Analysis of a moral struggle

Résumé du document

"Public should not exercise authority over any marriage", says Nathan Warner in a recent article. Is it that simple? Should marriage really be a private matter, on which the State has no control? A few years ago, the Economist published an article dealing with polygamy practiced by Mormon fundamentalists. Often compared to the struggle for gay marriage, as it fights for the legalization of a different kind of union, the Mormon culture seems to be hard to accept in the US. How can one explain this delicate debate? To answer this problem, it seems relevant to present the moral issue being debated in the article, and then to articulate both Universalist and Multi-culturalist points of view regarding the practice being discussed, and eventually to explain which position seems to have gained the upper hand in practice.

Extraits

[...] II Universalism vs. multiculturalism First of all, if one adopts a universality view, one has to fight for -or at least defend- what one considers as the moral preference and norm. As a matter of fact, universalism refers to religious, theological, and philosophical concepts with universal ("applying to all") application or applicability. Here, the norm is indeed a marriage between two persons of different sex, in order to ensure certain cohesion in society and to allow reproduction. This Catholic view predomines in the United States, and is used by the defenders of the 'marriage values'. [...]

[...] Actually, it seems that in the US, the universalist view is more popular than the multiculturalist one. Mormon fundamentalists wish to see polygamy legalized will not be fulfilled soon, and one can then say that the dominant religion and political conception of the marriage have gained the upper hand on a more "minority-tolerant" one. Conclusion In a nuthsell, one can state that this moral struggle is representative of the broader dichotomy between universalist theories, which in a word believe that some moral values are fairer than others, and that the State must intervening to translate them into explicit laws, and the multicultural view, which implies that all social and cultural choices are equal and acceptable, and that the State should not determine which norms or value is best. [...]

[...] Analysis of a moral struggle "Public should not exercise authority over any marriage", says Nathan Warner in a recent article. Is it that simple? Should marriage really be a private matter, on which the State has no regard? A few years ago, the Economist published an article[1] dealing with polygamy, claimed by Mormon fundamentalists. Often compared to the struggle for gay marriage, as it fights for the legalization of a different kind of union, the Mormon revendications seem to be hard to accept in the US. [...]

[...] The dichotomy between universalism and multiculturalism is hard to overcome. On the one hand, one can state that something so private that love (or at least adult unions) cannot be controlled by the State or any other moral norms. As Nathan Warner affirms, "it is not the place of the religious to insist that all citizens be governed by strictly religious moral conventions"[2]. This is not simply a question of public policy, but of equality and justice. According to him, consent is generally desirable, but has often been a stumbling block in America's progressive realization of Thomas Jefferson's proclamation of human nature. [...]

[...] Multiculturalism, popular for instance in Canada, implies that all social and cultural choices are equal and acceptable. In this specific case, the multiculturalist approach would affirm that "no society has the monopoly of the moral virtue", and thus that one cannot restrict marriage to the heterosexual and monogamist view of it. Furthermore, not only can one say that no moral value is better than any other, but also that the government has no right of inspection on people's private life, as they cannot determine a universal norm (in this case, regarding adult unions). [...]