A husband without a wife is a contradiction — it is ontological nonsense. A wife without a husband is impossible — an ontological absurdity. A marriage without a husband or a wife is a contravention — an ontological irrationality. A female husband or a male wife, likewise, falls into the category of the absurd. And we are left with the conclusion that the essence of marriage not only requires both husbandness and wifeness, but both of these terms require in ontology maleness and femaleness respectively.

Over the past decade, the arguments against homosexuals’ desire to have their unions be sanctioned as marriage by the state have revolved principally around defining marriage based on Scriptural premises. And while some proponents of homosexuality have gone to extreme strains and exegeses to show that Scriptural condemnation of homosexuality is an illusion, the Biblical argument largely has become irrelevant.

We no longer live in a time in which accepting Sacred Scripture as an objective standard of morality is de rigueur.  To assert as much has not only lost its quaintness — it has become rather offensive. Therefore, to argue theologically to defend a political or social position has in many ways lost its relevance. That does not mean revealed truths or Sacred Tradition or theology is any less right; however, it does mean that we as its defendants must take great pains to illustrate points of relevance and contact between the natural and supernatural, the secular and theological. This is a feat that too many have, unfortunately, since the late 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant considered impossible.

It was Kant, whose insistence that there was an impenetrable wall between the phenomenal (the earthly observable, that which can be demonstrated a posteriori via our senses) and the noumenal (the transcendent unobservable, that which can be demonstrated a priori). In short, things as they appear vs. things as they really are.  If I asked Kant how one could come to know God, he would have said “You can’t get there from here,” primarily because our senses, while they can apprehend the phenomenal world as it appears, cannot comprehend the totality of being.

For it’s time, Kantian epistemology rescued Western concepts of knowledge from the twin grips of Cartesian rationalism and Humean skepticism.  Yet this Kantian brass wall of absolute separation between God and Earth eventually became an absolute separation between God’s servants (the Church) and the earth’s servants (the State). Thus, for today’s theist, any argument that invokes God must first appeal to a non-theistic point of relevance and contact between God and man.

Enter ontology.

Ontology is a 17th century word (though a concept fleshed out by St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle long before) that deals with the Greek ontos (being) – not just a simple fleeting existence, as existentialism posits, but being as a model.

For instance, what is “is” as a word? The Latin word for “to be” is the infinitive “esse,” whence we derive our modern “essence.” The essence of something is of absolute necessity to its being “it.” Without “its” essence, “it” would not be “it.”  Essence is “being as being” or the effective essence and existence of an object — the two terms truly being distinct (essence being a definition predicated on existence, or what truly exists).

Confused?  Then try this: Ontology shows what is essential to the existence of a thing; the manifestation or definition of existence. The “what-ness” of what being, and the “how-ness” of how that being became what. The essence of a thing defines its very core.

A triangle has three sides and three angles. But having three sides and three angles is not the essence of a triangle. A square has three sides, as does a pentagon, a hexagon, and everything geometrically above them. But only a triangle has “on a two-dimensional plane only three sides and three angles.” This is the essence of a triangle — not its size, obliqueness or acuteness, or even whether the sum of its angles add up to halve a quadrangle. The “triangleness” of a triangle is that its three lines close to form three sides and three angles — and three sides and three angles only.

Ontology, it follows, is abstract enough to be noumenal, but understandable and observable enough to be phenomenal. Ontology is the pair of saloon doors that swings between the impenetrable walls of the secular and spiritual realms.  As Aquinas posits himself (and perhaps in anticipation of a Kantian objection to the idea of metaphysics), being and essence and not causal relationships that occur within space and time, but rather a natural consequence of the cosmological argument — one that Kant and Aquinas both embrace as a starting point.

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So what does this have to do with so-called gay marriage?  Absolutely everything.

Each side of the argument has sought to answer, manipulate, or cheat the question “What is marriage?”  The import contains that two-letter word: “is”?

