The Triumph of Romanticism in the Supreme Court

The ruling in the Supreme Court last week to legalize homosexual marriage in the U.S. culminates the long history of romance becoming the sole cultural basis for marriage. Unfortunately it extends that mindset to unions that are also contrary to nature and contrary to the Biblical concept of marriage.


C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves spends a lot of time talking about how the falling-in-love experience is never adequate as a foundation for true love, love as described in the Bible such as in I Corinthians 13. He points out that following romantic love as the great authority in life is nothing new but has been especially ascendant in Western culture since the rise of the  romantic poets and romantic composers about 200 years ago. He makes clear that following the lead of romance often results in nothing more exalted than adultery, injustice, destruction of families and breaking of vows regardless of how soaring and exalted that in-love experience may be. Lasting love  ('caritas' in Latin, 'agape' in Greek), he goes on to explain, is more often controlled by such things as justice, fidelity, self-sacrifice, and self-denial.


Both the Bible and Lewis point out that there are a great many times when falling in love is not an acceptable reason for marriage. The Bible is especially emphatic about not marrying those outside the faith, regardless of whether you are in love. It is also clear that falling in love when you are already married or falling in love with a near relative (incest) are not acceptable reasons for marriage. The Biblical injunctions against homosexuality make it clear that falling in love with someone of the same sex is not an acceptable reason for marriage. There are many other cases, such as falling in love with someone vastly different in age, in which it is not a good idea even if it may not be immoral. There are a great many cases where falling in love is not an acceptable reason for marriage.




And while falling in love often provides the motivation to get married, it is never enough to sustain a marriage. Again the The Four Loves makes a very strong case that the love of I Corinthians 13 requires that things like justice, fidelity, self-sacrifice and the keeping of vows be the basis of a marriage, not falling in love.




In our culture the rise of romance as the only basis for marriage began to take its heavy toll with the rise of no fault divorce. This kind of divorce is based on the idea that no longer having the 'in love' experience is justification for divorce, and requires acceptance of the idea that falling in love is the basis of marriage. If marriage were based on more solid ground, then falling out of love would not be a basis for divorce. Having accepted the idea that falling in love is the foundation of marriage, it only made sense to see falling out of love as the basis for divorce.


If falling in love is the foundation of marriage, then falling in love is also the basis for sexual intimacy. From there, it is a very short step to accepting falling in love as justification for sex as soon as you fall in love, without waiting for marriage. So the rise in the cult of romance has resulted in easy divorce and also the rise in living together without marriage.


The church has been all too complicit in this. The church exalts the idea of falling in love as the basis of marriage just as the secular world does. The teaching of the Song of Solomon as a guidebook for marriage does exactly that, proclaiming romantic love as the foundation of marital bliss; yet, the Bible itself looks at the phase of Solomon's life in which the Song was written and proclaims it vanity (Ecclesiastes 2:8) and sin (I Kings 11:1-8). Some say the Song is a picture of Christ and the church but the extreme sensuality of the Song contrasted against the totally non-sensual nature of Christ's love make that view untenable in my mind. The teaching of the church about the Song is typical of the victory of romanticism in the church as well as in the broader culture, and this romanticism has paved the way for viewing homosexuality with this same romantic mindset. If falling in love is the main issue, then gender should not matter.


The fruit of the triumph of romanticism is clear: rampant divorce, rampant out of wedlock births and cohabitation, rampant adultery and fornication, and rampant homosexuality. In every case children are damaged even more than their romance-obsessed parents.
It will not be enough for the church to continue to speak out about the sin of homosexuality; the church will have to abandon its obsession with romance as well.


There are other issues with the decision of the court, issues about constitutional law and the court's disregard of the legislative process, but it seems to me that the acceptance of the ruling by much of the public has nothing to do with their concept of constitutional law: it is all about their complete acceptance of the cult of romance.