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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
Analysis of arguments advanced by those who favor a law establishing homosexual marriage
Homosexual marriage in the name of equality?...................................................7 Homosexual marriage in the name of the protection of the partner?.......................8 Homosexual parenting in the name of love?.......................................................9 Homosexual parenting in the name of legal protection?...................................11 Adoption in the name of the right to a child ?...................................................12 Adoption in the name of children waiting to be adopted?.................................13 New forms of homosexual parenting in the name of equality?..........................14 The law to be changed because many people want it to be?...............................15
PART TWO
LGBT activists wish to deny sexual difference.........................19 The biblical vision of man-woman complementarity.................................21
CONCLUSION ..................................................................24
HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
INTRODUCTION
A great many of our fellow citizens see demands for homosexual marriage as just one more step in the democratic struggle against injustice and discrimination, a continuation of the fight against racism. It is finally in the name of equality, open-mindedness, of being progressive and right-thinking, that we are asked to accept this challenge to the foundations of our society. It seems, moreover, on the basis of public opinion polls, that this challenge is already considered acceptable by a majority of our fellow citizens and thus the question of its establishment as a matter of law has not provoked a debate worthy of the momentous issues at stake. Frances Chief Rabbi has thus chosen to take the time to analyze the issue, to scrutinize arguments, to set forth underlying theories, and, above all, to bring to light the true stakes of the negation of sexual difference in our society. He has preferred to take time for a careful analysis in a document that can serve as a text of reference, rather than posting a brief and partial intervention limited to the taking of a position for or against; thus he hopes to avoid being exposed to dismissive caricatures, which, alas, are all too common where subjects such as this are concerned. It is a matter of the greatest importance to make clear the true implications of the negation of sexual difference and to debate publicly what is at stake, rather than to fall back on principles, such as equality, that flatter those who set themselves up as their standard-bearers, even though the way these principles are invoked to justify the homosexual marriage agenda does not stand up to critical scrutiny. In this essay I will unpack and scrutinize the main arguments for the legalization of homosexual marriage and bring to light the negative effects of measures demanded by advocates of legalization. my aim is to contribute to the emergence of a real debate in the public square, for this subject deserves better than the court of political correctness whose authority the pro-homosexual marriage advocates hope will prevail until the law is voted on, a tribunal they defend by means of disqualifying caricatures against anyone who dares to question their project and their motives. I speak as a rabbi, and more particularly as the Chief Rabbi of France. I am not the spokesman of a group of individuals, but the voice of French Judaism in its religious dimension. Like other rabbis, I am a reader, a teacher, and a commenter of texts of Jewish wisdom that are part of a great tradition of dialogue, of dialectics, of interpretive exploration, in a word, of pluralism. I have always understood myself as duty-bound to intellectual engagement in the great choices of history and first of all in the great choices faced by my country. Thus I am necessarily concerned by the proposed legalization of homosexual marriage, as well as by plans to change our laws so as to accommodate homosexual parenting and adoption. This is why I reject the stance of a minority of religious leaders who withdraw from the debate on the grounds that we have the possibility of preserving marriage as a religious institution as distinct from civil marriage. There is nothing to admire in such withdrawal when it serves the interest of those who avoid debates.
HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
My choice to speak up is the studied expression of the solidarity that binds me to the national community of which I am a part. It also reflects my sense of responsibility to uphold the universal principles that this community has forged and defended over the centuries, principles on which the French Republic was founded and without which it cannot endure. If non-Jews choose to hear me out, each will receive what I say in light of his or her own personal judgment, his own system of values and his own identity as religious, agnostic, or atheist. It will be up to them to recognize any wisdom or moral value in what I say. It will surprise no one that my worldview is guided by the Bible and by the rabbinic commentaries. On the key subjects of sexuality and filiation, it is based on the complementarity between man and woman. In this essay, I have referred only to the book of Genesis and thus have chosen not to mention the prohibitions against homosexuality included in Leviticus, for it seems to me that what is at stake now is not homosexuality, which is a fact, a reality, whatever my view of it as a rabbi might be, but the risk of irreversibly scrambling genealogies, questions of legal and social status (the child-assubject becoming child-as-object), and identitiesa confusion that would be harmful to society as a whole and that would lose sight of the general interest in seeking the advantage of a tiny minority. Finally, let me add that my biblical vision of the world, in which justice is a central principle, leads me naturally to condemn and to fight strongly against the physical and verbal attacks of which homosexual persons are victims, in the same way that I strongly condemn and fight against racist and anti-Semitic speeches and deeds. I wish to thank T. Collin, J. P. Winter, B. Bourges, and L. Roussel for the wealth of their reflections that nourished this project and express my great gratitude to Joel Amar for his invaluable assistance with this essay
PART ONE : Analysis of arguments advanced by those who favor a law establishing homosexual marriage
HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
What we hear :
of Homosexuals are victims as discrimination. They must have thes right to marry, the same heterosexuals.
The argument for marriage for all those who love each other does not hold up. From the fact that people love each other it does not follow necessarily that they have the right to be married, whether they be heterosexual or homosexual. For example, a man cannot marry a woman who is already married, even if they love each other. Likewise, a woman cannot be married to two men, on the grounds that she loves both of them and that both want to be her husband. Or, again, a father cannot marry his daughter, even if their love is uniquely paternal and filial. It makes no sense to grant the right of marriage to all those who love each other in the name of equality, of tolerance, of the struggle against discrimination or of other such principles. The sincerity of someones love is not the question here. Of course we understand the wish of people who are in love that their love be recognized. Still, there are strict rules and there will continue to be strict rules defining what kinds of unions can be recognized as marriages and what kinds cannot. Thus marriage for everyone is only a slogan, since the authorization of homosexual marriage would maintain forms of inequality and discrimination that would continue to apply to those who love each other but to whom marriage is not available. The argument for marriage for all conceals a split between two existing visions of marriage. According to one worldview, which I share with a great number of people, both believers and nonbelievers, marriage is not only the recognition of a loving attachment. It is the institution that articulates the union between man and woman as part of the succession of generations. It is the establishment of a family, that is, a social cell that creates a set of parent-child relations among its members. Beyond the common life of two individuals, it organizes the life of a community consisting of descendants and ancestors. So understood, marriage is a fundamental act in the construction and the stability of individuals as well as of society. According to another worldview, marriage is held to be an obsolete and rigid institution, the absurd legacy of a traditional and alienating society. Is it not paradoxical to hear those who share this worldview raising their voices in favor of homosexual marriage? Why do those who reject marriage and prefer free unions demonstrate alongside LGBT activists in favor of homosexual marriage? Whichever worldview you hold, it is clear that what is going on behind the slogan of marriage equality is a substitution: an institution fraught with legal, cultural, and symbolic significance would be replaced by a de-sexed legal category, thus undermining the foundation of individuals and of the family. The question before us is in effect whether, in the name of equality and the struggle against discrimination, we should suppress all references to sexual difference in relations between citizens and the state, beginning with the marriage ceremony and the family records that issue from this ceremony.
