Always with the tobacco.
That CT sided with Tolkein is no shocker—just look at the post title. CT’s reader base is evangelical-heavy, so any hint of straying from the default position on political issues is going to spark an unrelenting shipstorm of strongly worded emails.
Says Lewis:
Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is quite the different question-how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.
My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christian and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.
Part of Tolkein’s response. CT emphasized some of it but I’m too lazy to do the markup:
The horror of the Christians with whom you disagree (the great majority of all practicing Christians) at legal divorce is in the ultimate analysis precisely that: horror at seeing good machines ruined by misuse. I could that, if you ever get a chance of alterations, you would make the point clear. Toleration of divorce—if a Christian does tolerate it—is toleration of a human abuse, which it requires special local and temporary circumstances to justify (as does the toleration of usury)—if indeed either divorce or genuine usury should be tolerated at all, as a matter of expedient policy.
Under your limitations of space you have not, of course, had opportunity to elaborate your “policy”—toleration of abuse. … A Christian of your view is, as we have seen, committed to the belief that all people who practice “divorce”—certainly divorce as it is now legalized—are misusing the human machine (whatever philosophical defense they may put up), as certainly as men who get drunk (doubtless with a philosophic defense also). They are injuring themselves, other people, and society, by their behavior. And wrong behavior (if it is really wrong on universal principles) is progressive, always: it never stops at being “not very good,” “second best”—it either reforms, or goes on to third-rate, bad, abominable
I side with Lewis much more here, obviously, but what bothers me is that Tolkein (who described himself, philosophically at least, as a kind of anarchist) doesn’t connect “group of people x should” with “the government should”.
Maybe he had thought, as many other Christians do, that the use of the state is presumed. It’s my belief that the burden of proof lies on them: prove to me why the church at large needs to petition secularized, man-created entities that wield weapons as its distinctive feature to accomplish its goals, to accomplish her goals*.
* Offering “there have always been governments,” or “religious people have always been involved with governments” as arguments is not a good idea.
8 Comments
My only concern (legit one, I believe) isn’t a moral on, necessarily, but one of where the road travels.
Let me give an illustration, and one that has already happened.
Linda and Barbra want to be married. The state says they can legally be married, they’re excited. They wanted a big church wedding with bells and all. Going to the church the pastor says, no. Now there is a legal issue because the pastor won’t marry them in the church, but the state says it’s ok.
If we want to divide married from Christian/church marriage and state marriage, that’s fine and dandy. Give them what they legally want and all that that jazz.
But the problem starts when the gay community wants to push into the church because “it’s now legal to marry so marry us”. And when the church won’t (which, private institution, why should they have to?) then people will press charges ,cause a stink and the issue escalates because they’re not getting their dreams met by everyone.
I love how some of the old style mosques look. I think the architecture and such is beautiful. However, if I went to the .. whatever they call their religious leaders .. and wanted them to marry me to my significant other they would, no doubt, say no … And why not!? It’s not a public place they can say “no” to whomever they want!
This comment is dangerously close to being a rant …
In short, I don’t care if the government wants to let them get legally married in a government facility with a judge and all that. Fine. Make it legal for them to get all the same benefits legally as straight folks. But if it comes to a church, of any religion, there should be no forcing the issue.
Hi Tadd,
I believe you bring up a good point only for the fact that many in the religious community are concerned about the same thing. HOWEVER, I can tell you that the petition of same-sex marriage is NOT so that they can get married in church. In fact, it is understood even now that religious institutions can ‘reject’ any couple whom they deem outside of their religious practice. I know many same sex couples who have joined into committed relationships and not one of them expected to get married in a church that didn’t support or approve of their union. You brought up a good example of a christian wanting to get married in a mosque. The answer is “no,” and it’s understood. No one that I know is arguing that.
They DO, however, want to be able to plan for each other the same way you plan with your wife or husband. They are two consenting adults of legal age. If something happens to one of them and they are hospitalized, who has the ‘authority’ to come and help take care of them? You would be surprised at the answer. They share the same household and share their lives, but they are not currently allowed to take care of each other in the event of tragedy or the aging process. THAT is what they are fighting to change.
I very much support the freedom of two consenting adults to marry via the government and I very much support the freedom of religious institutions to continue practicing discrimination as it relates to their particular religion. Neither group should be allowed to diminish the rights of the other.
Molly, thanks for your reply. Good reply.
