Has the same sex marriage proposition pushed gay rights activism too far?

Well, you can dress ’em up, but you can’t take them anywhere. 

On one side of the ongoing polemics is one who has the “urge for power”.  He wants to be a Senator.  At the same time, he is an internationally famous boxing champ, a Born Again minister, a PBA playing coach, a TV show host, a recording artist, among other things.  He is the number One taxpayer of the country.  (Ironic, BIR’s Henares is not happy with him?  Recall she also shamed Pia Wurtzbach, when Pia had no intention of evading taxes.  How low class, bastos, could our culture of governance further go?  BIR has become a predator.)

This basically means Pacman is not like 99% of us; he is in the third or fourth ladder of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Consequently, it is understandable, and I suppose expected, that he now finds himself being thrust, consciously or unconsciously, into the ultimate ladder: the need for power.  

Poor guy, he is finding for himself that unlike all the lower ladders, power could banefully bite.  Time and again, he has demonstrated that he may not have sufficient mental preparation in pursuing that ultimate need of humans.  It is not his position that is being questioned; it’s the way he reasons, or the lack of it.  But, we lesser mortals could only imagine.  Does he spend sleepless nights trying to control this drive for power that has entered his anatomy?  Or, does he even realize that such a drive exist and it is not the same drive as when one wants to eat to satisfy hungry, or to go boom boom when one feels horny?  Time will only tell whether he will eventually learn to rein in this potent urge, or succumb to the old adage that water seeks it’s own level, and of course, man is made up of 75% water.  

He seems to be in a hurry, but is spreading himself too thinly.  I don’t know, but it might be worth if he now take stock of things to find out what he really wants and just focus on that.  For sure, he can’t be a Senator.  At the risk of me being accused of being presumptuous, I just thought a sabbatical for him of five years, or more, in say, Boston, might do him good.  For sure, Boston would be a good base from where to shuttle to and from Paris or London from time to time.  It might be one way of getting inculturated into a first world mentality depending on the new friends he acquires.  It might also be a way of getting rid of the leeches of the third world kind who we hear are always with him almost 24/7.  But, it is his life; we have no right to meddle with it unless he meddles with ours. 

* * *

On the other side are people who are ever present in our TV, even though we could not fully comprehend why people watch them.  One has made big business out of trading gossip.  Another has the loathsome propensity of dropping hints here and there that sex is what makes man, when man should be much, much bigger than sex even if man is a sexual being.  Hopeless cases. 

I agree with Ilda; I also think the lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community wants to disown said guys.  They are terrible representations of them.  There are many good and decent people among the LGBT who contribute well to the society.  Here, it is important to emphasize that same sex attraction can’t be a sin; it is an involuntary feeling.  Something can only be a sin when it involves an act.  Feeling is not an act.  Of course, it is a feeling that majority would prefer not to have.  It seems to be an incomprehensible feeling, to say the least, but apparently some have. 

Sodomy is a sin because, like masturbation, fornication, and the like, there are things perverted about these acts even if we just use our common sense.  We think that way because that is how we have been culturally conditioned.  Now, there is every kind of attempts to revamp the culture. The debate is whether such changes would do good to the society. 

Nevertheless, the third sex has every right to demand equality, and we have to yield to that.  More to it, there is something urgent about that demand because of the long history of them being discriminated.  But now, it seems they are overcompensating that history that it appears they are demanding things beyond equality.  They should be very careful about this for they truly at risk of invading the private spaces of a majority.  They deserve real equality, but still we can’t totally blot out the difference between them and us even if we attempted to. 

I cannot believe there are homosexual brutes.  Brutes don’t have the capability of dissecting the two components in a sexual coitus: the pleasure aspect and the procreation aspect.  Separating these two requires intelligence and will.  Only humans have intelligence and will, which make them superior to brutes that only have emotion and instincts, which humans also have. 

* * * 

Be that as it may, there is a confirmation from this firestorm that media, the advertising industry, and showbiz, here and abroad, are heavily influenced by — maybe even under full control of — the LGBT mindset.  Just by cursory look, there are many of the LGBT kind in front of the camera; there are many more behind the camera.  How else could they create such a firestorm?  Whether that be for good or for bad, that is a lopsided situation, considering that the LGBT community is a minority — worldwide, last I checked the statistics, about four percent (4%) of the world population. 