1- LGBT : Lesbiennes Gays Bisexuels Transgenres
What we hear :
find themselves in a precarious Manyahomosexualsseparation. Homosexual marriagesituation without legal protection a after death or a will provide a remedy
Deaths and separations are times of pain and suffering. They can also give rise to very difficult practical situations, especially where housing is concerned. And this is true for all couples, heterosexual as well as homosexual, whether the couples are married or not. When we look at marriage from the very practical standpoint of housing, financial means, budgets, debts, and inheritance, it is clear that marriage cannot be reduced to an emotional attachment and a distant promise of mutual aid. The fact is that a promise can be transformed in a single day into a question of legal justice. I am committed to the partners protection, whatever his or her sex, and whatever the sex of the person who has been separated from a partner after a period of life in common. Concerning the protection of the partner, one thing should be clear at the outset. Marriage, or for that matter civil union, cannot create rights and obligations unless it is legally contracted. In other words, the authorization of homosexual marriage in France would not automatically guarantee the protection of all partners in all homosexual couples. It would still be necessary that the partners choose to marry! This is equally true for heterosexual couples, many of whom choose to live together without marrying.. If many heterosexual couples are choosing civil unions (the French PACSsee the below chart), this must be because they find this form of union in their interest, in particular the economic and legal parameters that define the material interests of the parties (housing, finances, social insurance, etc.). One can easily find on the Internet tables comparing marriage and the PACS (French civil unions) on each of these parameters. Even if certain provisions are not automatic in the case of the PACS, they are nevertheless possible. Take the example of inheritance. A partner in a civil union can inherit under the same conditions as a spouse in a married couple, but his partner must have drawn up a will and designated him or her as the heir. In the case of PACS as in the case of marriage, the partners inheritance is not subject to estate taxes. A line-by-line analysis of the comparative tables shows that the gap between the two legal forms is limited. Still, the question does arise concerning compensatory payments in the case of a separation that causes a significant decline in income for one of the partners, even if this partner has the option, in the case of a PACS, of applying to a family law judge to divide joint property and redress grievances.
HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
What we hear:
most LWhat is child,important is love. A homosexual couple can give much love to a sometimes even more than a heterosexual couple.
Thus, by abandoning the man-woman distinction in favor of the heterosexual-homosexual distinction, homosexual activists demand not parenthood (paternity or maternity), but the right to some new abstract parental status that reduces the role of the parent to the exercise of certain functions such as education. This overlooks the fact that, even in the case of adopted children, to be a parent is not only to educate the child, but to re-create lines of paternity and maternity. We must therefore strongly reaffirm that to be a father or a mother is not merely an affective, cultural, or social function. The term parent is not neutral; it involves sexual difference. To accept the term homosexual parenting is to strip the word parent of its intrinsic meaning as bodily, biological, and fleshly. Thus the Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents and Future Parents (APGL in French) has proposed several substitutes for the term parent depending on the various functions to be performed: stepparent, co-parent, homo-parent, others mother, biological parent, legal parent, social parent, second parent, etc. It seems unlikely that a child would manage naturally to find a stable meaning in relation to all such terminologies.
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
What we hear :
Homosexual parenting already of children are being raised byexists as a matter of fact: Hundreds of thousands homosexual couples. A legal framework must be created to protect these children. What we often neglect to say :
The law already allows for the practical organization of re-composed families. Article 372 of the French Civil Code indicates that the exercise of parental authority belongs to the father and mother of the child and that parents do not have the right, at their convenience, to grant their authority to a third party. On the other hand, the Civil Code provides for the possibility of delegating the exercise of parental authority to a third party by the decision of a family law judge (articles 377 and following of the Civil Code). This delegation can be entire (in which case it includes all rights relative to the child except that of consenting to the childs adoption), or partial (including only certain aspects, such as care or supervision). The family law judge has the authority, by him- or herself, to decide upon the delegation or restitution of parental authority. Still, this mechanism of delegation has the disadvantage of depriving parents of whatever is delegated to a third party. This is why, in the face of the growing phenomenon of re-composed families, the mechanism was made more flexible in 2002 (Law no. 2002-305 of March 4, 2002, relative to parental authority) and now offers family law judges the possibility of organizing the sharing of parental authority as best suits the educational needs of the child and in accordance with parental wishes (article 377-1 Civil Code). This arrangement now makes it possible to bring a third party into the exercise of parental authority without thereby removing the actual parents prerogatives. A mothers lesbian partner can already share in the mothers exercise of parental authority. The question of whether the sharing of parental authority with a third party can take place within a homosexual couple was already heard at the Supreme Court (Cour de Cassation), which accepted the proposition that parental authority can be shared between the mother and her homosexual companion (Cour de Cassation, February 24, 2006). In its ruling, the Court affirmed that the Civil Code does not oppose a mother who has sole parental rights delegating all or part of the exercise of those rights to the woman with whom she lives in a stable and continuous union, as long as the circumstances require it and as such a measure is in conformity with the best interests of the child. The Supreme Court has further explained: We therefore hold that the best interest of children may in certain circumstances justify the sharing of parental authority between a mother and her female companion. There is no need to add to the law. French law already has the resources to address the needs of existing recomposed families, including families led by homosexual parents. Rather than adding more to the legal code, wouldnt it be better simply to make more people aware of what already exists and addresses existing situations? Better sharing of information on existing legal tools would make these tools more widely available and encourage flexible solutions appropriate to individual situations, allowing a stepparent or another third party to share the exercise of parental authority when such sharing proves necessary and in the best interest of the child.
