My recent letter on same-sex marriage in the June 23 issue of Levittown Tribune prompted many curious questions from people who wondered why my opinion on this issue was so vague given that the letter was several hundred words long. Simple, really. Life’s complicated and same-sex marriage is one of those issues that demonstrate that fact more than many others.
Life’s complicated and any reasonably intelligent understanding of the issues of the day entails, by necessity, a working-out of the dialectics inherent in those issues. If, for example, I wanted oversimplified, pre-packaged, mass-produced answers to life’s Big Question, I’d be a creationist fundamentalist or Marxist atheist rather than an Episcopalian student of Charles Darwin.
Every day I ponder how humanity is the product of billions of years of evolution and made in God’s image. If I wanted absurdly cookie-cutter clichés on political issues, I’d be a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican. Instead I’m an advocate of monarchy and aristocracy because history is too unpredictable, human nature too complex, and irrational, and civilization too fragile to be governed by democratic consensus, the sophistries of lawyers, or the utopian schemes of intellectuals; statecraft requires kings who are philosophers and philosophers who are kings.
If I were seeking simplistic bumper-sticker solutions to the economy’s woes, I’d be a free trade capitalist or a welfare state socialist. Instead, I appreciate the fact that some aspects of the economy, those that engender innovation and competition, need to function without governmental regulation whilst other aspects need to be state-controlled to prevent exploitation, fraud, pollution, or loss of citizens’ jobs.
The issue of gay marriage requires this dialectical process because gay marriage isn’t wrong because ‘God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’ and it isn’t right because it’s no different from the opposite-sex marriage we’ve practiced for thousands of years. The issue is more complex, festooned with ramifications and implications, and requiring thought and caution. We are sailing in poorly charted waters. That doesn’t mean we don’t cast off. (What would have happened if Darwin had never boarded the H.M.S. Beagle?). But it doesn’t mean we put to sea without the best mariners at helm and mast.
Paul Manton
Levittown resident
