Contact: Mark Bradford, National Catholic Bioethics Center, 215-877-2660
PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 10 /Christian Newswire/ -- The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) joins reasonable people everywhere who were dismayed that Proposition 8, which defines marriage in California as between a man and a woman, was overturned and declared unconstitutional by a federal judge on Aug 4, 2010. Judge Vaughn Walker's opinion within which this ruling is made provides an extensive analysis of the issue. The ethicists of the NCBC think, however, that the opinion is irreparably flawed in that it never addresses head-on what constitutes the reality of marriage. Furthermore, the opinion commits itself to a false understanding of unjust discrimination and of the ever important concepts of sexuality and gender.
In opposition to Judge Walker's opinion, we argue first that marriage is a complementary union ordered to procreation. This is a distinctive reality that can only be realized by heterosexual couples. Marriage refers to this distinctive reality; it cannot refer to relationships that cannot be procreative. Second, we argue that assessing whether a law manifests unjust discrimination requires looking at the reasons or intent behind the law. Every law has certain effects on certain groups and not others, even homicide laws have specific effects only on murderers and not others. That a law has a particular effect only on one group of persons does not itself make for an unjustly discriminatory law. One has to look at the reasons or intent behind the law. Insofar as Prop 8 is informed by what truly constitutes a marriage, it does not specifically target homosexuals. It is therefore, not unjustly discriminatory. Third, we address what seems to be a key argument in the ruling, namely, that changing the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples will change the social meaning of homosexuality and make it more widely acceptable. We think this is the center-piece of the opinion in that it is generated in reply to why domestic partnerships are not sufficient even though they afford a "couple" all of the legal rights and privileges of a marriage. This "social meaning argument" amounts to cognitive engineering; it aims to reorder society and declare that homosexual acts are morally pristine.
Finally, in our commentary on the opinion we address Judge Walker's misunderstanding of what it is to say that marriage is a complementary union ordered to procreation. The opinion treats the inherent procreative potential of heterosexual intercourse as an accident, as something that is not distinctive, or as something that does not indicate a specific kind of relationship. We believe, given the text of the ruling, that a fundamental misunderstanding of what marriage is, its nature, is what leads to the false conclusions drawn.
The NCBC analysis may be read in full at
www.ncbcenter.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=482&storyid1277=120&ncs1277=3
