FIRST THINGS March 2013

HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE,
PARENTING, AND
ADOPTION
Gilles Bernheim, Chief Rabbi of France, says
what we often forget to say.
great many of our fellow
citizens see demands for
homosexual marriage as just one more step in the democratic struggle
against injustice and discrimination, a continuation of the fight against
racism. It is in the name of equality, of open-mindedness, of being pro-
gressive and right-thinking that we are asked to accept this challenge to
the foundations of our society. It seems, moreover, on the basis of public
opinion polls, that this challenge is already accepted by a majority of our
fellow citizens and thus the question of its establishment as a matter of
law has not provoked a debate worthy of the momentous issues at stake.
Gilles Bernheim is the Chief Rabbi of France. This statement was translated by Ralph Hancock of
Brigham Young University, and adapted for publication from a longer essay.
41
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE, PARENTING, AND ADOPTION
I believe, on the contrary, that it is a matter of
the greatest importance to make clear the true im-
plications of the negation of sexual difference and to
debate publicly what is at stake rather than falling
back on principles, such as equality, that flatter those
who set themselves up as their standard bearers, even
though the way these principles are invoked to justify
the homosexual-marriage agenda does not stand up
to critical scrutiny. This subject deserves better than
the court of political correctness, whose authority,
advocates of homosexual marriage hope, will prevail
until the law is voted ona tribunal they defend by
means of disqualifying caricatures against anyone
who dares to question their project and their motives.
I
speak as a rabbi, and more particularly as the
Chief Rabbi of France. I am not the spokes-
man of a group of individuals but the voice
of French Judaism in its religious dimension.
Like other rabbis, I am a reader, a teacher, and
a commentator on texts of Jewish wisdom that are
part of a great tradition of dialogue, of dialectics, of
hermeneuticsin a word, of pluralism. I have always
understood myself as duty-bound to intellectual en-
gagement in the great choices of history and first of
all in the great choices faced by my country. Thus I
am necessarily concerned by the proposed legaliza-
tion of homosexual marriage, as well as by plans to
change our laws so as to accommodate homosexu-
al parenting and adoption. This is why I reject the
stance of a minority of religious leaders who with-
draw from the debate on the grounds that we have
the possibility of preserving marriage as a religious
institution distinct from civil marriage. There is noth-
ing to admire in such withdrawal when it serves the
interest of those who avoid debates.
My choice to speak up is the studied expression of
the solidarity that binds me to the national commu-
nity of which I am a part. It also reflects my sense of
responsibility to uphold the universal principles that
France has forged and defended over the centuries,
principles on which the Republic was founded and
without which it cannot endure. If non-Jews choose
to hear me out, they will receive what I say in light
of their own personal judgment, their own system of
values, and their own identity as religious, agnostic,
or atheist. It will be up to them to recognize any wis-
dom or moral value in what I say.
It will surprise no one that my worldview is guided
by the Bible and by the rabbinic commentaries. On
the key subjects of sexuality and reproduction, it is
based on the complementarity between man and
woman. In this essay, I have referred only to the Book
of Genesis and thus have chosen not to mention the
prohibitions against homosexuality included in Le-
viticus, for it seems to me that what is at stake now is
not homosexuality, which is a fact, a reality, whatev-
er my view of it as a rabbi might be. What is at stake
is the risk of irreversibly scrambling genealogies, as
well as legal and social statuses (the child-as-subject
becoming child-as-object) and identitiesa confu-
sion that would be harmful to society as a whole and
that would lose sight of the general interest in seeking
the advantage of a tiny minority.
Let me add that my biblical vision of the world,
in which justice is a central principle, leads me natu-
rally to condemn and to fight strongly against the
physical and verbal attacks of which homosexual
persons are victims, in the same way that I strongly
condemn and fight against racist and anti-Semitic
speeches and deeds.
PART ONE
Rabhi Bernheim offers an analysis of arguments
advanced by those who favor a law establishing ho-
mosexual marriage, first giving the argument that
we hear for it and then what we often neglect to say.
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE IN THE NAME OF EQUALITY?
What we hear: "Homosexuals are victims of dis-
crimination. They must have the right to marry, the
same as heterosexuals."
What we often neglect to say: From the fact that
people love each other it does not follow necessarily
that they have the right to be married, whether they
be heterosexual or homosexual. For example, a man
cannot marry a woman who is already married, even
if they love each other. Likewise, a woman cannot
be married to two men on the grounds that she loves
both of them and that both want to be her husband.
A father cannot marry his daughter, even if their love
is uniquely paternal and filial.
Of course, we understand the wish of people
who are in love that their love be recognized. Still,
there are strict rules defining what kinds of unions
can be recognized as marriages and what kinds can-
not. Thus "marriage for everyone" is only a slogan,
since after the authorization of homosexual mar-
riage the law would maintain forms of inequality
and discrimination that would continue to apply to
those who love each other but to whom marriage is
not available.
