Posted on 06/21/2004 9:06:30 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
As America moves closer to embracing same-sex “marriage,” one can almost picture people in the wedding industry rubbing their hands in delight. After all, if we legalize gay “marriage,” we’ll have more weddings than ever, right?
Wrong. We will end up having fewer marriages, not more. Just ask the citizens of Holland, where marriage is going the way of typewriters and buggy whips.
In the Weekly Standard, Stanley Kurtz, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, points out that in recent decades—a time when parental cohabitation was sweeping across Northern Europe—the Dutch clung to the last, ragged remains of their religious traditions. Yes, they engaged in cohabitation—but when Dutch couples had children, they usually got married.
Not anymore. During the mid-1990s, the rate of out-of-wedlock births began to shoot up. By 2003, the rate of increase nearly doubled to 31 percent of all Dutch births.
What accounts for this phenomenon? Gay “marriage.” These were the years, Kurtz notes, “when the debate over the legal recognition of gay relationships came to the fore in the Netherlands.” The debate came to an end when Holland legalized full same-sex “marriage” in the year 2000.
The conjunction of these two social phenomena, says Kurtz, is no coincidence. During Holland’s decade-long drive to legalize same-sex “marriage,” gay advocates openly scorned the idea that marriage ought to be defined by the possibility of childbearing. Love between two partners—any two partners—was the real basis of marriage. Thus, as one gay “marriage” advocate told the Dutch Parliament, “there is absolutely no reason, objectively, to distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual love.” Dutch leaders bought this argument. Marriage would be reduced to—as Kurtz put it—“just one choice on a menu of relationship options.” In marriage, as with cheeseburgers, you could have it your way.
Then a funny thing happened on the road to redefining marriage: Dutch people simply stopped getting married—even when they had children. This really ought to come as no surprise. After all, Kurtz writes, “Spend a decade telling people that marriage is not about parenthood, and they just might begin to believe you. Make relationship equality a rallying cry, and people might decide that all forms of relationships are equal.”
The ease with which the Dutch jettisoned marriage happened in large part because the Dutch had already abandoned their Judeo-Christian heritage. The few religious voices raised in defense of traditional marriage were drowned out. And as a result Holland is now going the way of Scandinavia—where acceptance of gay “marriage” has led to the continued deterioration of marriage.
What’s happening in the Netherlands gives us clear evidence of what gay “marriage” does: People stop getting married, and children suffer. Let this serve as a warning to Americans. Marriage between one man and one woman must be protected and strengthened. If it isn’t, then American families—already deeply damaged by divorce and illegitimacy—will be destroyed.
We shouldn't call the Dutch names even though you have got a point. The problem started in Holland when they took sides with the Protestants and its never been the same since. The problem with the Conciliar Church is they took sides with the Protestants, Pagans, Muslims and Jews and its never been the same since. We have got to get back to Christ. Jesus said that A man shall leave his father and mother and join himself to a wife and the two shall become one flesh. What God has joined let not man put asunder. Well man is throwing marriage out the window with divorce and gay marriage and it will not work it will destroy our society which is practically destroyed anyway. Too much respect is paid to man and very little to God. God will not be mocked! Can I put you on my ping list??
You have an excellent point- by subsidizing illegitimacy they get more customers for abortion and birth control. Also you can control people better and get them to do what you want when you weaken there character. The devil does this to he is very clever. I am not sure which religious people you are talking about perhaps the liberal religious people but one wonders how "religious" they really are. Anyway I take it you are not "religious" whatever you take that word to mean
You have an excellent point- by subsidizing illegitimacy they get more customers for abortion and birth control. Also you can control people better and get them to do what you want when you weaken there character. The devil does this to he is very clever. I am not sure which religious people you are talking about perhaps the liberal religious people but one wonders how "religious" they really are. Anyway I take it you are not "religious" whatever you take that word to mean
Don't you love it when a plan comes together?
Illegal? No. Immoral? Some think it is, some think it isn't.
It is both illegal and immoral for you to engage in any sort of interpersonal behavior involving the reproductive organs unless you do so exclusively with the one and only person to whom you are bonded in Holy Matrimony before God.
Illegal? No. Immoral? Some think it is, some think it isn't.
Roger that! The info Colson presents here is more for us to use with the average gay-sympathetic man on the street than to turn around any gay activists. Also, the Weekly Standard's piece on Scandinavian marriage by the same author quoted gay activists who admitted the goal in Scandinavia had been the abolition of marriage all along.
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