This should be a good time as any that we speak out.  Some of the characters, whether straight or gay, invading our living rooms via the TV are just so disgusting.  They simply can’t be the heroes and models of our children.  The reason why many families already, including mine, avoid the local TV channels.  There should be much more families, that practically a boycott takes effect; it would even be fantastic if it would be unplanned thing.  This has been my fervent prayer for a long time.  The media moguls make billions, but they have blood in their hands, psychologically anyway.  They are defining culture and the national identity and look where they have taken us, armies of nincompoop, zombies as GRP writer zaxx is wont to say.  Whatever, this is not schadenfreude of famous people, far from it.  It is much more, it is wishing a jihadist come and bomb them away to the 4th depth of hell. 

* * *

I was intending to comment as such to complement, and compliment, the article of my idol writer, Ilda.  I would have left it at that, but somewhere in reading the other articles of GRP, I saw a comment in one of the comboxes something to the effect on why GRP is going apeshit writing on these abnormals making the headline news today.  It is like saying: pumapatol kayo sa mga abnormal shows mga abnormal din kayo.  

Well, when the many writers here come out swinging on the same issue, it is because there is something fundamental, something basic, behind, or undergirding, the issue.  True, we could just take this as a possible election issue, or another entertaining event, and limit it at that.   A good many, afterall, would only care about an important issue if there is entertainment to it, cheap or not, like celebrities quarrelling.  Well, if that is all what you have been reading out of all these, then you have not been reading.  There is more than meets the eye.  

Truth be told, as Grim is wont to say, we may be talking here of a subtle paradigm shift, or a slow, but earth shaking, cultural shift.  Believe it or not.  This bigger context is assumed as already out there by the writers here.  But, the matrix of this context is just too big that there is every logic in just taking a small slice out of that matrix one at a time for analysis.  In any event, comments are always welcome by GRP, at least, that is what benignO has been showing through out.  They move forward the articles to where both writers and readers learn.  In any case, let me attempt an image of that matrix even if it be reductionist and amateurish.  Even that, I hope I can.  If not, you can lambaste it all you want to your heart’s delight. 

* * *

What became apparent in this last firestorm is that the umbilical cord of the Philippines to the United States of America has not been cut.  For those who are unaware, there is a culture war going on in the West, which is quite pronounced in North America.  The recrimination we are witnessing here is mild compared to what has been going on there. In the US, the line between liberals and conservatives is being more clearly drawn by the day, and it has become more and more difficult to bridge the gap for various reasons, some quite ideological.  Such is the product, as well as the input, of their system.  The system has been designed as such so that checks and balances, among others, work at all levels and facets of the society — sometimes too efficiently, there have been instances Washington DC found itself in a standstill.  

At the political level, this forms a major part of the never ending disagreements between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.  For this reason, unlike here, Americans are very suspicious of the character and motive of balimbings (turncoats).  It simply doesn’t happen.  They may understand, though, those who slowly transition from a bleeding heart liberal in their youth to the dyed-in-the-wool conservative in their middle age, for there is something quite logical about that for some reason that probably comes with experience and maturity.  And that has been the case in many instances. 

If there is this war, the apology of Pacquiao, one can now understand, looks futile. Kate Natividad is quite right, I must agree.  He let out of his mouth words that should not have been uttered.  But, it has been uttered, and it is useless to retrieve.  He should have been more diplomatic.  But the air of recrimination in the US is quite thick, made worse by the decision of the US Supreme Court to legalize SSM. I will try to explain this later.  Anyway, hIs apology did not do him good.  I think he has now now displeased both sides of the aisle, particularly in the US. 

But I digress.  I don’t know how many Filipinos have a good appreciation of the US system.  We try to imitate it, but we are a far cry from it.   What we have in the Philippines is democracy in name, a de facto feudal system of Middle Age Europe, made worse by the Filipino brand of patronage politics.  Funny, though not funny, we have warlords, media lords, gambling lords, drug lords, smuggling lords, and the praise-the-lords, and everyone wants to be a lord when they can’t even lord their own selves. 

When the push for SSM finally hits our shores, I have a good feeling they will pass or reject a bill again for the wrong reason.  Philippines is wont to churn out laws with hidden political and personal agendas.  Seldom are there laws passed having objectives as that what the law explicitly says in itself.  The RH Law is a good example.  BS Aquino push it hard because Obama dangled a US$ 400 million MDG Fund.  Now, since that fund has not been released, Aquino’s administration does not care about the proper implementation.  See how they cut the budget for it behind the back of the RH advocates.  

