Robert P. George on the Superiority of Opposite-Sex Unions: Because I Say So

Robert P. George of the American Principles Project (yes, yet another of those right-wing think tanks in D.C. that seem to have unlimited access to deep pockets and the immediate ear of the mainstream media) has just published a Wall Street Journal opinion piece arguing against same-sex marriage.* Under the guise of advising the Supreme Court not to weigh in on this issue, George seeks to build a theological foundation (informed by his version of Catholic theology) for viewing opposite-gender marriage as inherently superior to same-sex marriage.

The heart of George’s argument:

The definition of marriage was not at stake in Loving. Everyone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages. Racists just wanted to ban them as part of the evil regime of white supremacy that the equal protection clause was designed to destroy.

Opponents of racist laws in Loving did not question the idea, deeply embodied in our law and its shaping philosophical tradition, of marriage as a union that takes its distinctive character from being founded, unlike other friendships, on bodily unity of the kind that sometimes generates new life. This unity is why marriage, in our legal tradition, is consummated only by acts that are generative in kind. Such acts unite husband and wife at the most fundamental level and thus legally consummate marriage whether or not they are generative in effect, and even when conception is not sought.

Of course, marital intercourse often does produce babies, and marriage is the form of relationship that is uniquely apt for childrearing (which is why, unlike baptisms and bar mitzvahs, it is a matter of vital public concern). But as a comprehensive sharing of life—an emotional and biological union—marriage has value in itself and not merely as a means to procreation. This explains why our law has historically permitted annulment of marriage for non-consummation, but not for infertility; and why acts of sodomy, even between legally wed spouses, have never been recognized as consummating marriages.

Where to begin with analysis of an argument that contains so many downright fallacious premises and misleading attempts to disguise raw prejudice as reason? First, it’s important to note that George’s claim that “[e]veryone agreed that interracial marriages were marriages” is simply false.

I understand why George and his allies need to undercut the clear parallels between Loving v. Virginia and same-sex marriage. Those parallels point to the indefensibleness of arbitrary prejudice as a basis for denying marriage to couples who, in all respects except one respect based on sheer social penchants grounded in nothing other than prejudice, qualify to have their lifelong public commitments to each other recognized as marriage.

In point of fact, everyone did not agree that interracial marriages were marriages. That was the bone of contention. Why was there ongoing legal contention to establish these marriages as marriages, if such agreement already existed, if everyone agreed that these interracial unions were marriages?

As I’ve noted several times on this blog, I’ve spent a great deal of time in the past several years researching a fascinating story from my own family’s history, in which a white Southern planter lived with a free woman of color in a marital union throughout his whole adult life. He acknowledged his children by her, sent them off for an education, set them up on prosperous farms in a non-slave state, willed his property to them.

But he could not call his spouse his wife. He was not permitted to marry his spouse. Not legally. Not in a church. On the two occasions when it became safe for him even to acknowledge her existence on the federal census, he lists her as his housekeeper—though his letters to their children make it abundantly clear that he regarded this spouse as his wife.

I am finding other such stories from the area in the 19th century. Without exception, these stories revolve around a central tragedy: the inability of two people of different races, living together in a lifelong union that they themselves recognized as marriage, to consolidate their marital union legally. That tragedy caused the couples themselves untold misery throughout their lives. And it visited the generations after them with constant trial and tribulation grounded in one stark legal reality: the refusal of law to recognize the marital union of the interracial couple as a marriage.

Everyone most certainly did not agree that interracial marriages were marriages. That was the point of contention: whether a loving, lifelong commitment recognized as a marriage by two persons of different races deserved to be called a marriage, when social norms preferred to see this union in other terms, as a manifestation of immoral lust or social decay. Facts matter here, intently so.

The heart of George’s argument has to do, of course, with the link between generativity and marriage—physical generativity. There, too, George knows he is up against facts, against data that seriously undermine any rational attempt to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples.

This attempt is undermined by evidence—by facts—that are not difficult for any of us to find. Both our government and our churches willingly marry opposite-sex couples who either have no ability to procreate, or who do not intend to procreate. No questions asked. No promises made, prior to marriage, that one can or will bear children, before permission is granted to marry.

Marriage does not, in fact, depend on the ability or willingness of a same-sex couple to procreate. And that fact, evident to all of us, makes it plain that those opposing same-sex marriage on the ground that it is not procreative are really opposing it on quite another ground: they are opposing it on the ground of taste, of their personal distaste for dignifying the lifelong committed union of two people of the same sex as marriage. Just as, for generations, a majority of Americans found the lifelong committed union of a person of color and a white person distasteful.

Just because. Because they were not of the same race. Just because. Because they are of the same gender.

