To Be Or Not

What we are puzzled on are the fundamental questions of what marriage is, and its purpose. It was the answers to these questions that allowed the western civilization to place their authority over the status of marriage and its monogamous heterosexual identity from the very beginning, and though these ancient answers may have been recently forgotten, or have fallen reprobate, they remain as sound and as compelling as ever. To understand what is at the other edge of that outcome--that is, what stands to be undone by gay marriage--we also have to distinguish marriage in its essence from an assortment of other goods and values with which it is usually grouped (Schulman). Those values--love, monogamous sex, establishing a home, fidelity, childbearing and childrearing, stability, inheritance, tax breaks, and all the rest--are not the same as marriage (Schulman, Orthodox Today). True, a decent marriage generally has these values; a failing marriage is often deficient in them, and in religion, custom, and law. To understand why it is necessary to oppose legal recognition of homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different orders need to be taken into account. Among the most likely effects of the recognition of such unions is to take us down a "slippery slope" to legalized polygamy and "polyamory" (group marriage). Marriage will be radically changed into a variety of relationships of male and female adding up to three or more people (Kurtz). A scare scenario? Barely. The bottom of this slope is clearly visible from where we stand on this issue. Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality; sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). Furthermore, lifestyles of homosexuals and the core premise civil laws express not only on the surface, shape the life of society, but also tend to alter the children's discernment and assessment of forms of behavior. Legal recognition of homosexual unions would confound certain basic moral values and cause a depreciation of the establishment of marriage. Civil laws "play very important and sometimes decisive roles in the influencing patterns of thought and behavior" (Pope John Paul II).

In restricting marriage to one man and one woman, aren't you imposing your beliefs on others?

Marriage has been the underpinning of civilization for millennia in cultures around the world. It is the single most important social institution, and it is the basis for the proliferation of children and the center of family life (Knight). Those who are trying to radically change it for their own purposes are the ones who are trying to inflict their values on the rest of the populace. Right-minded people did not pick this fight. They are not the antagonists. They are simply protecting the indispensable principles that have prolonged the culture for everyone against a radical assault (Knight).

In identifying the meaning of marriage, it always has frequently and officially been renowned as the union of a man and a woman, not a man and a man or a woman and a woman. The statute--and safeguard--of the marriage "liaison" has been a deep-seated compulsion of government since before Christ. Aristotle acknowledged these more than 2,000 years ago, and our Supreme Court has done so without fail throughout our own history. The high court has ruled time and again that marriage is a basic freedom that cannot be denied, for example, on account of race.

The laws of marriage do not form marriage, but in civilization ruled by law they help illustrate the precincts and uphold the public sense of marriage (Gallagher). Without this shared, public feature, brought about generation after generation, marriage becomes what its critics say it is: a mere contract, a vessel with no particular content, one of a menu of sexual lifestyles, of no fundamental importance to anyone outside a given relationship.

Oh, come on. Whom does it really hurt if a same-sex couple wants to get married?

When homosexual couples seek state authorization and the benefits that the state coffers for married couples, they necessitate the law on everyone. According to non-marital relationships, the equivalent standing as marriage, would mean that millions of people would be disenfranchised by their own governments (Knight). The state would be informing them that their beliefs are no longer suitable, and would twist the civil rights laws into a battering ram against them: business men and women would be obligatory to bestow "family" health benefits to homosexual couples, children would be taught in schools that homosexual sex is

the moral equivalent of marital love, gay "marriage" would smooth the progress of the adoption of children by homosexual couples, and sex-based merits in the law would be detached (as was proposed in the rejected Equal Rights Amendment). Law is not a suggestion; it is force (George Washington). Official state endorsement of homosexual relationships as "marriage" would bring the full system of the state against those who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman (Knight). Traditional morality would, in effect, be barred.

Government can justifiably license marriages and seek to bolster it through public policy, because marriage serves public purposes: namely, procreation and the benefit of children and society. Other relationships, such as cohabitation and homosexuality, do not benefit children and society--as a product; they should not be supported by government. There is no evidence showing that these relationships have the same positive effects as marriage. In fact, there is considerable evidence that they have damaging effects on both children and adults.

Human relationships are by nature difficult enough which is why communities must do all they can to strengthen and not to weaken those institutions that keep us up to a mark we may not be able to achieve through our own efforts (Gallagher). The penalty of not doing so will be an escalation of all the other afflictions of which we have so far had only a taste in our society and which are reflected in the hurtling figures of illegitimacy, cohabitation, divorce, and fatherlessness (Gallagher).

But if two people--any two people--love each other, why not let them marry?

Marriage is not just a subject of feelings. It is the distinctively defined social, spiritual, economic and legal union of a man and a woman (Knight). If that definition is radically altered