Obama, by the way, is of the liberal stripe; one of his biggest contributors is Planned Parenthood (PP).  The founder of PP is Margaret Sanger, the most prominent advocate of eugenics and very Malthusian in her arguments.  She was for a while the adviser to Hitler.  PP is the biggest worldwide in contraceptive and abortion business.  They are now under Congressional investigation in the US for selling aborted baby parts.  But like NRA (National Rifle Assoc), PP is one of top three lobbyist in the US.  American conservatives derisively call them Mis-Planned and Un-Planned. 

Anthropologically, sociologically, psychologically, it is said that SSM has higher scale of impact on society than contraceptives even if it involves a smaller section of society.  They can’t have a wishy washy approach to it.  Seeing what it has done to North America, I will push for a Civil Union Law as a best compromise.  It makes more for good common sense than SSM. 

* * *

As I was saying, the umbilical cord is there alright.  This is not only because Filipinos can rattle the names of celebrities in the US — though they won’t know what ideas these names represent — but because we just witnessed the ripple effect of the wrath of the liberals in the US on our Pambansang Kamao.  Or, was it a whirlwind?  Some here are very happy of the action of Nike while some are also happy in a different way — they say it is time to boycott Nike.  But, Pacman is now a marked man by the liberals.  He will start feeling the derision with passing days.  He has to be witty in his retort or come out with sound arguments for his position.  Americans highly respect highly-principled individuals even if same are their enemies or opponents. 

Pacquiao is not the first who caught the wrath of the Liberals or the Left.  Non-celebrities are, have been, caught in a similar situation.  Example is Jack Phillips who owns the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado who asked a same sex couple planning a wedding to go to somewhere else for their wedding cake.  Phillips said that he could not in conscience be an accessory to an SSM; he has now been sued by the couple.  Then there was the case of Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky, who would not issue the marriage license to another same sex couple applying for said license.  Again, conscience was cited as the reason.  She was picked apart by the liberal media at same time that there were big rallies in Kentucky coming from the Right to give her moral support and from the Left to lambaste her.  She almost lost her job. 

Of course, that CEO of Mozilla, the developer of the popular Firefox browser, was fired from his job because he was found to have given several dollars to a certain anti-gay rights group in California.  The media firestorm generated by the comment of the owner of Chick-A-Fil that resulted in the boycott of that fastfood chain is also another example.  I think you are getting the point, but there are several more other cases. 

Dawn Stefanowicz, a Canadian, is one of the leaders of the bigger group among other groups of grown up children who were raised by same-sex parents and who have been exposing the pitfalls of same sex parenting and the pains, psychological and otherwise, they have experienced under such environment.  She was invited as an amicus curiae during the hearing of that now landmark case, Obergefell v. Hodges, at the Supreme Court of the US.  She said that legalizing SSM would eventually result in restricting freedom of speech and religious liberty.   Canada legalized SSM much earlier than the US, and  SCOTUS invited her to give testimony from her experience.  She was jailed twice in Canada for speaking against SSM. 

They are some of the reasons why a growing number of Americans think Obergefell was mistake.  Philippines should not commit the same mistake.  The LGBT has achieved a certain amount of victory.  Now, they want more. It is no longer equality they want.  They want to dictate the moulding of cultures.  They are now on the offensive, rather than defensive. 

* * * 

So far, we have been talking at superficial levels.  At this level, the debate looks like only between the religious and the secular.  It is the playbook of the liberals: insist that it is a secular issue, but then always lead the discussion into religious territory, so that accusation of religious meddling can be made.  It always work.  For indeed, a good aspect of the debate enters into religious realm.  But, who is trespassing whose territory should be asked. 

It is the same playbook that has been used as that related to artificial contraceptives and abortion.  Contraceptives were legalized in the US sometime in 1968 via Griswold v Connecticut (sounds like Grimwald, but I can assure you our favorite prolific writer here has nothing to do with it); abortion, in 1972 via Roe v Wade.  And yet, the debates rage on, and more intensely today because the Obamacare includes contraceptives.  WHY?  The laws should have settled the issues  

Well, it can’t stop because people don’t still have a good reply on what part of the natural anthropology of man can man step in to meddle with it.  Which part which is natural can be made artificial without having side effects?  Are the side effects manageable, or can they be considered necessary evil?  What kind of society evolves with such meddling?  In the case, for example, of contraceptives, this has resulted in the demographic winters of Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.  Japan is the most affected and the impact is beginning to have effects on their economic numbers.  But, those are only numbers, what have been the qualitative impact on society?  Is SSM really the ultimate in population control as some are suspecting?  

