Same-Sex "Marriage" Is Not a Civil Right

Same-Sex "Marriage" Is Not a Civil Right return to full navigation Summary: Homosexual activists continue to hitch their caboose to the civil rights train, but the fact is, same-sex marriage is not a civil right. Today's homosexual activists are seeking not to fulfill, but to overturn, the principles of family that were enshrined in nature from the beginning of the human race.

Mr. Sprigg delivered the following remarks at a "Defend Maryland Marriage" rally at the State House in Annapolis, Maryland, on January 27, 2005.

Good afternoon. My name is Peter Sprigg and I serve as the senior director of policy studies at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C. I am also a proud resident of Montgomery County, Maryland.

In addition, I am the author of Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage, a book published last year. Today I'd like to share with you just a few points that I made in my book.

The first point is that same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue. Without exception, every adult in Maryland already has a right to marry. But everyone also has restrictions on whom they may marry--again, without exception. No one is permitted to marry a child, a close blood relative, a person who is already married, or a person of the same sex. These restrictions apply equally to everyone--there is no discrimination involved.

Nevertheless, homosexual activists continue to hitch their caboose to the civil rights train--something which is offensive to a majority of African Americans. We ban discrimination based on race in this country for the specific reason that race is a characteristic which is inborn, involuntary (you can't choose it), immutable (you can't change it), and innocuous (it harms no one). Plus, race appears in the Constitution. The choice to engage in homosexual behavior is none of the above. The laws which once limited one's marriage partner on the basis of race were designed to build walls and to keep blacks and whites apart. But restricting one's choice of a marriage partner by gender preserves marriage as an institution that builds bridges to bring men and women together to create future generations and serve the health of society.

But even if same-sex marriage is not a legal right, some people ask, what harm would be done by letting same-sex couples marry? I sometimes find it hard to believe people can ask that question in light of the devastation we've seen from other changes in family structure in the last 35 years. The research we've done at the Family Research Council shows several things: homosexuals are much less likely than heterosexuals to enter into long-term relations in the first place; if they do have a partner, they are less likely to remain sexually faithful; and they are much less likely to remain committed for a lifetime. These problems--an unwillingness to commit to marriage, a lack of fidelity, and a lack of permanence--exist among heterosexuals as well. But the experience of the Scandinavian countries shows that opening marriage to same-sex couples would make these problems worse, not better, throughout the population.

I know that many people here have come with your pastors and in church groups, and are motivated in part by your religious convictions. This leads some people to charge that we are trying to impose a religious definition of marriage on civil society. But defining marriage as the union of male and female is not something unique to Christian theology, biblical teaching, or even a Judeo-Christian worldview. In fact, until the last blink of an eye in human history, there has never been any civilization, any religion, or any culture that has treated homosexual relationships as the full equivalent of heterosexual marriage. Marriage is not simply a religious institution, nor is it merely a civil institution. Instead, marriage is a natural institution, whose definition as the union of a man and a woman is rooted in the order of nature itself.

Individuals may choose to marry for all kinds of private reasons, but the reason marriage is a public institution is because it brings together men and women for the purpose of reproducing the human race and keeping a mother and father together to cooperate in raising to maturity the children they produce. The public interest in such behavior is great, because thousands of years of human experience and a vast body of contemporary social science research both demonstrate that married husbands and wives, and the children they conceive and raise, are happier, healthier, and more prosperous than people in any other living situation.

In fact, I would suggest that the argument in favor of same-sex marriage can only be logically sustained if one argues that there is no difference between men and women--that is, if one argues not merely that men and women are equal in value and dignity, a proposition with which I'm sure we all agree, but that males and females are identical and thus able to serve as entirely interchangeable parts in the structure of marriage. The contention is absurd on its face. Thus, "same-sex marriage" is a contradiction in terms.

Finally, let's be clear about one thing. This debate has not arisen because there's been a large groundswell of public support for same-sex marriage, for no such groundswell exists. We are sometimes accused of being "divisive" for opposing same-sex marriage, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there are few political issues on which Americans are so united as they are in believing that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The only reason this debate is taking place at all is because small groups of homosexual activists have gone to court in an attempt to gain from a small band of judges what they know they could never win through the democratic process. They did it in Vermont and succeeded; they did it in Massachusetts and succeeded; and they are trying to do it in Maryland as we speak. Will they succeed? Not if we can help it!

During the civil rights movement--the real civil rights movement--people like Thurgood Marshall, whose statue is before us, went to court to fulfill the principles of liberty that were enshrined in our Constitution from the beginning of our nation. But today's homosexual activists are seeking not to fulfill, but to overturn, the principles of family that were enshrined in nature from the beginning of the human race. They will not succeed as long as government of the people, by the people, and for the people is alive in the state of Maryland.

Peter Sprigg is the author of Outrage: How Gay Activists and Liberal Judges Are Trashing Democracy to Redefine Marriage (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2004).

