Eagle Forum, Day 2

Day Two, Phyllis finally brought out the intellectuals. After a brief speaker from Clare Boothe Luce, who emphasized the bias of institutions of higher education with the confidence of a person who knows her audience supports her, we had a host of speakers who, while supporting different views and agendas than me, at least engaged us intellectually. I would have enjoyed sitting down with each of them of a conversation, which unfortunately, was not possible, because I always wanted to hear the next speaker.

First, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse (Ph. D Econ.) spoke about traditional marriage. I agreed with and respected the first part of her speech, other than a slip up where she implied that the "alternative to marriage" is worse than an abusive relationship. (It was just a misphrasing. She clearly meant that there is a greater chance of being abused in cohabitation than marriage.) She explained that marriage has an "integrative function": it joins men to women and children; it joins the functions of biological, emotion, social, and legal parenthood; and it joins love, sex, and child-rearing. The man and woman come together naturally to make babies. Once there is a baby, the woman is "naturally" bonded and "the father is the problem." Essentially, marriage makes men stick around.

Okay, I'm following you thus far, Dr. Morse. She touched briefly on two "organic" functions of sexuality, the unitive and procreative aspects, and explained how contraception and IVF each separate these functions. In a bit of humor, she added that in her opinion, IVF is "a bit like skipping dessert and going straight for the brussel sprouts." I'm not sure how pro-life it is to compare children to brussel sprouts, but it got a laugh.

Next, she tackled "their" point of view. The left apparently wants to take over private lives. Marxism, in its creation myth, harkens back to primitive communism and communal marriage, and the left wants to bring us into a socialist age by bringing about the downfall of marriage.

At the center of this evil, she narrowed in on two threats: no-fault divorce and same-sex marriage. No fault divorce, Dr. Morse explained, gives the government control of our lives. It functions to separate someone from their family, and, since 75% of no fault divorces are unilateral, this separation occurs against someone's will, often the father. Furthermore, the state becomes involved in minute decisions: instead of being in the bedroom, as feminists feared, it sits "at the kitchen table."

If no fault divorce starts the alienation of men from their families, "same sex marriage completes the project of separating men from their families." She lost me here -- she never made a clear connection about how two men who adopt a child might find same-sex marriage an impediment to connecting to their family.

The next bit enraged me. She compared no fault divorce, same sex marriage, and Roe. Regardless of the relative moral and legal bases for each of these issues, only one of them authorized the murder of millions of people.

In the Q&A two interesting points came up. First, someone asked more about same sex marriage and she pointed towards her lecture series, "Same Sex Marriage Affects Everyone." I, of course, thought of the commercial and my ever-beloved Colbert. She pointed out that same sex marriage changes the motivation for marriage. Women will one day be having children via IVF without needing men. People marry people of the same gender for immigration purposes. And this is only the chip of the iceberg.

As the polite, under the radar liberal that I was, I did not tell Dr. Morse that people marry people of the opposite gender for immigration purposes. Not to mention political, financial, and lustful marriages. Heterosexual marriages have their fair share of problems.

I did ask how adoption of orphans, divorce due to abuse, widowhood, etc. affect her idea of the supremacy of a biological basis for bonding. She replied that these cases are exceptions, but should not prove the rule. I should have asked why she assumed the supremacy of biology for bonding. I don't necessarily disagree -- but I don't necessarily agree and definitely do not know the rationale behind it.