A civilising circle?

Wednesday, 24th June 2009

John Heard finds that the best argument for gay marriage is not even an argument for love

In The Symposium, Plato has one of Socrates’ interlocutors claim that love is among ‘the most ancient’ of the gods, with ‘no parents and none ascribed to him by prose writers or poets’. Citing Hesiod, Phaedrus sketches out a Greek creation myth, which has chaos existing first, ‘and then/Broad-breasted Earth, a secure seat for everything for ever/And Love’.

On this telling, chaos makes way for security on Earth, and we learn (from other Greek sources) that the organising principle in earthly communities is law. Phaedrus tells us it is love, more than law, or security, or anything else, that turns chaos into human virtue: ‘Neither family bonds nor public status nor wealth nor anything else is as effective as love in implanting something which gives lifelong guidance to those who are to lead good lives.’

This dual sense of the efficacy of law in relation to security, and the primacy of love in matters of virtue, remains intelligible today. An implicit sense of the close relationship between the two continues to shape Australian political debate. These are, indeed, often the most compelling claims made for a fundamental change to Australian marriage law.

So, when he rose in Parliament to oppose the Howard government’s Marriage Amendment Bill (2004), which clarified the legal definition of marriage — with broad bipartisan support — as the ‘union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life’, Greens Senator Bob Brown used a version of the argument: ‘Love is the highest human value and it is in the heart of everybody… Any sensible liberal society, besides practising acceptance, will promote love.’

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