Joseph Bottum’s recent Commonweal piece “The Things We Share” was disappointing, to say the least.
It’s frightening to read these words from a former First Things chief editor:
“I DON’T MEAN to hide this essay’s conclusions. Where we’re going with all this is toward a claim that the thin notions of natural law deployed against same-sex marriage in recent times are unpersuasive, and, what’s more, they deserve to be unpersuasive—for their thinness reflects their lack of rich truth about the spiritual meanings present in this created world.”
Bottum’s chief claim in his wordy and meandering essay is that, as a matter of prudence, the Church would better serve her own interests—and the sensibilities of the culture to which she strives to witness and endear herself—by abandoning the project of defending conjugal marriage in the public square.
How Bottum, a man whose former job exposed him to some of the best Christian-American intellectual thought on public issues, can believe this is baffling.
His essay does share something in common with so many people who do believe in conjugal marriage but don’t seem to sense a compelling reason to actually convert that belief into action or advocacy of some sort: Neither party seems to fully grasp what is at stake right now in the marriage debate.
If the Church, and other similarly-disposed institutions, drops her defense of marriage, here’s what won’t happen.
There won’t be a religious “marriage subculture,” existing parallel to and within the larger contours of “marriage culture writ-large”; those who believe in the conjugal view won’t be at liberty to “do their own thing,” to live and let live.
The contemporary marriage debate is a zero-sum game. There won’t be draws, cat’s games, or stalemates. There will be a winning side, and there will be a losing side.
The debate has taken on this quality not by nature of the topic around which it centers, but by virtue of the militant agenda of the gay lobby providing its impetus. Exhibit A: New Mexico’s recent ruling that trampled on the conscientious and free speech rights of a self-employed entrepreneur who believes in traditional marriage.
If Bottum has at heart the Church’s best interests vis-à-vis its reception and perception in the American sensibility, capitulating on marriage is the very last thing that would constitute prudential action.