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What we hear:
of discrimination. Homosexuals are victimsto have children. Just like heterosexuals, they must have the right
.
The right to a child does not exist. There is no such thing for homosexuals any more than for heterosexuals. The desire to have a child in no way establishes the right to have a child. A couple who wishes to have a child can decide to unite in order to conceive a child. A couple who desires to adopt a child can go through the necessary process. But none of these couples has a right to the child they desire simply because they desire it. An infertile heterosexual couples wishes may not be honored if it appears that conditions are not optimal for the adoption of a child. For example, one may judge that a young and healthy couple is better suited to have a child than an older couple in fragile health. If a right to a child for homosexual couples were recognized, then all heterosexual couples denied children would feel themselves victims of discrimination in one way or another, and would have grounds for claiming the same right. As unfortunate as it may be, sterility does not by itself establish the right to a child. People can experience sterility or the inability to procreate because of illness, advanced age, celibacy, or the sexual configuration of the couple. There is no question of denying the suffering experienced by homosexual couples, whether male or female, owing to their infertilitya suffering they share with heterosexual couples who cannot procreate. Such homosexual couples now demand that their suffering be recognized and alleviated. But no one has the right to be relieved of suffering at anothers expense, particularly when this is to the disadvantage of the weak and innocent. The suffering of an infertile couple is not a sufficient reason to give this couple the right to adopt. The child is not an object of rights but a subject of rights. To speak of a right to a child reflects an unacceptable instrumentalization. If whoever wants a child has the right to a child, then the child is objectified. In the current debate, the child as a person, as a subject, is absent in the arguments of those who demand adoption for homosexual couples. This absence allows adults demanding rights to avoid asking what might be the rights of the child, what the child might need, and whether the child might prefer having a father and mother instead of two parents of the same sex. This is a case where our carelessness borders on cynicism. The right of the child is radically different from the right to the child. The former right is fundamental. It consists in particular in giving the child a family in which it will have the best chance to have the best life.
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
What we hear :
children are waiting for it Thousands of homosexual couple than adoption andanwould be better for them to be adopted by a to remain in orphanage.
.
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What we hear :
is to medically The meaning of parentinglawevolving, particularlyofthanksdevelopments.assisted assisted procreation. The must take account such
1- http://association-lesbiennees.org
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
It is well understood that, in many domains of life, an infractionthat is to say, a failure to respect a prohibitioncannot be sufficient grounds for lifting the prohibition that has not been respected. In other words, the reality of certain facts is not sufficient to create a legal reality. This holds as well for the new forms of homosexual parenting. It is also clear that what is at stake in medically assisted procreation on the one hand and in surrogate pregnancy on the other hand goes far beyond the mere question of homosexual parenting and far exceeds what is provided for in French family law. It is essential, therefore, that the subjects continue to be treated in the proper framework of the law of bioethics and that this framework not be taken hostage by demands aiming to erase all sexual difference in our society.
