More on Marriage
- GEORGE WEIGEL
Why support a Federal Marriage Amendment? Here are ten reasons why.
The FMA will prevent activist judges from redefining marriage to fit their squinty reading of the "signs of the times." There isn't the slightest shred of evidence to support the claim that the American people want this redefinition. Those who do should have the democratic courtesy to take their case to legislatures, not courts. Judicial usurpation of decision-making on grave issues of public policy is undermining democracy. It's time to draw the line. This is the place.-
"Marriage" is not something the state can legitimately redefine. Marriage
is a human institution thousands of years older than the state; a just state recognizes
that and structures its laws accordingly. The state is under moral judgment here,
not the institution of marriage as it's been understood for millennia.
- Attempts
to redefine marriage inevitably involve parallel attempts to drive religiously-informed
moral norms from public life. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, for
example, declared marriage a "wholly secular institution" in its recent
decision mandating so-called "gay marriage." The Massachusetts Supremes
were wrong, but if their opinion prevails, it will be another step toward establishing
secularism as the official ideology of the United States.
- Government-sanctioned
same-sex "marriage" will inevitably lead to demands that homosexual
sex be discussed "neutrally" in public schools. Parents who fight this
will be branded irrational bigots. This is already happening to supporters of
the Federal Marriage Amendment.
- The same charge of bigotry will
be laid against priests, ministers, and rabbis who decline to perform "gay
marriages." One young priest I know, an entirely sober soul, told me that
he fully expects to see clergy of his generation jailed for refusing to perform
same-sex "weddings." He is not being alarmist. Unhappy precedents have
already been set in Canada and Great Britain, where clergy have been subjected
to the pressures of the criminal law for teaching classic Christian doctrine on
homosexual behavior.
- Some constitutionally fastidious conservatives
and a few dissembling politicians argue that marriage has always been a matter
for the states. This is historically inaccurate. Several federal laws against
polygamy were passed in the nineteenth century, and absent federal intervention,
polygamy might well have been legal in several states. Moreover, gay "marriage"
activists will insist that any one state's "gay marriage" provision
be recognized in every other state under the Constitution's "full faith and
credit" clause and they'll find a lot of the federal appellate bench
supporting that claim. In the current political, cultural, and judicial climates,
defining marriage is, inescapably, a national issue.
- Then there's
the slippery slope, which in this instance is an empirical reality, not a logical
fallacy. If states can redefine marriage as the union of two men or two women,
on what principled ground will states deny the claims of one man and three women
to be married? Or two women and three men? There is no such ground. If gay "marriage"
becomes the law of the land, polygamy and polyandry are not far away.
- Gay
"marriage" advocates insist that family "structure" doesn't
matter. Haven't we learned from years of a lengthy, failed experiment in social
welfare policy that marriage "structure" does count? What's just about
ignoring the overwhelming social scientific evidence that kids flourish best in
a stable family led by a father and a mother? To endorse same-sex "marriage"
is to declare that motherless or fatherless families are social goods. The kids,
as usual, will suffer most.
- We've already seen the damage that's
been done to marriage and to children by a culture that increasingly divides "marriage"
and "procreation." Legally endorsing same-sex "marriage" will
accelerate the separation of marriage and parenting.
- What would we be saying about ourselves and our traditions if same-sex "marriage" wins the day? Among other things, we'd be saying that the biblical understanding of marriage and the family is wrong, even bigoted. We'd be saying that there's nothing really important about our being created male and female. We'd be saying that "marriage" is something than can be redefined by anyone seeking to meet a personal "need." Is that what we want to say to, and about, ourselves?
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Acknowledgement
George Weigel. "More on marriage." The Catholic Difference (April 21, 2004).
Reprinted with permission of George Weigel.
George Weigel's column is distributed by the Denver Catholic Register, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Denver. Phone: 303-715-3123.
The Author
George Weigel is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He is author of The Fragility of Order: Catholic Reflections on Turbulent Times; Lessons in Hope: My Unexpected Life with St. John Paul II; Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Catholic Church; Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II; Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches; Evangelical Catholicism; The End and the Beginning: John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy; God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church; Letters to a Young Catholic: The Art of Mentoring; The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church; and The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored.
Copyright © 2004 George Weigel