Apropos with recent discussions here is what I perceive to be an assumed illegitimacy of social context. When one enters these discussions, one is required to accept the autonomous nature of acts unless one proves otherwise. This notion is somewhat queer given that the range of acts that are autonomous is practically nil. We have gone from damning social norms to believing they are absent. We have done this in the name of freedom.
Of course by doing this we have made freedom valueless. Modern notions would have freedom meaning the ability of a man to choose amongst eating his shoes, his pants, or his shirt. The deprived man of course is the one who must eat bread alone. As absurd as it sounds to claim that we have enhanced the freedom to eat by adding the former categories, people go on making the argument. The argument doesn’t become more intelligent if I add the rejoinder, “but what if a person prefers eating shoes.” Preference is not an argument that overrides all others. Whether or not you prefer “eating” shoes does not change the consumption of shoes from the category of doing things that don’t offer caloric benefit. That some people “eat” gum doesn’t change the status of shoes, but just adds to the category of things that aren’t eating.
While the parallels to gay marriage are evident, I could just as easily be speaking about recreational marijuana use. I could be talking about the consumption of pornography. If I were to go more broadly, I could speak of the increasing absence of professional ethics in the academic, legal, and business professions. In academics, we have the phenomenon of diploma mills; at higher levels we have an astonishing number of plagiarism charges opposite otherwise wholesome activities like tribal backslapping. In the legal community, we have robo-lawyers and judges that seem outcome obsessed and not driven by an underlying ethic, regardless of informal partisan affiliation. In the business community we have taken “a willing seller and a willing buyer” as an irrefutable axiom. In all of this we are going to end up with students (and professors) that don’t possess knowledge eclipsing the prior generation, a legal system fraught with uncertainly and politicking, and a business climate that leverages deceit upon deceit until we have the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Of course in this environment to even discuss the ethical implications of marriage is to invite charges of bigotry. Demagoguery is the norm. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton campaigned on the issue of ending welfare as we know it. To arrive at that point, Democrats had to stop demagoguing those wanting welfare reform as racists. While one can certainly disagree with what came out of welfare reform, at some point policy makers actually had to get around to deciding whether policies were effective. No one would deny that race was an issue in welfare reform. At some point this country will have to grapple with the ethical implications of marriage. There is no value free choice here as gay marriage advocates like to claim. The allowance of gay marriage is a statement of our ethical beliefs about marriage. Likely our anti-culture will eventually validate gay marriage as it proves itself incapable of discerning social good. Since gay marriage is largely desired by those who are white and middle to upper class, almost no counter argument will be sustainable politically. And perhaps this last part offends your sensibilities. I’m sorry but a twenty-three-year-old Hispanic lesbian cleaning hotel rooms who decides to find a man to offer sperm without the expense of a sperm bank so she and her partner can raise the child just isn’t what this enlarging freedom thing is considering. It is a bourgeois exercise, the dressing up of which as marginalization is a ridiculous sight.
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