Not the Same

in

Theses on the Sexual and Reproductive Morality of an Increasingly Overt, Postmodern State Religion

 

— by Mark D. Menacher

  1. Many homosexuals face a complex dilemma. Their sexual desires or their sexual orientation or both are either incompatible with or contrary to heterosexual reproduction. Consequently, their homosexuality is incongruent with the biological means that brought them into existence. Likewise, their homosexual desires, orientation, and any subsequent homoerotic behavior are incompatible or conflict with the necessary biological means to propagate the human species and thus human community. Therefore, homosexuality by nature creates internal, interpersonal, and societal dilemmas and conflicts for homosexuals and for heterosexuals. These dilemmas and conflicts are evident in current debates in some western societies regarding the novum dubbed “same-sex marriage.”
  2. Due to these inherent conflicts regarding homosexuality, it is reasonable to assert that same-sex couples who seek “marriage” have emotionally, psychologically, or in some other way not fully accepted their homosexuality. This is perhaps most evident where homosexuals have pursued “marriage equality” through the courts in states which grant “spousal rights” to such individuals in registered domestic partnerships. In those circumstances, so-called “same-sex marriage” would seem to represent a vain attempt by some homosexuals, particularly through the undemocratic oligarchy of the judiciary, to effect an illusory external acceptance of their internally ambivalent homosexuality. In psychological-political terms, “same-sex marriage” realizes the desire by some homosexuals to attain existential self-justification under the guise of equitable, societal justice. Theologically, this endeavor proves to be just another example of sinners seeking self-righteousness through the law. In some cases, however, as the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the United States v Windsor indicates, the desire for “marriage” by some homosexuals may not be so much psychological or existential as mercenary in nature.
  3. Whatever the case, marriage by definition is a heterosexual institution. Historically, the only debate regarding marriage has been between polygamy and monogamy. Marriage is a heterosexual institution because by nature it generally provides the best environment for the procreation and protection of children and thus societally for the preservation of the human species. Because individuals seeking “same-sex marriage” are not oriented towards procreation and cannot by design procreate with each other, “same-sex marriage” does not fulfill a fundamental criterion of marriage. Even linguistically, by prefacing the word “marriage” with the modifier “same-sex,” the term “same-sex marriage” itself belies the fact that “same-sex marriage” is not the same, is not equal, is not marriage, and thus does not warrant and should not possess equal jurisdiction under the law. Sex drives, however, have an insidious and seemingly indefatigable way of messing up much more than the mind’s mental processes.
  4. The internally conflicted disposition of some homosexuals seeking either self-acceptance or personal gain or both by coopting the institution of marriage creates other linguistic contradictions and illogical conclusions. For example, some homosexuals and some heterosexuals often attack others’ rejection of “same-sex marriage” as being “homophobic.” The word “homophobia” and its cognates, however, are derived from the Greek prefix homo- meaning the “same” and the noun phobos meaning “fear.” Thus, the term homophobia literally means “fear of the same,” like xenophobia denotes fear of that which is foreign or strange. Consequently, heterosexuals cannot be “homophobic” vis-a-vis homosexuals because homosexuals are not the same as heterosexuals. In short, the phenomenon of some people denigrating heterosexuals as “homophobic” is an oxymoron, i.e., an illogical contradiction in terms which does not apply.
  5. Again etymologically, because the prefix homo- connotes the “same,” the words homosexual and homoerotic denote and describe a sexual and passionate desire for the same, and nothing is more the same than the self. Viewed from this perspective, both homosexual orientation and homosexual expression arguably represent a highly conflicted and complicated form of narcissism. Defined as an excessive or erotic interest in oneself, narcissism is pathological and thus deleterious to the individual, to healthy community, and thus to society as a whole. Centuries ago, Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430) employed the term incurvatus in se (being turned in on oneself) to describe the innately narcissistic nature of human sin.
