Ross Douthat’s latest meditation on Gay Marriage, titled Marriage Looks Different Now,is full of the same old bromides, but rearranged and framed by the debate of half a generation ago, Frum vs Sullivan, circa 1997, and the statistics from the Marriage Project, according to the narrative constructed by Mr. D., an academic think tank dedicated to the mature human life achievement of marriage. The natural state of the mature bourgeoisie is marriage. This sounds reminiscent of the once ascendent Freudians. One just might conjecture that defining humanity and it’s practices has not been resolved by a tradition of Philosophers, nor the journalistic hacks of our unenlightened present.
One might just observe that freedom means freedom: to associate freely as a matter of volition, sometimes with institutional safeguards and sometimes without. The right to make contract is a legal right, while it’s religious dimension is subject to the strictures of the hetero-centric Abrahamic Tradition. Poor Mr. Douthat can’t separate the obligations of the civic from the religious. Perhaps, the origin of his benighted patriarchal theo-politics?

Political Observer