Froma Harrop Nails It Again

One of our favorite secular columnists shows her brilliance by making the exact same point we've made for quite some time now.

The recent California high court declaration that the term “marriage” must apply to gay couples if it is used of straight couples, was certainly disappointing to say the least. But the news isn’t all bad—the truth is winning out!

Nearly three years ago ASJ called our readers attention to a columnist named Froma Harrop. While we can’t espouse all the positions of this left-of-center writer, we have found her to be a very intelligent voice in the secular forum on political issues affecting unmarried people. She first got our attention for an article making the point that the mortgage-interest deduction is unfair to if not discriminatory against renters, who are usually single people. Well, this time she’s done it again.

In a recent column responding to the California decision, Ms. Harrop makes the exact point ASJ has made before in arguing why the state has no business in the marriage business to begin with. What’s even better than having a journalist of her prominence make our point for us is that she actually outdoes us by citing a concrete example of what ASJ anticipated but could only warn about via hypotheticals. Harrop draws her readers’ attention to an actual suit in the European Courts brought by two English sisters, advanced in years, who shared a house inherited from their father. Because of British inheritance taxes, whichever sister dies first, the other sister will have to sell the house simply to pay the tax. But their gripe was that this would not happen if they were married since couples can transfer assets upon death without the same tax burden. What’s worse, they would also be spared the tax burden if they were a gay couple since the European Courts had recently extended recognition to same-sex “marriages.” Now why should sisters be penalized because they are not a gay couple?

So here we have a perfect example that shows why we get so irate with Catholics and other Christians when they don’t support our plan to totally wipe mention of marriage from the law books. That is, celibates, even those living chastely per the gospel precept, now get fewer privileges from the state than gays! Whereas the gospel prefers the celibate first, the married second, and active homosexuals a very distant third, modern policies almost directly reverse this divine order. In the realm of the state, thanks to years of pro-marriage policies that have since expanded to embrace gays but not singles, celibates are picking up the rear.

Harrop cuts straight to the point to expose the nonsense of these laws. She bashes the European court’s judgment against the sisters that “their relationship was of a different nature than that of married people.” Harrop asks the same question we’ve been asking for years now. She writes, “what could that different nature be other than the presumption of sexual contact? By the way, do the English taxing authorities know whether a married couple is having sex?” She’s exactly right. We’ve joked about this absurd fact in cartoons; same-sex celibates who are relatives, roommates, or good friends can often get wonderful civil benefits if they are only willing to have sex with each other! Just once is all it would take.

How any can Christian support laws that give a person privileges just for having sex? All people of good will should see that this is unjust, but Christians should be especially outraged at policies that deprive people of civil privileges for no other reason than that they are living Christian chastity and refraining from sex! The Church should also oppose such policies for another reason—pastoral care of homosexuals. The Church asks gays to remain celibate, but such laws actually give gays a state-sanctioned incentive to disobey the Church. No sex, no tax breaks!

The Church should support the ASJ efforts to make our laws totally agnostic to marital status. Ms. Harrop agrees with ASJ that the state has no business subsidizing sexual relationships of any type. She correctly states, “It’s easy to understand why gay people would want to get in on the marriage gravy train. There’s just no logic for there being one.”

 This article appeared in the June 4, 2008 issue of The Loyal Lion.