Gay Marriage in America, the First Redefinition of Marriage?

The debate over marriage equality in our country requires us to examine the psychological and cultural contexts that produce the political phenomenon surrounding it, which we inhabit today.  Like any issue that can produce major controversy, it cuts across all the planes of our experience; sexual, religious, political, cultural etc... While the majority of Americans and myself can agree that this is a human rights issue  which is self evident, we are left with a sizable percentage of our population that will be left to lament the moral, spiritual and social decay of the society around them.  We know the arguments for and the arguments against marriage equality.  Personally I seriously doubt that anyone with a solid opinion on the matter will have their minds changed by any such arguments.  But what I find more fascinating, is the complete lack of philosophical common definitions and common framework that exist, which impede any actual communication.  Where are the opponents of marriage equality coming from?  I mean besides traditional hate groups, where are they coming from?
Non religious opponents of marriage equality are engaging the debate on the very definition of marriage, its intrinsic purpose and form.  This is an essentialist approach, in that it attributes a specific and exclusive purpose of marriage, and by definition human sexuality and "the family".  This type of thinking aligns with most religious dogmas, in its consistent narrative of human sexuality.  It also aligns with baser forms of knowing, i.e. ignorance, bigotry, and fear (which are all essentially the same).
I am very interested to see how these hearings at the Supreme Court tomorrow will play out.  After all the rhetoric is over, it would seem to me that the basic question we can distill this debate down to is the definition of marriage.  Marriage has been being redefined, over the course of social evolution, for thousands of years. See "Origins of the Family Private Property and the State", by Fredreich Engels, or "Ancient Society" by Lewis H. Morgan or "The Bible", or the "The Quran" and you will find very diverse definitions for and purposes of marriage.  From historical materialism, to anthropology, to theology we can see the diversity of the history of legally enshrining and sanctifying different sexual relations.  While I am not building an argument here, I'm attesting to the fact that history has a very loose meaning for the word "traditional".  These are subjective mores dictated by power structures.  It would seem to me that attempts to make religious arguments against marriage equality, a-religious, by mounting a philosophical defense through a natural definition of marriage, fail because they are founded upon a subjectivity that has documented history of its malleability.  I feel that in addition to redefining marriage and family, attempts to define and legally control/permit forms of human sexuality have also been well documented.  Humanity's attempts to confine itself by narratives of morals, motivated by both fear and desire are universal.  It is clear we have a propensity for dictating different sexual morals through law, we are just another moment in history, the question is only whether we will move forward or let ourselves be dictated to by power structures that claim to explain the infinite depth of human sexuality.
Could the cultural opposition to gay marriage and homosexuality be, in itself, a libidinal response?  Fear of the unknown and the decision that something is unknowable, rejection, domination, and objectification are all part of both, the spectrum from homophobia to opposition to gay marriage, and the libidinal consciousness.  I find it ironic that one culture's sexual fears, or definitions or tensions would subjugate the sexual realizations of another to the realm of the disordered, illegitimate, and non-familial.  It is precisely in structuring homosexual persons out of the notion of family that our society does the most psychological and physical violence to the LGBT community.  In separating their love and their children from societal protection and recognition as a family, our culture all at once demeans their freedom, their love, and their children while at the same time attesting to its own disregard for freedom, love, and children. 

Pope Francis I, Remembering and Celebrating our Common Humanity

The massive contribution of active love and charity, to the world, of the good and dedicated lay and clergy of the Catholic Church, is well known to its faithful. This is also likely experienced in some fashion by those outside the Church.  Likewise, the massive failings, oppression and inherent social/psychological incongruities of the Catholic Church are well known to its detractors.  In turn, these drawbacks are likely experienced to different degrees by the faithful of the Church.  We welcome today, in this decade of crescendo, a new pope, a new beginning for the Catholic Church.  If we allow it to be, this can be an  opportunity for the secular world, struggling for tolerant, just, and peaceful societies all over the globe, to reciprocate this act of progress, (in the election of a Jesuit from Argentina) with attempts to engage the Church with renewed patience and charity.

While the dogmas of the Catholic Church are unchanging, its spirit and practice is alive in its faithful who let the love of God pour out into their lives.  Those that witness to the grave injustices and crimes of the Church, could take this moment to recognize the good people who make up what the Church would call the Body of Christ.  This is a moment for those of us who are critical of the Church to renew their commitment to fighting its exploitation and discrimination with love and understanding, rather than approaching it from a place of arrogance and hate.  The heart of both the Church and the secular progressive movement is love, peace, and a yearning for greater understanding.  While witnessing to the injustice of the powerful, we must always be sure that our anger does not manifest in the very prejudice and closed-mindedness we aim to combat.

The election of a relative outsider to the Vatican milieu at least symbolizes an attempt towards unity with the world outside of its narrow philosophical corridors.  Our world faces powers more dangerous and violent than the Catholic Church.  We should all strive to cooperate in our journey to justice.  I will accept this new development as a reminder that our caricatures of movements/religions/people can be wrong and unhelpful in effectively perceiving and engaging those around us.  Sometimes they can say more about the limitations of the perceiver than the failings of their object.  To my Catholic friends I extend my apology for my sometimes unproductive ranting, not because today's events change or mend any problem or offense, but because they remind me that unity and understanding can be even more productive than truth sometimes.  Parts of the truth can be ugly. Parts of the truth can be beautiful.  And parts of the truth can also be unknown, to me.  As we all journey towards truth together, we remember that we are all of the same sacred dignity, regardless of the shortcomings of ourselves, or our traditions.

