A few weeks ago Rick Santorum made a pretty unusual argument against gay marriage in a video you can watch here: http://blog.spreadingsantorum.com/2011/08/santorum-fails-to-grasp-difference.html. Anyways, I suppose I would agree that a paper towel would not be the same thing as a napkin even if one were to call it that, but this argument does bring up some interesting questions about the relationship between words and what they have come to signify.
Now Santorum makes quite a few arguments against gay marriage here, but I’m going to focus my rebuttal on just one, which I think I can summarize here:
1. Napkins possess certain traits.
2. We call these things “napkins” in order to signify them as having these traits.
3. A paper towel does not have all of these traits.
4. Therefore, calling a paper towel a napkin would not make it a napkin in any way other than in name.
Santorum here is trying to point out the difference between a thing’s name and its character or essential, intrinsic traits. He intends for his argument about napkins to apply to gay marriages in this way, thus:
1. Marriage possesses certain traits.
2. We call this thing “marriage” in order to signify it as having these traits.
3. Gay marriage does not have all of these traits.
4. Therefore, calling a gay marriage a marriage would not make it a marriage in any way other than in name.
This argument certainly seems similar to the last one. The problem, however, is that there is a very fundamental difference between “marriage,” an abstract thing, and “napkins,” which are physical objects. Santorum seems to think that marriage is a concrete thing that exists independent of human thought and interaction, as napkins do. This is untrue. Marriage is a concept, an idea. It is like justice, mercy, or fairness; all good things, but they cannot exist without humans thinking about them. Imagine for a second that tomorrow everyone in the world would forget everything they knew about napkins and also everything they knew about marriage. Napkins would still exist exactly as they were before. They wouldn’t move, they wouldn’t change, and they wouldn’t cease to exist. We might be a little perplexed by their presence and we would be clueless as to what they are, but they would still be there. Marriage, however, would cease to exist. It cannot exist unless we think about it. Certainly marital contracts would still exist, and wedding rings, and marriage photos, but marriage itself would not. We might eventually relearn what we knew about marriage from dictionaries, legal records, stories, and other concrete sources, because these would be unaffected, but until then marriage would not exist. There is no concrete thing called “marriage” that you can go touch and with which you can interact.
Therefore, Santorum makes a false claim when he says we can call a thing marriage but that will not make it marriage. As a matter of fact, this will make it marriage. And this has been seen throughout different cultures for a long time. In early Hebrew culture, it was acceptable to have multiple wives, and this relationship was marriage. Until recently, marriage was more of a property agreement, and it was still considered marriage. Marriage has been constantly redefined throughout societies, and each time it was, the essential character of what marriage actually is changed.
There is an objection to this that I think Santorum might make that I would like to address next. He might say, “But that is not what I meant by marriage at all. A polygamous marriage practiced by the early Hebrews wasn’t marriage, they just called it that. It wasn’t actually marriage.” An interesting point, Rick, but again there is a problem. In order to best explain this problem, however, I think we need to separate the thing from its definition. When Senator Santorum says marriage, he means “a contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender.” So his objection can be rephrased as “A polygamous contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender practiced by the early Hebrews wasn’t a contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender, they just called it that. It wasn’t actually a contractual relationship and property agreement between two people of the opposite gender.” In translation, this objection makes sense. Of course a polygamous marriage wasn’t an agreement between two people of the opposite gender, because it involved multiple people. But Senator Santorum seems to think that his definition of marriage is the universal, concrete, and unchanging version of marriage, the real version. A quick look through history, however, will show that that is untrue. Marriage has been redefined and practiced differently in many different cultures.
So now that we know what Santorum is really saying, let’s take another look at his original marriage argument. This time, however, we are going to replace the word “marriage” with “Rick Santorum’s version of marriage.”
1. Rick Santorum’s version of marriage possesses certain traits.
2. We call this thing “Rick Santorum’s version of marriage” in order to signify it as having these traits.
3. Gay marriage does not have all of these traits.
4. Therefore, calling a gay marriage a Rick Santorum’s version of marriage would not make it a Rick Santorum’s version of marriage in any way other than in name.
Changing his argument in this way actually makes it valid. It is true that a gay marriage is not the same thing as Rick Santorum’s version of marriage. Naturally, then, it is makes no sense for us to call a gay marriage an example of Rick Santorum’s version of marriage. But guess what Mr. Santorum? The gay community and its supporters don’t really have any desire to call it that. In fact, I think that most would agree that the gay community’s definition of marriage is different than Rick Santorum’s version of marriage. Admitting this makes no real difference in the debate. So congratulations, the gay community will concede that gay marriage is different than your definition of marriage. But they will not concede that it isn’t marriage in character. They want a version of marriage that best allows people to be joined in a loving relationship, and unfortunately, yours doesn’t really allow for that.
Ultimately, Santorum’s argument doesn’t really have anything to do with the morality of gay marriage but the definition of gay marriage. This is just a silly argument over semantics, but I don’t think Santorum has realized that yet. I think it would help him a lot to be able to understand the difference between abstract and concrete objects, and to learn to separate a thing from its name. After all, a quick Google search of the word “santorum” will show how easily and drastically the definition of a word or a name can change.
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