  6. The health of a society is determined by its belief systems both individually and collectively. Formally or informally, the practice and codification of beliefs and belief systems, as established and maintained by societal groupings from the ad hoc to the state-sanctioned (from Latin sanctio and sancire, to make sacred), with the goal of attaining righteousness of the self, give rise to countless forms of religion (WA 40,1:47,8–48,12; WA 40,1: 603,5–604,13; WA 40,2:110,6–111,2).1 When Christianity with its roots in Judaism began to supplant the religious/philosophical belief systems of Greco-Roman polytheism, it simultaneously sought to accommodate higher Greco-Roman intellectual principles while rising above the base and often barbaric manifestations of paganism. In terms of human reproduction, this meant the gradual abolition of homoerotic behaviour and of both pre- and post-term infanticide.
  7. Beliefs and particularly belief systems do not arise in a vacuum. At the time of high Scholasticism and particularly the Renaissance, western culture became respectively reacquainted with and infatuated by intellectual and philosophical elements and principles of Greco-Roman paganism. Under the pretense of secular advancement, today a secularized form of Greco-Roman polytheistic paganism masquerades in western culture as pluralistic inclusivity, sometimes called postmodernism, whose supposed principles of tolerance, paradoxically, can be not only antithetical to but also overtly hostile to a Judeo-Christian worldview, especially the latter’s procreative standards in society regarding marriage and human reproduction.
  8. The diffuse infusion of polytheistic neopaganistic belief systems into western societies has found a powerful but undemocratic, i.e. prejudicial, advocate with the advent of electronic mass media whose seemingly self-serving entertainment enterprise often advances a base, adolescent mentality at the expense of healthy societal norms, ethics, and laws, particularly in relation to human sexuality, human reproduction, family structure and parenting, and subsequently to societal authorities and institutions. In light of this phenomenon, it needs to be asked whether the mass media produce rather than reproduce public opinion regarding human sexuality and reproduction and consequently whether the oligarchy of the judiciary has in this regard become the handmaiden of the base neopaganistic principles exhibited in much of the mass media.
  9. Contrary to unconsidered perceptions, landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases such as Roe v Wade (pre-term infanticide) and the Obergefell v Hodges (“same-sex marriage”) represent neither a constitutionally mandated separation of church and state nor a constitutionally protected advancement of enlightened human rights. Because secularization since the Renaissance represents the pseudoscientific manifestation of paganistic, polytheistic belief systems, the U.S. Supreme Court in actuality has purposefully, even if perhaps unwittingly, become a primary vehicle for the establishment, the codification, and the institutionalization of secularized, state-sanctioned neopaganism. In other words, the U.S. Supreme Court, its allied judges, and its like-minded politicians are engendering the American republican-democratic state into establishing or into becoming the state Church of Neopaganism in the USA with the Supreme Court Justices in majority ruling as its self-ordained high priests.
  10. For nearly two millennia, western culture with its procreative understanding of human sexuality has maintained the utility and the sanctity of such procreation within monogamous, heterosexual marriage as the healthiest way to foster children and to maintain society. The U.S. Supreme Court once shared this position in its 1885 decision Murphy v. Ramsey. In recent years, however, this same court, having effectively established the state Church of Neopaganism in the USA, has sought to eviscerate rival belief systems in the public square, has sanctioned pre-term infanticide, and has denigrated the heterosexual institution of marriage as a foundational component of healthy society. By establishing itself in this high priestly role and by autocratically promulgating its neopaganistic beliefs, the U.S. Supreme Court in majority arguably represents not only a threat to constitutional democracy in the United States but also a threat to “all that is stable and noble in our civilization” (Murphy v. Ramsey, page 114 U. S. 45).2

Footnotes

  1. D. Martin Luthers Werke - Kritische Gesammtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883). ↩︎
  2. “For certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth, fit to take rank as one of the coordinate states of the Union, than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement” (http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/114/15/case.html). ↩︎

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