3
institution into a contractual arrangement available to any group of consenting adults, a
development likely to weaken the bonds of matrimonial loyalty even further.
4
Why is loyalty currently an object of both such importance and such
disagreement? A full answer to that question would take us far afield, but the arguments
that political theorists have conducted over the past few decades--whether we think of
them as helping to shape the public culture or merely reflecting it--provide an excellent
clue. Ever since John Rawls published A Theory of Justice in 1971, provoking the great
debate between liberalism and communitarianism, arguably the central topic debated by
political theorists has been the autonomous self. We are sometimes told that this
liberal/communitarian debate has subsided, but that is not really the case. We are still
debating the same issue, sometimes in obvious ways, as in arguments over whether
"autonomy" or "toleration" is the central value of liberalism, at other times disguised
under labels such as multiculturalism or nationalism. But the autonomous self is still
very much with us.
5
This is true not only at the level of academic debate, but also in the public
political culture. The Lawrence v. Texas case provides, again, an excellent example. For
the Lawrence majority invoked the Court's earlier abortion decision in Planned
Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey (505 U.S. 833 [1992]). There the Court--
famously or infamously, depending upon one's persepctive--wrote, of the liberty
protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define
one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human
life" (505 U.S. 833, 851). One could hardly ask for a better description of the
Convention