Save Marriage? It's Too Late.

Opinion Journal ^ | March 15, 2004 | Donald Sensing

[Unam Sanctam]

Opponents of legalized same-sex marriage say they're trying to protect a beleaguered institution, but they're a little late. The walls of traditional marriage were breached 40 years ago; what we are witnessing now is the storming of the last bastion.

[Jim Noble]

This and being unable to hold people in bondage when their people taste freedom

Nice idea.

Freedom to do what?

[SuziQ]

If it's as easy as it is, how can it be taking advantage?

ROTFL!! Point!

Young women these days have been sold a bill of goods by the popular media. MTV, UPN, FOX, and most of the other networks have pushed programs celebrating the idea that 'free sex' is the best thing that has ever come down the pike. This is the way the feminists have told women they can be as 'powerful' as men, to act like they do by having sex with as many people as they want, whenever they want.

These attitudes have been disasterous for women, but since they are omnipresent, young women have not seen an alternative to the notion unless they have parents or groups to which they belong that fight against those ideas.

[Truthsayer20]

"Saying that traditional marriage is defined as "one man and one woman", full stop, is so misleading as to be fundamentally false. Traditional marriage has three essentials:

1) It is permanent.

2) It is sexually exclusive, with penalties, both legal and social, for breach.

3) It is between one man and at least one woman. Many cultures limit marriage to one man and one woman, but not all.

When our society removed #1 and #2 from the definition of marriage, marriage was abolished."

As others have pointed out on this thread, the New England Puritans considered marriage a dissolvable civil contract. Divorce was very much a reality in 17th century Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England. Your definition of "traditional marriage" is one of the Catholic tradition which has never been the norm in American Protestantism; the true religious tradition of America. Your "traditional marriage" was never a universal in America.

[lentulusgracchus]

Opponents of legalized same-sex marriage say they're trying to protect a beleaguered institution, but they're a little late. The walls of traditional marriage were breached 40 years ago; what we are witnessing now is the storming of the last bastion.

C'mon, Rev. Try to figure it out. The barbarians are inside the gate, and trying to get at us up in the keep. OK, what do we want to do? Give over? Or fight harder? Think for a second about the consequences, and then make up your mind. You part of the problem, or part of the answer?

Just because it gets tough, some people want to throw their hands up and quit.

Wonder if we've got ourselves a little offering from the gay seminarians' cabal here? Helping us to see the impossibility of our position.....helping us to quit?

Comments?

[NutCrackerBoy]

Since this exchange has gone all the way off the topic (my fault), I'll thank you for your responses and leave it at that.

[lentulusgracchus]

Marriage is primarily a social institution, not a religious one.

This statement is unsupported by either physical or documentary evidence. Archaeological anthropologists can point to graves showing evidence of ceremonials going back beyond 100,000 years -- and so how does the writer exclude religious motives from ancient arrangements?

Especially since so much cave art appears to have had some relationship to sympathetic magic? Sounds religious to me!

[Unam Sanctam]

I do believe that he is too defeatist and quick to throw in the towel, but I think he raises a very good and legitimate issues, which is that the nexus between sex and procreation. If we all listened to Pope Paul VI and his current successor and realized the proper place of sex in human life, we would not be in the current mess we are in, where the state is now going to promote homosexuality and promiscuity by creating false conceptions of marriage.

[lentulusgracchus]

The widespread social acceptance of these changes is impelling the move toward homosexual marriage.

No, it isn't.

The mainspring of the "single-sex marriage" (note: quotes applied to propagandistic formula) has been homosexual vindictiveness and rebellion against the moral judgment entered against them by revealed teachings going back 3000 years, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition (and more recently, the Islamic tradition).

Its engines today are the bohemianism and secularism of Artisan personalities in entertainment and media, and their cultivation by artful and ruthless homosexuals.

"Everybody wants to rule the world." Including people who don't care whether they do it well.

[johnb2004]

If the state can license and regulate marriage, then it can no more deny a license on the basis of gender or sexual orientation than it can on the basis of race or religion.


What garbage. The State has the right and duty to prohibit perversion of the natural law.

[GeekDejure]

AMERICA WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP THE BLEEDING

The LORD has never allowed a society to promote homosexuality or abortion without bringing His judgment - ours is no different: America is even now under the judgment of the LORD. America will not be able to stop the bleeding; foreign armies will occupy this land. Behold, they are already among you, and you see them not. America has refused the LORD’S grace, now she must accept His judgment:

1. Innocent blood has been spilled on the land and the land is now defiled.
2. The blood of over 40 million babies has been shed in this land.
3. The sin has reached unto the throne of the Holy One.
4. Judgment is now upon the land; it will tarry no longer.
5. The blood of the offender has to be appeased.
6. America rejected the LORD’S grace, she will have to accept His judgment.

[familyofman]

"If the trend is ever to be reversed, society must become more open about bastard children being an embarassment, divorce a matter of shame, single motherhood (other than widowhood) a cause for public humiliation, and "shacking up" a cause for scandal.

I don't think our society wants to go there. "

I agree with the first part of your comments regarding the battering of the ramparts. But, I think you missed the point that these battles were not only engaged - and that clear winners have already been declared. It's sad but true.

There are still some of us that take our vows seriously - but I fear we are a dying breed.

[lentulusgracchus]

I do believe that he is too defeatist....

I agree, but why is he defeatist? Is he writing in good faith? Perhaps we shouldn't assume that he is. After all, gays have shown they can be pretty ruthless:

Gays Talk Shop: http://www.cathfam.org/Hitems/254boywords.html

[ClearCase_guy]

I think you missed the point that these battles were not only engaged - and that clear winners have already been declared.

I agree with you. I wasn't completely clear in what I wrote. I said "I don't think society wants to go there." What I meant was that I don't think society is about to return to a more traditional conception of marriage. I think the horse has left the stable, unfortunately.

Society should not have gone down the slippery slope to "anything goes", but that's where it went.

[IDontLikeToPayTaxes]

There is no way that marriage could have "evolved" naturally, and it is not a win-win situation biologically or economically. What normal, red-blooded caveman would give up the prospect of multiple sex partners and sacrifice half of his resources for one nagging cavewoman and her whiny kids?

Beware what you say, or else the Freeper Feminist Hit Squad will show up on this thread and call you names.

[Salvation]

It never too late!

See my tagline!

[AMDG&BVMH]

"men were free to be as promiscuous and irresponsible as they wanted"

Right you are! And this was achieved in the name of what women wanted and needed!

Re your 1. Yes, and not merely the Pill, but others which can be abortifacient to a greater or lesser percentage effect: all called "contraceptives" to dull the conscience.

Your entire analysis is right on.

We all deserve better than the dredges the "sexual revolution" has to offer. I need to read JPII's Theology of the Body. The beauty or our design needs to be appreciated. Apparently, there are groups studying this, which is a good sign. As I don't have time to join a group, I'll have to buy the book or hunt it up on the internet one of these days.

[BikerNYC]

Just don't force my church to bless the resulting mess.

Nice post. I agree.

[ArGee]

So the economics of sex evolved into a win-win deal.

Bzzzzt! Wrongo.

If men and women had invented marriage to "evolve" the "economics of sex" into a win-win deal it would not look like this at all. Marriage is devolving into exactly what men and women would have asked for if they had invented the concept.

Shalom.