Stephen, in answer to your comment about "positions" with regard to the bible - there are none. Once you're married, anyway.

I'm curious though: I was just reading an article that discussed Massachusetts (gay marriage before the SC), and it mentioned the Defense of Marriage Act. Has this been challenged yet, and if not, will it? I'm just curious what the consensus on this is. I didn't even know the act existed, and was under the impression that gay marriage in one state would have to be honored elsewhere...

I hate it when people take the Hebrew scriptures out of context and present them as examples of Jewish law. According to the Talmud, which is as binding on Jewish law as the Torah for observant Jewry all over the world, all forms of mutually enjoyable sex are permitted between husband and wife. So much for the missionary position.

Also, polygamy was permitted under Jewish law until sometime in the Middle Ages, when the rabbis ruled that this law would be suspended for the indefinite future because it was out of step with the civilization they were living in. But few families in the Scriptures look like the stereotypical "nuclear family" (which also rarely existed in history - because of adult mortality, there were just as many stepfamilies then as now).

David Warren should do some research. But he has put his foot firmy in his mouth before, so I'm not surprised at this.

Demosthenes , I don't remember the particulars, but I can't see how the DMA can be constitutional, what with the Full Faith & Credit clause.

However...

That's the LAST way I'd like to see gay marriage become legal. Roe v Wade forced legalized abortion (which was coming anyway) on the nation in an authoritarian manner. Had the Supreme Court waited it out, we'd have had the almost the same result, but without all the long-lasting rancor.

I'm afraid that legalizing gay marriage through similar means would have a similar result.

That's what I thought. But how does that work if there are things legal in one state but not another? Interesting. It wouldn't surprise me if the US Supreme Court overturned that, though.

Oh, and it's in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

Warren is not only ignorant of Hebrew scriptures, but he also appears to be woefully ignorant of the finer points of Shakespeare. The "beast with two backs" phrase is one used in a decidedly negative context: it is employed by the arch-villain Iago, as he describes to Othello (hoping to incite Othello's deadly jealousy, which he does, of course) the position formed by Othello's wife, Desdemona, when she is consummating her affair with Cassio, which Iago has invented solely for this purpose. Iago speaks the phrase with sneering, condemnatory condescension and hatred. Now, if that's Warren's attitude toward the approved sexual position between men and women...well, fine. Leave him to his own problems. (By the way, I cannot refrain from noting that two gay men, or two lesbians, can do plenty of things face to face -- including consummating the sex act. Not that I would expect people like Warren to have enough imagination to visualize such activities. More's the pity for them.)

Stephen,

I agree with much of what you have said.... and harbor little doubt that Mr. Warren is on the wrong side of history here. However, I thought it might be illuminating to see this debate from a slightly different set of assumptions. Here's what you said about Mr. Warren:

"Now let's apply Warren's slippery logic to the rest of the paragraph. If God made us male and female, to be completed by complimentary pairing, then it must follow that gays and lesbians are lesser creatures, undeserving of protection under our laws -- or God's."

Your logic is flawless, so long as one subscribes to the notion that homosexuality is something inherent, something that immutably defines who we are, something that is a point of difference among us. Perhaps Mr. Warren subscribes to this belief; I do not know. His writing, however, would suggest that he does not.

There are a number of alternative frameworks for defining and/or explaining sexual inclination and activity, including several which adopt as a central premise the idea that sexual behavior is not a matter of a priori affinity, fixed at birth, but rather a matter of contingent action - a product of the will and/or environmental factors.

If any of these latter theories were to obtain, and I see no reason at present to suspect that anyone has truly discovered the nature of human sexuality, then even accepting Mr. Warren's flawed arguments, there would be no reason at all to assume that "gays and lesbians are lesser creatures," because it would not be about who they are but rather what they (and heterosexuals, I might add) do. They wouldn't be lesser creatures, they could simply be human beings exercising their perogative as independent intelligences to act against their basic biological programming, their basic natures, in the service of alternate ideals; those ideals could even include such sublime notions as love -- love so great as to push one to defy what Mr. Warren would call God's mandate on human nature. Even accepting Warren's arguments, I would still argue in favour of mankind in that scenario.

Obviously this entire argument has little to do with the merits of either Mr. Warren's or your substantive positions. But it is something that I believe many people forget: we don't know what makes heteros hetero, or what makes gays gay. It could be biologic, but then again it might not be. But even if you were to be ultimately proved correct on that point, it is still a little bit disingenuous of you to launch an ostensibly logical attack on Mr. Warren based on an unproven, unstated premise to which you do not even know if he subscribes.

Keep up the good work... you're rapidly becoming not only one of my favourite blogs, but one of my favourite writers.

Sincerely,

Michael E. Lopez

Sorry, Arthur: Iago does indeed coin the "beast with two backs" phrase, but he uses it to piss off Brabantio, Desdemona's father, with regard to Othello (whose marriage to Desdemona Brabantio is as yet unaware):

BRABANTIO: What profane wretch art thou?
IAGO: I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.
BRABANTIO: Thou art a villain.
IAGO: You are a senator.
[Othello, Act I sc. i 115-118]

Gotta love Iago's snappy comeback...

Not only does Western Civ fetishist Warren not know his Bible or his Shakespeare, he conveniently forgets our Greco Roman past. The medieval attachment of guilt to human sexuality defiled the values of the ancients, and went beyond anything done or contemplated by the Hebrews (or by the kind and humble Jewish reformer in whose name this was done) and caused unnecessary problems for hundreds of years.

Fantastic blog you have here. Thanks.

"Somehow, the inclusion of more people into legally-binding families will destroy families. I suppose shoving bourgeois constitutions down the throats of Germany and Japan after WWII diluted the power of elections and free markets."

That's a total non-sequitur.

And some of us believe a better analogy would be "pissing in the soup". More isn't always better.

Are you willing to entertain the notion that expanding marriage this way might have adverse and perhaps irreversible consequences for our society? Or that it's possible for those who oppose it might base their objections on something other than antipathy toward gays or religious objections?

Thanks, Brian. Oops. Well, the major point remains: Iago uses the phrase in a very, very negative manner -- not in the way that Warren describes. But thanks for the correction. I HATE being wrong about details like that. I'm wondering now, though...I have to check the libretto for Verdi's Otello. I think they may have transposed Iago's line to an exchange with Otello in the opera, in the process of adapting the play. I'll check it out...