structure of anything. Without going into issues beyond the scope of this post (we will take them up later), the creation cries out for moral guidance that can be rendered only by humans fully human: orangutans and monkeys cannot fill the bill nor can humans acting like them. God set the table of creation for humans with manners derived from moral sensibilities; apart from these moral sensibilities a feast becomes an orgy as manners morph into raw appetites run amok. Humans alone can supply the moral guidance fully reflecting humanness to all of creation and in so doing keep things on course, as it were, applying restraint to keep desert in its place as the accent to essential nutrition.
Part of this moral guidance should be to celebrate the equal value found in gayness (granting gayness as a matter of self-definition) that rules over impulse, appetite, and opportunity by refraining from sexual relations as in celebrating singleness that does so. In this, gayness and singleness can both speak to marriage guiding it back to the essential ideal too often lost. If we admit that mere union of male and female is no guarantee of ongoing humanness as reflected in God’s intent; and that although joined together, male and female too often find themselves at a table with the orangutans and monkeys having followed the deceitful lie of impulse, appetite, and opportunity into the gutter; then whether manifested in neglect, abuse, settled-in boredom, or divorce, when heterosexual marriage ends up on the rocks it is as much a witness in its own way of the loss of pure humanness as is the drive for gay marriage. Celibate singles, gay or straight, have something to say about this.
You may argue that divorce is an accommodation of a human condition as Jesus stated (e.g., Matthew 19:3-12); and that there can be circumstances where divorce is not merely justified but required. By the same token, one might argue that gay marriage is an accommodation to avoid same-sex promiscuity. So what is the difference? Merely that the whole matter turns on the meaning of the sexual union of male and female becoming one flesh; even in marriage this essential meaning can be so obliterated that sexual union becomes a lie and reconciliation is neither desirable nor justified: that to honor the meaning of the male-female sexual union divorce is required. On the same grounds it follows that gay "marriage" by definition is impossible because same-sex union obliterates the meaning of it: gayness, like singleness, can honor marriage and the essence of humanness only in celibacy; but in doing so, can legitimately serve as beacons of light shinning into the fog of confusion clouding broken marriages.
Whatever the finer points of this argument, and whether you agree or disagree, a couple of things come clear. One is that we who oppose gay marriage should be just as passionately for healthy heterosexual marriage. It just comes down to the fact that keeping marriage healthy is as important as keeping gays from it. The primary issue is not to protect marriage; but in protecting marriage to honor and celebrate what it means to be human beings bearing God’s image before the whole of creation. Orangutans cannot do this because they have no will to alter organic sexuality. Without table manners, they are without moral sensibilities, and procreate but do not create; that is their natural state. Bearing God‘s image we take giant leaps beyond mere procreation to create things both wonderful and awful. Altering organic sexuality, the natural state of you and me as part of a greater whole, is one of these. Some have done it and insist that we all join in. But like tinkering with a time bomb, there are consequences. So we have to ask: what will be the outcome? Blowing somethings to kingdom come is right in order. Blowing up other things entails blowing us up too. Traditional marriage is one of these. Even orangutans have more sense. Messy as they are, not one has been accused of self-immolation.
