Is it “biological fetishism” for millions of spouses to find it beautiful and uniquely appropriate that their children are a mixture of their bodies? Or for couples to see their infertility as a tragic limitation even when they can adopt? Or for proud new parents to care which healthy child is handed to them in the maternity ward?
I see Chappell’s “biological fetishism” and raise him “Manichean dualism;” for dualism is what his breezy dismissal of the value of bodily union betrays. I can also point him to book-length arguments in defense of our view that the body is an intrinsic aspect, not an extrinsic instrument, of the human person. And here I can cite other moral conclusions that lend support to this view. What’s peculiarly perverse about torture? That it uses one aspect of the person (his body and affects) against another aspect of his self (wishes, choices, commitments). Why is rape gravely wicked even when performed on someone in a coma who never finds out and sustains no physical or psychic injuries? It still involves misusing—ab-using—a person, and not merely using and replacing intact his or her property. Why can you licitly relinquish all future rights over your possessions, but not over your body or its capacities for labor? Again, because your body is part of you, not just your property.
A positive implication of this fact is what Chappell denies: that bodily union is integral to comprehensive personal union. What Chappell is pleased to call fetishizing biological functions is our insistence that, in embodied animals, comprehensive union must include bodily union, which must mean joint biological functioning (chosen to embody the spouses’ commitment). There is no other candidate for this than coitus, so the requirement that a comprehensive union—i.e., marriage—be capable of coital consummation is hardly arbitrary. Chappell merely states the opposite and so proves nothing. And the position he so signally fails to justify would render the concepts of a distinctively marital act or form of common life senseless or superstitious.
via www.thepublicdiscourse.com
Is the joint functioning of a penis and a vagina the only path to the kinds of goods associated with marriage? How can we go about testing or verifying that claim? I've never had anal sex with a guy before, and I don't plan on trying it. So, I don't have any first hand experience with what kind of unions such sexual acts may produce. But, I'm inclined to think - based on reports from homosexuals about their committed relationships - that anal sex, other forms of sexual activity as well as other emotional, shared experiences regarding can serve as a path to the sorts of goods we associate with committed, relationships even if procreation is not among them. I think that's a sufficient basis of permitting homosexuals to marry if the State is going to be in the business of regulating these relationships.
Proponents of the conjugal view of marriage appeal to this view as a basis for social policy regarding marriage. They want to define it as a union between a man and woman and exclude homosexuals. They claim that the State should not encourage immorality by affording homosexual couples legal recognition. Therein lies the problem with trying to base social policy on the conjugal view. According to the conjugal view, any heterosexual, married couple - you know a "traditional marriage" - where the couple uses any form of contraception is in a morally inferior marriage. Only marriages where the couple does not do anything to disrupt reproduction are morally correct marriages. While Girgis seems to dance around this point, other proponents of the view at least come right out and say it.
Moreover, in the intrinsic natural meaning, the biological unity in the sexual act signifies the spiritual unity of persons. Therefore, the intrinsic meaning of a deliberate decreasing of the biological unity in the sexual act is the decrease of the spiritual unity. And this active decreasing of the biological unity is thus a sin against the dignity of marriage.
Indeed, on this view, it looks like we're morally obligated to have as many kids as possible to enhance their union. The more kids, the stronger the biological and thus spiritual unity. But, we don't hear proponents of traditional marriage suggesting that we exclude heterosexual couples that don't plan on having kids from getting married, just the homosexuals. What's the basis for the principled and justified discrimination against morally inferior homosexual relationships, but permitting heterosexuals to enter into morally inferior relationships? I'm still unclear on this point.
The conjugal view relies on controversial metaphysical and normative commitments that are not rationally compelling. But, we live in a society where there are competing views of the nature and aims of marriage. A free society should try to accommodate as many of them as possible. It should permit people to exercise their individual liberty and treat people equally under the law, unless there's a good reason to think that some social harm greater than that of limiting individual liberty will result from it. I've yet to see a cogent argument from harm against same-sex marriage or gay adoption. (Is gay adoption worse for kids than growing up in foster homes or in state institutions?)
Is "homophobia" or "biological fetishism" the only motivation for defending the conjugal view of marriage? Probably not. I bet several issues dealing with gender/sex-relationships, social institutions, investiments of desire, and social reproduction that play a central role in motivating the defense of "traditional values" play a role in motivating the conjugal view. And, these other issues, of course, are open to question and interrogation as well. At any rate, I'm fairly certain that my conservative friends that express disgust at the idea of homosexual sex and appeal to the conjugal view are not merely motivated by the logic of the relevant arguments. Do philosophers that continue to defend them fair much better? Maybe a little, since their arguments are more carefully constructed. But, not much better in the grand scheme of things. There arguments still lead to conclusions that the majority of people have rejected and we're left to wonder why those are permissible, but same-sex marriage is not. Just look at the number of Catholic women using birth control!
Proponents of the conjugal view of marriage like to point out that it's a view held by a long list of influential philosophers that goes all the way back to Plato. They insist that their views on marriage are principled and beyond suspicion of bias or prejudice because these great minds have defended the view. But, the modern history of natural law sexual ethics is a history of concessions to liberal morality. Very few among us think that only reproductive sex is moral sex. Very few of us think that using birth control is immoral. Doesn't that history of concessions require an explanation at least as much as Girgis thinks "belief in a deep link between marriage and the procreative sort of bodily union achieved in coitus" requires explanation?
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