A great set of posts by Greg Forster (PhD, Yale University) on what he sees as key disadvantages in employing either natural law arguments or explicitely Christian/biblical defenses of marriage in today’s cultural landscape. In short, he sees both as unconvincing to those predisposed to endorse same-sex “marriage.” Instead, he offers a new path forward. Excerpt:
We must speak the truth about sexuality and romance in the language of sexuality and romance. This can’t be a special, private sexual language for Christians that others will need to learn. It must be a language that speaks to people in terms of their everyday experiences and doesn’t presuppose that you need to be Christian before you can have a humane understanding of sexuality.
This will require constructive efforts that describe how sex transcendently, metaphysically bonds husbands and wives in beautiful ways. (Note: it’s not marriage that supernaturally bonds a couple, it’s sex; that will be a key distinction for the new language to bring out.) It will also involve describing the monstrosity of divorce and the tragic suffering of disordered desire. And it will involve satire that exposes the conventions that maintain the fantasy world.
Hollywood already produces these kinds of narratives from time to time, and critics tend to applaud them. Consider the success of Juno a few years ago.
Read the whole thing.