Before I begin, just let me say that some of my best friends are gay… no, not even I would dare. Let me say that some of my best friends, including my wife, are married. My son’s parents are married. Many of my workmates at Red Hat and many of my associates in the Hare Krishna movement are married. In fact, I’m married! Yes, you guessed it - we’re about to say something more about same-sex marriage.

I’ve been thinking lately about the controversy within the Hare Krishna movement on this topic, and wondering why some people within the movement consider me to be a left-leaning liberal, while others harangue me for being a fundamentalist. My tongue-in-cheek harmonization of this is that those who consider me a leftist liberal are themselves liberals in disguise, and merely try to recast my ultra-right wing ideology as liberalism in order to avoid having to adopt it themselves.

But seriously, as mentioned previously, personally I’m a card-carrying member of Srila Rupa Goswami’s Progressive Party. Our party creed? “(Under expert guidance) accept that which is favorable to spiritual advancement, avoid that which is not.”

Now, the other day I happened to see “The Death Camp of Tolerance” episode of South Park, and I’m inspired, so let me lay down some ultra-conservative-fu for everyone out there who is under the mistaken impression that I am some kind of compromising sentimentalist. Now, everyone who is laying it down on same-sex marriage, step aside, because I’m about to lay down some siddhanta on hetero marriage.

Anybody who raises the argument that same-sex marriage condones or approves of same-sex relationships is obviously laboring under the mistaken idea that hetero marriage condones or approves of heterosexual relationships. Bzzzzzt! Wrong. Take that liberal, leftist idea and throw it on the pyre with all your other books on getting a “healthy” balance, sense gratifiers.

Marriage means regulation - like, fidelity, monogamy, restraint, limitation of options, etc. etc. We’re talking old school marriage here, not any weirdo post-modern leftist liberal idea. Previously, when people would generally not have sex life outside of marriage, it was understood that under the license of marriage you could have sex life. Maybe then people might have mistakenly thought that marriage gives the green light to sex life. Right now though, with people having sex life left, right and center stage, you’d think it would result a little more obvious that marriage is actually meant to limit sex life.

There are no regulations governing water drinking, because there is nothing wrong with it, but there are strict government regulations controlling alcohol and tobacco, because these things are bad for you. The government does not encourage you to take them, but rather tries to limit the damage done to the individual and to the society. In the same way the scriptures try to regulate the sexual activity of the human being because otherwise it is counter-productive to spiritual advancement.

In animal life there is no regulation. In the spiritually progressive human form of life sex life must be regulated, and ultimately transcended.

“Oh no!” I hear you gasp. “What an ultra-conservative thing to say!” Sorry to be so un-PC with the “Body Positive” set, but the bottom line is: Anyone who thinks that sex life is OK is an animal.

Let me lay down a few rhymes on that one - yo DJ kick it!

It begins with the body and the land of birth,
He who worships these only worships dirt
From the moment of conception to the point of old age
The body is changing every day
It made of Five gross elements,
Water, Earth, Air, Fire, Sky
The cells they keep replacing themselves as the old ones die
From a tiny tot to a grown-up
The bodys’re completely different
But I remain the same

Every living entity is a spiritual identity. The difference between a dead body and a living one is the presence of the spiritual spark. No amount of chemical ministration can give life to inert matter, or bring life back to the once living. The person is the non-material entity who animates the body. Under the influence of the illusory energy, however, we identify with the particular material body that is our temporary home for a few short years, making it our all in all.

Sex life just increases this illusory identification. First of all you have to identify with the material body to get anything out of it. From there all your energy is diverted to making the body look good, putting nice clothes on it, getting a nice place for it to live, a good car to drive around in, and so on, merely to attract potential partners for flickering happiness.

What a waste of energy! The Vedic standard is that life’s energies should be directed to spiritual realization, in order to put an end to the artificial situation of the spirit soul’s identification with matter and material bodies. So rather than let people live like animals, simply directed by and under the control of the biological instincts of the material bodies they find themselves in, human civilization places them under strict regulations which limit and control their lower tendencies and engage them in spiritual pursuits.

Marriage does not condone or approve of sexual activity. It is the product of a civilization which recognises that sexual activity increases material identification, and actively seeks to counter-act this with regulative legislation.