* * *

In the US, they have 25 ways to Sunday.  If they can’t win at the SCOTUS, they will do it the laborious way by going state by state.  In this, the conservatives seems to be winning; they have managed to reduce the abortion clinics from about 4,000, at its height, to, I think, about 700 nationwide today.  But, they are losing the battles in contraceptives and SSM.  But, it is certainly futile to keep a scorecard on these things for the issues are far from over.  The road ahead remains very long. 

The thing about long running debates is that when political powers take sides on what may be purely theological or philosophical, real issues become muddled.  For polticians, a topic could lead to another and then another.  Before anybody knows it, the original questions are no longer being asked.  At the same time, the mass of ordinary people are busy with their jobs and don’t have time to follow the debates, which of course is what media takes advantage of to generate their own spin and soundbytes.  In the end, misconceptions develop further distancing the issues from what could have been probably simple.  Or Maybe, that is the intention: muddle things up. 

Rightly or wrongly, it has been advanced that these hot button issues are what may account for the rapid increase of “Nones”.  They now account for 33% of the population.  The Nones don’t want to be classified as atheists for they still believe in God, but don’t want to have any affiliation with any religious institution.  To Nones, it is simple, probably; if religious and secular leaders and thinkers could not agree with each other, why would the mass of people bother with the issues.  As a result, lifestyle takes precedence over belief, except that the culture war affects all whether they are aware of it or not, or whether each side knows really what is at stake. 

Thing is, when people get involved in the issue from time to time, they pick it up from wherever they could conveniently do, i.e. without a good appreciation on what transpired.  The result: the problem looks multi-faceted because everybody starts putting their inputs coming from. 
We could scoff at all that as nothing out of the ordinary.  That is not what experts think.  They worry about this culture war.  A brief look at the history of Europe should be instructive. Normally, Europe is ahead of everyone else when it comes to theological and philosophical thought and social trends.  In 16th century Europe, the debate among theologians was about “justification.”  Is man justified by “faith alone?”  Is revelation by Bible alone, and tradition has nothing to say?  These were the main issues and the issue on “indulgence” was thrown in as well for good measure.  

Even after Luther posted his 95 theses to the Wittenberg door, most people took the debates raging as just a quarrel of theologians internal to the one Church.  That held for 120 years after the Wittenberg incident, though emotions were building.  Things deteriorated when finally  the secular powers saw they could use the prevailing emotions.  They had their their own respective personal agendas and started taking sides on the issues.  Of course, wars ensued, and Europe entered an era when war became cyclical.  It of course also sealed the break between Catholicism and Protestantism.  Experts don’t want to be alarmists, but they worry.  If leaders don’t help tone down the rhetorics in this so called culture war, things could be dire.  

Problem is, the US is not as simple as 16th century Europe, and people anger might manifest itself in forms not yet seen.  The shooting rampages in US schools that have occurred almost like a habit are signs that there is anger simmering.  But what can be done, there are so many cultural issues unresolved.  People are confused.  The only thing that covers these things under the rug is that the US remains the number one economy.  And, Filipinos who still look at the US as a paradise would be surprised about this.  But ask Americans, and they will tell you the US is no longer the bed of roses it used to be.  Something is rotting in the inside.  Maybe it just is following the historical cycle of going into decay after an impressive progress. 

* * *

Okay after showing that culture war is nothing to scoff about, let us make a brief drive through some things philosophical. 

As already hinted in the foregoing, what are at issue, among them SSM, are nothing short of fundamentals in anthropology.  We are asking: (a) what is reality? and (b) what is man?  Believe it or not, those are really the questions. 

Evangelicals, of course, would immediately say that all the answers to those are in the Bible.  But, how can you have a conversation with those who don’t believe the Bible?  Or, do we apply the Catholic approach, which is basically the Thomist approach?  Thomas Aquinas, who said that the Bible is the Word of God in the words of men, decided to study every word of men including those of the Greek philosophers.  He is now known to have achieved the first and best synthesis of theology and philosophy, and yet maintaining a clear distinction between the two.  He is said to have baptized Aristotle.  Philosophy became the handmaid of theology.  Thomism remains all about the Bible.