The argument for marriage for all conceals a split
between two existing visions of marriage. According
to one worldview, which I share with a great number
of people, both believers and nonbelievers, marriage
42
FIRST THINGS March 2013
is not only the recognition of a loving attachment. It
is the institution that articulates the union between
man and woman as part of the succession of genera-
tions. It is the establishment of a familythat is, a
social cell that creates a set of parent-child relations
among its members. Beyond the common life of two
individuals, it organizes the life of a community con-
sisting of descendants and ancestors. So understood,
marriage is a fundamental act in the construction
and the stability of individuals as well as of society.
According to another worldview, marriage is an
obsolete and rigid institution, the absurd legacy of a
traditional and alienating society. Is it not paradoxi-
cal to hear those who share this worldview raising
their voices in favor of homosexual marriage? Why
do those who reject marriage and prefer free unions
demonstrate alongside activists in favor of homo-
sexual marriage?
Whichever worldview you hold, it is clear that
what is going on behind the slogan of "marriage
equality" is a substitution: An institution fraught
with legal, cultural, and symbolic significance would
be replaced by a de-sexed legal category, thus under-
mining the foundation of individuals and of the fam-
ily. In the name of equality and the struggle against
discrimination, should we suppress all references to
sexual difference in relations between citizens and
the state, beginning with the marriage ceremony and
the family records that issue from this ceremony?
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE TO PROTECT THE PARTNER?
What we hear: "Many homosexuals find them-
selves in a precarious situation without legal pro-
tection after a death or a separation. Homosexual
marriage will provide a remedy."
What we often neglect to say: Marriage, or for
that matter civil union, cannot create rights and obli-
gations unless it is legally contracted. In other words,
the authorization of homosexual marriage in France
would not automatically guarantee the protection of
all partners in all homosexual couples. The partners
would still need to marry. This is equally true for
heterosexual couples, many of whom choose to live
together without marrying.
Many heterosexual couples choose civil unions (in
French, the pacte civil de solidarit, or PACS) because
they find this form of union in their interest, in par-
ticular the economic and legal parameters that define
the material interests of the parties (housing, finances,
social insurance, and so on). The gap between the
two legal forms is limited. Even if certain provisions
given automatically to the married are not given auto-
matically to those in civil unions, they are nevertheless
possible. Take the example of inheritance. A partner
in a civil union can inherit under the same conditions
as a spouse in a married couple, but his partner must
have drawn up a will and designated him as the heir.
In the case of PACS, as in the case of marriage, the
partner's inheritance is not subject to estate taxes.
A question does arise about the difference in com-
pensatory payments when a separation causes a sig-
nificant decline in income for one of the partners,
though the partner can apply to a family law judge
to divide joint property and redress grievances. I
want to express my wish that technical solutions be
found that would protect partners in civil unions at
the same level as married spouses in the case of death
or separation.
And I wish especially to emphasize that in the
framework of civil unions already in place in France,
there is no reason that our concern for protecting
partners would cause us to put in question the insti-
tution of marriage in the radical way implied by the
authorization of homosexual marriage.
HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING IN THE NAME OF LOVE?
What we hear: "What is most important is love.
A homosexual couple can give much love to a child,
sometimes even more than a heterosexual couple."
What we often neglect to say: To love a child is
one thing; to love a child with a love that provides
the necessary structure is another. There can be no
doubt that homosexuals have the same capacity to
love a child and to convey this love as do hetero-
sexuals, but the role of parents extends beyond the
love they feel for their children. To reduce the pa-
rental bond to its affective and educative aspects is
to overlook the fact that the parent-child bond is a
psychological vector of fundamental importance for
the child's sense of identity.
All the affection in the world will not suffice to
produce the basic psychological structures that ad-
dress the child's need to know where he comes from.
For the child establishes his own identity only by a
process of differentiation, which presupposes that he
knows whom he resembles. Thus he needs to know
that he issues from the love and the union between
a man, his father, and a woman, his mother, thanks
to the sexual difference between them. Even adopted
children know that they originate from the love and
the desire of their parents, even when these are not
their biological parents.
Father and mother represent a genealogy for the
child. The child needs a clear and coherent genealogy
in order to find his place as an individual. What has
always and will always constitute our humanity is the
43
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE, PARENTING, AND ADOPTION
capacity for language in a sexually differentiated body
and as part of a genealogy. To identify a child's par-
entage is not only to indicate who will raise the child,
with whom he will have affective relations, and who
will serve as his adults of reference. It is also, most
important, to situate him in a generational chain. The
chain guarantees each individual a place in the world
in which he lives, for he knows where he came from.
