Same-Sex Marriage: A Dilemma for Parish Clergy

Same-sex marriage within churches is an ongoing, highly contentious, and contested topic. A rich literature depicts dichotomised views, reflecting those of academics at denominational level, and addresses theological substance or denominational policies. Significantly less is known about the perspectives held on the issue by individual clergy at parishioner level. This paper provides a background on the subject of Christian clergy who support same-sex marriage. A review of the literature in this area reveals few sociological studies pertaining to clergy who are supportive of gay rights. No known studies in the combined sociological and psychology scholarship have yet exclusively examined clergy’s perspectives on same-sex marriage. While previous study offers some understanding on religious attitudes toward gay individuals, it should not be assumed that attitudes of religious individuals toward same-sex marriage necessarily follow the same pattern. For many religious people it is more problematic to accept same-sex marriage than same-sex partnerships, as this challenges the definition of the institution of marriage. This paper presents a literature review which identifies a gap in knowledge regarding perspectives of clergy who support same-sex marriage. These perspectives are important to understand, as clergy hold influential positions as opinion leaders impacting both at individual and social level, and influence discourses within religion and beyond.     

Longitudinal Effects of Religious Media on Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage

Religion and anti-gay prejudice in the United States are closely connected. Yet we still know little about the specific mechanisms through which religious subcultures may shape adherents’ attitudes toward gays and lesbians. This study considers religious media consumption as a unique mechanism through which religious Americans are socialized and embedded within an anti-gay religious subculture. Drawing on panel data from the nationally-representative Portraits of American Life Study, and focusing on opposition to same-sex marriage as a measure of anti-gay prejudice, analyses show that more frequent consumption of religious radio and TV (but not internet) is associated with higher levels of opposition to same-sex marriage over time. These effects remain significant with different model specifications as well as controls for previous attitudes toward same-sex marriage, general media use, sociodemographic and religious characteristics, and intimate contact with gays and lesbians. We propose that consuming religious media over time may influence Americans’ views toward LGBT issues directly through explicit messages about homosexuality and indirectly by embedding Americans within a broader religious subculture (largely, conservative Protestantism) that opposes homosexuality.     

Origin Stories: Same-Sex Sexuality and Christian Right Politics

In this paper, we examine dominant Christian conservative narratives of the origins of same-sex sexuality. Critics of the Christian right usually focus on a narrative of choice that Christian right organisations and activists use to explain the origins of same-sex sexuality. A choice narrative grounds a range of political positions and, in many contexts, effectively neutralises both claims of discrimination and public support for potential legal remedies. On the other hand, a narrative of development receives less attention from critics of the Christian right. Although it cannot be reduced to its political efficacy, the narrative of development has a political as well as therapeutic function. Indeed, this narrative circulates tacitly through a different set of public debates than those usually associated with the narrative of choice, including debates over programmes geared to eliminate antigay harassment in public schools. The two narratives create tensions within Christian conservative thought that can destabilise antigay social and political projects.     

Kant and The Marriage Right*

Abstract: The provision of a marriage right is a distinctive aspect of Kant's political philosophy and seems, initially, difficult to reconcile with the general concern with ensuring external freedom of action apparent in the universal principle of Right and the sole innate right said to follow from this principle. I claim that this provision can be regarded as consistent with this general focus and that Kant's treatment of issue suggests an interesting secular argument for the institution of marriage.     

从婚检看隐私权与知情权的冲突与协调

医生为当事人进行婚检,当发现其中一方患有性病等疾病时,告知是否会涉及到隐私权与知情权的问题,就隐私权与知情权的冲突与协调问题进行了探讨.     

How Charity Transcends the Culture Wars: Eugene Rogers and Others on Same-Sex Marriage

In 1994 the "Ramsey Colloquium," under the leadership of Richard John Neuhaus, posed a challenge to what it called the "homosexual movement" within the Christian Church. The challenge was to prove that it had reasons distinguishable from secular liberalism—reasons consistent with orthodox Christian theology—in favor of same-sex coupling. Eugene Rogers's book, Sexuality and the Christian Body: Their Way into the Triune God , can be read as a response to this challenge. The book is important not only for the content of its arguments, which are imaginative and theologically rigorous, but also for the exemplary way in which Rogers exhibits charity in his account of his conservative opponents. Rogers's recent anthology, Theology and Sexuality , provides additional evidence that a new, more promising debate is arising within the Church, a debate that has some hope of transcending the rhetoric of the culture wars.     

Vulnerability by Marriage: Okin's Radical Feminist Critique of Structural Gender Inequality

The central thesis of Susan Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family—that the ideology of the traditional family is the linchpin of contemporary gender inequality in the US—remains significant more than a quarter‐century after the book's publication. On a political register, Okin's insistence on structural analysis of gender inequality is an important corrective to recent mainstream feminist emphasis on individual women's choices. On an academic register, her work reveals the incoherence of scholarly classifications of feminist theories as “liberal feminist” or “radical feminist” by confounding such distinctions. I argue that her thesis is best understood in relation to the early radical feminism of Juliet Mitchell's Woman's Estate, a book Okin praised. Placing Okin's work in the context of its radical roots clarifies her “linchpin thesis,” but also reveals the limitations of her argument: in her emphasis on what Iris Young has termed the “distributive paradigm of justice,” Okin unnecessarily adopts a much narrower definition of the family than did Mitchell, and overestimates the influence of economic vulnerability after divorce on women's capacity to exit marriage. I suggest modifications to her theory, and conclude by showing the continuing relevance of her argument for analyzing recent legal, policy, and demographic shifts.     

Kantian Schemata: A Critique Consistent with the Critique

Kant posits the schema as a hybrid bridging the generality of pure concepts and the particularity of sensible intuitions. However, I argue that countenancing such schemata leads to a third‐man regress. Siding with those who think that the mid‐way posit of the Critique of Pure Reason's schematism section is untenable, my diagnosis is that Kant's transcendental inquiry goes awry because it attempts to analyse a form/matter union that is primitive. I therefore sketch a nonrepresentational stance aimed at respecting this primitivity.     

Farewell to Objectivity: A Critique of Brandom

I argue that Brandom's account of inconsistency in terms of the pragmatic notion of incompatibility, as originally set out in his Making It Explicit (1994) and defended in Articulating Reasons (2000), has the absurd consequence that all true claims are warranted. This is in obvious conflict with our ordinary conception of truth as objective, which is what Brandom intends to capture. My proof proceeds from two principles, extracted from Making It Explicit , that govern the notions of commitment and entitlement in terms of which the notion of incompatibility is being defined. If either of these principles is rejected, it will no longer be clear what the content of Brandom's thesis is.