Three essays I’ve read recently powerfully express – far better than I could – some thoughts I’ve been having lately on the nature of marriage, on the brouhaha over Clarence Thomas’s dissent in Obergefell vs. Hodges, and on liberal/progressive insecurity.

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Writing at First Things, Joshua Schulz dismantles Justice Kennedy’s contentions that “the procreative potential once thought essential to marriage is in fact no more central to the institution than the race . . .,” and “that what is essential to marriage is the autonomy right of ‘self-definition’ in one’s intimate relationships . . .”

In his essay, Schulz thoughtfully articulates the problems with Kennedy’s contention and shows why the aspects of marriage essential to its nature are bound up in the procreative and unitive properties of human sexuality, and not, contra the Court, in the autonomous individual’s right to “self-definition.”

Also at First Things, Wesley J. Smith explains what Clarence Thomas was really saying about human dignity in his Obergefell vs. Hodges dissent. Only someone making a deliberate effort – or someone who no longer believes in inherent human worth – could have misunderstood Justice Thomas’s point. But for those few who may have honestly missed it, Smith’s essay provides an excellent corrective.

And over at Public Discourse, David Azerrad explores liberal insecurity. According to Azerrad, liberals believe that we “are all sovereign individuals, radically free to fashion and refashion ourselves into anything we so please at any point in our lives.” Oddly, however, these sovereign individuals seem unable to thrive unless others affirm and approve their self-defined choices.

“For all his purported god-like powers of self-creation,” Azerrad writes, “liberal promethean man is actually a weak, insecure, and isolated individual. It is not enough that he define and express his identity. He needs others to recognize it, embrace it, and celebrate it. He needs the state to confer dignity upon it.”

If you haven’t already read them, each of these essays is well worth your time.