Don’t confuse me with facts. It’s not facts or reason or truth that are at stake here. It’s what I want. Because I prefer it. Because I find who you are and what you are doing distasteful.

And so Robert George’s need to find that fancy smokescreen of rhetoric about male-female complementarity which increasingly tries to cover over the sheer, undisguised prejudice lying behind the opposition of many Christians to same-sex marriage. George argues that even though opposite-sex marriage only “sometimes” generates new life—a telling word—it represents a “comprehensive sharing of life—an emotional and biological union” that, on the face of it, vastly transcends any such comprehensive sharing or union that might take place in a same-sex relationship.

Why? Because he tells us this is the case. Since we do, in fact, marry droves of opposite-sex couples that cannot or do not intend to have children, that do not intend to procreate, the only way we can justify the arbitrary, discriminatory choice to deny marriage to same-sex couples is by claiming that, even though opposite-sex couples often cannot and do not procreate, their unions are just flatly better than those of same-sex couples.

Because we say so. Because the churches say so. Because they have said so throughout history. Just as they said that slavery was fine and dandy, that women were malicious daughters of Eve and misbegotten males, that people of color were the cursed children of Ham doomed forever to hew wood and draw water for the race of Shem.

George’s analysis is not an argument. It is prejudice masquerading as high rhetoric. Just as is the churches’ bogus male-female complementarity argument on which this analysis is based.

I’m all for permitting members of religious groups to believe whatever they choose to believe: that men inherit a planet on which to live in celestial harmony forever with all their wives; that the house in which the Virgin Mary grew up flew through the air from the Holy Land to Italy; that God dictated every word of the bible verbatim to scribes who wrote it down in good King James English. Whatever. Let folks believe, if they wish, that God made women and people of color to serve white men, and that gay people are doomed to hell for all eternity just because they are gay.

What I am not for, however, is permitting people to impose their peculiar religious beliefs on the body politic in a pluralistic society, particularly when those beliefs harm others. That’s why, gradually, most developed nations have chosen politely to ignore the peculiar, religiously grounded or religiously fueled notion that women are inferior to men or that people of color are born to serve white people—even when churches have been loath to give up those notions because they consider their authority imperiled when their longstanding interpretation of scripture is called into question.

I am not for permitting people to dictate to the body politic what is and is not to be acceptable, simply because they say so. Because they happen to believe so. Just because they say it. Just because they believe it.

The developed world has rejected that move, to a great extent, in the case of misogyny and racism. And it may also one day do the same in the case of homophobia. But not if the Robert P. Georges of the world have their way. Swallow their deliberately misleading smokescreen arguments for what cannot be rationally justified or supported in a pluralistic society founded on the notion of justice for all, and you may even find yourself believing that the white men who now fight tooth and nail against gay marriage would actually have fought for and not against interracial marriage a generation or so ago.

* Once again, a hat tip to a good reader of this blog, Jim McCrea, for bringing this piece to my attention. I also note that Andrew Sullivan has posted about the article at his Daily Dish blog today.

Paranoid Leadership Styles and Church-Owned Institutions

“Kings who make speeches about submission only betray twin fears in their hearts: They are not certain they are really true leaders, sent of God. AND they live in mortal fear of rebellion,”

Gene Edwards, A Tale of Three Kings (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992).


So what happens when the big woman or big man on top is paranoid? And has a paranoid leadership style?*

Unfortunately, if this leader is in a church or a church-owned institution, don’t expect a lot of immediate action from those in authority over him. Not even when the leader inflicts considerable pain on others (as paranoid leaders are wont to do), or when he drives the institution he leads into the ground.

I bring up the church context of paranoid leadership not only because of my own professional concern with churches and the academy. I do so because a surprising amount of the literature being published now about paranoid styles of leadership explicitly addresses the church context.

The growing body of literature about paranoid leaders within churches and church-owned institutions suggests that the presence of paranoid leadership within churches and their institutions is a serious problem. And it’s a problem that grows more intractable as churches and church-owned institutions (including church-sponsored universities) adopt the CEO model of leadership. There are strong parallels between the corporate model of CEO leadership and the paranoid style of leadership. As Matthew C. Wells’ Parallelism: A Handbook of Social Analysis (XLibris, 2002) notes, the corporate CEO model of leadership and paranoid systems of leadership share paternalistic presuppositions about what good leadership is all about (http://parallelism.org/13949-WELL-layout2.pdf).

Wells indicates that paternalistic leadership systems always glorify and idealize the big woman or big man on top—the Freudian parent-ruler. Paternalistic worldviews are inherently hierarchical and anti-democratic. They militate against the fraternal style of leadership of a democratic system, which seeks to empower all citizens. They assume that the big papa or big mama on top knows best, and the obligation of those ruled is to submit and obey, not to question, think, or take any initiative independent of the big mama or big papa on top.

