Artikkelen kan lesast
HER. Han blir, som min ven Morten understrekar, noko heterodoks mot slutten, og eg kan ikkje fylgje han i grunngjevinga han gjev for opning for "homosexual unions". Men argumenta hans elles er veldig interessante og grundige - også fleire argument her som ikkje tidlegare er fremja i norsk offentlegheit, fordi dei er for politisk ukorrekte, må eg nok seie. Eg veit elles at dette er litt følsom tematikk for mange. Så vi får freiste å møte kvarandre med respekt, uavhengig av kva standpunkt vi måtte ha i dette og hint.
Eg skal printe nokre utdrag frå artikkelen, og føye til litt kommentarar under. Eg har utheva og understreka det eg meiner er viktigast i det Milbank understrekar.
[A catholic cardinal argues that]
a supposed "extension" of marriage to gay people in fact removes the right to marry from heterosexual people. [Slik har også NK Monsen m. fl. argumentert].
This can seem like a perversely contorted claim, but its logic is quite straightforward: the intended change in the definition of marriage would mean that
marriage as traditionally defined no longer exists. Thus heterosexual people would no longer have the right to enter into an institution understood to be only possible for heterosexuals, as doubly recognising both the unique social significance of male/female relationship and the importance of the conjugal act which leads naturally to the procreation of children who are then reared by their biological parents.
In effect, if marriage is now understood as a lifelong sexual contract between any two adult human persons with no specification of gender, then the allowance of gay marriage renders all marriages "gay marriages." Given such a situation, were it not for the space afforded by canon law (namely, the possibility of church marriage) a resort to cohabitation - which has hitherto been understood as "common-law marriage" - would be the only logical path for clear-thinking Christians.
[Dette er også interessant, sidan Milbank her uttrykker seg om kva løysingar kristne burde gå for, gjeve legalisert homo-ekteskap. Det kan synast som at kristne her faktisk blir tvinga til ei meir katolsk løysing, på sikt, der kyrkja tek seg av ekteskapet. Verkeleg noko å reflektere over.]
(...)
In the realm of public discourse, assertion of sexual difference has become practically unspeakable, despite the fact that it is implicitly assumed and indeed spoken of by most ordinary non-intellectual people in the course of everyday life. [Mmhm, det er jo sant, dette her. Kjønnsforskjellar gjer livet interessant.]
Moreover, there are crucial negative testimonies to its persistence. It would seem that when it is denied that a woman's body or biology has any psychic correlate, that then her purely physical difference gets vastly over-accentuated and exploited. Thus children are increasingly differentiated by gender to a ludicrous degree in terms, for example, of every item intended for little girls being coloured pink and the ever-younger adoption of sexualised clothes and make-up by adolescent and pre-pubescent girls.
Indeed, it has been plausibly argued that the "young girl" is now at once the prime commodity and the prime consumer of late capitalism. Is it an accident that the according of only "human" rights to women coincides with a new phase in their degradation? [Også interessant; Det må vere mogleg å etablere seriøse kjønnsroller for kvinner, som ikkje henfaller til "kvinne-menn" pdes. og "sex-objekt" pdas.]
(...)
Equally, the increased crisis of the masculine psyche suggests that we cannot just remove by fiat the greater propensity of men towards danger, risk, physicality, objectivity, transcendence and the need to be in charge. Faced with the prospect of being out-competed by women possessed of more personal skills, plus a stronger draw of physical focus (something both natural and today artificially enhanced) in the ever-expanding service sector,
working and lower-middle class men are tending to retreat to the margins. This suggests that we need to learn how to channel male aptitudes to social advantage, rather than dogmatically to deny their instance, in the face of all the evidence. [Noko å tyggje på: Er det rom for denne typen menn i den kristne kyrkja? På kva måte, i så fall? Dette problemet tenker eg mykje over i mi presteteneste. Vi har barnekor for dei unge, og dette er populært blant jentene. Men vi må også ha speidar og paintball og trial-køyring, liksom. Det finst heldigvis noko av dette også.]
(...)
...just as we need men in the home, so we need women in politics, business, the arts, academia and even the military. This prospect belongs to a radical as opposed to a liberal feminism, because it suggests that a new public role of women can
truly make a difference.
If the household has always been a political unit (as a male-female unity)
then by contrast the "domestication" of the public sphere due to the increased presence of women who are truly women - as opposed to the fetishised passive functionaries deployed by late capitalism - should result in its radical transformation into something more fully human.
