Chicago Tribune columnist Rex Huppke demonstrated his usual glib condescension yesterday in his ridicule of a Tennessee county commissioner’s odd proposed resolution. What is striking in Huppke’s relentless efforts to mock anyone who believes marriage has an ontology central to which is sexual differentiation is that he studiously avoids engagement with the ideas expressed by the foremost scholars defending the historical understanding of the nature of marriage. Such avoidance smacks of intellectual dishonesty and cowardice.

Does Huppke believe that marriage has no ontology or does he believe it does but that no one apprehended it correctly until homosexual activists did in the late 20th Century. Perhaps if he spent less time mocking those who are easy targets for his attacks—targets that don’t require him to make any actual arguments that he must defend with evidence—and more time engaging with substantive ideas, we would learn more about his beliefs.

For example, does he believe that marriage has a nature that societies merely recognize and regulate, or does he believe marriage is wholly a social construction—a social invention created by a vast, millenia-old, cross-cultural, patriarchal conspiracy?

If marriage is merely a social invention with no inherent nature, why not recognize unions constituted by platonic or storge love as “marriages”?

If marriage is wholly a social construction, then why not expand marriage to include any number of people of assorted “genders” (or no “gender”)?

If marriage is wholly a social construction and, as the Left argues, has no inherent connection to procreative potential, then why prohibit consenting brothers from marrying?

If, on the other hand, Huppke believes marriage has a nature but that nature is devoid of any connection to procreative potential and is solely constituted by love, then why erotic love? Other than procreation, which the Left argues is irrelevant to the nature of marriage, what is so special about erotic love that would render it of interest to the government? If marriage is wholly unrelated to procreative potential, then why is the government involved at all? After all, the government isn’t involved in recognizing and regulating other non-reproductive types of loving relationships.

Here’s an idea, why doesn’t Huppke spend some time reading and writing about the substantive, deeply intellectual ideas of Princeton University law professor Robert George, John Finnis (shared by Notre Dame and Oxford), Ryan Anderson, Michael Brown, Anthony Esolen, Robert Gagnon, and Doug Wilson. Yes, mocking their ideas may be a tad more challenging for Huppke, but his refutations would make infinitely more interesting reading than his ridicule of culturally non-influential people from small Tennessee towns.

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