Fight For Marriage Like There’s No Tomorrow
The Left, energized by feckless Republicans wheedling conservatives to set aside those pesky social issues, is poised to make a run at marriage again this week in Springfield. It’s time to retrieve our creaky spines from storage and return them to their proper places, holding our gelatinous bodies upright. We must exceed the fervor and tenacity of those who seek to pervert marriage and rob children of their birthrights. Don’t allow homosexual demagogues and bullies cow you into submission through lies and name-calling. Stand for truth and children’s rights even if doing so is costly.
Republican State Representative Ed Sullivan from Mundelein just announced his support for same-sex “marriage,” presumptuously explaining that “because my mother-in-law is gay, I have more of an understanding and familiarity with same-sex couples.” Clearly, however, he has virtually no understanding of what marriage by nature is or why the government is involved.
Sunday morning on Fox 32 Sunday, House Minority Leader Tom Cross said “I think you’re going to see 3 or 4 Republicans…probably be supporting [same-sex ‘marriage’].
Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn fulminating against conservatives again reveals the Left’s profound ignorance of marriage and the reason for the government’s involvement in marriage. He exposes his ignorance through his baseless comparison of homosexuality to race and his equally foolish assertion that “opponents [of legalized same-sex ‘marriage’]…rage incoherently about tradition, biology and scriptural condemnation of sodomy.” (It’s curious that Zorn dismisses biology without even an attempt at defending his dismissal. Why are reasons emerging from biology, that is to say, hard science, less legitimate than reasons emerging from the ever-fluid world of social science that the Left relies on even when it’s bad social science?)
Zorn, and other “progressives” would be well-served by studying the important book What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense by Ryan T. Anderson, Sherif Girgis, and Princeton Law Professor Robert George. It may surprise the self-righteous Zorn to learn that they don’t rage, their arguments are non-religious, and they’re coherent.
If Zorn wants to talk about incoherence, he needs to look no further than President Obama who every year issues Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations that affirm the essential roles that mothers and fathers play in the lives of their children, and then endorses a form of “marriage” which says, in effect, that mothers or fathers are expendable. Now that’s incoherent—and pernicious.
Zorn prophesies that “40 years from now, opposition to gay marriage will be an embarrassing relic of our Puritan past” and that those who yet believe marriage is inherently sexually complementary will be a “hateful and fundamentally irrelevant minority.”
Is homosexual marriage analogous to interracial marriage?
The basis for his ugly prophecy is his comparison of homosexual “marriage” to interracial marriage, which is based on the baseless comparison of homosexuality to race. Race is, of course, a lousy analogue for homosexuality. Race is 100% heritable, in all cases immutable, and has no inherent connection to subjective feelings, desires, or volitional acts. Homosexuality, in contrast, is not 100% heritable, is in some cases fluid, and is constituted centrally by subjective feelings, sexual desire, and volitional sexual acts.
Here are some differences that the Left refuses to acknowledge:
- Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they introduced a criterion wholly irrelevant to the nature and purpose of marriage, which is a sexually complementary relationship naturally ordered to reproduction and childrearing.
- Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they were based on a flawed understanding of human nature. The erroneous assumption was that white men and black men were by nature different. Bans on homosexual marriage are based on the true belief that men and women are fundamentally different—a fact that homosexual men and women openly acknowledge.
- Bans on interracial marriage were wrong because they discriminated based solely on who someone was, whereas bans on homosexual “marriage” make distinctions among behaviors—which all laws do. A black man who wants to marry a white woman is seeking to do the same action that a white man who wants to marry a white woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits an interracial marriage is wrong because it is based on who the person is, not on what he seeks to do. But, if a man wants to marry a man, he is seeking to do an entirely different action from that which a man who wants to marry a woman seeks to do. A law that prohibits homosexual marriage is legitimate because it is based not on who the person is but rather on what he seeks to do.
What is marriage and why is the government involved? Some non-religious reasons
Zorn, like his fellow dogmatists, simply declaims that marriage constitutes “legally formalizing the love and commitment of same-sex couples.” That’s a contention—not an argument. And it’s a revolutionary idea. The government has no vested interest in “formalizing” love. The government couldn’t care less if those seeking to marry love each other.
The Left argues that marriage has no inherent connection to sexual complementarity or reproductive potential and that it’s just about who loves whom. If that’s the case, then why the magic number two?
What our presumptuous “progressives” don’t discuss is the inconvenient truth that children have an inherent, inalienable right to know and be raised whenever possible by their biological mother and father—a right of which they are illegitimately denied when society formally severs marriage from sexual complementarity and reproductive potential.
Marriage is the union of one man and one woman, which is the type of relationship that naturally results in children. The government doesn’t compel reproduction or ascertain fertility. It merely recognizes and regulates the type of relationship from which children naturally ensue.
And what are the essential elements for the procreation of children? You need one man and one woman in a sexual union. This is the only reason the binary criterion of legal marriage makes sense. There are two sexes. When two people, one from each sex, come together in a sexual union, children may and often do result. Sever marriage from any inherent connection to reproductive potential and the binary requirement becomes irrational.
Eliminate sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage and eliminate reproductive potential from our understanding of marriage, substituting love as the central constituent feature, and not only does the prohibition of plural marriage become irrational but so too does the prohibition of incestuous marriage.
The government is involved in marriage to protect the developmental needs and inherent rights of children—which ultimately also serve the future health of any civilization. The Left in transmogrifying marriage into a virtually unrecognizable shape is changing the central focus of marriage from the needs and rights of children to the desires of adults. As the French who oppose the legalization of same-sex “marriage” (and that includes atheists and homosexuals) say, the rights of children trump the rights to children, who are being objectified and commodified as they’re bought and sold to homosexual couples that are by design sterile.
Please don’t allow battle fatigue to get the better of you. Religious liberty, speech rights, parental rights, and, most important, the rights and needs of children are at stake.
Take ACTION: Please take a few minutes to email or a fax to your state representative — it is time to speak up now! Click HERE to contact your Illinois Representative and tell him/her to oppose the effort to redefine marriage! Even if you have previously contacted your representative, please do so again. Tell your representative in no uncertain terms that you want him or her to oppose same-sex “marriage.”
Please take a few minutes to also call him/her through the Capitol switchboard at (217) 782-2000.
Help us continue the fight for natural marriage by donating $15, $25, $50 or $100 or more today.
Click HERE to support the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute. With your support we can continue our vital work!