[Eg har tenkt mykje på kronikken til Ihle, Eia etc., der dei understreka at det norske samfunnet har blitt noko meir keisamt og mindre ambisiøst, i og med at kvinnene har gjort sitt inntog i arbeidslivet. Eg trur det er sanning i dette. Samstundes har kvinnene tilført mange verkeleg gode ting i arbeidslivet også, forutan det arbeidet dei har utført, liksom - dvs. "something more fully human", og også ein grunnleggjande tryggleik, på sett og vis. Eg har ofte fundert litt over dette. Kunne nazi-Tyskland ha skjedd dersom det var mange kvinner i sentrale stillingar i politikken? Hm. Kanskje det, med tanke på at også kvinner står i front for å gjeninnføre eugenikk i dagens politikk. Men eg tvilar. Men ja, Milbank talar om å vere "truly women."]
(...)
Heterosexuals are in solidarity with members of their own sex, who may also become their rivals, and conversely they are attracted to the opposite sex. But homosexuals are at once in solidarity, rivalry and relations of attraction to their own sex which - as Girard himself has argued - tends to increase exponentially the contagion of mimetic desire and its resulting agon, not to mention the augmentation of narcissism.
[Det er nok dette som dels er med på å forklare den noko - for meg - gåtefulle dynamikken i homoseksuelle relasjonar.]
On the other hand, homosexuals are neither in a relation of solidarity with nor attraction to the opposite sex, but may well sometimes be in a relationship of rivalry. This means that there is a certain constitutive alienation from the opposite sex built into homosexual logic. Of course, there can, to some extent, be a solidarity of homosexual perspective with the opposite sex, grounded in the fact that both share the same sexual object - but notoriously this can often be contrived, fragile and particularly subject to betrayal.
Does this structural analysis imply that homosexuality is necessarily a sinister reality? Certainly not - but it does suggest that a homosexual destiny is a particularly strenuous fate and ethical task. However, where this yoke is genuinely assumed, then there are also perhaps special unique gains which make a crucial social contribution.
[Og her peikar Milbank på tematikk som er massivt under-diskutert i dagens offentlege debatt om desse tinga. Men eg har heller ikkje gjort forsøk på å finne faglitteratur om det, så om ein grev litt djupare, vil ein sikkert finne interessante ting.]
Thus the coincidence of solidarity, attraction and rivalry in the case of one's own same sex can result in a more complete solidarity with it. Equally, the absence of either solidarity or attraction in relation to the opposite sex can lead towards a valuing of their pure human otherness for its own sake and a solidarity transcending gender difference altogether.
(...)
The same analysis also indicates caution about extending marriage to gay couples. For it is arguable that more radical gays have a point in suggesting that fidelity and longevity of relationships do not have exactly the same imperative for a homosexual logic which tends, in its more sublime form, towards a human solidarity in general.
This is not, of course, to deny that permanence and exclusivity of gay relationships should not be encouraged, but it does suggest that the breakdown of these relationships is not the same social catastrophe as the collapse of a heterosexual marriage. This is partly because children are more often involved, partly because it more often tends to pull apart families linked through the marriage alliance, but also because the breakdown of a heterosexual relationship has more the appearance of a symbolic catastrophe as an instance of the failure of the permanent union of the two halves of the human race which are necessary for its procreative continuity.
This difference is, in fact, today publicly recognised in the circumstance that a gay civil partnership can be instantly dissolved on a whim, whereas divorce remains somewhat more cumbersome and protracted.
And here we see one of the irresolvable difficulties of redefining marriage:
it would be intolerable to impose difficult divorce obstacles on gay people, but equally intolerable to make divorce entirely instant for heterosexual couples, since many marriages can be saved by allowing a longer time for consideration and by the sheer weight of the difficulties involved in legal separation. Yet to differentiate here in terms of sexual orientation would be, in effect, to once more distinguish between marriage and civil partnership.
[Også dette understrekast av empirisk forsking, men det blir ikkje diskutert offentleg, sidan den liberale logikken som driv fram endringar, ikkje anser denne typen fenomen som eigentleg relevante.]
(...)
a genuinely Catholic view will not be surprised to learn that the family was, from the outset, embedded in general ritual and social norms. Indeed, heterosexual exchange and reproduction has been hitherto the very "grammar" of social relating as such.
Therefore the abandonment of this grammar implies a society no longer primarily constituted by extended kinship, but rather by state control and merely monetary exchange and reproduction. The diminution of the role of kinship would here be of one piece with the decline of the role of locality and mediating institutions in general.
For the individual, the experience of a natural-cultural unity is most fundamentally felt in the sense that her natural birth is from an interpersonal (and so "cultural") act of loving encounter - even if this be but a one-night stand.
This provides a sense that one's very biological roots are suffused with an interpersonal narrative - which can become an image for the idea that the natural world is the work of a personal creation.
