Rusty Reno on an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsement in Marriage, Morality and Culture
The controversial question of same-sex marriage marks decisive new phase in our cultural drive toward an every deeper freedom to live as one pleases. Freedom from censure is no longer sufficient. Today, we see an emerging right to cultural approval and endorsementâ?¦ Our present and widespread social censure of moral censure inculcates and reinforces a non-judgmental ethos. Now we are embarking on a much more aggressive program. Everybody should have access to the cultural symbols of affirmation. â?¦
But we cannot turn culture into the equivalent of a public access channel. As Aristotle explained in his account of moral formation and human flourishing, culture humanizes us by demanding our obedience. Happiness does not come from living according to your desires. It comes from desiring to live according to demanding and disciplining social norms that transcend individual desires….It is sociologically incoherent to imagine that we can both radically redefine marriage and transfer its â??transcendent, cultural, and social significanceâ?? to same-sex couples, as if the former does not alter and undermine the later.
Empedocles at A Pox on Both Your Houses is on the same theme with Social historical kinds and Marriage
The question we must ask is not what is the definition of marriage, but what is its function. The function of marriage is to provide an environment for he successful raising of children. This is the only explanation that accords with its historical origins (although the forms it has taken through the centuries has differed). And as I mentioned, for each function there will be attendant virtues. Love is the primary virtue of marriage; it is what allows a marriage to perform its function of providing an environment that is safe, stable, healthy, and nurturing for children to be born into. There are other virtues in addition to love that allow a marriage to perform its function: having the means to support the child…
Multiculturalism would say that it is the majority that must give up their cultural practice and adopt the practice of the minority group, that unless the majority accommodates the cultural practice of the minority, some moral evil has occurred. Thus we see all these ridiculous efforts in the western world to appease other cultures by abandoning their own cultural practice and accepting practices and demands that they would normally notâ?¦. Multiculturalism, thus requires that everyone else remain monocultural while we good multiculturalists float above all cultures, enjoying all the various cultural production of the Earth. And so multiculturalism requires a two-tiered system: a foundation of monocultures, and an upper-crust of those multiculturalists who do the celebrating of diversity….despite multiculturalismâ??s egalitarian rhetoric, it is in fact an elitist ideology, requiring two separate systems in order to exist.
