Good Riddance to the Old Art of Mariage

Those concerned about the attempt to redefine marriage in our culture should read Stanley Kurtz's piece, "Zombie Killers," at National Review Online. Kurtz brings to light the disparaging arguments against tradional marriage made for years by Europe's leading sociologists, as they eagerly approve of reshaping marriage into a "whatever you want" institution.

Kurtz summarizes:

"But strip away the jargon, drop the element of celebration, and it turns out that conservative opponents of same-sex marriage and some of Europe’s most influential sociologists are saying much the same thing: Same-sex marriage doesn’t reinforce marriage; instead, it upends marriage, and helps build acceptance for a host of other mutually reinforcing changes (like single parenting, parental cohabitation, and multi-partner unions) that only serve to weaken marriage. In short, “the queering of the social” (meaning a broad spectrum of family change, including, but not limited to, same-sex partnerships) calls into question the normativity and naturalness of “heterorelationality” (i.e., traditional marriage)....Although their larger outlook is radical, the need to defend same-sex marriage forces [American sociologists] [William] Eskridge and [Darren] Spedale to deny what European family sociologists (and their American followers) freely confess: instability is the price to be paid for the end of the old family system, and same-sex unions help usher in this new, more unstable regime."

Here's what I think: If the European art world acted with same disdain that European sociologists have toward traditional marriage, they'd take down every old painting in the Louvre, toss them out in the street, put up new works of art, and then say they did it all in the name of tolerance.

Some classics are worth preserving.