Thus to lose this "grammar" would be to compromise our deepest sense of humanity - and risk a further handing over of power to market and state tyrannies supported by myths both of pure human nature and technocratic artifice.
[Igjen: Det blir klarare etter kvart som tida går at det omtrent kun er kyrkja som bevarer ein rasjonelt grunngjeve klassisk moral og humanitet, i samfunnet. Det betyr ikkje at andre er umoralske eller inhumane, men eg talar om den rasjonelle visjonen som kan grunngje, og forhåpentlegvis gje grobotn for, klassisk moral og humanitet.]
(...)
So far, I have tried to frame my arguments in broadly "natural law" terms which can appeal to all human beings. Thus I have tried to indicate how, when human nature is flouted, either insoluble dilemmas arise, or else it reveals itself after all in a negative fashion.
Nevertheless, in the end the true character of human nature is only recognisable if one ascribes to the notion of a created order, and this is only likely to be done by people whose thinking already obscurely anticipates that the God who gives in creation will also give the knowledge of himself to rational spirits by grace.
[Milbank tek her de Lubac-linja som også Hart tek i debatten med Feser. Men uansett om Feser har rett, som eg held ein knapp på, så forblir problemet at det er svært vanskeleg å vinne gehør for "natural law" sjølv om ein har dei beste argumenta, i og med at "natural law" heng breiare saman med eit klassisk-kristent livssyn, som på andre måtar er uakseptabelt for moderne sekulære menneske. Eg seier ikkje at dette er uakseptabelt av di dei har betre argument; men dette er de facto situasjonen.]
In other words, the "nature" and the "reason" considered by secular people, on the one hand, and religious people, on the other, are not likely to coincide. Christians are likely to frame the debate over gay marriage in terms of the true human good, the proper goals that human beings should aim for. Secular people, on the other hand, are likely to reject the idea that such goals can be objectively shared in common, and to frame the debate in terms of rights and private utility.
For this reason the Church needs already to face the fact that it is quite likely to lose this debate, even if it should still try to win it.
(...)
A marriage is primarily a de facto reality made by a consenting couple, without necessarily the involvement of either parents or clergy.
However, it remains nonetheless a symbol of the bridal unity between Christ and his Church, which for St Paul is equivalent to the unity between God and the Cosmos. (Clearly, the centrality of this symbolism rules out the possibility of Christian gay marriage.) Consequently, while marriage was seen as radically natural, it also fell within the purview of canon rather than secular law.
[Den lutherske avskaffinga av det sakramentale synet på ekteskapet er nok eit studium verdig. Det er greitt nok at ikkje ekteskapet nødvendigvis treng å plasserast i same kategori som dåp og nattverd. Men ideen om analogien mellom mann+kvinne i ekteskapet pdes. og Kristus/Herren+kyrkjelyden/Israel i Guds rike pdas. er jo sentral i GT, NT og oldkyrkja. Som med så mange andre ting; her må den protestantiske kyrkja vurdere situasjonen på ein annan måte enn Luther, som levde i eit samfunn der styremaktene respekterte både kyrkja og naturretten. Kva gjer vi i dag, liksom? Noko å tygge på.]
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...in the event of the universal advent of gay marriage [...] instead of [the Church] banging its head against a cognitive brick wall, the proper response of the Church should be to deem marriage under civil law a failed experiment and to
resume its sacramental guardianship of marriage as a natural and social condition.
[Milbank viser altså til katolsk ekteskapstenking. Og som han understrekar, må ein saktens spørje om kva som er alternativet. Slik det er no, har vi ein "uneasy" allianse mellom sekulært homo-ekteskap i lovverket pdes. og kyrkjeleg kjønnsdifferensiert ekteskap. I praksis har vi altså to ekteskapsforståingar side om side i det norske samfunnet; staten seier at kjønnsdifferensiering ikkje er essensielt, og heller ikkje truskap til døden. Kyrkja seier at mennesket er skapt som mann og kvinne og at ekteskapet skal vare i kjærleik og truskap inntil døden. For øvrig har den protestantiske kyrkja meir eller mindre forlatt ideen om at sex som leier til born er ein essensiell del av ekteskapet, i motsetning til den katolske kyrkja.
Så kva gjer vi den dagen politikarane tek frå kyrkja vigselsretten, slik jamvel KrF har teke til orde for...? Hm, då sit vi att med kun ei ekteskapsforståing, og kun ein "måte" å bli gift på, dvs. statleg. Dvs. at det kjønnsdifferensierte, sakramentale, naturbaserte ekteskapet verkeleg er avskaffa. Spørsmålet er då kva ortodokse kristne gjer i så fall.
