What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in
Education?
Toppling
Dominos
Anti-Christians
don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's
Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of
Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic
Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of
Secularism
"Don't Impose Your
Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death
Warrant?
Court Ordered
Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
The Culture War
Battles
"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for
Catholics in this Election
Christians
Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic
Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay
Marriage
Whose Side are You
on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake
Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields
Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion
Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way,
Baby
The Incarnational
Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told
You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them. How Else
Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be
Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of
Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or
Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But
One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the
Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with
homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality,
and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of
Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well,
Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong
Side
"These are the
Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few
are Married
"...Prepare him for
additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a
Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in
the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a
Person?
The Point of a Point of
View
Politically Correct,
Morally Depraved
Population
Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress
through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for
Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be
schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality
Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass
Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull
the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to
Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal
if...
Get Rid of that Worthless
Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues
Prior to Voting
|
|
by Monsignor James C. Brunner |
Faith Points |
A Primer on Gay Marriage
When John Adams, a religious man who made frequent allusions to God in his writing, penned the Massachusetts constitution 224 years ago who would have suspected that he secreted within it a constitutional right to homosexual marriage? That is what the clever Massachusetts justices have found. Their decision will have profound effects on the rest of the nation as gay couples will wed in Massachusetts as soon as May of this year and then demand that their unions be recognized in other states. Since the legalization of homosexual marriages has been thrust upon us we offer herewith a primer on the subject.
- Homosexuals should be allowed to marry because homosexuality is a birth condition.
That is a position wholly unproven. No homosexual genes have ever been found. Even if a genetic predisposition could be proved it would not follow that homosexual acts are good. Persons may have a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, rape, or child molestation but expressing them would be against right reason if not against the law. Homosexual acts are essentially disordered and there is no way to justify their approval except on the grounds that all purely recreational sex is permissible.
2. Opposing gay marriage is like opposing interracial marriage, a violation of civil rights.
Laws against miscegenation were wrong because they promoted an unjust racial order. Marriage laws are not against anyone. Society needs men and women to make babies for the society to survive and so it makes laws to foster this endeavor. There is no corresponding public stake in promoting other sexual arrangements. Freely chosen acts cannot have the same standing as a nature. That violates logic. One can have a homosexual orientation and still refrain from homosexual acts, but one cannot for example be born black and refrain from being black. Expression of homosexual acts does not deserve the same respect that a nature does.
- Marriage is not for children but for the commitment of the spouses.
History, research, and common sense show that the best situation for children is to be reared by their biological parents in a permanent low-conflict union. Society does not make the decision for spouses to have children but it does have an interest in seeing that children receive the best upbringing. Gay unions cannot contribute to the survival of the human race. Whatever contributions they make they are not equivalent to that of marriage and so there is no social policy reason to equate gay unions with heterosexual ones.
- The government creates civil marriage. (Massachusetts decision)
Marriage pre-existed the formation of states. States may regulate and promote marriage by defining rights and obligations, but it may not redefine marriage. Private property pre-exists the state. The state may regulate and defend private property but may not redefine it in such a way as to make it meaningless, such as saying that all property must be held in common. That doctrine taught by Communism resulted in millions of deaths. Redefining marriage by removing it from parenthood will have devastating effects on society. Gay unions gut marriage of its central assumptions because homosexual acts close sex to the gift of life. The Massachusetts Supremes wrote: “Eliminating civil marriage would be wholly inconsistent with the Legislature’s deep commitment to fostering stable families and would dismantle a vital organizing principle of our society.” Ironically, the Justices were unknowingly making the case that homosexual unions would dismantle marriage.
- Without legally recognized unions homosexuals cannot enjoy certain legal and tax benefits.
Homosexuals can freely visit their partners in the hospital and even other heterosexual friends. They can leave their property to their partner. Have they never heard of wills? Laws can be passed to make up for other anomalies. There is no need for recognition of gay unions to provide these rights.
- Gays should be able to live under the same set of laws as other people.
They already do. There are no special speed limits for gays. Like others they may marry someone of the opposite sex. What is denied them in opposing recognition of homosexual unions is society’s stamp of approval on their deviant lifestyle which undercuts marriage.
- People who love one another should be allowed to celebrate their love.
Marriage is not self-definition, nor from a social policy point of view, is it about love. The state may have no place in the bedroom but it does have an interest in maintaining the basic building block of society and replacing it with straw. It is not the job of government to make people feel good about their private relationships. Destroying the basic building block of society is a high price to pay to make homosexuals feel good.
- Recognizing homosexual unions will foster greater stability among gays.
Apart from the lack of desirability in promoting a disordered lifestyle there is scant evidence that endorsing gay marriage would produce stability. A Dutch study in a nation that approves homosexuality found that in so-called monogamous gay relationships there was room for an average of eight additional partners. It also found that these relationships lasted an average of one and one half years. So much for stability.
- Why should the marriage of two men or two women affect anybody else’s marriage?
Gay unions deprive children of either motherhood or fatherhood. Children born to unmarried mothers or in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risk of poor outcomes. There is abundant research to establish that.
Gay unions will obliterate the importance of marriage. It has already done so in Scandinavia where gay unions are legally recognized. Thus in Norway the out of wedlock birthrate rose from 39% in 1990 to 50% in 2000. In Sweden the rise was from 47% to 55%. In Denmark 60% of first born children have unmarried parents. Both married and unmarried couples are breaking up at an unprecedented rate. Contraception and abortion allowed a separation of sex from parenthood. Once marriage is redefined to accommodate gay unions the cultural separation between marriage and parenthood will be widened. Gay unions confirm the idea that individual choice trumps marriage form. If marriage is concerned only with personal relationships it will lead to a decline if not the disappearance of marriage. Why does a couple or other grouping need a document to certify their love?
Recognition of gay unions leaves no principled way of forbidding incestuous, polygamous, or even interspecies unions.
Gay marriages once legalized will be presented to youth as being just as acceptable as heterosexual marriages. There will be deep changes in school curricula. Sex education classes will present gay unions as legal and normal, something that they might seek for themselves. Contrary religious teachings will be branded as hate speech and discriminatory. Restrictions on religious teaching condemning homosexual activity have already been placed in Canada, England, and Scandinavia.
Recognition of gay unions would undercut traditional morality and endorse decadence. If we reap what we sow we will further corruption of our society. “The one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh.” (Gal. 6:8)
(Printed March, 2004)
St. Mary's Church Pastor & Vicar
