Subsidiarity and Moral Absolutes

Last week Patrick offered a subsidiarity-based defense of the Federal Marriage Amendment, asserting that:

the primary place of subsidiarity in the marriage amendment argument, as I understand it, concerns the government's responsibility to assist the body politic in giving effect to the particular function/authority that precedes the state.  I therefore agree with those who insist that subsidiarity does not necessarily assign this task to the lowest possible level, e.g., states, governments, or individuals.  Marriage needs help, and those charged with the common good are to provide it, consistent with their own proper functions.

I agree that subsidiarity cannot just stand for devolution across the board, or else we'll soon be one step removed from the state of nature, empowering any local actor so inclined to pursue their own moral project, regardless of its corrosive effect on the common good.  But I'm left feeling a bit perplexed if the alternative approach is to limit subsidiarity based on the (highly contested) contours of the natural law.  It sounds like we're telling society, "we implore you to honor subsidiarity's localizing impetus, except when the issue is one that we don't want to localize."  If subsidiarity's implementation is going to turn on a contest of overarching principles, it's not going to go very far.  Supporters of the Federal Marriage Amendment can insist that marriage between a man and woman is so important that local exceptions are forbidden; Massachusetts can insist that having a pool of potential adoptive parents based only on relevant parenting criteria (as determined by the state) is so important that local exceptions are forbidden; California can insist that having access to employer-provided birth control is so important that local exceptions are forbidden, etc.  Once we start arguing over which principles are so important that the higher body is justified in supporting the principle's vitality in the society, subsidiarity recedes from the conversation.  To a certain extent, this is unavoidable (e.g., we're not talking about subsidiarity in our approach to regulating murder), but we need to be very careful in letting the non-negotiable moral principle overwhelm the inclination toward local empowerment.

I'm not suggesting that we can do away with a debate about principles; I'm just saying that if we carve out an exception to local empowerment on contested moral issues based on our own contested understanding of the natural law, we shouldn't be surprised if the society views our invocation of subsidiarity as self-serving.

Rob