Though Western nations pride themselves on their democratic structures, in Wells’ view, the many Western institutions remained deeply tinged with paternalistic (and thus anti-democratic, anti-fraternalistic) presuppositions. Wells notes that the corporate world continues to structure itself on hierarchical, paternalistic principles akin to those of monarchical or theocratic institutions (p. 30).***

Paternalistic worldviews and the social structures they spawn are also heavily gendered. Because of their strong investment in the fantasy of the big man (big woman) on top, paternalistic systems reward “masculine” traits and punish “feminine” ones—particularly when the latter are exhibited by men. Paternalistic institutions view the world through a rigid optic of good-evil, black-white, male-female. “Good” men (or "good" women cast in the mold of paternalistic men) are tough, strong, macho, aggressive, powerful, and decisive (p. 21). “Bad” men display “feminine” characteristics such as softness, weakness, or maternal behavior (p. 22).

The growing body of literature about the paranoid style of leadership within churches and church-sponsored institutions indicates that this leadership style finds a comfortable home within institutions that are heavily gendered, with males (and women molded in the male image) on top and females (including men stigmatized by paternalistic leaders as “feminine”) on bottom. Churches and church institutions produce and protect paranoid leaders because they give privilege to the male, particularly when he bullies, dominates, divides and conquers.

Churches and church-owned institutions—including church-owned universities—gravitate towards the CEO model of leadership because that model incorporates paternalistic presuppositions that are equally congenial to church leaders. The hierarchical, top-down leadership style of the corporate business community mirrors the hierarchical, top-down leadership style of churches, and vice versa, because both are rooted in paternalism and its gender-biased assumptions about social reality—assumptions that the world works best when it has a big man on top, or a big woman created in the image of the big man.

For the preceding reasons (and to return to the analysis of academic institutions), a church-owned academic institution that finds itself led by an out-of-control paranoid leader cannot expect much assistance from the church sponsoring that institution, or from leaders of that church, or from church dignitaries who sit on the governing board of such a church-owned university. Even when the behavior of a paranoid leader of a university is clearly causing considerable suffering to others, or is so aberrant that the decisions made by the paranoid leader are likely to endanger the university, church officials and governing boards are likely to uphold the leader until her or his behavior becomes egregiously toxic.

They are likely to do so because questions about out-of-control paranoid leaders are far too likely to lead to probing questions about the paternalistic assumptions that underlie church leadership and leadership in church-owned institutions. If those probing questions are entertained, they lead in turn to substantive revision of how the church and its institutions are structured—they lead to reform, with economic implications. It is easier to hold the line, while engaging in impression management and issuing bland statements about the institution’s commitment to democratic principles.

How do those who serve within a church-owned academic institution led by a paranoid leader recognize what is happening to their institution? What are the signs of an out-of-control paranoid university leader? How does one describe the paranoid style of leadership?

■ Everything has to be about the leader. Paranoid leaders take their own inner misery—their insecurity and pathological distrust of everyone around them—and spread it around. When a paranoid leader is at the helm of an institution, the inner drama of the leader is all that counts. The entire organization must be made to respond to that drama on a daily basis, or the leader becomes even more intensely paranoid.

When things work well, the paranoid leader is convinced by the silence of the well-functioning university she head that people are plotting against her. When leaders she appoints are doing a good job and the organization is running smoothly, she becomes convinced that they are seeking to usurp or authority or rival her.

The paranoid leader is intensely unhappy (which is to say, intensely distrustful and out of control) when things are not upside down and torn apart. Because the inner drama of the paranoid leader must replicate itself all around that leader, to convince the leader that she remains on top and is not being subverted, the paranoid leader will go so far as to produce artificial crises as a justification for expelling a demonized employee on whom she has cast suspicion. Or she will tear everything up in order to produce crisis—for example, by repeatedly removing good leaders from her team only to appoint leaders incapable of doing a good job.

■ Everything must be kept in chaos. This is the only way the paranoid leader can reassure herself that she remains on top. There is constant disruption, constant tearing up of leadership teams and of well-functioning structures within the organization she leads. Those working for the paranoid leader are constantly subjected to ever more refined loyalty tests and loyalty oaths. The paranoid leader will even spend quite a bit of her time and energy devising tests for those on whom her suspicion has fallen. She will create traps for these hapless employees, and will urge others on her team to engage in plots to try to ensnare someone of whose disloyalty she has become convinced, in the inner drama that determines all of her choices.

■ Divide and conquer is the order of the day. The paranoid leader will deliberately sow seeds of discord within her leadership team and in the institution she leads, in an attempt to assure her own dominance. She will externalize her paranoid inner drama in scripts shared with others, in which she paints now one and then another of her subordinates as the perceived enemy, as malicious, as incompetent, as disloyal to her and out to get her.