What we hear :
thousands of adults and The Hundreds ofmarriage. Other countrieschildren are concerned. WhyFrench favor have already legalized. fall behind? homosexual
2- Proposition de Loi n745 prsente par la Snatrice Esther Benbassa, EELV, le 27 aot 2012.
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We should add that in Spain, a country of 46 million inhabitants, there are about 3100 homosexual marriages each year, after a first year (2006) of 4300 marriages. The number of children of homosexual couples has also been greatly exaggerated. According to the APGL, there is urgent need for legislation because 300,000 children are being raised in France by parents of the same sex. Alongside these statistics used by the activists, it is useful to read studies by the National Institute of Demographic Studies (INED), the official state agency for demographic data: INED estimates the number of concerned children to be between 24,000 and 40,000. There is one number, by the way, which is easy to verify and not subject to debate, namely the number of members of the APGL: there are 1800 in all of France. The legalization of homosexual marriage and adoption is a measure neither of progress nor of the advanced status of the nation. It is often said that France is falling behind in relation to other countries that have legalized homosexual marriage or adoption in the framework of a civil union. This notion of falling behind merits scrutiny. In order to be considered a nation of the first rank would it suffice to allow the greatest number of things that are prohibited in other countries ? As an index of the progress or advanced status of a nation, I prefer to consider the well-being of the population and its confidence in the future, alongside traditional data on socioeconomic status and educational and scientific achievements. Where questions of social justice are concerned, the nation might appear at the same time far behind and very advanced depending upon quite arbitrary standards of classification. No doubt some will take pleasure in a classification in terms of homosexual marriage, but one would first have to demonstrate that it is in the nations general interest to be out in front. Or one might appeal to a classification in terms of minority rights, but there again, wouldnt the first priority be to concentrate on the integration of certain minorities in the Republic and especially on the number of attacks based on racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia? If opinion polls are to be the measure of social acceptability then they should address all demands and their consequences. Over the last ten years, several institutes that study public opinion have regularly asked representative samples of the population of those over eighteen years of age whether they favored or opposed homosexual marriage and adoption of children by same-sex couples. These two questions reflect an interest in adding to the rights of homosexuals as part of a larger concern for the struggle for equality and against discrimination. These polls show undeniably that the percentage of French people who favor homosexual marriage has increased steadily for ten years and that this group now forms a significant majority: 65 percent held this view in one recent poll, that of the IFOP for August 2012. Results are more nuanced where adoption for same-sex couples is concerned. The same poll puts that number at 53 percent in favor, a figure five percentage points below the level of support a year earlier. It would be useful to debate a certain vision of politics according to which facts must become law, that is, that the law must change as soon as polls reveal a favorable majority of public opinion, or, in other words, the social acceptability of the facts in question. But this debate would take us too far from the immediate subject of homosexual marriage and parenting. It is easy to see that public opinion is volatile in a number of areas. The fact that a public opinion poll reveals a result above 50 percent is not enough to justify a law or to decree that a debate must not take place.
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
Nevertheless, if one were to accept public opinion polls as the compass of our society, would it not make sense to survey the French people also on all the demands made by LGBT activists in the name of equality and antidiscrimination? Would it not make sense above all to ask questions from the point of view of adopted children as well as questions concerning the concrete consequences in their daily lives of the effacing of sexual differences ? The fact is that the two questions regularly posed over the last ten years do not allow us to understand the state of public opinion on a whole range of issues associated with homosexual marriage and parenting. When a poll investigates these issues from another angle by requiring people to make an exclusive choice and to define priorities, the resulting answers are quite different. Here is the proof: The poll conducted by the IFOP on September 27-28, 2012, and posted online on October 10 included the following data. When it was asked which of two principles should be given priority, 63 percent of French respondents (48 percent of those who identified with the left and 70 percent of those who identified with the right) said that adopted children must have a father and a mother, whereas 34 percent of respondents (49 percent of the left and 17 percent of the right) said that homosexual couples must be able to adopt children.
