Carson Holloway: Same Sex Marriage and the Death of Tradition

"Tradition" is not always a dirty word. Carson Holloway sees the move to legitimize "same sex marriage" as a dangerous abandonment of a universal norm, which can only lead to tyranny.

Conservatism emerged as a defense of tradition. Edmund Burke, universally acknowledged as the founder of modern conservatism, famously defended tradition as a source of social safety and stability, a bulwark against the corrosive effects of an unfettered rationalism. To be sure, neither Burke nor his later followers have defended a blind adherence to traditional social forms. As Burke noted, a state incapable of change is a state without the means of its own preservation. Tradition must often be altered and adapted to new circumstances. Nevertheless, for the conservative, if tradition is not always to be preserved, it is at least always to be given the benefit of the doubt. As the most eminent of American Burkeans, Russell Kirk, once said, "if it is not necessary to change, then it is necessary not to change."

The same-sex marriage movement is surely a great challenge to conservatism. The success of the movement would represent a great repudiation of tradition; in fact, it is almost impossible to distinguish the victory of the same-sex marriage movement from a complete repudiation not only of the traditional definition of marriage, but of the social authority of tradition as such. Consider the following points.

First, the traditional understanding of marriage as a union of a man and a woman is not unique to American civilization. It is rather the understanding of every civilization of which we have knowledge. Even this formulation, however, states the case too weakly. That marriage is a union of a man and a woman has in fact been the belief of every human society—civilized, barbarian, or savage—in history. Whether they have lived in immense communities governed by bureaucratic structures and the rule of law, or in tiny bands ruled by the traditional authority of an eldest male, no human beings of whom we are aware have ever, before now, entertained the idea that marriage was anything other than a heterosexual union. Thus the heterosexual conception of marriage is not a tradition of this or that society but a tradition of the entire human race.

Second, the departure from tradition urged by the advocates of same-sex marriage is simply gratuitous. There is no necessity compelling it. One can hardly contend that society as a whole is suffering from the lack of same-sex marriage. Nor can much of a case be made that homosexuals themselves suffer seriously from having no opportunity to marry each other. Many homosexuals have no interest in marrying. Among those who do, the specific rights that they seek—such as rights to dispose of their property according to their own judgment, or to be visited in the hospital by people of their own choosing—can be guaranteed without redefining marriage. What remains, then, as the basis for the argument for same-sex marriage—and what is in fact pressed most insistently by its advocates—is the claim that, without marriage, homosexuals are being denied the same recognition that heterosexual couples receive. Put bluntly, without marriage, homosexuals are made to feel that society does not value their unions as highly as heterosexual ones. This is hardly a compelling case for tinkering with the foundations of human society.

Third, the argument for same-sex marriage is advanced without any effort at a sympathetic understanding of traditional notions and what could be said in their defense. For the proponents of same-sex marriage, institutions that treat different people differently are immediately suspect. That is to say, these proponents argue like egalitarian ideologues. Thus, they are steeped not in the thought of the past, but in the dominant intellectual reflexes of the present. Apparently, traditional understandings of foundational concepts like both marriage and equality are not worth a second thought. Indeed, tradition is to be not only rejected out of hand but even demonized. It is a source not of wisdom but of oppression, and its defenders—those who merely want to preserve the society as it has been handed down to us—are not merely wrong but are bigots.

In sum, what was thought to be obvious by all people, not just in our society but by all human beings from the dawn of humanity until just a few years ago—that marriage is a union between a man and a woman—is to be rejected out of hand, as irrational and unjust. It would be difficult to conceive a more complete repudiation of tradition’s authority. The society that takes this path is not just refusing to be ruled by the past; it is refusing even to listen to the past.