Human Nature

In his "State Of The Church", address, Pope Benedict described the institution of family under dual attack. First, there is the zeitgeist which questions whether lifelong commitment corresponds to man’s nature or is antithetical to freedom? More deeply, there is also the particular philosophy which leads people to deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. He argues that if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. In asserting the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God

According to Strauss, in thinking about "man’s nature", the classics, not concerned with establishing utopia, asked "what is best for man?", while the moderns, who are so concerned, ask "what can be expected of man?" The Pope argues that it is primarily a false understanding of the nature of human freedom (the true understanding is: "only in self-giving does man find himself") that makes lifelong commitment an unreasonable expectation.

Within American politics the argument for marriage equality, embraces, rather than denies, nature: Homosexuality is asserted to be part of nature. Moreover, the Jewish tradition, at least, can be understood to teach that the freedom to create oneself, far from denying the Maker, is the very definition of being created in the image of God. Denying that freedom calls into question whether or not we have a distinctly human nature.

A stronger variation of the Pope's argument is that the demand for marriage equality stems from marriage being understood as it is experienced -- an "emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction" -- rather than as its social, or higher, purpose -- establishing the best context for rearing children. This way of understanding can be seen to reflect our increasing individual self-centeredness, which, following Strauss, is the natural result of the "Hobbes-ian" project that sought to cultivate a good society without appealing to our best nature.