In discussions and announcements of the latest gay rights, an often repeated phrase is that now we
have the right to love who we want to love. This is just an attempt to
attach an emotional string to an issue that is currently front and center in
order to cater to the specious desires of a those who wish to reduce love to merely its sexual component.
The fact is that for a long time people have had the right to love whomever
they want.
Philosophers and theologians have generally recognized four type of love storge, philio, eros and agape. C. S. Lewis in his book Four Loves describes them.
Storge refers to a love or affection toward a family member such as love between parents and their children.
Philo is an affection between friends.
Eros is romantic love and agape is a spiritual love.
The exercise of any of these forms of love does not and should not need any civil authority to permit their practice. For very understandable reasons society has, however, placed taboos and restrictions on the way these loves are expressed. Many of these restrictions and taboos center on the sexual aspects of love. Might I suggest that it is these taboos that this phrase is referring to. Each of the forms of love has at one time or another had a sexual component attached to it. Each culture, society or community has placed certain permissions and restrictions on the sexual behavior allowed in each of these forms of love.
Currently, both familial affections and close friendships
are considered not to include sexual intercourse. Cultural mores establish the accepted behavior in each of
these forms of love. Incest is not acceptable, friends engaging in sexual
intercourse are recognized as having moved to an erotic relationship. Agape, as spiritual,
is concerned with complete self-giving and so is free of the reciprocity
characteristic of erotic love. None of these three forms of love require
permission from civil authority to allow one to engage in them.
Neither does erotic love. In its more elevated characteristics it needs no civil permissions in order to be exercised. Mutual self-giving, a single-minded regard for the other and its solemn privilege to procreate, educate and so carry on the advancement of the human condition, these are all aspects of erotic love that need no civil authority to validate or affirm them.
Neither does erotic love. In its more elevated characteristics it needs no civil permissions in order to be exercised. Mutual self-giving, a single-minded regard for the other and its solemn privilege to procreate, educate and so carry on the advancement of the human condition, these are all aspects of erotic love that need no civil authority to validate or affirm them.
So what then has society been given by finally allowing
someone to love who they want to love? In such a statement love is reduced to
merely its sexual component, completely divorcing sex from its higher
giftedness. Reducing love to mere self-gratification. Really, what’s love got
to do with it?
1 comment:
It's good to see that our intrepid author is trying to grapple with his recent reading. And C.S. Lewis's is a first-rate mind to grapple with. I don't see, however, how the taxonomy of love that Lewis spells out -- agape, eros, philia, and storge -- has much bearing on the nature of marriage as society has been recently redefining it, now with the blessing of SCOTUS.
I find it interesting that my reading of Bob's comment coincides with this 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, when the Lectionary for this Cycle B prescribes for the second reading the 5th chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians. The emotional charge, of course, stems from Paul's admonition that wives subordinate themselves to their husbands. BUT he hastens to add at the end of the reading (v. 32) that he's not talking about social relationships at all but about the relationship between Christ and the Church.
Paul's actual words are: "Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord." Christian marriage is a sacramental and a reflection of Christ's relationship to the Church. Just as Christ in an outpouring of love -- love transcending and subsuming agape, storge, philia, together with eros -- bathes and cleanses and glorifies the Church -- for which the marks of oneness, holiness, and catholicity are eschatological in character -- so too is the wife exhorted to give herself over unreservedly to the tender ministrations of her husband.
Jesus respected a domain in which Caesar is allowed to hold sway. Caesar's domain has over time redefined the social institution of marriage in a way that deviates more and more from the Sacrament of Matrimony. Whereas formerly the civil institution and the sacrament reinforced each other, now our teachers and preachers have their work cut out for them to keep the difference between civil marriage and the sacrament in the active consciousness of the faithful.
Caesar's domain has attached certain civil benefits to the social relationship of marriage -- benefits having to do with taxation, inheritance, and kinship authority. Persons who enter into sustained, committed relationships with persons of the same gender as themselves have laid claim to those civil benefits. The Supreme Court has validated those claims. It is only in that way that the assertion "Now I can love whomever I want" makes any sense.
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