Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams lectures the Church on same-sex marriage.

irst 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 of Salon (whose lat­est screed against the Catholic Church can be found here) 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.  To find out what she does believe in, we need to read her lat­est piece of pif­fle with a care­ful eye. Here is what she says:

[S]top pre­tend­ing that mar­riage isn’t a man-made insti­tu­tion, one that we humans have defined in dif­fer­ent ways through­out the course of his­to­ry. Stop for­get­ting that if you’re look­ing for “tra­di­tion­al” mar­riages, the Bible itself is chock-full of them—defined by incest, rape[,] and bigamy.”

the crock alarm sounds off

I will address some of this lat­er, but the thing to note here is that Ms. Williams does not say that mar­riage has no def­i­n­i­tion and that any­thing at all may be giv­en legal sanc­tion. What she does say is that it can be defined dif­fer­ent­ly from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. Now, to define some­thing is to lim­it it.  So what Ms. Williams real­ly believes in is not mar­riage “equal­i­ty,” but mar­riage plasticity—which is just anoth­er way of say­ing the destruc­tion of mar­riage.

The words “mar­riage equal­i­ty” are no dif­fer­ent than any oth­er euphemism:  They are meant to shut down crit­i­cal thought.  We are just to dash blind­ly over the cliff along with the rest of the herd. “Equal­i­ty” is a word that makes us feel all good and tol­er­ant; who can be against it?  But once we are remind­ed that we are not real­ly talk­ing about “equal­i­ty” here, it is less easy to be deceived.  That is why hon­esty and exac­ti­tude in lan­guage mat­ter.

Ms. Williams, unfor­tu­nate­ly, does not have much of a his­to­ry of hon­esty.  Any­one who can write an arti­cle with so absurd a title as “The Vat­i­can Hates Gays” is not the kind of per­son you would expect to have a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship with the truth.  So when she makes state­ments of out­ra­geous his­tor­i­cal ignorance—such as that human beings have defined mar­riage dif­fer­ent­ly through the ages—the Crock Alarm should be sound­ing loud­ly.

stop! in the name of open-minded liberal tolerance

So with that as our back­drop, let us look at Ms. Williams’ absurd new piece of pif­fle.  She begins by refer­ring us to this let­ter from the USCCB, which is to be dis­trib­uted in parish bul­letins dur­ing May and June.  She describes it—in a loose, slop­py, col­lo­qui­al way—as a “cork­er.” It is, she says, the work of “near­ly 500” “frustrat[ed],” “unwed,” and “celi­bate” men.  (How any of that is to the pur­pose, she does not say.)  She quotes a few pas­sages hav­ing to do with “prayer, penance, and sac­ri­fice”; with “reli­gious lib­er­ty” and “a cul­ture of life”; and with the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage as “a per­ma­nent and exclu­sive union of one man and one woman.”  But hear­ing Catholic bish­ops say Catholic things is just too much for Ms. Williams’ open-mind­ed, lib­er­al tol­er­ance to bear, and she lets loose with a lec­ture repeat­ed­ly punc­tu­at­ed by the pained words “Stop!” and “Don’t!”

“[S]top!” she cries

pre­tend­ing that mar­riage isn’t a man-made insti­tu­tion—[It’s not. From the begin­ning he made them male and female.]—one that we humans haven’t defined in dif­fer­ent ways through­out the course of his­to­ry.

[Bib­li­cal mar­riages are] full of incest, rape[,] and bigamy.

 

[Tell me, please, how it is that, if the Bible says x did y, God must there­fore be good with it.]

 

Stop con­ve­nient­ly ignor­ing that the church says that mat­ri­mo­ny is for the pro­cre­ation of chil­dren but does­n’t restrict the elder­ly or infirm from enjoy­ing the ben­e­fits of reli­gious­ly sanc­tioned unions.

