Contrary to what the pundits would like us to believe, the June 26 U.S. Supreme Court decision affirming the right to gay marriage was not a step forward on the road to universal equality and justice.
More important, it was never about the right to marry.
It wasn’t a step forward for jurisprudence. A handful of judges changed the definition of a hallowed institution and retroactively declared it a right.
By doing so, the court circumvented the rule of law and created a precedent by which it can now grant itself potentially limitless power.
It wasn’t a step forward for children, who benefit psychologically and developmentally from growing up in the nurturing environment of one male and one female parent.
Of course, there are exceptions. But by institutionalizing a home life that denies children the advantages of a one-mother/one-father home, we encourage the kind of domestic chaos that has already rendered many children and young adults dysfunctional. Watch for statistics that will bear this out.
And it wasn’t a step forward for society as a whole. It has torn down what remained of perhaps the most fundamental cultural bulwark against moral anarchy and social disintegration.
The institution of marriage has always rested upon three pillars: biology, psychology and morality. Virtually all of these have now been demolished.
For most of history, simple biology served as the bedrock of marriage. It took one man and one woman to produce and raise a child. The man was best suited to the demands of physical labor necessary to support a family, and the woman was best suited to childbearing and childrearing necessary to raise children to become healthy adults.
Marriage is hard work precisely because men and women are so different from one another. But as in any cooperative system, partnerships succeed when partners complement one another’s abilities, with each taking up the slack left by the other’s deficiencies.
This model of cooperation is part of the reason why children benefit from having a mother and a father. But it also benefits the couple, for marriage becomes training for all aspects of life. Only by learning to accommodate people different from myself can I become a productive, integrated member of society.
The statutes that govern a pluralistic society should be purely utilitarian. Traffic laws, public health regulations, taxes for highways, utilities and law enforcement — these are societal necessities and the proper job of lawmakers and public servants.
But civilized society will endure only with a collective commitment to the spirit as well as the letter of the law. Citizens need a common reference point to define who they are and what they believe.
“Freedom” is too abstract a concept to do the job. “Rights” is too self-serving. That is why the cornerstone of civilized culture has always been marriage.
Marriage as an institutions created a moral structure upon which all other moral structures found purchase — partnership, self-sacrifice and, perhaps most critically, respect for the natural boundaries and limits imposed by the design of the universe in which we live.
Humans took for granted the imperative to conform to nature’s laws and plan. Individual desire and ambition learned to submit to a higher reality and universal truths.
Personal gratification was not the ultimate arbiter of morality in a society that required cooperative spirit and collective commitment to ideals that extended beyond oneself.
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s argument that marriage “focuses almost entirely on the happiness of persons who choose to marry” trivializes the most sanctified and morally exalted institution in human civilization. It is also the reason why so many marriages fail today. If the relationship is all about my happiness, the moment I’m no longer happy the marriage contract is, by definition, void.
Needless to say, the system was never perfect. Marriages sometimes failed, so divorce was an inevitable companion of marriage.
But divorce was a last resort. By exhausting every other possibility first, most couples found that differences could be resolved and marriages preserved, not only for the sake of the children, but also for the ideal of the home that represented the ultimate stabilizing influence within society.
Back before the acceptance of all behaviors as “lifestyle choices,” people had to hide their counter-culture behavior behind closed doors. Then, society’s values could survive a rebellious minority.
But when that conduct was thrust upon a public incapable of insulating itself from the popular culture, the erosion of moral boundaries accelerated a thousandfold.
Which brings us to the second point: If it were only about rights, proponents of gay marriage would have been satisfied with civil unions. Tax benefits, inheritance rights, access to medical records and adoption opportunities were in place before the court decision.
But this was about ideology and forcing establishment culture to abandon its most deeply-rooted definitions of morality.
It was about imposing upon those still committed to traditional values an ultimatum of concession or persecution: Recant what you believe or suffer retaliation through the force of law.
But wait and see. Polygamy will be next, then incest and after that we can only imagine.
As lesbian journalist Masha Gessen admitted in a June 11, 2012, radio interview, the endgame is not to broaden marriage laws but to destroy the concept of marriage. Only then will we all be truly “free.”
The High Court decision does not take us forward. It takes us a step further away from the ideals of the U.S. Constitution’s framers and a leap closer to the moral anarchy of the Roman Empire.
Perhaps the pendulum will swing back. Or perhaps it’s too late to avoid the precipice that lies ahead.
Rabbi Yonason Goldson lives in St. Louis, where he teaches, writes and lectures. He is the author of the new book “Proverbial Beauty: Secrets for Success and Happiness from the Wisdom of the Ages.”
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