So where does this philosophical deviation that marriage condones a lifestyle based around sex life come from? It’s an age old problem, as old as human civilization itself. It’s not conservative versus liberal, it’s progressive versus reactionary.

The reactionaries want to hold on to their current state of consciousness, so they are always looking for something in the guidelines for progress that justifies their current situation. The progressives, on the other hand, are busy looking for ways to to take advantage of those same guidelines to advance.

Unfortunately the human being has the tendency to cheat, so the reactionary element is strong in human society. This is described in the Srimad Bhagavatam, one of the greatest works on spiritually progressive life.

The compiler of the original Vedic canon, Srila Vyasadeva, had to deal with misinterpretation of his work. Although he had prescribed regulation of sense gratification for progressive life, people with a cheating reactionary mentality were misusing his prescriptions. Regulated sex life beats animal life any day, but it doesn’t mean that it’s OK. Therefore he had to write further in order to clearly spell this out. He produced his definitive work Vedanta-sutra in two versions. The first was the ultra-scholarly “sutra” edition for panditas, or Vedic intellectuals. This edition requires the study of the entire Vedic scriptural canon before reading it, because it does not repeat anything that has already been written elsewhere, but rather limits itself to resolving the controversies that rage amongst those scholars who have already read everything that came before. If you think making head or tail of my posts is hard, you ought to try the Vedanta-sutra sometime.

The second edition was “Vedanta-sutra for the Rest of Us”, aka Srimad Bhagavatam. This edition is written in a story form that transmits the essential elements. Think Celestine Prophecy, to make an analogy.

Anyway, the Vedanta-sutra begins with the statement: “The conclusion is that spiritual advancement is the goal”, and goes on from there. Of course, the whole argument that is concluded in the first line of the Vedanta-sutra is predicated on the whole Vedic canon and its practical application. The background of this statement is explained in Srimad Bhagavatam (1.5.15):

“The people in general are naturally inclined to enjoy, and you have encouraged them in that way in the name of religion. This is verily condemned and is quite unreasonable. Because they are guided under your instructions, they will accept such activities in the name of religion and will hardly care for prohibitions.”

Here Vyasadeva’s mentor Narada Muni explains to him the practical result of his proscribing sense gratification by prescribing regulation - the cheating mentality turns the restriction into an endorsement.

It’s the same problem that plagues debate over the legalization of marijuana, for example. On the one hand legalization advocates claim that at the moment there is no regulation. Legalization, they argue, will enable the government to regulate the sale and consumption of marijuana, rather than simply letting it go on in a completely unregulated fashion. Opponents point out the phenomenon of the “falling drinking age” as a counter-point. The legalization of a substance generally leads to progressive acceptance and increasing social tolerance.

Narada Muni’s remedial prescription for this situation was not a re-adjustment or a repeal of laws or arrangements relating to regulation of sense gratification, however. What he advised Vyasadeva was the following:

“The Supreme Lord is unlimited. Only a very expert personality, retired from the activities of material happiness, deserves to understand this knowledge of spiritual values. Therefore those who are not so well situated, due to material attachment, should be shown the ways of transcendental realization, by Your Goodness, through descriptions of the transcendental activities of the Supreme Lord.”

By hearing and speaking descriptions of the transcendental pastimes of the spiritually perfect, one gradually becomes purified and spiritually perfected, just as, in a mundane sense, by hearing stories of war or sport heroes one becomes inspired to follow in their footsteps.

Many of the people weighing in on the same-sex marriage debate are under various misconceptions of hetero marriage. “Heterosex” is condemned by learned trascendentalists as much as “homosex” is.

Narada Muni’s conclusion, echoed in Vyasadeva’s opening line in Vedanta-sutra is that persons who are married or single, heterosexual or homosexual, should carefully read Srimad Bhagavatam in order to understand the contents.

On a practical level, same-sex marriage is here and it will be a widespread social reality moving forward into the future. Ultimately, while its social establishment is inevitable, it has to be done away with in the progressive spiritual life of the individual, just as heterosexual marriage does.

If you are interested, here is the wikipedia entry that inspired the title of today’s entry. The reactionary mentality is deeply encoded in our thinking and that is reflected in our subversion of language. Those very proscriptions for our benefit become prescriptions for our doom. Heterosexual marriage included.