Sex, Marriage, Life
September 15, 2004
I find that a lot of conservative Protestants, including Evangelicals, from baby boomers to gen-xers, are uncomfortable with the traditional Christian teaching that marriage is non-optionally tied to procreation and childrearing. Thus it is heartening to note that Christianity Today has affirmed this teaching and its central significance in its anatomy of abuses in many arguments that support gay marriage. (Also see my comments on the latest “marriage” issue of Books & Culture.)
On the subject of gay marriage itself, however, the wisest thing I have seen written on it is Paul J. Griffith’s “Legalize Same-Sex Marriage: Why law & morality can part company” in Commonweal.
Also of recent note tipped from The Revealer is an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on Dr. Panos Zavos, “[a]n American scientist working in New Zealand” who “is expected to announce that he has begun experiments in creating embryonic clones of a dead girl and man using DNA extracted from their corpses.” Says Dr. “Frankenstein” Zavos: “This is powerful stuff. If anyone ever accused me of playing God, this is as close as you can get.”
Bolder still is the recent credo from Ruth R. Faden and John D. Gearhart of Johns Hopkins University, which declatres, among other things, “We believe that the obligation to relieve human suffering binds us all and justifies the instrumental use of early embryonic life. And we believe that it is possible to draw morally relevant lines and to enforce them as a matter of national policy.” Of course, it is clearly “morally irrelevant” to question the definition of suffering, the primacy of alleviating it, and the morality of any (particularly nonconsensual) instrumental use of human beings.
This is Sex, Marriage, Life in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Bottum and Dresner on Academic Standards | Next: David Morrison on Homosexual Couples: “Always Our Neighbors” | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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