A Unitive Look at Same-Sex Marriage

My teacher Thomas Berry used to tell me over and over again, “In the present context, humans as a species must learn to think with their genes rather than with their brains.” Another way he put it was, “We’ve got to learn to think at the species level.” What might he have meant?

The brain has three major sections or cortices. The newest on the scale of evolution is the neo-cortex, responsible for, or rather the locus of the cognitive processes. Thought is the most obvious “voice” of that cortex; the most obvious function is cognition. Beneath the neocortex and enclosed within it is the paleo-cortex or old mammal brain. It is the locus of feeling functions and within it is the brain stem or Reptilian cortex, which is the locus of instinctual functions. Thomas Berry’s advice is to bypass all three functions and to think in categories which are common to our own species, the other species, and ultimately the whole community of life called the biosphere. It is in my opinion our inability to follow his advice which plagues our attempts to understand why same-sex marriage just doesn’t “feel right” to heterosexuals, including the one who writes this.

Constitutional thought is one of those products of the cognitive cortex as is all legal thought. The same can be said of sociological, psychological, theological or any other thought. It must be stated that if marriage is a legally guaranteed right of the Constitution, then same-sex marriage must be made legal. US citizens must share equally in the protections of the US Constitution whether or not same-sex marriage feels the same as both-sex marriage does in the gut.

---but---

In the gut, where species level thinking finds a voice, another sort or category of knowing presents itself. We have called this category “Thinking at the species level.” So, what about same-sex marriage at the species level? The historical, archeological and anthropological facts seem to indicate that marriage is the way in which humans come together in a relationship of committed love to have and to raise human young. All species have mating rituals and all human cultures do as well. Marriage is the cultural/religious expression of a species level fact called propagation. We have done a pathetic job of our mating ritual in these past few decades, but, it is still what it is at the species level. Whatever else same-sex marriage has in common with both-sex marriage, this one thing is clearly different; two men and two women cannot propagate.

Or can they?

What if at the genetic or species level it was clear that our shoddy job of parenting, the result of our shoddy job of commitment, whether due to the war-orphaned or divorce-orphaned, neglect-orphaned or abuse-orphaned, or earthquake-orphaned or tsunami-orphaned, or however orphaned, what if the species mind is calling upon the same-sex couples to rescue these children and provide for them where both-sex couples have not? What if the same-sex family is emergent as a species-level rescue mission for both-sex failure or inability to rear human young? That emergence reflects a species-level response to emergency faced by so many human young. Maybe same-sex marriage is a parenting partnership with both-sex couples in response to the plight of all human young.

But again, in any case, if the US Constitution in fact guarantees equal rights regarding marriage, same-sex couples have the right to marry period! It feels different in the gut, but the Constitution is the Constitution for all US citizens.

Want to explore more of my thinking on same-sex marriage? I went into much deeper analysis in Chapter 29 of my book The Modern Christian Mystic.