“I long for a society in which the extraordinary dynamic that is at work in the encounter between a man and a woman continues to be established, under a specific name.” Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, Chief Rabbi of France

We are subject to a bewildering number of rules and regulations. In my most recent posts I’ve noted that a higher order rules should guide and inform our behavior. Since those posts, I’ve come across a pair of remarkable essays to which I should have liked to provide links.  

In my post on macaroni and cheese I noted the transaction between farmer or dairyman in selling raw milk directly to a consumer is subject to a higher order of “rule” that is unmatched by any USFDA food safety regulation.

That higher order regulation can be summed up by one word – Trust. In short, a consumer, who wants real milk for making cheese, trusts that the dairyman selling raw milk wants to provide a wholesome food that is not commercially available. Above all, the raw milk producer does not wish to make anyone sick.

The Front Porch Republic, posted an essay by Skyler Reidy detailing what that trust entails. [Full Text & It’s a worthy read.]

“I work at a small raw milk dairy located on a Christian community in Texas. We take great pains to keep our milk pure. On a typical morning in the barn we might spend about four minutes prepping cows and cleaning for every one minute we spend milking. Every morning we clean our cows literally from head to tail. We milk the cows into stainless steel buckets, and strain the milk twice through cheesecloth. After milking, our milk is put directly on ice and kept cool until the moment it’s consumed. When customers come to our ranch we insist that they bring a cooler for us to fill with ice. Throughout the process we leave ourselves no room for error. Any milk that might be contaminated is left outside for the dogs or sprayed into our vegetable garden. This isn’t always fun. Mornings can be cold and dark, and nothing is more disheartening than hand-milking an entire gallon into a pail only to pour it out after seeing a speck of dirt land on the surface of the milk...

In my last post I quoted President Obama’s recent speech on violence, he said “there is no  more important ingredient for success, nothing would be more important to us for reducing violence than strong, stable families -- which means we should do more to promote marriage and encourage fatherhood.”

In that statement the president implicitly acknowledged a higher order of rule on human sexuality and the tradition marriage as the proper context honoring sexual love and the formation of household and family.

Marriage, like Trust, is a higher order rule governing the proper expression of human sexual desires.

Yet, should the president examine those rules as such, I am sure he would be reluctant to explicitly endorse them.   

To do so would be to endorse Gilles Bernheim’s, the Chief Rabbi of France, Orthodox Judaic defense of traditional marriage and warning on the moral and social hazards of legalizing gay marriage in France. [Full Text. It’s a must read.]

In a long essay on the topic, he concluded:

“I am one of those who believe that a human being is not an autonomous construction with no given structure, order, status, or role. I believe that the affirmation of freedom does not imply the negation of limits and that the affirmation of equality does not imply the leveling of differences. I believe that the powers of technology and of the imagination do not require that we forget that being is a gift, that life is prior to all of us, and that it has its own laws.

“I long for a society in which modernity would have its full place but without implying the denial of elementary principles of human and familial ecology; for a society in which the diversity of ways of being, of living, and of desiring is accepted as fortunate, without allowing this diversity to be diluted in the reduction to the lowest common denominator, which effaces all differentiation; for a society in which, despite the technological deployment of virtual realities and the free play of critical intelligence, the simplest words—father, mother, spouse, parents—retain their meaning, at once symbolic and embodied; for a society in which children are welcomed and find their place, their whole place, without becoming objects that must be possessed at all costs, or pawns in a power struggle.

“I long for a society in which the extraordinary dynamic that is at work in the encounter between a man and a woman continues to be established, under a specific name.”

It’s a long essay, but it’s a must read for anyone who wishes to have an informed opinion on the topic, whether in support or opposition to gay marriage. Sections of essay were cited by Pope Benedict XVI in his Christmas Address in 2012. It has since gone “viral” among diverse faith communities throughout the English-speaking world.

To criticize Bernheim's essay as gay bashing is a mean spirited excursion into postmodern and deconstructionist sexual politics, because it is anything but. It is instead a traditionalist essay in defense of the plain meaning of a word -- marriage.