Category: Moral Theology

Not even Christo­pher Hitchens believed in moral rel­a­tiv­i­ty. Those who claim to believe in it prob­a­bly mean instead, “I don’t want to be both­ered with what you Chris­tians tell me I ought or ought not do.” But that’s dif­fer­ent. Behind every claim to moral rel­a­tiv­i­ty is some­one mak­ing an excuse, either for him­self or for some­one else. He knows the behav­ior in ques­tion is wrong, but is attached to it, or per­haps does not wish to make the nec­es­sary effort to cor­rect it. Per­haps he feels it would require too much effort. Or per­haps he doesn’t wish to give offense.

Of things that exist, some exist by nature, some from oth­er caus­es.” That is the open­ing of Book II of Aristotle’s Physics, and is the begin­ning of all cor­rect rea­son. A tree exists by nature, but a park is made by man. For Aristotle’s “nature,” the Chris­t­ian will sub­sti­tute God; Aquinas improves on Aris­to­tle. Thus of things that exist, some are cre­at­ed by God and some by man. And since they are, in fact, cre­at­ed, it fol­lows that they are cre­at­ed for a pur­pose. It fol­lows, too, that their pur­pose is defined by the mak­er alone. With that in mind, we can turn to Jef­fer­son.

First we’re going to talk about lan­guage. It behooves any who be hon­est to get the expres­sion “mar­riage equal­i­ty” out of his head. No one believes in any such thing. I doubt very much that Mary Eliz­a­beth Williams believes in it. I would be stu­pe­fied into a coma if she told me she thought it was all good and well if I were to mar­ry two women; or two men; or one woman and one man; or my cat; or a three-year-old child; or six cows; or the exhumed body of King Tut. The rea­son she does not believe I may do these things is because she does not believe in mar­riage equal­i­ty.