Posted on 11/21/2003 6:42:35 AM PST by SJackson
"Certainly our decision today marks a significant change in the definition of marriage as it has been inherited from the common law and understood by many societies for centuries," wrote Chief Justice Margaret Marshall in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court opinion finding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. "But it does not disturb the fundamental value of marriage in our society."
That is either the most dishonest assertion in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health or the most naive. Either way, it is false.
Of course the most radical redefinition of marriage in centuries is going to have deeply disturbing consequences. It may be a decade or two before the full impact is evident, but some of the coming changes we can anticipate right now.
In the SJC's brave new world of gender-neutral marriage, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will no longer communicate to its citizens that the central purpose of marriage is to bind men and women exclusively to each other and to the children that their sexual behavior is apt to produce. It will communicate instead that marriage was created to gratify grown-ups by reinforcing their committed romantic relationships. To be sure, a loving relationship is ideal in any marriage. But that isn't why every society in recorded history has defined marriage as an institution for linking the sexes.
Sooner than you think, it will become improper to speak of unique sex roles in family life. The meanings and status associated with words like "husband" and "wife" will be erased from the law; most likely, the words themselves will be replaced in statutes with the unisex "spouse," just as "father" and "mother" will give way to "parent." Two years ago, a private school in New York caused a stir when it banned celebrations of Mother's Day out of concern for the sensibilities of children being raised by gay parents. That was a tiny foretaste of what is now in store for Massachusetts — and perhaps the rest of the country too, if the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause means what many experts say it means.
The redefinition of marriage will not end with same-sex weddings. In explaining its decision, the court says: "Without the right to marry — or more properly, the right to choose to marry — one is excluded from the full range of human experience and denied full protection of the laws for one's avowed commitment to an intimate and lasting human relationship."
But if that is true for committed gay and lesbian unions, it is just as true for every other committed but nontraditional union. Why shouldn't a man and two women, deeply in love and yearning to live as one, be permitted to marry? Or two family members — of the same sex or not — whose romantic love for each other is deep and lasting? If the opposite-sex limitation must yield to "the right to choose to marry," by what rational argument can the only-two-spouses or no-close-relatives limitations be sustained?
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
And those deeply disturbing consequences are the very reason the homosexual activists and their bots are pushing the gay agenda.
Note that in "Brave New World" the words "mother" and "father" were deeply offensive words, never to be used in polite society.
Probably will require churches to remove "center aisle" so that all can sit in the middle and not be embarassed by making the wrong choice.
Exactly! Here's the text of one of my articles posted on PALACE OF REASON, posted in July:
July 6, 2003
The Supreme Court's decision to strike down laws against sodomy in the Texas case this past week has been the foot in the door for homosexual activists who guarantee the rest of us that there will be laws on the books legalizing "gay marriage" in the foreseeable future. Somehow, these people have the idea that legalizing the live-in union of same-sex couples will somehow legitimize it, and force the rest of us to condone it, as if the legalization of the act was tantamount to agreeing with the practice. But, what if legalizing such a peccadillo could not legitimize it?
The victory the homosexuals got in Texas makes them think they are going to be able to force the country to accept what they refer to as "gay marriage." Their next goal, frequently stated, is exactly that.
They can call it whatever they wish, but they aren't going to make it a marriage. And forcing a law onto the books that "recognizes" their bogus union as a marriage isn't going to make it a marriage any more than it would if the partners were poodles.
Andrew Sullivan was a guest on Michael Medved's radio program this week, trying to explain why we straights should look on his relationship with his boyfriend as something to be blessed with the name "marriage." In response to Medved's incisive questioning, Sullivan was unable to produce a single good argument for such a designation, let alone an argument in favor of legislating it as a special "right" of homosexuals of whatever stripe, even though his replies sounded calmly presented.
Marriage in human culture is so special that it has been protected by laws for the entire period of known history. No other status has this protection. Marriage is not only a relationship between a man and a woman, it can't be anything else. And if that man and that woman are not right in their hearts about what makes up a real marriage, the relationship they have can not be a real marriage, but will be a marriage in name only. Calling a relationship between two people of the same sex a "marriage" will no more make that union a marriage than will the passing of a law.
A marriage exists on such a different plane from other relationships that there can't be a comparison. Why did your grandparents stay married for 65 years? Do you think that Fred and Ted, who want to be groom and groom, are going to have that kind of relationship? They not only won't, they can't. What makes a marriage different from any other romantic relationship can't be present in a homosexual union.
History was right on this one: In order to insure that heirs are legitimate, there has to be a way to prove their paternity. Maternal descent is easy to prove, but paternity is a different matter. So in order to insure a more legitimate succession or inheritance, marriage was given primacy over every other physical union possible. Religious reasons for marriage were equally important, and strictly enforced, all down through recorded history.
Even the few historical sallies into polygamy and polyandry that have popped up here and there can't change the definition of marriage: Marriage is a state of connubial union between one man and one woman. Like the knowledge that the sun comes up in the East, it's a truism, and can't be otherwise. Any other kind of union is simply a counterfeit, no matter how much the parties believe they "love each other" or how much they believe they have in common. Two men can't contract a real marriage any more than two women or a man and several women. (Even in the case of polygamy, there is really only one wife. The rest of the women in the relationship are concubines.) No matter how you slice it, marriage is possible only between one man and one woman.
The only reason homosexual activists have for pressing for legalization is to slap the face of straight people and religious believers. It has been revealed repeatedly that homosexual men are incredibly promiscuous, having hundreds of different partners in a year, for instance. I'll admit that there might be a few men out there who are settled down comfortably. But the chances of such a relationship lasting 65 years like grandma and grandpa's are virtually nil.
Suspicion and jealousy among homosexuals is rampant, because all homosexuals know what homosexuals do, and they all know how promiscuous they can be, no matter how much Fred and Ted think they "love" each other. They can't produce anything but a pale imitation of the kind of love that grows between a man and a woman in a real marriage over long years together, a love like our grandparents had.
"Love" to most homosexuals is what they do to each other. Desiring legitimacy for their unions is one more way they try to demand that we condone their behavior. They really don't want marriage. They want us to be forced to accept that they love what they do more than they love whoever they do it with. Feelings of comradely loyalty are quite a different thing than a desire to put one's genitals into places not intended for such invasion.
Forcing the courts and legislatures to legitimate an unnatural union doesn't make that union anything but legal. It doesn't make it right, it doesn't justify it, and it simply cannot, by virtue of its very nature, make it a real marriage.
Someone long ago said, "Marriages are made in Heaven."
Precisely.
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