"Satan" is a Hebrew word derived from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seti ("ha-Set-hn" as spoken in the Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "Adversary" of Judaic theology. A perplexing question is whether "Adversary" was originally intended as a plural like "Malakhim Raoth" in Hebrew, as a composite entity of the many "evil angels." (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim, according to primary dictionary definition in most errant college editions.) Paganism is pantheistic, idolatrous and always violently adversarial to Judaism historically. There is also Biblical description of pagan conflicts within Judaism itself, a confederacy of insurgent deceivers opposing God. Many Jewish rabbis will say that Satan does not exist at all; possibly because either phantasms are no things corporeal, and therefore the collective embodiment in their prince cannot be also; Satan, Lucifer, etc. are fictitious pagan deities, as all the pagan pantheons are contrived; or considering there is, according to Judaic theology, the many fallen angels, whereas Lucifer, Satan, Abaddon, Beelzebub, Belial, etc., etc. are but just a few of them. It is also consistent in Biblical teaching that there are false prophets within Judaism and the Christian Church inspired by such inimical genii. The Bible (both New and Old Testament), if taken literally, is a Zionist doctrine. Yahweh and Yeshua are Zionists, without exception or compromise.

The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass, an animal holy to the pagan Egyptian god Set, was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the figure commonly known to Gentiles as Satan, was born into the World. Such conflict was evident from the cradle of human civilization through pagan Babylon, pagan Egypt, pagan Greece (with the Maccabean period of Ptolemic Dynasties and Antiochus Epiphanes), pagan Rome, and continues into modern times on several fronts with Marxist iconic paganism, Islamic paganism and New Age Neo-paganism (they all hate the Jews and Christians).

The idea of a "Devil," lord and master of an infernal place, is universal to religion and a seemingly interminable myriad of names are enough to fill several pages in very fine print. The Patagonian devil "Setebos," alluded to by Shakespeare through Caliban in the Tempest, is one of many compelling similarities between esoteric mythoi in the Egyptian Book of the Dead: "Behold, I am Set, the creator of confusion, who creates both the tempest and the storm throughout the length and breadth of the heavens." Iago in Othello: "Divinity of Hell! When devils will the blackest of sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows, as I do now." Iago represents Satan in Othello. William Shakespeare knew a lot more in his time than the many do today. 'The many, as many, are ignorant,' according to Plato. Satan, Lucifer, etc., are spirits of paganism.

The Greeks called Set "Typhon," who was the war god assigned to Upper Egypt. This also represents another contravention to the "accepted" etymologies of words like "typhoon" in English, which is listed erroneously or deficiently as the Cantonese "tai fung" in many dictionaries. Often the etymologies are not congruent with definitions in language; such is true of the term "pagan." Often the Neo-Pagans will deceptively assert that Satan is only in Christianity. Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word (adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set, as the other devils' names are of pagan origin).

Socrates already told us why the pagans are liars and their gods are a lie before his execution for exposing the pantheistic pagan esoteric sophistries. Piety to the many gods, who all want different devotions or actions from humans, is impossible.

Consider these words from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:

First, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.

Because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God; therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.

Another relic of Gentilism is the worship of images, neither instituted by Moses in the Old, nor by Christ in the New Testament; nor yet brought in from the Gentiles; but left amongst them, after they had given their names to Christ. Before our Savior preached, it was the general religion of the Gentiles to worship for gods those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream. This is the reason why St. Paul says, "We know that an idol is nothing": not that he thought that an image of metal, stone, or wood was nothing; but that the thing which they honored or feared in the image, and held for a god, was a mere figment, without place, habitation, motion, or existence, but in the motions of the brain. The worship of these with divine honor is that which is in the Scripture called idolatry, and rebellion against God. For God being King of the Jews, and His lieutenant being first Moses, and afterward the high priest, if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to images (which are representations of their own fancies), they had had no further dependence on the true God, of whom there can be no similitude; nor on His prime ministers, Moses and the high priests; but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite, to the utter eversion of the Commonwealth, and their own destruction for want of union. And therefore the first law of God was: they should not take for gods, alienos deos, that is, the gods of other nations, but that only true God, who vouchsafed to commune with Moses, and by him to give them laws and directions for their peace, and for their salvation from their enemies. The second was that they should not make to themselves any image to worship, of their own invention. For it is the same deposing of a king to submit to another king, whether he be set up by a neighbor nation or by ourselves.

An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colors, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. These are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Greeks, with whom the word "eido" signifies to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. From these images, it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. From hence it is manifest that neither there is, nor can be any image made of a thing invisible.

It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.

Whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. These are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved molded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature.

Besides these sovereign powers, divine and human, of which I have hitherto discoursed, there is mention in Scripture of another power, namely, that of "the rulers of the darkness of this world," [Ephesians, 6:12] "the kingdom of Satan," [Matthew, 12:26] and "the principality of Beelzebub over demons," [Ibid. 9:34] that is to say, over phantasms that appear in the air: for which cause Satan is also called "the prince of the power of the air"; [Ephesians, 2:2] and, because he rules in the darkness of this world, "the prince of this world" [John, 16:11] and in consequence hereunto, they who are under his dominion, in opposition to the faithful, who are the "children of the light," are called the "children of darkness." For seeing Beelzebub is prince of phantasms, inhabitants of his dominion of air and darkness, the children of darkness, and these demons, phantasms, or spirits of illusion, signify allegorically the same thing. This considered, the kingdom of darkness, as it is set forth in these and other places of the Scripture, is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light, both of nature and of the gospel; and so to disprepare them for the kingdom of God to come.

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