Sad day in USA for both Parties (Page 10)

No, Hollis, YOU'RE HOT! I think it takes a lot of strength to bear reading about how people think you should not be entitled to basic civil rights that are at the core of FAMILY - civil recognition of your marriage to Kathryn. Your forgiving attitude is an example to all of us. It takes strength of character to not become bitter or disheartened. I don't know that I would handle it with the same grace and with the same forgiving heart that you have.

SCOTUS does.  See Loving v. Virgina.   

What about you Scout? Do you see obtaining a marriage license as a basic civil right?

Whether yes or no, I'll not ask you to justify your opinion. Just asking you to state your opinion, if you're going to weigh in.

I'll take a temporary tangent then return to the question.

I agree to a large extent but not fully. I always thought I would never get married but when I started wanting children everything changed. Then I needed that marriage contract - a sign to my husband, my children, my family, friends, society that I had committed myself fully to becoming a family unit. After leaving my husband 6 years ago, I thought I would never marry again. Cohabitate, yes; marry, no. I have since changed my mind on that as well. I want to fully commit to someone who is willing to fully commit to me. A marriage contract is the ultimate commitment.

Our respective personal views of marriage contracts aside... back to the debate.

How you do feel about same-gendered couples being denied the opportunity to enter into marriage contracts that you and I have the option of accepting or rejecting?

Thanks for sharing your opinion.

I agree that religious organizations have every right to determine upon whom they will bestow marriage sacraments and blessing. However, marriage ceremonies are not the exclusive domain of religious sects/denominations. It is up to the couple to decide whether they want religious sacraments or not. Civil marriages are performed all the time. 

My religion, Buddhism, does not have marriage sacraments. It is considered a civil matter. I checked into it when I thought I might get married about 3 years ago. What I read is that you might be able to find a monk who is licensed by the state to perform marriage ceremonies but that there is no Buddhist doctrine as it relates to marriage.

but it's really important to note that he conceedes that he did not make a natural law argument that would support gay marriage.

Thankfully, our Founding Fathers didn't agree with you. 

oops, I think I erase my original post... here it is...

Chris, thank you, thank you, thank you for finding and posting that piece by Weithman. It's the kind of reason based argument I was hoping for.

I suggest that everyone read this. Weithman He is a proponent of gay marriage and reasonably takes on the current philosophical architects of opposition to gay marriage, George and Finnis. If you read it, you'll get the sense of what I've been meaning by the term instrumentalization, and also see why I've been having trouble fully articulating such a precise technical term.

This guy has way more tools than I do, and he does a great job of explaining most of the anti gay marriage natural rights position. Perhaps the fact that he is pro-gay marriage will give you a comfort level needed to fully consider my position.

Chris, Weithman's argument is very good, and I need to give it careful study before I can fully respond. (or perhaps see if George himself has responded, in which case it would be a case of peers taking each other on, instead of a photographer )

So I want to look up his footnotes and such. As well as give it several more reads.

A couple of things jump out at me after the first read, though.

By pointing out that George and Finnis have not aimed their philosophy at other issues, such as worker rights, he seems to be saying that, what I would call a sin of omission, somehow indicates their real motivations. Therefore, he seems to conclude, their arguments are less valid.

This seems like a straw man to me.

Interestingly, Weithman points to John Paul II as a figure who more fully embodies the consistency that Weithman criticizes George and Finnis for not having. At the same time, he fails to mention that John Paul II found the natural law defense of marriage to be consistent with Catholic teaching. So Weithman can't have it both ways.

Another point that pops out is in some of his talk about Thomist (Aquinas) theology/philosophy regarding the movability of goods depending upon cultural circumstances.

This moral equation speaks to your question to me yesterday about how I could be against gay marriage, but perhaps not oppose gay civil unions.

Weithman seems to take a leap in context, first talking about Aquinas' analysis of the sex act, and then in the next sentence talking about Thomist philosophy of the movability of goods. Aquinas may indeed have been talking about the two in the same context, but I'm not sure about that. I need to go read the reference that Weithman makes in his footnote. My hunch is that Weithman took them out of context.

Another point is this: Weithman questions how natural law proponents could point to Greek philosophy as the standard, while at the same time needing to argue that a part of Greek culture that was sustained for centuries was itself morally corrupt.

That is a very good point. I agree that it seems problamatic.

I'd argue, though, that post-modernists and materialists face the same dilemma. They point to Christianity as corrupt, yet they must rely on philosophy derived from Christian thought in order to cogently make their point in the first place. It's not a coincidence that the call for gay marriage is rising up out of the Western culture. A culture that was built on Christianity. It's not a coincidence.

The last thing that pops up about Weithman's piece is that he himself conceeds that the argument he laid out is only an implicit argument for gay marriage, not an overt one. I think he rightly points out the relationship between anti-sodomy laws and marriage laws, and I think his argument can be shown to be false, but it's really important to note that he conceedes that he did not make a natural law argument that would support gay marriage.

And lastly, I do not think I am being disingenuous. If natural laws exist and are true, then their discovery (not their creation, but their discovery) began before the rise of Christianity.

If anything, it should point to the genuine search for truth inherent in Christianity as shown by the resurection of Aristotle by Aquinas. (Non-Christian Americans would be well served to remember that we live in a predominantly Protestant Christian culture. The Reformation threw philosophy out the window. It did not consider it a valid way to come to know truth. Only the Bible mattered.)

To say that natural law theory is invalid because so much of it was developed within Christian institutions is like saying that heliocentricity is invalid because the Catholic priest Copernicus discovered it. The truth is the truth.

Anyway, your post is a great addition to this debate.

Yeah...I for one am learning a lot. Participating in discussion like these, even thought they won't change the world, is excellent in sharpening my reasoning abilities.