In 2010, at a time when Barack Obama and hosts of other politicians and media pundits championed the states to decide the issue of same-sex marriages, I argued that such profound cultural questions "must not be left to regional sentiments and the arbitrariness of state legislatures." Readers can found the respective blog essay below under the title of "Ideological Misuse of Federalism leads to Bad Governance" (https://www.edwinseditorial.com/2012/05/ideological-abuse-of-federalism-leads.html)
Boy, was I right! One beauty of proper philosophical reasoning is the timelessness of its findings. Like most of my other writings, this essay is as topical as when I published it on Oct 9, 2010. In the case of Mr. Obama, who had just departed from his previous conviction and come around to embrace same-sex marriages, it was quite apparent that it was about shirking responsibility along with political expediency that made him espouse that stance.
Now, roughly four years later, the Supreme Court has to decide the issue for the entire country. As was to expect, the court is profoundly divided over the issue. In the following, I outline the why and provide the solution and answer to this subject matter:
What underlies this and, more or less, all socially contested issues is an undifferentiated misconception and misuse of the principle of equality. In addition to the false philosophical conception of the equality notion, ideological strategies are applied in the public and political realms to protect the idea and prevent a fierce debate from taking hold. Whoever attempts to question equality aspirations is being denigrated as discriminating, antiquated, a violator of human rights. As far as the issue of same-sex marriages is concerned, opponents are even called homophobic. This intolerable state of public debate needs urgent change. The essential prerequisite for a turnaround would be the proper theoretical understanding of the notion of equality, as, with Aristotle, only sound theory can ultimately provide for good (political) practice.
It is clear that in terms of their human dignity, all men are equal – male and female, people of any ethnic descent, skin color or sexual orientation, infants and geriatrics, everybody. Yet, in addition to their biological and sexual differences, all humans are different regarding their concrete way of being. How would we otherwise justify different income levels, responsibilities and entitlements, property, and tenure?
For the proper dealing with the idea of equality, it is thus inevitable to differentiate two levels of equality – the formal or primary one, on which all men are equal; and the factual or secondary one, based on the former, on which differentiation and disparities are allowed. The fact grasped that equality clearly forbids a schematic equal treatment and not only affords but even demands differentiations that have to be justified by objective and factual rationales. The only thing the principle of equality forbids is arbitrary and baseless differentiation.
This outlined dualism of form and content forbids the schematic and straightforward treatment of gender issues and any other aspect of social disparity, including the issue of same-sex marriages.
"To treat the latter different from traditional marriage does not at all violate the principle of equality. The (moral) imperative to upkeep traditional marriage in its exclusivity – as a religious sacrament as well as a civil union – derives from the idea that every social claim has to be designated its proper place in the cultural cosmos of (occidental values) and ideas."
This cultural underpinning cannot and must not be altered by impulses of individual hedonism and personal gratification, which seem to have become the driving social forces in our societies. Instead, the stakes of the common good and humanistic considerations have got to return to our public, political, and legal discourses.
But in the given context, we must not deceive ourselves over the fact that when it comes to the claims of the gay communities and particularly same-sex marriages, it is about more than merely the desire to satisfy individual sensitivities and personal preferences. When we deal with gender issues and related topics, we face claims that aim to create new power structures and identity designs that substantially alter our societies. The termination of the traditional binary gender code in the name of equal treatment and anti-discrimination, as a precondition for the destruction of traditional marriage, is supposed to pave the way for an amorphous society that allows for all possible combinations of social coexistence and ways of life.
The burden resting on the Supreme Court judges' shoulders is no small one, for the future of this society will depend in no small measure on their decision. A community losing its capability to enclose itself in a "bounded horizon" (Friedrich Nietzsche), losing its sense for differentiation and the power to accept a hierarchy of values, its instinct for rank and distance, is destined to perish.