Today we face the immense risk of irreversibly
scrambling the chain of generations. Just as one can-
not destroy the foundations of a house without the
house collapsing, one cannot reject the foundations
of our society without putting that society in danger.
"Homosexual parenting" is not parenting. The
term itself was invented to mitigate the impossibil-
ity of homosexuals' being parents. This new founda-
tion, invented to promote the legal option of giving a
child two "parents" of the same sex, is part of a fic-
tion. Neither marriage nor parenthood has ever been
based on the sexuality of individuals but rather on
sex itselfthat is, on the anthropological distinction
between man and woman.
Thus, by abandoning the man-woman distinction
in favor of the heterosexual-homosexual distinc-
tion, homosexual activists demand not parenthood
(paternity or maternity) but the right to some new
abstract parental status that reduces the role of the
"parent" to the exercise of certain functions such as
education. This overlooks the fact that, even in the
case of adopted children, to be a parent is not only to
educate the child but also to recreate lines of paternity
and maternity.
We must therefore strongly reaffirm that to be a
father or a mother is not merely an affective, cultural,
or social function. The term "parent" is not neutral;
it involves sexual difference. To accept the term "ho-
mosexual parenting" is to strip the word "parent" of
its intrinsic bodily, biological, and fleshly meaning.
The Association of Gay and Lesbian Parents and
Euture Parents has proposed several substitutes for the
term "parent" depending on the various functions to
be performed: "stepparent," "co-parent," "homo-par-
ent," "mother to another," "biological parent," "legal
parent," "social parent," "second parent," etc. It seems
unlikely that a child could manage naturally to find a
stable meaning in relation to all such terminologies.
HOMOSEXUAL PARENTI NG TO GIVE LEGAL PROTEC-
TI ON TO THE CHILDREN WHO ALREADY HAVE HOMO-
SEXUAL PARENTS?
What we hear: "Homosexual parenting already
exists as a matter of fact: Hundreds of thousands
of children are being raised by homosexual couples.
A legal framework must be created to protect these
children."
What we often neglect to say: The law already
allows for the practical organization of recomposed
families. Article 377 of the civil code of Erance lets
parents delegate the exercise of parental authority to
a third party by the decision of a family law judge.
The mechanism was made more flexible in 2002 and
now lets family law judges organize the sharing of
parental authority as best suits the educational needs
of the child and in accordance with parental wishes.
The Supreme Court has already accepted the proposi-
tion that parental authority can be shared between a
mother and her homosexual companion. The Court
affirmed that the civil code "does not oppose a moth-
er who has sole parental rights delegating all or part
of the exercise of those rights to the woman with
whom she lives in a stable and continuous union, as
long as the circumstances require it and as such a
measure is in conformity with the best interests of
the child."
There is no need to add to the law. Erench law
already has the resources to address the needs of re-
composed families, including "families" led by ho-
mosexual "parents." Rather than adding to the legal
code, wouldn't it be better simply to make more peo-
ple aware of the law, encouraging flexible solutions
appropriate to individual situations?
ADOPTION TO PROTECT THE RIGHT TO A CHILD?
What we hear: "Homosexuals are victims of dis-
crimination. Just like heterosexuals, they must have
the right to have children."
What we often neglect to say: The right to a child
does not exist. The desire to have a child in no way
establishes the right to have a child, neither for het-
erosexuals nor for homosexuals. The wishes of an
infertile heterosexual couple may not be honored if
conditions are not optimal. Eor example, one may
judge that a young and healthy couple is better suited
to have a child than an older couple in fragile health.
If a right to a child for homosexual couples were rec-
ognized, then all heterosexual couples denied chil-
dren would feel themselves victims of discrimination
in one way or another and would have grounds for
claiming the same right.
There is no question of denying the suffering
experienced by homosexual couples owing to their
infertilitya suffering they share with heterosexual
couples who cannot procreate. Such homosexual cou-
ples now demand that their suffering be recognized
and alleviated. But no one has the right to be relieved
of suffering at another's expense, particularly when
44
FIRST THINGS March 2013
this is to the disadvantage of the weak and innocent.
Their suffering is not a sufficient reason to give them
the right to adopt.
The child is not an object of rights but a subject
of rights. To speak of a "right to a child" instrumen-
talizes and objectifies the child. In the current de-
bate, the child as a person, as a subject, is absent in
the arguments of those who demand adoption for
homosexual couples. This absence allows adults de-
manding rights to avoid asking about the rights of
the child, what the child might need, and whether the
child might prefer having a father and mother instead
of two parents of the same sex. This is a case where
our carelessness borders on cynicism. The right of
the child is radically different from the right to the
child. The former right is fundamental. It consists in
particular in giving the child a family in which he will
have the best chance to have the best life.
