[mrustow]

Rauch balked at this idea, pointing out that Scandinavia does not recognize gay marriage, just civil partnerships. He said that country doesn’t encourage marriage at all, which has contributed to the institution’s decline. That is why the argument for gay marriage works – it will encourage marriage and hold it up as a “gold standard for stable relationships.”

Scandinavia isn't a country. And what government has ever -- prior to Bush -- "encouraged" marriage? It was family and church that encouraged marriage, never the government. Or am I missing something?

[little jeremiah]

Different countries in Scandanavia have varying laws about same sex marriage, all very socialy liberal. There have been more than a few articles - especially one by Stanley Kurtz - detailing the familial breakdown concurrent with the acceptance of homosexual "marriage" in the Scandanavian countries in general.

Of course government has encouraged marriage. How so? By outlawing sodomy, especially same sex sodomy or same sex acts, by laws that make it difficult for bastards - I mean the children of unmarried parents - to inherit or have legal paternity, by having laws against statutory rape, and so on. Also, by not having confiscatory taxation, mothers didn't need to work and could therefore stay at home, take care of children, and be "homemakers"; a not unworthy occupation.

Of course, society - community and church - encouraged marriage. But in the "old days" when the establishment clause of the Constitution was not misinterpreted to mean mandatory atheism, the world was a different place.

The government cannot be values neutral. By attempting to be so, it is by default pro-sodomy, pro-homosexual, pro-libertinism, pro-abortion, pro-multi-culturalistic, pro-transvestite, on and on ad infinitum.

If the moral absolutes which were the foundation of this country are eliminated, something has to take their place. And who gets to choose what will take their place?

Why, those who hate those moral absolutes, that's who.