...for every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you ~ walt whitman

Spring

the smell of spring wind over wet earth, rushes into my lungs
on the slick rock I slide the moss, gritty and
smooth with my thumb
I greet the sudden change of season like a photograph of my brothers as children
remembering how we were then, and smiling
i greet the cool thrust of that unique spring air
like an old friend at a familiar bar
I swear it comes from a specific place,
waiting for the arrival of this moment to return here
celebrating itself with gusts and swirls until settling into a warm and inviting night.
And now i sleep in spring
and spring's air sleeps from my bed to the top of the sky.
-patrick walsh

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

An amazing documentary chronicling, first hand, the attempted coup of Hugo Chavez's democratically elected administration by heads of industry in Venezuela and the US CIA.  RIP

The Role of Non-Violence in a Society Without Recourse

Observing the alarming brokenness of our democratic system, it is growing increasingly harder to imagine true systemic justice, ever emerging out of any legal, current democratic recourse.  I believe I have some unique questions to discuss here, but I will begin with a quick bulleted preface, to give context to my analysis.

Whether we identify our government's obsolescence in empirical and documented failures:
-the direct influence of the free market on all branches of all levels of government i.e. revolving door, lobbyists, citizens united court decision (to cite a fairly current nail in the coffin)
-current inability to a pass a federal budget
-the pressure of multinational corporate intrests on our government
-the sequester
-2011 and 2012 National Defense Authorization Act
etc...
...Or documented cultural aberrations:
-nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty, 16% of the population, 20% among children according to November 2012 census statistics.
-skyrocketing unregulated costs of healthcare which is limiting access and bankrupting our budget
-the current financial infrastructure of the banks elevating themselves to a level of criminal immunity
-4,700 estimated civilians killed by drones. (that the government admits to)
-sustaining decade plus long wars on unidentified enemies
etc...
...Or documented political aberrations
-the 2012 election "voter ID" laws proposed
-"jerrymandering"
-time wasted in congress on reactionary and racist endeavors: attempted repealing Voter's Rights Act, stalling of Hurricane Sandy disaster relief (just to name a few brazen recent occurrences, etc..)
-blocking of third party debates from official presidential election discourse
etc...
...And all the other moral, philosophical, socio-economic catastrophes that could comprise hundreds of volumes of writing, taking all that into account,  can we not agree as a people that our situation is untenable?

Proving that proposition is not the aim of this article.  If, after careful observation of their social environment, the reader feels that the status quo, or some kind of purer adherence to a freer free market capitalism and more American style democracy as such, is the answer to our current national and global crisis, then we have little context for discussion.  My goal, here, is to pose questions about how truly the public wants change, and to examine approaches to extensive and fundamental political and economic rearrangement.

The current state of affairs that we have in America, beyond being untenable, seems to be unfixable within the current governmental structure. So what recourse does this nation have to stem the explosion of the complex crisis, just beginning to emerge?  Outside of democratic recourse lies a chaotic morass of interests and methodologies.  The shortcomings of the Occupy movement highlight this point.  Do we, as a population, even recognize the extent of the crisis before us and the destruction we sustain by participating in its reproduction?  Or would we identify fundamental and dramatic political and economic restructuring as unnecessary and not worth its risks?  What would a non violent transition of power and political paradigm look like?

In response to these questions and challenges, I would humbly suggest one small element of perspective.  Love, that which harnesses empathy and action, is the guiding force of successful revolution.  Radical love (and all true love is radical) that compels justice, is the ethos of true change.  Love, which always recognizes human dignity as the pivot of justice, this is the objectivity that demands revolution.  The will to power is subjective.  Love, in this sense, is objective.  Despite countless attempts to mechanize love as a rationale for oppression and condemnation, it remains a universally identifiable phenomenon, its antithesis equally universally identifiable.  Thus a true revolutionary spirit demands a justice springing from love.  While righteous anger has its role in mobilizing action and challenging injustice, it is philosophically static.  Compassion and empathy is procreative.   A subjugation of the weak by the strong, overturned by a subjugation of the strong by the weak  results in the same inequity.  The methodology and goal of a true revolution must respect the dignity of life, even in those who exploit and oppress.  But where is the role of the tradition of non-violence in a society whose population is often without shame, attention span, context, or empathy?  Where is the role of nonviolence in a global community governed by banks and their political organs?  Gandhi shamed the British out of their colonization of India because the philosophical tide of the world was on the side of independence.  Who is there to shame the exploitation and violence of our government to, when the rest of the industrialized world is on the same system?

I present these thoughts not because I have answers but because I have more questions than I have answers to.  I hope to stimulate your thoughts to respond to some of these suggestions and questions in the hopes of greater understanding and future peace and justice.  I would greatly appreciate your comments and discussion.