I dream of living in ... a World Without Dictators! I'm a Libertarian Paternalist in Slovakia - Freedom with Responsibility - 10% of income into your own Pension; Tax Loans for education, health, housing; now supporting Employment Maximizing Companies!

Three Loves plus a New Heart

I'm struggling with my response in favor of civil unions but strongly against gay marriage (eg to Sullivan).  I'll be thinking about the "new heart" idea.

Other notes: in biological terms, every child is a "one flesh" union of the mother and father; half of each parent's DNA.

I'm thinking of 3 loves: Lust-Love (sexual pleasure); and Soul-Love (companionship pleasure), both of which also might apply to gays; and Creation-Love (parental pleasure), where, as God has created people, people act a tiny bit like God in creating the new lives of their children.  This Creation-Love is also related to their love of continuing their own society, civilization, into the future.  Creation-Love is costly, but it provides benefits to my children; creations of my marriage (with my wife!).  I want marriage to celebrate this Creation-Love; and it's just not available for gays.

Via The Anchoress on Pope Benedict's speech: "the Lord “implants” this new heart in us at baptism, through faith. It is not a physical transplant, but perhaps we can make this comparison. After a transplant, the organism needs treatment, requires the necessary medicines to be able to live with the new heart, so that it becomes “one’s own heart” and not the “heart of another.”

This is especially so in this “spiritual transplant” when the Lord implants within us a new heart, a heart open to the Creator, to God’s call. To be able to live with this new heart, adequate treatment is necessary; one must have recourse to the appropriate medicines so that it can really become “our heart.”

Thus, by living in communion with Christ, with his Church, the new heart truly becomes “our own heart” and makes marriage possible. The exclusive love between a man and a woman, their life as a couple planned by the Creator, becomes possible, even if the atmosphere of our world makes it difficult to the point that it appears impossible."

Posted by: TomGrey at 04/27/06 17:05 | link | comments (5)
hearts and minds, gays

Comments:

#1  27 April 2006 - 20:25

 

so are you saying that heterosexual couples who are unable to reproduce have an incomplete marriage?

krazykounselor

#2  28 April 2006 - 06:18

 

"incomplete marriage"?
Yes, actually, whether thru no fault of their own, or thru "waiting" until it's too late, or thru getting married too late to begin with.
A "complete" marriage includes children.
I think a legal marriage, without children, should be pretty much identical to a civil union, except that a hetero marriage w/o children should allow adoption.

The social ideal for marriage should be one man - one woman plus children; the nuclear family.

The legal benefits for marriage should primarily be for the children. And a hetero couple "could" have had a child, so "could" be the natural parents -- where a gay couple never can be.

TomGrey

#3  28 April 2006 - 06:55

 

Tom, that is ridiculous on so many levels, I don't know where to start. As for myself, I definitely want kids. But how is a marriage any less valid because they don't have kids. I know people (some of my family members included) who choose not to have kids because they feel they would not be the good parents that the children deserve, and since that cannot necessarily be guaranteed with adoption, they choose not to have kids. It is better to not have children at all than to do a poor job of raising them. That is a truly mature choice to make.

krazykounselor

#4  29 April 2006 - 02:04

 

Didn't you know? Tom's a libertarian. He wants liberty for people - liberty for people to tell other people they can't get married because of some crazy ideas Tom has about God putting hearts in babies.

Anonymous

#5  30 April 2006 - 07:08

 

"how is a marriage any less valid" --
Let's go thru my logic again.
1) The Tom Grey "Marriage" is for the children.
2) The optimum, for children, is to be raised in a nuclear family of married husband - wife.
3) Couples, whether gay or hetero, w/o children, do not "need marriage".
4) I clearly do not believe gay couples should adopt children, who were born thru the sexual union of a hetero couple.
5) Whatever gov't benefits accrue to a couple thru their status of being "married" should be based on helping them raise their children -- w/o children such benefits should be the same as for "civil unions".

Is this clear enough? I'm not talking about validity, but about purpose and legal benefits. The legal benefits are for the purpose of helping the married couple raise their children.

The legal benefits of a civil union are to make the committed partner to easily inherit and make health decisions and such other estate issue conveniences -- as current marriage now does. These non-children oriented issues should be available to all couples who agree to that level of commitment.


The more pure "Libertarian" position is that gov't shouldn't give monetary benefits to anybody, whether married or not; and is, thus, against any monetary gov't benefits for marriage.

I used to believe this, but in looking at demographics and the future of the West, it's clear that without more incentives to HAVE children, there won't be enough to replace those now working.

"Principles" that result in the demographic disappearence of those holding the principles are not good principles.

We know, now, the demographic profile of the maximum of number of 20 year-olds will be in 20 years -- a lot less people born from the West, a lot more w/o fathers married to their mothers.

TomGrey

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