ADOPTION TO HELP THE CHILDREN WAITING TO BE
ADOPTED?
what we hear: "Thousands of children are wait-
ing for adoption, and it would be better for them to
be adopted by a homosexual couple than to remain
in an orphanage."
What we often neglect to say: The adopted child
needs a father and mother even more than other chil-
dren. At the deepest level, viscerally, he desires to
find a place close to the basic cell that gave him life: a
father and a mother. The adopted child is burdened
by the simultaneous traumas of abandonment and
of the family's double identity. Even more than other
children, this child needs a clear sense of a biological
chain. This is because he or she has no sense of being
the fruit of a loving union. He was not desired, he has
no one's eyes, and he cannot recognize himself in any
member of his new family.
It is common for the adopted child to reject one
of the two sexes. It is therefore important that the
child be able to identify with two parents of differ-
ent sexes: with his mother, because he needs to be
reconciled with the woman; and with his father, in
order to know the presence of a man, without whom
his mother would not have been able to have a child.
Homosexual adoption thus risks aggravating the
trauma of the abandoned child, for the generational
chain would be doubly broken: first in the reality of
the child's abandonment, and second, symbolically,
in the fact of the homosexuality of the adoptive par-
ents. Do we have the right to ask a child who has
already been wounded by his past to adapt to the
affective situation of his parents, a situation that is
very different at once from that of the great majority
of other children and from what the child aspires to
rediscover? Is it the adopted child's responsibility to
adapt to the affective life choices of his or her parents?
Adoption exists to provide the child a family, and
not the reverse. Adoption is intended to address the
child's hardship. It is thus essential to clearly discern
the intentions of every couple that submits a request
for adoption: Is the child to be adopted for himself, or
to satisfy the couple's need? Does the couple want to
remedy the child's hardship, or does it seek a remedy
for its own pain in not being able to have a child? To
be sure, a couple would not adopt a child if it did not
feel the need to do so. Nevertheless, we must be sure
that the child's interests come first, as this is stated
in our family law: Every child has the right to a fam-
ilyfirst of all to his own family, and, failing this, to
a family suited to become his own by adoption. This
is why it is necessary to remind ourselves that desir-
ing a child is not sufficient grounds for adoption, and
that apparently simple solutions based on compassion
are not always good solutions: Much harm can be
done in the name of the good.
NEW FORMS OF HOMOSEXUAL PARENTING TO CREATE
EQUALITY?
What we hear: "The meaning of parenting is
evolving, particularly thanks to medically assisted
procreation. The law must take account of such
developments."
What we often neglect to say: The lesbian and
feminist association LesBienNes (The Well-Born)
gives the four forms homosexual parenting would
take following its legal authorization: "It can be the
result of a family's recomposition with a partner of
the same sex following a heterosexual union. It can
come about within a system of co-parenting in which
gays and lesbians agreed to have a child who will be
raised cooperatively between the two households. It
can also be the result of an adoption. Or, finally, it
can be the result of artificial insemination or of a
medically assisted procreation."
LGBT activists seek to advance the idea that any
limits on the rights of "parenting" would be a viola-
tion of the principle of equality and thus an injustice,
thereby setting aside the fact that a child is always
born of the union of a man and a womaneven
if this union may sometimes be medically assisted.
These activists demand the consistent application of
the principle of equality to leverage their cause, in
particular in the case of medically assisted procre-
ation for lesbian couples.
These new forms of homosexual parenting have
opened the door to a frightening array of possible
45
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE, PARENTING, AND ADOPTION
combinations. For example, a lesbian might donate
an egg to her partner, who would then be insemi-
nated and carry a child for the couple. The sperm
might be provided by a couple of male homosexuals
who would then function as co-parents for the child,
who would thus have four parents. Such combina-
tions and others are now a reality. These invented
combinations give rise to two demands. The first is
to legitimize them because they already exist. The
second is the creation of a universal right to any such
combination, on the grounds that access to these
means of reproduction in foreign countries is expen-
sive and therefore a source of inequality.
It is well understood that, in many domains of life,
an infraction^that is to say, a failure to respect a
prohibitioncannot be sufficient grounds for lifting
the prohibition that has not been respected. In other
words, the reality of certain facts is not sufficient to
create a legal reality. This holds as well for the new
forms of homosexual parenting.
It is also clear that what is at stake in medically
assisted procreation and in surrogate pregnancy goes
far beyond the mere question of homosexual parent-
ing and far exceeds what is provided for in French
family law. It is essential, therefore, that the subjects
continue to be treated in the proper framework of
the law of bioethics and that this framework not be
taken hostage by demands aiming to erase all sexual
difference in our society.
