ITS IRRATIONALITY IS THE POINT:

IS MARRIAGE RATIONAL?: In the debate over who can marry, both sides imbue the institution of marriage with an importance it neither deserves nor possesses. (G. Pascal Zachary, 8/22/06, AlterNet)

In the context of my own cynicism about marriage, the current fervent pursuit of the right to marriage by gays and lesbians is perplexing. But equally perplexing is the defense of heterosexual-only marriage by judges and religious conservatives. In the debate over who can marry, both sides imbue the institution of marriage with sanctity and an importance that it neither deserves nor possesses.

I don't say this simply because I had the most painful divorce in human history. (Well, maybe not as painful as the fellow in Manhattan who recently blew up his home -- with himself in it -- to stop his wife from getting the place in the final dissolution.) Certainly, failed marriages are no justification for the end of marriage itself. Even I remarried, three years ago, though once again cynically, in order to help my new life partner gain permanent residency in the United States. There are unquestionably practical benefits to marrying. That's why I'm in favor of gay marriage as a legal matter. But in favoring a more liberal criteria for marriage, I worry that we lose sight of the wider and weirder problem of permitting government to validate our most personal social partnerships. [...]

All these changes highlighted the essential arbitrariness of marriage, undermining fatally the claims that romantic partnerships must be endorsed by God in order to qualify as moral or legal. The government accepted that marriage was purely civil and subject to the same rules of procedure as any other. Of course, the implications of this principle have delivered us to our present conundrum.

Quite right. It's not a rational matter and is purely religious. Government ought to have no role other than to extend certain benefits to those who marry as per God's design for Man:

002:020 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air,
and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not
found an help meet for him.

002:021 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he
slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh
instead thereof;

002:022 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a
woman, and brought her unto the man.

002:023 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of
Man.

002:024 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and
shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

But there's no reason the legal system can't extend normal contractual protections to other sorts of couples.

MORE:
Mohels to Mozambique: The case for genital mutilation (William Saletan, Aug. 19, 2006, Slate)

ut why stop with girls? Why not rescue boys, too? That's the argument of the anti-circumcision movement, whose constituencies—groups such as Mothers Against Circumcision, Jews Against Circumcision, and Catholics Against Circumcision—are flooding the Internet. There's a site for "intactivists" and another for foreskin restoration. There's a gallery of naked men, literally uncut. Some groups troll for personal injury plaintiffs; others promote marches on Washington to honor Genital Integrity Awareness Week.

To its credit, the movement has challenged custom and inertia. It has pleaded for "scientific research" and "an open mind," and doctors have listened. Seven years ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that evidence of potential benefits was "not sufficient to recommend routine neonatal circumcision." The American Medical Association agreed. Fewer boys are being circumcised today than in 1970, and more medical residency programs that teach circumcision are including anesthesia.

But scientific rebellions against religion have a nasty habit of becoming religions themselves. [...]

Have these people lost their heads?

The stakes in that question are becoming deadly serious. Of the 5 million people who contracted HIV last year, two-thirds lived in sub-Saharan Africa. In Swaziland, more than one-third of adults have the virus. In South Africa, nearly 30 percent of pregnant women are carrying it. Four years ago, an analysis of 38 studies by the U.S. Agency for International Development, mostly in Africa, concluded that circumcised men were less than half as likely as uncircumcised men to get HIV, apparently because of the susceptibility of foreskin. Last fall, reporting on a randomized controlled trial in South Africa, scientists found that circumcision reduced female-to-male transmission by 60 percent. "Male circumcision provides a degree of protection against acquiring HIV infection, equivalent to what a vaccine of high efficacy would have achieved," they wrote. It was, they observed, "the first experimental study demonstrating that surgery can be used to prevent an infectious disease."

Forget the benefits, it's the Covenant, silly.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 22, 2006 8:55 AM