Is Homosexual Marriage Good For America?

The story this post is based on is available here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121400362307993399.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I renamed it homosexual because I believe the word gay means something specific. It refers to one who is happy. I will not allow the homosexual community to take away the true meaning of the word from me to define themselves. I will call them homosexuals. That is simply what they are. If they want to call me a heterosexual, that is fine. That is what I am.

I’m not going to quote this article entirely, but I will be referencing pieces and I trust the reader can follow along.

Our writer, Jonathan Rauch, says this in the second paragraph on why we should keep homosexual marriage:

To understand why, imagine your life without marriage. Meaning, not merely your life if you didn’t happen to get married. What I am asking you to imagine is life without even the possibility of marriage.

Now let’s be sure on one thing so we’re not playing word games at the start. Historically, marriage has meant one thing. It has meant one man and one woman united together and that has been for the purpose of producing children. I say this because part of the goal in the homosexual community is to redefine marriage and I want us to be on the lookout for having the deck stacked beforehand.

The third paragraph says:

Re-enter your childhood, but imagine your first crush, first kiss, first date and first sexual encounter, all bereft of any hope of marriage as a destination for your feelings. Re-enter your first serious relationship, but think about it knowing that marrying the person is out of the question. (endquote)

Already, we know we’re not dealing with the Christian worldview as we’re told to imagine our first sexual encounter. I would hope most of us who are Christians are practicing chastity until marriage. (Celibacy is the term for the lifelong covenant. Chastity is to be used for those who intend to abstain from sexual intercourse until marriage.)

The reality is that this is simply an emotional appeal. I can in fact look back now on my first crush and realize that there is no chance whatsoever for a relationship. We have to accept that. However, could it be that some relationships shouldn’t happen because they are not proper? If my first crush, for instance, was on a married lady, does that mean to avoid being brokenhearted, I should have been allowed to murder her husband and marry her? (And it wasn’t for those concerned.)

Rauch says that this kind of world will have more sex and less marriage. AIDS is the quilt of this world. However, could it be that the solution is not to re-define marriage but to actually practice marriage? Someone once asked G.K. Chesterton what he thought of civilization. He said he thought it was a great idea and someone should try it sometime.

Sadly, this is where we Christians have failed. Our divorce rate is just as high as the world’s is. We are not really practicing true marriage and if the world wants to look to other practices instead, then we have to take the blame where it belongs. We have been more impacted by the culture than we have been an impact on the culture.

Rauch wants us to remember that marriage isn’t just a contract between two people. That’s true. He’s left something important out though. It’s a contract between a man and a woman. We have to describe marriage the way that it is. If we can re-define marriage, we can make it anything we want to be and it’s valid to ask “Where do we draw the line?”

Later, he has this paragraph:

This is a fantastically fruitful bargain. Marriage makes you, on average, healthier, happier and wealthier. If you are a couple raising kids, marrying is likely to make them healthier, happier and wealthier, too. Marriage is our first and best line of defense against financial, medical and emotional meltdown. It provides domesticity and a safe harbor for sex. It stabilizes communities by formalizing responsibilities and creating kin networks. And its absence can be calamitous, whether in inner cities or gay ghettos. (endquote)

The problem again is that this is equivocation. This is about heterosexual marriage and it does provide those benefits. Please notice that homosexuals don’t naturally have children. If a man and a woman can’t have children due to infertility, it is because of a flaw within the system. A homosexual couple cannot have children because the system itself is entirely flawed.

Does marriage provide a safe harbor for sexual intercourse? (Which is the fruition of sex. What we call gender today is more properly called sex. I have sex already in virtue of being male.) However, this is intercourse between a man and a woman. It provides an outlet for the powerful passions that are produced by sexuality.

Rauch goes on to say:

In 2008, denying gay Americans the opportunity to marry is not only inhumane, it is unsustainable. History has turned a corner: (endquote)

However, he has yet to tell me what is inhumane about it. What is not being allowed? It is already being assumed that these desires are good ones that we should be promoting in our society. Are they though? The proper question in the homosexual marriage debate is not “What will make people happy?” The proper question is “What is moral?” Rauch will have to give the standard by which this is inhumane.

Saying history has turned a corner doesn’t help either. A society says relativism will only hurt the homosexual cause for if society changes and homosexuals are not seen as people, what is to be done then? Proponents of marriage like myself have a love for homosexuals as people while not promoting the act of homosexuality. We base that on objective morality. They bear God’s image as well.

His next paragraph after this goes as follows:

Because parents want happy children, communities want responsible neighbors, employers want productive workers, and governments want smaller welfare caseloads, society has a powerful interest in recognizing and supporting same-sex couples. It will either fold them into marriage or create alternatives to marriage, such as publicly recognized and subsidized cohabitation. Conservatives often say same-sex marriage should be prohibited because it does not exemplify the ideal form of family. They should consider how much less ideal an example gay couples will set by building families and raising children out of wedlock.

The first is simply an argument of pragmatism. I don’t care how pragmatic legalizing homosexual marriage would be. I simply care about “Is it moral?” Now we have considered how much less an ideal homosexual marriages would create. That is why we are against them. The family means one thing and it is not to be redefined to mean something else. We as humans are to discover reality. We are not to create it.

The next point is about the slippery slope. Rauch says that homosexual marriage laws will involve few and modest changes. Modest changes such as totally re-defining what marriage is for all society? Last I checked, that is not a modest change. That is a huge change. Again, I am more interested in the act of homosexuality itself. “Is it moral?” If not, then why should I validate it by calling it marriage?

And actually, the slippery slope is quite valid because it does involve us re-defining what marriage is and what reason is there for not having it be polygamous or between relatives or with something that a group like NAMBLA would be happy with?

So what is the ultimate fallacy in all of this?

Homosexuals are not wanting the same rights. They are wanting different rights. They can marry someone legally of the opposite sex. So can any heterosexual. The homosexual movement wants to change that and the misnomer of love has been used to do that. Love has been reduced to an emotion in our society today. It does involve emotions, but it itself is not an emotion. It is a producer of emotions, but true love is love that is there when the emotion is not.

Also, this is difficult because historically, marriage has not been about love. It has been about children. It has been about the future of society and that is all the state cares about. When a man and a woman come together, the state doesn’t care if they love each other. It cares about whether or not they are going to build a family of children.

Is homosexual marriage good for America? No. What is good for America? When marriage is properly lived and exemplified and for we in the church, that falls largely on our doorstep. Maybe if we started getting things done in our own relationships properly, other people would see the idea and actually pursue it and defend it.