So, too, with “Same Love.” At most, it theorizes that it’s the same love, that love is love however expressed, but this is never defended so much as assumed; and since, as Macklemore asserts, “We press play, don’t press pause / Progress, march on,” with all other positions retrograde and bigoted, the millions of viewers, “ten years hence,” may remember that there was a controversy, but not why.
As powerfully as any cultural artifact I know, “Same Love” reveals the odd imbalance or mismatch involved in the marriage dispute. On the one hand, the traditional, conjugal view held by, for instance, the Catholic Church, operates within the vocabulary of metaphysics (nature, being, cause, structure, purpose), practical reason/ethics (good, bad, right, wrong, proper, flourishing), and logos (causation, inference, syllogism, entailment). On the other hand, metaphysics is replaced with self-identity and expression (“Live on and be yourself”), ethics gives way to egalitarianism (“I might not be the same, but that’s not important / No freedom till we’re equal, damn right I support it), and logos to sentiment (“My love / She keeps me warm”).
So you have Theology of the Body or the arguments of natural law versus the word–image association of Macklemore—that’s not likely a ripe conversation—and Macklemore has a lead of 48 million views and a culture moving in his direction, not only in its beliefs but in its vocabulary.
Read more at First Things.
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