As I stated, I’m fine if they want to be married outside of a religion institution that doesn’t agree with them. I wouldn’t call it discrimination, I would called it choice. It’s the Muslim choice to deny my married based on who I am or what I believe. It would be a pastor’s choice to deny a gay/lesbian couple use of their building based on what they believe.
It’s not discrimination, but I suppose that depends on what your definition is derived from.
World Dictionary defines it as “unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people” while Random House Dictionary also defines it as “the power of making fine distinctions”.
Some people would just define it as not agreeing with sometime else.
I don’t allow smoking in my house, but that doesn’t mean I’m discriminatory against smokers. I don’t allow swearing in my home, or around my kids – but if someone wants to sit on their own couch dropping the eff bomb all night, so be it.
ALSO
I HAVE heard gay/lesbian couples doing exactly what I fear: Trying to force a church into marrying them. (example http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive//ldn/2007/aug/07082104 ) and I also know a few couples who said if a church turned them down they would press charges. Obviously this isn’t just a gay/lesbian issue – people of all sexual preference have been infected with a bug called “entitlement”.
If a gay/lesbian couple wants to get married in the eyes of the government and receive all the government benefits associated (medical, legal, etc) then hey – go for it I’m ok with that. I’m not going to go to their Gay Pride and try and make them do anything that’s against what they believe. Nor would I or SHOULD I expect them to come to a church and say they have to agree with them. I wouldn’t cook bacon in the synagogue!
I hope this all sounded logical and not annoyingly retarded … not annoyingly so.
Thanks for the comments you two. As far as the government forcing religious groups to perform same sex marriages…yeah, there’s going to be some incidents but I don’t think that will be the norm or that it will go very far legally. It’s too much of a hassle to get Church X to do it when there’s already a Church B that will. I mean to say that there are some institutions that are willing to do it already, in the first place, so homosexual couples wanting to marry would seek those churches out before trying to cajole socially conservative churches to perform them. And a government, at any level, would want to force churches to perform same sex marriages because there would be an immense backlash from voters. I don’t even think most liberals want to force religious bodies to do that.
One thing to mention about the legalities of gay marriage and having the same “status’ as hetero marriages: the problem is that there is state recognition of marriages qua marriages (and subsidize them as such via special tax statuses and the like) and not as an enforceable contract. If they are treated as contracts between willing parties, any couple can define them as they see fit and agree upon them. That way homosexual couples (or any couple, or any group of people) can have any kind of legal contract they’d like concerning their assets and other things that cohabiting people need to consider, rather than cajoling (sorry, used that word twice) the government to recognize a certain kind of contract that they should already be honoring.
Umm…Lewis and Tolkein weren’t talking about gay marriage. Don’t assume you know what they would say.
Not assuming, just making a good guess based on the information at hand. We do it every day.
There is not only no reason to have sex, but “gay marriage” is not only vulgar and decadent, but nonsense. One cannot call it “marriage”.
Lewis and Tolkien would have both puked at the thought of gay marriage. Further, marriage itself should not be allowed for everyody. In the past, this was not a big problem, since man’s ego hasn’t yet been puffed up with so much pride as in our modern world.
You are neither entitled to marry/have sex, nay, you may actually get sterilized if your genes are worthless, as in the case of my father, this asshole, who passed on most of the worthless sick genes I suffer from.
To quote the brilliant Colombian Catholic Nicolás Gómez Dávila:
More repulsive than the future which progressives unintentionally prepare is the future they dream of.
The modern world will not be punished.
It is the punishment.
I do not know whether, in another world, the devil punishes an irreligious society.
But I see that it is soon punished here by aesthetics.
Sexual promiscuity is the tip society pays in order to appease its slaves.
The most recent generations are particularly boring: believing in effect that they invented violence and sex, they copulate doctrinairely and doctrinairely kill.
Modern man’s life oscillates between two poles: business and sex.
The problem is not sexual repression, nor sexual liberation, but sex.
To liberate man is to subject him to greed and sex.
Sex does not solve even sexual problems.
Modern society is abolishing prostitution through promiscuity.
“There is not only no reason to have sex,”
This isn’t so much an argument as a contextual observation. There’s no reason to do lots of things, but we still do them.
It might be helpful to clarify which version of marriage you’re talking about. What’s the context? You’ve got a lot of baggage that you’re using to swipe at things outside of your control. It’s a man’s job to live by his convictions and the reality of his situation, but it’s also a man’s job to realize those are contextual to himself and not necessarily others.