Snow is white — but does that mean that the essence of snow is its whiteness, that snow cannot be snow unless its whiteness is evident? Or does it simply mean the snow I observe and have historically observed happens to appear white to my senses?

Empirically, the latter explanation rules (as evidenced by the Vienna Circle’s logical positivism and the example of a “black swan” in the 1920s — one counterfactual devolves the argument, as Popper’s theory of falsification demonstrates).  Yet in theoretical thought, however, the former explanation shows its superiority.

In the question of marriage, we are now arguably at an ontological crisis. What is marriage?

Supposing the definition: “Marriage is between a husband and a wife” — but does that mean that the essence of marriage is the participation and union of husbandness and wifeness? or does it simply mean the marriages I observe and have historically observed happen to have appeared between the participation and union of husbandness and wifeness?

This is the question neither side can adequately answer. That is, without appealing to ontology.

In ontology, one must distinguish between a “substance” and “accident.” The substance of a thing is that which would not allow the thing’s existence without its participation. The substance of a triangle is not its third side and angle — it is its third, culminating, closed, and contiguous side to form a third and final angle.

The accidents, on the other hand, are those properties that are not essential to the existence of the thing. In the case of the triangle, this would be its acuteness, obliqueness, or dimensions.  Aquinas identified these concepts as quiddities (peculiarities) — and tackles them outright in On Being and Essence (Ch. IV):

Although substances of this kind (separate intelligences or angels) are simple forms without matter, nonetheless they are not in every way simple as pure acts are. They do have an admixture of potency, which is evident in the following way. Whatever is extraneous to the concept of an essence or quiddity comes to it from beyond itself, and forms a compsition with the essence since no essence can be understood without those things which are its parts. On the other hand, every essence or quiddity can be understood without its act of existing being undersood. I can understand what a man or phoenix is, and yet not know whether or not it exists in reality. Therefore, it is evident that the act of existing is other than essence or quiddity.

This is true, unless, perhaps, there is something whose quiddity is its very act of existing. This thing would have to be unique and primary, since it would be impossible for anything to be multiplied except by the addition of some difference, as the nature genus is multiplied into species; or by a form being received in diverse matters, as the nature species is multiplied in dfferent individuals; or by one being absolute, and the other being received in something. For example, if there were a certain “separated” heat it would be distinct, in virtue of its very separation, from the heat which is not separated.

If, however, something is posited which is simply its own act of existing, such that it would be subsistent existence itself, this existence cannot recieve the addition of a difference, because then it would not be simply an act of existing, but an act of existing plus this certain form. Even less would it receive the addition of matter, because then it would not be subsistent existence but material existence. Hence, there remains only one such thing that is its own act of existing. Accordingly, in anything other than it, the act of existing must necessarily be other than its quiddity or nature or form. Hence among the intelligences (angels), their acts of existing must be other that their forms. Therefore, it is said that intelligences are (composed as) forms and acts of existing.

Whatever belongs to something is either caused by the principles of its nature, like risibility in man, or accrues to it from some extrinsic principle, like the light in the air which is caused by the sun. It is impossible that the act of existing itself be caused by the form or quiddity — and by “caused” I mean as by an efficient cause — for then something would be the cause of itself and produce itself in existence which is impossible. It is therefore necessary that everything whose act of existing is other than its nature have its act of existing from another.  (emphasis added)

The actual substance and accident of a thing causes great debate, but few have argued that to distinguish between the two is unnecessary, and even fewer have argued that the concept of substance and accident is non-existent.  Indeed, such accidents are they very things that sharpen the distinctions between esse and existence.

In classical and traditional thought, the substance of Marriage has been that the participation and union of husbandness and wifeness — that is, of maleness and femaleness: the prospect of generation. Secular and religious history universally confirms this. The accidents of Marriage have been the pre-existing relationships, the manifest affection (or disaffection), the age-difference, or even resulting generation. Thus, ontologically, marriage — traditionally — is between a husband and a wife. To remove husbandness or wifeness from this equation makes the statement false.

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