THE LAW TO BE CHANGED BECAUSE MANY PEOPLE
WANT IT TO BE?
What we hear: "Hundreds of thousands of adults
and children are concerned. The French favor homo-
sexual marriage. Other countries have already legal-
ized it. Why fall behind?"
What we often neglect to say: The statistics cited
in 1999 in support of civil unions (the PACS) were
grossly exaggerated, and this practice continues in
the case of homosexual marriage. In 1999, we were
told that it was urgent to adopt PACS because five
million persons wanted to enter into such unions.
But the official government statistics now show that
904,746 entered into them between 2000 and 2010
and that only 7 percent of these were between per-
sons of the same sex (that is, 63,609 PACS in ten
years). The same overbidding is at work today: The
legislative proposal states that there are 3.5 million
gays and lesbians in France and cites the Associa-
tion of Gay and Lesbian Parents and Future Parents
(APGL) to the effect that 45 percent of lesbians and
36 percent of gays desire to have children. This would
work out to about 700,000 homosexual marriages.
In Spain, a country of 46 million inhabitants,
there are about 3,100 homosexual marriages each
year, after a first year (2006) of 4,300 marriages.
The number of children of homosexual couples
has also been greatly exaggerated. According to the
APGL, there is an urgent need for legislation because
300,000 children are being raised in France by par-
ents of the same sex. The National Institute of De-
mographic Studies (INED), the official state agency
for demographic data, estimates the number of chil-
dren to be between 24,000 and 40,000. There is one
number, by the way, which is easy to verify and not
subject to debatenamely, the number of members
of the APGL: There are 1800 in all of France.
The legalization of homosexual marriage and
adoption is a measure neither of progress nor of the
advanced status of the nation. It is often said that
France is falling behind in relation to other countries
that have legalized homosexual marriage or adoption
in the framework of a civil union. I prefer to consider,
as an index of the progress or advanced status of a
nation, the well-being of the population and its con-
fidence in the future, alongside traditional data on
socioeconomic status and educational and scientific
achievements. Where questions of social justice are
concerned, the nation might appear at the same time
far behind and very advanced, depending upon quite
arbitrary standards of classification.
No doubt some will take pleasure in a classifica-
tion in terms of homosexual marriage, but one would
first have to demonstrate that it is in the nation's gen-
eral interest to be out in front. Or one might appeal to
a classification in terms of minority rights, but there
again, wouldn't the first priority be to concentrate on
the integration of certain minorities in the republic
and especially on the number of attacks based on
racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia?
Over the past ten years, several institutes that study
public opinion have regularly asked representative
samples of the population of those over eighteen years
of age whether they favored or opposed homosexual
marriage and adoption of children by same-sex cou-
ples. These two questions reflect an interest in adding
to the rights of homosexuals as part of a larger concern
for the struggle for equality and against discrimina-
tion. These polls show undeniably that the percentage
of French people who favor homosexual marriage has
increased steadily for ten years and that this group now
forms a significant majority: 65 percent held this view
in the most recent poll, in August 2012. Fifty-three per-
cent favor adoption for same-sex couples, a figure five
points below the level of support a year earlier.
It would be useful to debate the vision of politics
according to which facts must become law^^that is.
46
FIRST THINGS March 2013
that the law must change as soon as polls reveal that
a majority of the public favors an opinion. But this
debate would take us too far from the immediate sub-
ject of homosexual marriage and parenting. Public
opinion is volatile in a number of areas. The fact that
a public opinion poll reveals a result above 50 per-
cent is not enough to justify a law or to decree that a
debate must not take place.
Nevertheless, if one were to accept public opin-
ion polls as the compass of our society, would it not
make sense to survey the French people also on all
the demands made by LGBT activists in the name of
equality and antidiscrimination? Would it not make
sense above all to ask questions from the point of
view of adopted children, as well as questions con-
cerning the concrete consequences in their daily lives
of the effacing of sexual differences? The fact is that
the two questions regularly posed over the past ten
years do not allow us to understand the state of pub-
lic opinion on a whole range of issues associated with
homosexual marriage and parenting.
PART TWO
Rabbi Bernheim shows that in this debate there is
a confrontation between two worldviews. On the
one hand is the worldview of the LGBT activists
who wish to deny sexual difference and replace
fixed sexual identity with a chosen sexual orienta-
tion, in service of the project of destroying marriage.
On the other is that of the biblical vision of the ir-
reducible difference between man and woman and of
their complementarity, a constitutive difference that
opens up transcendence.
THE NEGATION OF SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
L
GBT activists wish to deny sexual differ-
ence. One of their tools is "gender theory."