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PART TWO : Behind the arguments, the confrontation between two worldviews
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
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If gender is a pure social construction, then all social representation of sexuality appears as constructed, acquired, and artificial. Little by little, sex understood as a natural category is put in question and sexuality itself as a natural given is relativized.
From the political project for replacing sexual identity by sexual orientation . . .
In the place of sexual identity, which is considered a thing of the past, queer theory proposes the notion of a sexual orientation chosen by each individual based upon the gender that somehow defines his or her interior being. By distinguishing the sexed (sexuality as a given fact) from the sexual (sexuality as a behavior), queer theory defends the idea according to which one can be physically masculine but psychologically feminine, or the reverse. It follows that, independent of ones biology or gender, one can experience desires that are homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual. Queer theory thus invites the individual to leave behind the straitjacket of manhood or womanhood that he did not choose, and express himself according to his own self-perceptions. For example, a person who is masculine biologically and gendered as a woman could have heterosexual desires and thus live with another man. From this point of view, the sexual orientation chosen by the individual would never be definitive and could vary over the course of ones life. If gender is constructed, it can thus be deconstructed. Femininity and masculinity becomes simple roles that one can choose to take on or to reject, to parody or to exchange as one wishes. Women, men, heteros, homos, bisexuals or transsexuals . . . In this merry-goround of genders, sexual identities are replaced by individual expressions, which are ceaselessly created and re-created in relationship to one another. It is in the name of tolerance that defenders of queer theory demand social recognition for all forms of sexual orientation: homo-, bi-, trans-, etc.; but tolerance in this case is nothing but a Trojan horse in the fight against heterosexuality, a social norm that they judge to be an obsolete imposition, since it is built upon sexual difference.
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
Indeed, what is authoritative is no longer an individuals sexual identity but his sexual orientation; if an individual who is physically masculine can in fact be psychologically feminine or the reverse, and if it is the will of the individual and no longer nature that determines sex, then why not institutionalize the union of two people, whoever they might be ? And, in particular, what would be the point of refusing to confide children to such a couple, since all the different models are considered equivalent ? Faced with such a series of demands, we are justified in asking whether the activists purpose is not finally the pure and simple destruction of marriage and of the family, such as these have been traditionally conceived. With this aim in mind, homosexual marriage and the right of adoption for samesex couples appear as nothing more than a means for exploding the foundations of society, making possible all kinds of union, finally liberated from an ancestral morality, and thus definitively doing away with the very notion of sexual difference.
An irreducible difference
So G-d created man in his own image, in the image of G-d created he him; male and female created he them (Gen. 1:27). The biblical account grounds sexual difference in the act of creation. The polarity masculine-feminine pervades all that exists, from clay to G-d. It is part of what is given primordially and what guides the respective vocationthe being and the agencyof man and woman. The duality of the sexes is part of the anthropological constitution of humanity. . Thus, every person is brought sooner or later to recognize that he or she possesses only one of the two fundamental versions of humanity, and that the other will remain forever inaccessible. Sexual difference is thus a mark of our finitude. I am not the whole of humanity. A sexed being is not the totality of the species; it needs a being of the other sex to produce its likeness.
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I am not everything, I am not even all that is human. I do not know all that is human: The other sex always remains partly unknowable to me.
This double finitude implies that self-sufficiency is impossible for a human being. This limitation is not a privation, but a gift that allows for the discovery of the love that springs from wonder in the face of difference Through desire man discovers sexual difference at the heart of nature. This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh (Gen. 2:23). Openness to this other leads to self-discovery as complementary difference: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh (Gen. 2:24). In Hebrew, one flesh refers to the One, Ehadthe divine name par excellence, according to the prayer of Shema Israel: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our G-d is one Lord (Deut. 6:4).
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
It is in this union, which is at once carnal and spiritual, a union made possible by difference and by complementary sexual orientation, that man and woman reproduce, in the created order, the image of the One G-d. As a counterpoint, the third chapter of Genesis presents sin as the refusal of limitation and therefore of difference: For G-d knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be as gods, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5).