As Wells notes, paternalistic systems thrive on pitting one against another: “Balanced rivalry typifies all paternalistic systems because paternal authority is maintained through a strategy of ‘divide and rule’ (p. 25).” Wells also suggests that paranoid leaders deliberately cultivate discord in their leadership teams, in order to control those who report to the leader:

This tendency towards conflict often leads to what has been described as the paranoid leadership style. Because individuals are continuously played off against one another, there is invariably a tendency towards conspiracy. This fostering of conspiracy at all levels of society ultimately leads to a rise in the level of paranoia. This as well can be seen in the proliferation of intrigue, conspiracies, and counter-conspiracies, as well as conspiracy theories (p. 26).**

The paranoid leader will appoint subordinates to leadership positions not because they are competent, but because they have utilitarian value to the leader. She will seek to surround herself with the less competent and the venal because they can more easily be played against each other and manipulated to keep her inner drama on the table as the driving agenda of the organization.

She will actively seek out damning information about those she appoints to leadership positions, so that she can better control these leaders and prevent them from plotting against her, as she fantasizes that those on her team do. She will pit the worst members of her team—those she can most easily control—against the best, those concerned only to do a good job, whose professional competence demands that they challenge her when her paranoid needs insist that they sabotage their own good work to assure her of their loyalty.

The leader also gleefully uses spies. These are usually people who have learned to be adroit about massaging her paranoid ego. They are trustworthy advisors precisely because they tailor their reports to keep her paranoia well-fed. They are, in short, accomplished liars and game players whose misleading reports the paranoid leader chooses to believe, because those reports reinforce the paranoid fantasies of the leader.

■ Character assassination is routine. Competent, hard-working employees who lack a taste for the blood sports of vilification and intrigue in which the paranoid leader excels should expect to find themselves targeted by the out-of-control paranoid leader. Under the governance of a paranoid leader, such employees commonly find themselves targeted for no apparently reason at all, or because their good work is seen by the leader as a threat, as a suggestion that she is not in ultimate control or cannot do the job of the employee even better.

The paranoid leader will actively work to solicit negative information about such an employee. If the employee is a member of her leadership team, she may well appoint an easily manipulated, unscrupulous, ethically challenged employee to an associate position, so that this employee can report on and undermine the leader he or she is appointed to assist.

The paranoid leader sometimes even forces co-workers to generate bogus reports of incompetence regarding the employee she is currently targeting. She may produce copious files of manufactured “documents” to demonstrate that employee’s malfeasance, and to convince her board that she is justified in destroying the job and/or career of the person she has targeted.

Wherever the paranoid leader works, there will be a trail of bodies—of those targeted and attacked by her. Good employees will become sick as a result of the game-playing. Careers and reputations will be destroyed. Bad work will be rewarded and good work will be punished. And the institution she leads will suffer tremendously as a result.

What can be done to change such situations? Unfortunately, not a great deal—particularly not when the paranoid leader is well-ensconced in a church or in a church institution. As I have noted, churches and their institutions are loath to challenge or correct the paranoid leader, because doing so introduces systemic questions about why churches often belie their professed ideals in how they do business—questions churches do not wish to entertain.

In most church-sponsored institutions, nothing will be done to deal with an out-of-control paranoid leader, until she becomes so toxic that the future of the organization is placed at risk by the excesses of the leader. The body count may mount up, payouts in severance deals for demonized and expelled workers may proliferate, consultants may be brought in at lavish cost only to be discounted when their verdict does not reinforce the script of the paranoid leader’s inner drama.

As all this goes on, the church-sponsoring institution will stand by, not giving much thought to what is happening, until circumstances force the church and the governing board of the university to act. Thinking about such distasteful situations requires, after all, careful examination of the fundamental assumptions many churches make about leadership—and about gender and its privileges . . . .

*This posting continues my reflections on the shortcomings of the CEO model of top-down leadership in academic and church life—http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2008/12/ceo-model-of-academic-leadership.html.

**See also F. Abrahams, “A Systems Psychodynamic on Dealing with Change Amongst Different Leadership Styles” (Masters thesis, University of South Africa, 2005), p. 99—http://etd.unisa.ac.za/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-06062006-133152/unrestricted/07chapter6.pdf.

***Here, a footnote to the posting to which this reflection links is worth repeating: On the foundational significance of institutions of higher learning in imparting the values necessary for democracy to thrive, see the significant 20th-century educator Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman University, who notes in her "Spiritual Autobiography," “In this atomic age, when one small materialistic possession has wrought fear among peoples of the world, I am convinced that leadership must strive hard to show the value of these spiritual tools which are as real as anything we touch or feel, and far more powerful."