First used by feminists in their struggle for
sexual equality, gender theory was taken up
by homosexual activists in their fight against
sexual difference. In the 1960s, Anglo-Saxon femi-
nist movements denounced the social differences that
persisted between men and women based solely on
sexual difference. Their ideas gave birth to the notion
of "gender," which can be defined as the social role
attributed to each sex. Gender is relative to norms
and standards that determine what is considered
masculine or feminine. In other words, it defines the
difference and the social hierarchy between men and
women as a function of their sex. Such gender norms
are supposed to be the systematic basis for male dom-
ination over women.
Whereas sex is a matter of biological difference
between men and women, gender refers to social dif-
ferences based on these sexual differences. Gender
could therefore be described as the social dimension
of sexual difference. Theories that confine individu-
als to certain roles, jobs, or images, such as "the man
at work and the woman in the home," are thus de-
nounced as oppressive.
Gender theorists believe, as Simone de Beauvoir
said, that "one is not born a woman, one becomes a
woman" by assuming certain "gender characteristics"
that are, for the most part, cultural constructions that
these theorists denounce. One is born "neuter," and
it is society that imposes a male identity on each man
because of his masculine sex and a female identity on
each woman because of her feminine sex, with all the
inequalities implied in this difference.
These theorists do not define the individual by his
or her sex (man or woman) but by his or her sexuality
(homo-, hetero-, etc.). They tend to efface the biologi-
cal and anatomical dimension that separates the two
sexes in order to see only multiple genders, dictated
by culture and by history. Since they consider sexual
difference to be a social and cultural construction and
therefore artificial, feminist movements denounce ex-
isting social relationships and demand a culture ca-
pable of protecting women. One implication of this
protection is the renunciation of heterosexuality.
T
^ he most radical theorists go further: They
express the wish to eliminate all dispari-
ties between men and women and to
achieve perfect equality between them.
Since they believe there can be no dif-
ference without inequality, they demand the end to
sexual difference between men and women. (What a
paradox it is, in a society where we swear by nothing
so much as the acceptance of difference, to perceive
difference as a problem. But there is no antinomy be-
tween difference and equality; the opposite of equal-
ity is not difference, and equality is not contradicted
by sexual difference.)
Since these theorists presume that sexual differ-
ence is the enduring cause of the submission of the
woman to the man, equality necessarily implies the
end of sexual difference. Thus it appears that the fi-
nal goal of the feminist revolution is not only to have
done away with the privilege of masculinity but also
to eliminate the very distinction between the sexes.
If gender is a pure social construction, then all social
representation of sexuality is acquired and artificial.
In this way, little by little, sex understood as a natural
47
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE, PARENTING, AND ADOPTION
category is put in question and sexuality itself as a
natural given is relativized.
Queer theory pushes gender theory to its extreme
point and blames as heterosexist the assumption that
heterosexuality is the norm and therefore superior to
other sexual orientations. Once heterosexuality has
lost its self-evidence, all forms of sexual construction
become possible. Queer theory demands the creation
of a new anthropology that would not be subject to
"obligatory heterosexuality" or to "the self-evidence
of heterosexuality," with the aim of retuming to
some earlier stage before the existence of sexual or
"gendered" difference. It wishes to have done with
the "gendered" perception of the individual and
with all "gendered" usage of words, so that "man"
or "masculine" might designate a feminine body and
the body itself is no longer understood as a given real-
ity. Being only a social construction, sexual identity
no longer in any way determines the psychic constitu-
tion of the individual. Thus there is no point in taking
it into account.
In the place of sexual identity, which is considered
a thing of the past, queer theory proposes the notion
of a "sexual orientation" chosen by each individual
based upon the gender that somehow defines his or
her interior being. By distinguishing the sexed (sexu-
ality as a given fact) from the sexual (sexuality as a
behavior), queer theory defends the idea that one can
be physically masculine but psychologically feminine,
or the reverse. It follows that, independent of one's
biology or sex, one can experience desires that are
homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, or asexual.
Queer theory thus invites the individual to leave
behind the straitjacket of "manhood" or "woman-
hood" that he did not choose and express himself ac-
cording to his self-perceptions. For example, a person
who is male biologically and "gendered" as a woman
could have heterosexual desires and thus live with
another man. From this point of view, the sexual
orientation chosen by the individual would never be
definitive and could vary over the course of one's life.
If gender is constructed, it can thus be deconstructed.
Femininity and masculinity become simple roles that
one can choose to take on or to reject, to parody or
to exchange as one wishes. Women, men, heteros,
homos, bisexuals, or transsexuals . . . . In this merry-
go-round of genders, sexual identities are replaced by
individual expressions, which are ceaselessly created
and recreated in relationship to one another. What is
authoritative is no longer an individual's sexual iden-
tity but his sexual orientation.