But as mentioned above, the religious angle may not be the best approach to a secular issue.  Philosophy is the best way to go to avoid getting trapped into whoever’s playbook. Of course, I can’t help it if my bias would show as I too believe the answers are in the Bible.  Nothing to worry about really because Filipinos and Americans are in most ways Christians.  Filipinos have a weird way of expressing their Catholicism, but I know they are Christians. The US looks like atheist Europe on the surface but, deep inside, it remains a Christian nation, even if there are 300 million ways of expressing them now.  Natural Law remains the handmaid of their legal system.  Indeed, if you go deep inside the suburbs, one gets the impression that the people remain deeply religious, though they’re quite subtle about it.  That is not the impression one will get if the data is limited to that of social media. 

Richard Dawkins, when attacked for his very shallow philosophy, replied why he should dabble into philosophy, when philosophy seems to have been just going around in circles while science is already into outer space; quantum mechanics already provides a better understanding of black holes; particle accelerators are now detecting the motion of subatomic particles, etc etc.  (Maybe, he is afraid of ending up like his predecessor, Antony Flew, who was as famous as him and was the atheist guru of his time.  Flew was very much into philosophy; he died a theist.) 

* * *

Anyway, let us for a while take a hint from him.  If we are to be exact, science is the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion.  That is we are limiting ourselves to Newton’s three laws of motion, but many of the marvels of science still continue to rely on those.  Recall these three: 1) by the law of inertia, a body remains at rest or moving uniformly unless acted on by an external force; 2) the acceleration (a) of a body is proportional to the force (F) acting on it and inversely proportional to its mass (F=ma); and 3) to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

That should show science is all numbers.  Numbers are the only specifically exact notions, among all other notions. Quantities are numerical, qualities are not, and we have to note that distinction.  If we take quantities, there is nothing that forms the contrary of say, ‘two meters long’, or ‘three’, or of any such term.  In qualities, we may contend that ‘much’ is the contrary of ‘little’, or ‘great’ of ‘small’, but of definite quantitative terms no contrary exists.  

That means when it is a question of ‘more or less’, numbers can’t be our route to take.  White can be “more or less” white. If something is beautiful, it can be “more or less” beautiful than another object. Habits can be “more or less” permanent.  But “more or less” cannot be predicated of quantities; quantities are absolute.  There is no more or less to the number “1,” for instance, or to any other number or numerical fraction of a number. Quantities –and quantities alone –are exact. Quantity does not admit of variation of degree, 

Nature is described mostly qualitatively.  We could distinguish the shift from ancient thinking to modern, because there was a shift in emphasis to quantitative measurements.  In fact, this shift marked the Scientific Revolution that transformed the world. Newtonian physics made that change possible.  Newtonian physics addresses every proposition aiming for quantitative exactness, and “more or less” is no longer appropriate. The Scientific Revolution made exact quantities significant. 

Yet despite all the marvels, science does not tell us what we should do for it does not even tell us what “is” — simply, there are no units of measurement for is.  And, we are dealing with questions that depend and rest on that verb is.  Look at the questions again.  Operative word is “is” 

Well, if “is”, then we are dealing with a most ancient question.  The fundamentals can’t be from science and numbers. 

Hopefully, one day evolution will supply the missing link on how man came from brutes, and how chemistry became biology in the beginning after the Big Bang.  We should not be afraid of what science will find out for science is in search of truth and theology is also in search of truth.  Somehow, somewhere, sometime in the future, the two will intersect for sure.  Truth cannot contradict truth 

But, as of now, let us heed what Christ said: “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” 

(By the way, there is nothing in the Bible that is contrary to the evolutionary theory.  Genesis writes Adam came from the dust; now, it is up to science to get a glimpse on how God did that.  It is a scientific challenge so that man could marvel at the divine ingenuity one day.  Already, man take for granted the eyes they use for reading.  And yet it is one of the marvelous thing, if we take a closer look at its intricacies) 

* * *

Now, having established that we are dealing with most ancient questions, let’s get back to where we were. 

Dawkins may be right in saying that philosophy may have just been going in circles, although it is not entirely correct for science and the new ways of historical criticism have corrected many errors in philosophy.  But, he may be correct on two counts.  First, there is a notion being advanced today that everything is in a flux, nothing is permanent.  It is the hedonistic mentality: live today, for tomorrow we die. 

Gosh, we are back to square one when civilization was just starting, at least the historically recorded part.  That thinking is precisely what Socrates fought.  Reason demands permanence, he said. If one says there is no longer truth, either he is telling the truth or not, either way, he is contradicting himself.  How could we repute that; it is commonsense affirmed. 

