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Confucianism and Same-Sex Marriage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2020

Tongdong Bai Open the ORCID record for Tongdong Bai [Opens in a new window]
Tongdong Bai*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Fudan University
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Tongdong Bai, School of Philosophy, Fudan University, 220 Handan Road, Shanghai, China. E-mail: baitongdong@fudan.edu.cn
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Abstract

In the majority opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court over same-sex marriage, a claim by Confucius was quoted, which led to an uproar among Confucian scholars in mainland China. In this article, I will first explain the background of the debate over same-sex marriage in the United States, and why Confucius's claim was quoted. I will then show how a contemporary Confucian philosopher Zhang Xianglong addressed the issue of same-sex marriage from a Confucian perspective. In my view, compared with other mainland Confucians' responses, Zhang's are one of the most scholarly and moderate responses that nevertheless follow Confucian values. But he eventually rejected same-sex marriage on the Confucian ground. I will argue that, based on some Confucian values and principles which are shared by Zhang, we can answer Zhang's concerns with same-sex marriage, thus offering an even more moderate Confucian stance that accepts same-sex marriage. But this stance is still different from the typical liberal one. We will also see that, in order to accept same-sex marriage, it is the liberals, not the Confucians, who will have to deal with an issue—the acceptance of polygamy—that poses a serious challenge to the principle of equality, which is fundamental to some liberals.

Type
Article
Information
Politics and Religion , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2021 , pp. 132 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2020

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Footnotes

The research for this paper is supported by the Program for Professor of Special Appointment (Eastern Scholar, second term) at Shanghai Institutions of Higher Learning. I also wish to thank Professor Nicholas Tampio and the two anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments, the responses to which have made this paper significantly better than its first draft.

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