Marriage unites
BY LEN DEO, nj.com
from the Web, January 26, 2008
In their quest to redefine marriage
to include same-sex couples, same-sex activists would have us believe that
marriage is only a civil matter. Yet marriage is far more than that.
It is also a sacred religious and personal matter that affects the lives,
happiness and health of the men, women and children involved. Heterosexual
marriage, as clearly illustrated by social science evidence, provides the best
environment to raise children and yields the healthiest relationships on
average. Research also shows that strong religious beliefs increase
marital success, health and happiness.
Marriage is actually a human institution that involves both the church and the
state, which is why civil and religious marriage cannot be completely separated
from one another. Religion lends the critical support needed to sustain
the marriage culture on which the whole society depends, and the state is
interested in what marriage provides: a social structure that secures a
stable family. Same-sex relationships, in contrast, have proven remarkably
unstable and fragile in nature -- ending in dissolution significantly more than
heterosexuals. Broken families lead to crime, poverty, drug abuse, teen
pregnancy, school failure, mental and physical health problems -- all requiring
millions of dollars in the form of government aid.
While same-sex activists argue that marriage is simply a civil matter, they
have, at the same time, attacked the church for strongly defending one-man,
one-woman marriage, and have even attempted to rewrite church history regarding
marriage. The Judeo-Christian traditions and other major world religions
make it clear that God created male and female and instituted the union of one
man and one woman from the beginning of time. In spite of this, some
scholars claim that same-sex unions have been practiced and accepted by various
peoples throughout history, including by the church in premodern Europe.
Law professors Peter Lubin and Dwight Duncan respond to these insupportable
hypotheses in a 1998 Catholic Law review article by stating that the so-called
evidence for same-sex marriage comes from small, isolated, pre-literate tribes
and conclude that "There is no rich history of same-sex 'marriage,' [and] the
'resistance' to same-sex marriage is not limited to Western culture but extends
to al most every culture throughout the world."
Regarding the reworking of church history by a few homosexual activists, their
hypotheses stem from taking Greek words clearly describing brotherhood and
bonding rituals and falsely eroticizing them -- despite the precision of the
Greek language.
Because the civil and religious nature of marriage is so intertwined, the church
and the state must each do its part to support a stable marriage culture.
The church can do its part to help society and the state by stepping up
activities to encourage stable marriages, and the state can do its part to help
society and the church by passing a state constitutional marriage amendment to
preserve the definition of marriage between one man and one woman only.
Like all laws, marriage law is legitimately discriminatory in order to civilize
society for the benefit and health of all, not for the desires of the few at the
expense of the rest. Every citizen has equal rights, yet we must remember
that there is an important context to those rights in the U.S. Constitution:
We are "endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." President
John F. Kennedy recognized this foundational principle in his inaugural address,
stating, "The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are
still at issue ... the belief that the rights of man come not from the
generosity of the state, but from the hand of God. We dare not for get
today that we are the heirs of that first revolution."
Marriage is indeed both a civil and a religious matter, and with respect to
same-sex "marriage," there has never been a civil or God-given right to it.
Len Deo is executive director of the New Jersey Family Policy
Council.
|