Secondly, Dawkins may be right in the sense that he affirms what everybody already knows: ancient Greece reached a very lofty way of reasoning unmatched in history despite the lack of things similar to modern science and revelation theology (i.e. the Bible).  There were of course errors, but in the whole, their thinking endured for millenia, for it simply reflected coherence and common sense.  They took common sense and systematized it.  Dawkins was, unwittingly, praising the Greek thinkers. 

Now, let us take a small glimpse of Plato, Socrates’ student. Plato observed that there are certain realities that exist in fragmented and scattered form like beauty, goodness, justice, etc.  We don’t see beauty as such, but beautiful things; justice as such, but admirable actions; etc.  He asked, where can they be found in fullness?  For everything we can define, where are we getting such ideas.  His proposition: There must be a world of ideas, and ideas are the principle of things.  As such, the sensible world “participates” in the ideas.  He said, man’s fulfillment is in the contemplation of ideas.  Amazing and they are ancient. 

Remember these guys are not proving there is God; they are just trying to understand reality.  

Aristotle, Plato’s student, later corrected Plato’s error. The world of Ideas can’t be real.  Reality has to be the sensible world. (Makes sense)  Then he said one of most profoundest thing: Reality is the Act of Being. To exist, a thing has to TO BE first. (Again, commonsense verbalised.)

Further advancing his thesis of the act of being, he observed two components: (1) a substrate in which the change takes place, which he calls the substance, and (2) the things our eyes see like height, weight, etc, which he calls the accidents.  He proposed nine categories of accidents.  John at 10 years old is the same John at 25 years old, because in him is a substance.  Makes sense?  This the substance and nine accident categories 

Why is it that wood does not turn to bronze?  Aristotle said, because there are determining principles in them.  There are two: the matter (the principle of undifferentiation) and form (the principle of  differention).  Matter underlies the change.  Form determines the change.  In a wooden table and wooden chair, for example,  wood is the matter, the concept of chair and table would be the form.  A dog cannot be a cat because there is already a determining principle in them which is the form. 

He further calls any kind of change, motion.  So an act of being is in act when it is actually in act.  When it is not in act, it has potency.  An engineering graduate is not yet an engineer strictly speaking, but has the potency of an engineer.  When he finally applies what he learned, then we could say he is an engineer.  But a nurse cannot be an engineer because the potency is not there, he has to acquire that potency first. This is the act-potency doctrine. 

Well, what I have touched on is Ontology, and I hope more Filipinos dabble in this.  It is a difficult subject in beginning, but gets very interesting in the middle. 

Just as a side, Thomas Aquinas took the idea of the Act of Being because it jibes with the name of Yahweh quite well.  I AM WHO I AM or I am TO BE.  Then he took the idea of participation to explain how creations get their TO BE. 

BUT, Rene Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy threw all that away when he advanced his Cogito, ergo sum.  He said, the only reality I could be certain of is that I am thinking.  Unwittingly, the start of the glorification of Ego.  He even proposed that we should distrust knowledge acquired by the senses.  He went into a very complicated explanation of how we could be certain of what our senses are feeding us.  Of course, philosophers threw away his explanation, but there were some good arguments in his long discourses.  Again unwittingly, starting the dichotomy of the mind from the body. 

Cogito, ergo sum appealed to many, and became the foundational starting point to develop various philosophical systems, and the rest is history.  Subjectivity was objectified.  Whatever man thinks is what is reality. 

Now, to see how that went, check the following:

= emphasis on the mind, Rationalism, possibly Leibnitz, Spinoza, Malebranche

= emphasis on the senses, Empiricism, possibly Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume. 

Kant in his effort to find a ground of scientific knowledge, tried the synthesis again of the two, but some of his controversial propositions are that nothing can be known outside of our senses and ethics became based on the I MUST vs objective standards. 

Again, see, how Cogito, ergo sum went further:

Hegel (Dialectic Idealism)

Marx (Materialism – history is determined economic structures)

Schopenhauer (primacy of will above reason)

Kierkegaard (primacy of existence over essence)

Nietzsche (primacy of  active life over passive rational conformity)

Men today cannot solve basic and fundamental questions because men today refuse to go basic and fundamental.

* * *

Marriage is fundamental.  It is an institution since time immemorial.  There are things that could be changed.  Marriage is not one of them.  The LGBT community should be contented with a Civil Union Law.