It is in the name of tolerance that defenders of queer
theory demand social recognition for all forms of sex-
ual orientation, but tolerance in this case is nothing
but a Trojan horse in the fight against heterosexuality,
a social norm that they judge to be an obsolete imposi-
tion, since it is built upon sexual difference.
This fight clearly aims at the current model of
the family, which is felt to be a form of social con-
ditioning and an obstacle to the expression of the
activists' "deep self"that is, their gender. Medicine
and law will have to adapt themselves to these per-
sonal expressions of sexuality. If an individual who
is physically masculine can in fact be psychologically
feminine or the reverse, and if it is the will of the
individual and no longer nature that determines sex,
then why not institutionalize the union of two peo-
ple, whoever they might be? And, in particular, what
would be the point of refusing to confide children
to such a couple, since all the different models are
considered equivalent?
Faced with such a series of demands, we are justi-
fied in asking whether the activists' purpose is not
finally the destruction, pure and simple, of marriage
and of the family as these have been traditionally
conceived. With this aim in mind, homosexual mar-
riage and the right to adoption for same-sex couples
appear as nothing more than a means for exploding
the foundations of society, making possible all kinds
of unions, finally liberated from an ancestral moral-
ity, and therefore definitively doing away with the
very notion of sexual difference.
THE BIBLICAL VISION
T
^ h e complementarity between man and
woman is a fundamental principle in
Judaism, in other religions, in some non-
religious intellectual traditions, and in the
organization of society, as well as in the
opinion of a very large majority of the population. For
me, this principle has a biblical basis. Others will find
its foundation elsewhere. Here I will concentrate on
the biblical view, not to the exclusion of other views.
"So G-d created man in his own image, in the
image of G-d he created him; male and female he cre-
ated them" (Gen. 1:27). The biblical account grounds
sexual difference in the act of creation. The polarity
of masculine-feminine pervades all that exists, from
clay to G-d. It is part of what is given primordially
and what guides the respective vocationsthe being
and the agencyof man and woman. The duality of
the sexes is part of the anthropological constitution
of humanity.
Thus, every person is brought sooner or later to
recognize that he possesses only one of the two fun-
damental versions of humanity and that the other
will remain forever inaccessible. Sexual difference
48
FIRST THINGS March 2013
is thus a mark of our finitude. I am not the whole
of humanity. A sexed being is not the totality of the
species; it needs a being of the other sex to produce
its likeness.
Genesis finds the similarity of the human being
with G-d only in the association of the man and the
woman and not in each one taken separately. This
suggests that the definition of a human being is per-
ceptible only in the conjunction ofthe two sexes. Be-
cause of his sexual identity, each person is referred
beyond himself. Erom the moment a person becomes
conscious of his sexual identity, he is thus confronted
with a kind of transcendence. The person is required
to think beyond himself and to acknowledge the in-
dependent existence of an inaccessible otherthat
is, of one who is essentially related to himself and
desirable yet never wholly comprehensible.
The experience of sexual difference thus becomes
the model for all experiences of transcendence; it
designates an indissoluble relation with an absolutely
inaccessible reality. On this basis we can understand
why the Bible so readily uses the relation between
man and woman as a metaphor for the relation be-
tween G-d and man: not because G-d is masculine
and man is feminine but because it is man's sexual
duality that most clearly manifests an unsurpassable
otherness within the closest relation.
It is significant that, in the Bible, sexual differ-
ence is mentioned just after the affirmation of the
fact that man is in the image of G-d. This means that
sexual difference is embedded in this image and thus
blessed by G-d. Sexual difference must therefore be
understood as a fact of nature infused with spiritual
intentions. This, we think, is indicated by the fact
that in the seven days of creation, the animals are not
presented as sexed beings. What characterizes them
is not the difference between the sexes but the differ-
ence of orders and, within each order, the differences
among species: There are the fish of the sea, the birds
of the air, the beasts of the earth, etc. All living beings
are produced, according to the repeated refrain, "af-
ter their kind" (Gen. 1:21). In this account, sexuality
is not mentioned except in the case of mankind, for
it is precisely in the loving relation, which includes
the sexual act by which man and woman "become
one flesh," that the two fulfill their proper end: to be
in G-d's image.
Sex is therefore not an accidental attribute of
the person. Genitals are the bodily expression of a
sexuality that affects a person's whole beingbody,
soul, and spirit. It is because man and woman per-
ceive themselves as different in their sexed being,
while they are both equally persons, that there can
be complementarity and communion. "Masculine"
and "feminine," "male" and "female," are relational
terms. Masculine is masculine only insofar as it is
oriented toward the feminineand, through the
feminine, toward the child; and this holds true for
every instance of paternity, carnal or spiritual. The
feminine is feminine only as oriented toward the mas-
culine; and, through the man, toward the childin
every case, then, toward the maternal, whether car-
nal or spiritual.