Ms. Williams must real­ly think she has the Church backed into a cor­ner here.  Oh, the hypocrisy of it all!  But no. If the truth be told (as it must and shall), she mis­states Church teach­ing. What the Church says is that mar­ried cou­ples must always be open to life, but that if con­cep­tion is impos­si­ble, for rea­sons out of one’s con­trol, the mar­riage is not some­how invalid.  Ms. Williams real­ly should read the Cat­e­chism on this point—that is, if she wants to know the least scrap of what she is talk­ing about. (The rel­e­vant pas­sages are here).  Mar­riage in the Catholic Church is a sacra­ment, not a vehi­cle for legal ben­e­fit or social recog­ni­tion. (Though that’s all Ms. Williams seems to think it’s good for).

“And don’t!” she cries

repeat the flat-out vicious untruth—[Ooh!] that [redefin­ing mar­riage makes moth­ers and fathers dis­pen­si­ble]. … Because I have to tell you—[Uh oh! watch out! her ire has been raised!]—I’m a moth­er. And every time two dudes get mar­ried, I still keep my job.

Yes. But if two men or two women “mar­ry” and think that they are going to have a “fam­i­ly,” that is only pos­si­ble if they deny some child a mom and a dad. Two men togeth­er, or two women togeth­er, can­not pro­duce life.  Human beings were not designed that way, I am here to inform Ms. Williams.  Chil­dren thrive when they are raised by a moth­er and a father who are their own, and it does vio­lence to chil­dren to deny them that.

it’s time you learned about the facts of life

Ms. Williams asks, “Did my het­ero­sex­u­al dad erad­i­cate father­hood when he left my moth­er before I was born?” Well, maybe not of itself; no one says that. But he cer­tain­ly denied you a father. Sor­ry. Moth­er­hood and father­hood are more than hav­ing been there when con­cep­tion hap­pened. And if you think that such a state­ment reveals “a stun­ning amount of igno­rance about gay and les­bian fam­i­lies, their off­spring, and their rights.  Stun­ning,” the only thing you’ve proven is that you have a remark­able abil­i­ty for imag­in­ing that the use of ital­ics proves a point.  Or maybe you just think the ital­ics are real­ly scary and intim­i­dat­ing.  But no.

And by the way.  It seems I must be the one to state the obvi­ous to Ms. Williams, but gay and les­bian cou­ples don’t have off­spring.  When two men have sex, or when two women have sex, it is not pos­si­ble for a new human life to spring off. I think Ms. Williams has just shown her stun­ning amount of igno­rance about the birds and the bees.  Stun­ning.  Or maybe this is just a manip­u­la­tive and dis­hon­est use of lan­guage again.

Ms. Williams ends her arti­cle by opin­ing, in a grandiose and moral­ly supe­ri­or fash­ion, that “how and when we cre­ate our fam­i­lies is a deeply per­son­al deci­sion.”

But no. That is not right.  The cre­ation of a fam­i­ly hap­pens one way:  It hap­pens when a man and a woman come togeth­er in the mar­i­tal act and con­ceive a child.  A man and a man, or a woman and a woman, can do no such thing. That is not how they were designed. “Per­son­al deci­sion” has noth­ing to do with it.  A human being does not cre­ate his own biol­o­gy.  A human being does not cre­ate his own sex. A human being does not decide who he was made to be with.  Those deci­sions have already been made by the God who knit us togeth­er in the womb.

lies, damned lies, and “marriage equality.”

Mar­riage is about embrac­ing some­one who is dif­fer­ent, not same.  It has to do with com­ple­men­tar­i­ty, not nar­cis­sism.

Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in gen­er­al, and same-sex mar­riage in par­tic­u­lar, are noth­ing if not attempts to cre­ate your­self, rather than to be who you were made to be.  It is rebel­lion against one’s own self, in one of the deep­est and most per­son­al aspects of that self­hood:  one’s own body.

And here­in we come full cir­cle.  For I began this piece by point­ing out that the expres­sion “mar­riage equal­i­ty” is a dis­hon­est use of lan­guage.  Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, by anal­o­gy, is best under­stood as a dis­hon­est use of self.  It is using your body to lie.

That might be “stun­ning” for the sassy Ms. Williams to hear, but I’m sor­ry. The Church says what it says.  To be shocked that Catholic bish­ops would actu­al­ly say and believe Catholic things is luna­cy unbound.