The tree of knowledge of good and evilthe tree of knowing good and knowing evil symbolizes precisely the two ways of apprehending the limit. First, good knowing respects otherness, and accepts the fact of not knowing all and consents to not being all. This way of knowing opens towards love and thus towards the tree of life, planted by G-d in the middle of the Garden (Gen. 2:9). Second, evil knowing refuses limits and difference; it eats the other in the hope of reconstituting the whole within the self and of acquiring omniscience. This refusal of the relation of otherness leads to greed and envy, to violence, and ultimately to death.
Isnt this what is implied in the notion of gender: the refusal of otherness, of difference, and the demand to take on sexual behaviors independent of sexual difference, the first gift of nature? Is this not, in other words, the pretension to know the woman as the man, to become the whole of humanity, to emancipate oneself from all natural conditions, and thus to become as gods?
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CONCLUSION
After the analysis of arguments, after the explanation of underlying theories, it is important to find our way through the debate that is taking place. Along with others, I have discussed these matters with Mrs. Christiane Taubira, the Minister of Justice, and with Mrs. Dominique Bertinotti, Deputy Minister for the Family. Along with others, I have been heard respectfully, but only the legislative proposal and the positions the government will take will show whether the consultations were real or a mere faade; whether they produced true deliberation or were merely a process conceived by and in the service of political correctness.
As I conclude, it has become clear that the arguments invoked in the name of equality, love, protection, and of the right to a child do not stand up and cannot, by themselves, justify a law. Whether legal rights concerning homosexual parenting and adoption are extended or limited, it is also clear that LGBT activists will use homosexual marriage as a Trojan horse in their greater efforts to deny natural sexuality, to erase sexual differences, and to replace them with orientations that make it possible to leave behind the straightjacket of nature and to pursue the destruction of the heterosexual foundations of our society. There would be no courage and no glory in voting for a law based more on slogans than on arguments, in conforming to the dominant political correctness out of fear of the threatened anathema, and by counter-attacking as a last resort by a question such as: Dven if there is no reason to pass a law, why is it a problem if we want to pass one ? What bothers me is the refusal to question, to leave behind ones uncritical assumptions. The problem with the proposed law is the harm it portends for our society as a whole, and this solely for the benefit of a tiny minority. This harm consists in the irreversible scrambling of three things:
genealogies, by substituting parenting for fatherhood and motherhood, the status of the child, who would go from being a subject to being an object to which others have a right sexual identity, which rather than being a natural given would have to give way to orientation as an individual expression, in the name of the struggle against inequality, perverted into the elimination of differences.
The stakes must be clarified in the debate on homosexual marriage and parenting. They implicate the foundations of a society in which each of us wants to live.
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HOMOSEXUAL MARIAGE, HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING AND ADOPTION : WHAT WE OFTEN NEGLECT TO SAY
I am one of those who believe that a human being is not an autonomous construction with no given structure, order, status, or rule. I believe that the affirmation of freedom does not imply the negation of limits, and that the affirmation of equality does not imply the leveling of differences. I believe that the powers of technology and of the imagination do not require that we forget that being is a gift, that life is prior to all of us and that it has its own laws. I long for a society in which modernity would have its full place, without implying the denial of elementary principles of human and familial ecology; for a society in which the diversity of ways of being, of living and of desiring is accepted as fortunate, without allowing this diversity to be diluted in the reduction to the lowest common denominator, which effaces all differentiation; for a society in which, despite the technological deployment of virtual realities and the free play of critical intelligence, the simplest wordsfather, mother, spouse, parents retain their meaning, at once symbolic and embodied; for a society in which children are welcomed and find their place, their whole place, without becoming objects that must be possessed at all costs or a pawns in a power struggle. I long for a society in which the extraordinary dynamic that is at work in the encounter between a man and a woman continues to be established, under a specific name.
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