This is the year that societal institutions will crumble or stand.
The Supreme Court will decide this year whether it will redefine marriage and thereby permit same-sex couples to marry nationwide.
In the modern rampage of relativity, it is important to define what marriage is and why it matters, particularly with respect to governmental recognition in this sphere. Although culture has tried to impose a new definition, traditional marriage remains a comprehensive union of one man and one woman, and a shared life ordered to the unity of the couple and enriched in the procreation of children. Because a “conjugal” or traditional marriage is distinct from homosexual relationships, government cannot redefine marriage to include other unions.
Gay marriage is a relatively young social cause, almost too young to track its definite effects on society. Its proponents have advanced what Sherif Girgis, co-author of What Is Marriage? A Defense and advocate of traditional marriage, calls the “revisionist view,” which proceeds from equality under the law. As the Full Marriage Equality blog puts it: “We believe everyone has the right to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with any and all consenting adult(s) of their choice” (emphasis in original). The blog further says that full marriage equality is a basic human right.
The blog states that marriage should be globally defined as “the uniting of consenting individuals in a witnessed ceremony.” This illuminates the flaw in the revisionist view, according to Girgis: It cannot distinguish marriage from other human associations. What does “uniting” mean? This definition could apply to teammates, to a babysitter and children, to members in a carpool. What does it mean to share love, sex, and residence? Do these alone make marriage?
Girgis says that marriage, as a human good, has an essence and qualities that matter for defining it under law. In attempting to define marriage, both sides seemingly agree that it is some kind of companionship that is permanent, exclusive, consensual, a sharing of life in all aspects, including love, sex, and the rearing of children.
Marriage is an institution, not necessarily a right, that is beneficial both to the couple and to society, capable of fulfilling the the betterment of the spouses and the procreation of children; the government should uphold the traditional view because it fulfills these ends and affects society.
Only a conjugal marriage achieves the comprehensive union, the harmony of mind and body. Biologically, only this view can attain a one-flesh union. The revisionist view, which includes unions incapable of attaining a fruitful bodily union, must insist that marriage is an affective, romantic-emotional union.
The government has chosen to protect the traditional institution because it realizes that both aspects — unity and procreation — benefit society. The propagation of the human race and the raising of children in a family of a married father and mother — in which studies have shown children thrive most — concern society and its future. According to a paper written by Donald Paul Sullins and published by the Catholic University of America, emotional problems were more than twice as prevalent for children with same-sex parents than for children with opposite-sex parents. Also, numbers from the 2013 US Census Bureau showed that educational attainment is much higher in children raised in a household with both biological spouses present. Children living with cohabiting couples performed even worse academically than in single-parent homes. Though this is not data for homosexual unions, it does show that children thrive in married, heterosexual households. Studies have also shown that the specific traits of mothers and fathers are indispensable.
If government chooses to redefine marriage as any emotional bond, it must consistently protect all of the millions of kinds of emotional companionships. Once the institutions of marriage and the family fracture, all other pillars of society crumble as well.
Same-sex marriage proponents are fond of redefining terms. This is the effect of relativism: If there is no truth, there is no need for set definitions. Marriage must then be broadened to include homosexual unions. “Pro-marriage” is anti-gay. Incestuous relationships are “consanguineous.”
In January, FOX News reported that an 18-year-old girl from the Great Lakes region planned on marrying and reproducing with her biological father. If the culture allows for reinvented terms, such instances will increase. Slowly, as definite points slip away, exclusivity, permanence, gender, relation, number or any other terminology will no longer characterize marriage. By expanding traditional marriage, we not only cheapen it, but strip it of any definition. If marriage is redefined to include homosexual relationships, ultimately it will have no definition at all, and society will suffer for it.