T
^ he second account of creation deepens
this teaching by presenting the act of
creation of the woman in the form of a
surgical operation by which G-d extracts
the one who will become Adam's com-
panion from what is most intimate to him. Hence-
forth, neither man nor woman will make up the
whole of humanity, and neither one will know all
that is human. This expresses a double finitude: I am
not everything; I am not even all that is human; and I
do not know all that is human: The other sex always
remains partly unknowable to me. This double fini-
tude implies that self-sufficiency is impossible for a
human being. This limitation is not a privation but
a gift that allows for the discovery of the love that
springs from wonder in the face of difference.
Through desire man discovers sexual difference at
the heart of nature. "This is now bone of my bones,
and flesh of my flesh." Openness to this other leads
to self-discovery as complementary difference: "She
shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of
Man." "Therefore shall a man leave his father and
his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they
shall be one flesh." In Hebrew, "one flesh" refers to
"the One," Ehadthe divine name par excellence,
according to the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: the L ORD is
G-d, the L ORD is one." It is in this union, which is at
once carnal and spiritual, a union made possible by
difference and by complementary sexual orientation,
that man and woman reproduce, in the created order,
the image of the One G-d.
As a counterpoint, the third chapter of Genesis
presents sin as the refusal of limitation and therefore
of difference: "Eor G-d knows that when you eat of
it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be as gods,
knowing good and evil." "The tree of knowledge
of good and evil""the tree of knowing good and
knowing evil"symbolizes precisely the two ways
of apprehending the limit. Eirst, "good knowing" re-
spects otherness and accepts the fact of not knowing
all and consents to not being all. This way of knowing
opens toward love and therefore toward "the tree of
life" planted by G-d in the middle of the garden. Sec-
ond, "evil knowing" refuses limits and difference. It
49
HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE, PARENTING, AND ADOPTION
eats the other in the hope of reconstituting the whole
within the self and of acquiring omniscience. This re-
fusal of the relation of otherness leads to greed and
envy, to violence, and ultimately to death.
Isn't this what is implied in the notion of gender:
the refusal of otherness, of difference, and the de-
mand to take on sexual behaviors independent of
sexual difference, the first gift of nature? Is this not,
in other words, the pretension to "know" the woman
as the man, to become the whole of humanity, to
emancipate oneself from all natural conditions, and
therefore "to become as gods"?
CONCLUSION
I
have written in light of the French debate.
Whether legal rights conceming homosexual
parenting and adoption are extended or lim-
ited, it is also clear that LGBT activists will use
homosexual marriage as a Trojan horse in their
greater efforts to deny natural sexuality, to erase sex-
ual differences and replace them with orientations
that make it possible to leave behind the "straitjacket
of nature" and to pursue the destruction of the het-
erosexual foundations of our society.
There would be no courage and no glory in voting
for a law based more on slogans than on arguments,
in conforming to the dominant political correctness
out of fear of being anathematized, and in hiding
behind a question such as: "Even if there is no rea-
son to pass a law, why is it a problem if we want
to pass one?" The problem with the proposed law
is the harm it portends for our society as a whole,
and this solely for the benefit of a tiny minority. This
harm consists in the irreversible scrambling of three
things: genealogies, by substituting "parenting" for
fatherhood and motherhood; the status of the child,
who would go from being a subject to being an object
to which others have a right; and sexual identity as
a natural given, which would have to give way to
orientation as an individual expression, in the name
of the struggle against inequality, perverted into the
elimination of differences.
The stakes must be clarified in the debate about ho-
mosexual marriage and parenting. They have implica-
tions for the society in which each of us wants to live.
I
am one of those who believe that a human be-
ing is not an autonomous construction with no
given structure, order, status, or role. I believe
that the affirmation of freedom does not imply
the negation of limits and that the affirmation
of equality does not imply the leveling of differences.
I believe that the powers of technology and of the
imagination do not require that we forget that being
is a gift, that life is prior to all of us, and that it has
its own laws.
I long for a society in which modernity would have
its full place but without implying the denial of el-
ementary principles of human and familial ecology;
for a society in which the diversity of ways of being,
of living, and of desiring is accepted as fortunate,
without allowing this diversity to be diluted in the
reduction to the lowest common denominator, which
effaces all differentiation; for a society in which, de-
spite the technological deployment of virtual realities
and the free play of critical intelligence, the simplest
wordsfather, mother, spouse, parentsretain their
meaning, at once symbolic and embodied; for a so-
ciety in which children are welcomed and find their
place, their whole place, without becoming objects
that must be possessed at all costs, or pawns in a
power struggle.
I long for a society in which the extraordinary
dynamic that is at work in the encounter between a
man and a woman continues to be established, under
a specific name. Q
50
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