Consistently twisting, spinning, contorting - whether it's giving cover for Obama on the life issues, such as embryonic stem cell research support and "reducing the need for abortion"; or explaining how Catholics can vote for pro-abortion politicians; or defending Notre Dame's decision to award President Obama with an honorary degree.
And now his latest - Proposing an end to legally recognized marriage, as reported by the Catholic News Agency.
Doug Kmiec, a prominent Catholic who backed Barack Obama’s presidential bid, has endorsed replacing marriage with a neutral “civil license,” a proposal law professor Robert P. George called a “terrible idea” that would make the government neglect a vital social institution.
Speaking to CNSNews.com, Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec said that although his solution to disputes over the definition of marriage might be “awkward,” it would “untie the state from this problem” by creating a new terminology that would apply to everyone, homosexual or not. “Call it a ‘civil license’,” he said.
“The net effect of that, would be to turn over--quite appropriately, it seems to me, the concept of marriage to churches and a church understanding,” he said.
Kmiec said that a motive for California’s Proposition 8, which restored the definition of marriage to being between a man and a woman, was religious believers’ “genuine concern” that the California ruling imposing homosexual “marriage” was not addressing religious freedom issues.
Saying he was among those believers who had such concern, Kmiec noted the possibility that churches which don’t acknowledge same-sex “marriage” could be subject to penalty, lose public benefits, or be subject to lawsuits “based on some theory of discrimination.”
Kmiec argued “civil licenses” would address the question. He proposed the state withdraw from “the marriage business” and do licensing “under a different name” to satisfy government interests for purposes of taxation and property.
Under his proposal, “the question of who can and cannot be married would be entirely determined in your voluntarily chosen faith community,” he added, saying that the proposal would reaffirm the significance of marriage “as a religious concept,” which has a much fuller understanding than is found in civil marriage.
Responding to Kmiec’s proposal, Princeton University professor Robert George said it was a “terrible” idea and a “very, very bad one.”
George told CNSNews.com that marriage is not like baptisms and bar mitzvahs but has “profound” social and public significance.
“It’s a pre-political institution,” he said. “It exists even apart from religion, even apart from polities. It’s the coming together of a husband and wife, creating the institution of family in which children are nurtured.”
“The family is the original and best Department of Health, Education and Welfare,” he continued, saying that governments, economies and legal systems all rely on the family to produce “basically honest, decent law abiding people of goodwill – citizens – who can take their rightful place in society.”
“Family is built on marriage, and government--the state--has a profound interest in the integrity and well-being of marriage, and to write it off as if it were a purely a religiously significant action and not an institution and action that has a profound public significance, would be a terrible mistake,” George told CNSNews.com.
“I don’t know where Professor Kmiec is getting his idea, but it’s a very, very bad one.”
Kmiec's proposal is a distinction without a difference. And it opens wide the floodgate to uncontrolled chaos. What if someone's "religious faith" says it's okay for a brother to marry his sister, or for a NAMBLA member to "marry" a 12 year old kid? On what basis could the state limit marriage between two unrelated adults, straight or homosexual? Wouldn't that be setting limits, thus creating a condition of "inequality" under the law? I don't think he's thought out his position all that well.
Rather than turning its back on traditional marriage, Kmiec ought to be presenting solutions where the state incentivizes the preservation of the institution - promoting stronger marriages, encouraging responsible parenthood, perhaps repealing no-fault divorce. His idea does the exact opposite - creating an "anything goes" environment where society's foundation is weakened rather than strengthened. It's in the state's interest to have order rather than chaos, and that's what Kmiec's proposal would generate.
In reading this article, I kept asking myself - why is it so hard for a "prominent Catholic" to support Catholic teaching? Why is he trying so hard to be well-liked by so many? Or is he laying the groundwork for the Obama Administration on the so-called same sex marriage issue? Could this be a "common ground" compromise?
One only wonders which issue Kmiec will abjectly twist and spin about next. Conscience clauses for health care workers? Free speech issues? Given his consistent track record, it wouldn't be difficult to predict his response.
*UPDATE* - The Other McCain weighs in, and has some thought-provoking comments, especially in the 2nd Update section.
The danger here is accepting the premise that there isn't anything dangerous about so-call gay marriage, or that it isn't all that different from traditional marriage, and Kmiec has accepted that premise. He doesn't come right out and say it, but that's what his argument comes down to. But the egalitarian argument being employed here - trying to equate two very distinct different things that cannot ever be equal - while it sounds nice and pretty, has very a dark insidious underbelly. We cannot be fooled into thinking that 'civil licenses' or 'civil unions' represent the end game for the Egalitarianists - it's only a stepping stone.
