Manhattan Declarations and Ruminations

News about the "Manhattan Declaration," the manifesto signed by representatives of conservative evangelical, Catholic, and Orthodox faiths, continues to spread through the liberal blogosphere. I got a chance to read over the whole thing. There's nothing terribly new or surprising here. The manifesto has three main sections: Life, Marriage, and Religious Liberty. Each section begins with a general scripture and goes on to outline a conservative Christian consensus stance on those issues. Of course, each section frames its issue in terms of a growing threat from a secular world.

The "Life" section, for example, laments the continued acceptance of abortion as a legal medical procedure, linking "the killing of the unborn" with the killing of the elderly or disabled (i.e., euthanasia). Thus does the Manifesto conjure a dark but amorphous group of forces actively calling for the murder of unborn, aged, and/or handicapped individuals.

Who are these people? Who's advocating that the elderly get killed off? Apparently the "ghosts" of the "intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe" during the 1920s who (apparently with one unified, elite-intellectual-salon voice) called for the killing off of those unfit for survival. The "horrors of the mid-20th century" had buried these eugenicist ideas and their advocates, but "they have returned from the grave," costumed in the rhetorical clothing of liberty and choice.

In other words, "death panels," those physicians or caregivers who would dare to broach the subject of a person's being able to control how strenuously or for how long or under what conditions doctors may prolong that person's life. Here I thought it was reasonable, moral people thinking about living wills, do-not-resuscitate orders, or the plain old desire to let life end when every moment is agony. But instead I find it's Nazi eugenicists cleverly tricking people out of planning ahead for the inevitable.

As for who's thinking about killing of disabled people--who knows? The Manifesto is silent, assuring readers only that whoever these phantom murderers are, the Church stands ready to combat them.

Strangely absent from the Manifesto's talk of the culture of life is any mention of the death penalty or military action (such as the preemptive invasion of a country that never attacked us). While I do not agree with their stances on reproductive issues, I have to admit at least that Catholics are quite consistent in resisting the death penalty as much as they resist abortion. That the Manifesto is silent on such an issue puts the lie to its "culture of life" rhetoric.

The next section, "marriage," features a similar cavalcade of horrors stemming from the weakening of the institution of heterosexual marriage--or, more specifically, the weakening of "marriage culture." After some mention of the tragedy of divorce and infidelity, the marriage section devotes most of its space to an attack on the idea of non-heterosexual marriage. The authors argue that heterosexual marriage is uniquely blessed because only it involves the "sexual complementarity" of man and woman who "become one flesh" through the miracle of procreation. As if detecting the inevitable rebuttal (i.e., what about heterosexual marriages that do not aim at procreation?), the Manifesto specifies that the necessary component is the husband and wife "fulfilling the behavioral conditions of procreation."

Oddly, the authors follow that qualification with this statement: "That is why in the Christian tradition, and historically in Western law, consummated marriages are not dissoluble or annullable on the ground of infertility,even though the nature of the marital relationship is shaped and structured by its intrinsic orientation to the great good of procreation."

Huh? I call non-sequitor. If possibility of procreation gives heterosexual marriage it's monopolistic claim to morality, then you can't simply say that non-procreative marriage is just as good. That's not even Biblical! Look at what Abraham did when it looked like Sarah wasn't going to conceive: he took himself another woman (Hagar, whom he abandoned once Sarah got pregnant). Clearly, for Abraham, the lockbox of heterosexual monogamy just didn't cut the mustard if procreation wasn't happening.

A host of other problems crop up in this "marriage culture" section (among them: the historical amnesia about the gender inequalities that defined marriage for centuries; the encomium on polygamous marriages evident in Bible stories of Abraham, David, Solomon, and many others; the parallels between hetero-only marriage arguments today and same-race-only arguments of the early to mid 20th century; etc.).

The last section, "Religious Liberty" begins with the venerable argument against religious coercion before quickly turning into a "they're out to get us!" bit of breast beating about how put upon religious (i.e., conservative Christian) people and institutions are by a government that apparently punishes them for expressing their faith. The argument here--the government won't let us discriminate!--is as full of holes as the marriage-culture argument, but considering these holes is the work of another day.

More tomorrow,

JF