Posted on 12/08/2012 5:28:00 AM PST by Kaslin
My buddy, Glenn Beck, has made a great contribution to the TEA party movement and to a renewal of popular interest in our Founding Fathers and their ideals. For all that he deserves praise.
But, I believe, he is making a serious error in abandoning the civil right of marriage. The Republican Party was founded in opposition to two historic wrongs. The party’s first platform in 1856 denounced “slavery and polygamy—the twin relics of barbarism.” Slavery was finally put down with a terrible toll—630,000 Americans dead in the Civil War. The new movie, Lincoln, tells the dramatic story of the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery.
Polygamy was successfully fought with laws. Throughout the latter third of the nineteenth century, Republican presidents and Republican Congresses fought against this relic of barbarism. President Rutherford B. Hayes called upon Congress to make it a law for the western territories: an American must take an oath he is not a polygamist before he could vote for statehood, before he could even serve on a jury! That’s a pretty strong stance for marriage.
Faced with this unyielding opposition, the Mormon Church wisely reconsidered its position on polygamy. Mormons desperately wanted to be included in the American Union. They were willing to give up a sincerely held tenet of their new religion in order to gain acceptance.
This turnabout led to one of the funniest episodes in congressional history. When Church Elder Reed Smoot was elected by Utah to serve in the U.S. Senate, he was vigorously opposed. Critics said that even though Smoot was not a polygamist himself, he had strongly supported polygamy as one of the Mormon Council of Twelve. Idaho Sen. William E. Borah, a fellow Republican and also a Mormon with only one wife, rose to argue for seating Smoot. “I would rather serve in this august body with a polygamist who doesn’t polyg than with a monogamist who doesn’t monog.” Smoot was seated. Washington scuttlebutt had it that T.R.’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, was only with difficulty dissuaded from naming her newborn daughter Deborah (from Borah).
The LDS Church has since become a mainstay of support for traditional marriage. BYU Family Science Ph.D.s have provided some of the best scholarship supporting the tradition family. They clearly understand the difficulties that arise for the dignity and standing of women—and especially the hardships for children—that stem from plural marriage.
Glenn should have been at the Newseum four years ago. There, before an overflow crowd, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said: “I know opponents of gay marriage say it will lead to polygamy. Well, I’m for that.”
Turley’s shocking comments were wildly cheered by the room full of journalists, liberal congressional aides, and federal law clerks. True to his word, Prof. Turley has gone to court trying to overturn bans on polygamy.
Glenn told an interviewer: “The question is not whether gay people should be married or not, the question is why is the government involved in our marriage.”
Okay, it’s a civil question that deserves a civil answer: Children need and children have a right to the married love of a mother and father. Every reputable social science study shows that children do best when they have a loving, married mother and father in the home. They have better outcomes for health, education, and welfare. Children of married parents are less likely to commit crimes, far less likely to be victims of violence and sexual abuse, far less likely to fail in school, far less likely to drop out, use drugs, get pregnant out of wedlock.
If we care about children and the future of this nation, we cannot casually dismiss the institution of marriage.
Secretary Tim Geithner certainly understands the fiscal impact of out-of-wedlock births. Liberal that he is, Geithner said we cannot cut Medicaid spending—the main driver of deficits—because forty percent of all children born today are eligible for Medicaid. He means the 41% born out of wedlock.
Married parents want to care for their own children. They usually do not want the Nanny State. Single parents and cohabiting parents are often forced to rely on government assistance.
If you want Socialism, abolish marriage. If you want “Julia” to be the future of America, vote against the civil institution of marriage. Julia, of course, was the Obama campaign team’s fictional single woman target voter. Julia goes from Head Start to college, parenthood, to retirement in a seamless web of dependency on government. She decides to have a child at age 29. No man in her life is even hinted at—no husband, no father, no brother, not even a male friend or business partner. Except one. The One: Mr. Federal Government.
It's hard to understand why anyone would want to end traditional marriage. It’s the HOV lane to the Welfare State. Why any conservative, libertarian, or Republican would want to advance this process is a mystery.
Hollywood star Mae West was certainly no model for married life. WWII sailors called their buoyant life jackets their Mae Wests. But Mae West was onto something when she said: “Marriage is a great institution. I’m just not ready for an institution.”
I invite Glenn to spend just one hour with the Family Research Council’s Marriage and Religion Research Institute’s (MARRI) scholars. They are his type of intellectuals, and I think he would be moved by their body of work
Traditional marriage is a great institution. And it’s never been in greater danger.
Glenn has looked at the numbers and is going along to get along.
There is no such thing as gay marriage. They may make it legal but it is only a farce.Treat it as such.
NEVER accept it.
Traditional marriage is one of the few area’s that government should be involved in.
God gave us a promise in 11 Corinthians 7:14. We casually say, “GOD Bless America”...only to just live our lives casually without being true to His Word.
Unless Christians wake up and turn to God through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, turn from our wicked ways we will continue to live without God healing our land. It starts with individuals and goes up to God not the other way around.
Sad thing is we have got a Supreme Court and lower courts that are redefining the law of the land AND going against laws that a majority have voted to uphold all the while a warring minority decide to disavow.
a farce
Indeed.
It’s just laughable!
Where is this in the Constitution?
Where is "marriage" in the Constitution?
Four states had gay marriage measures on their ballots last month.
Three voted to allow it. The fourth voted against prohibiting it.
Exactly
Very well said
Heck, I'm still trying to figure out where liberals found sodomy in the Constitution.
Are you saying just because it is not in the Constitution children do not need and do not have the right to the love of a married father and father? It sure looks that way
Nobody is making the essential legal argument...
Reynolds v. United States (1878) defined marriage as one man and one woman.
I’m most ignorant about Mormonism. I’m not sure I’ve ever even known a Mormon.
Can someone point me to the place in the Bible where having multiple wives is sanctioned? (I’m not a Biblical scholar, either.......)
Try the entire OT. History of Abraham and Jacob, etc.
There are a lot of things Liberals want to imply are in the Constitution or covered under some completely unrelated Right or clause. Conservatives should not engage in the same re-interpretation game.
Marriage is not mentioned, defined, or specified as a Right in the Constitution. The Government should stay out of it and not provide special benefits, services, or tax rates to Citizens/residents based on their state of singlehood, co-habitation, or wedlock.
The government got into the marriage business in the 1920’s. It’s really none of their business, just another way to raise more money and regulate the people. Before this it was generally through a church.
Oh ya, it was originally to stop mixed race marriages, from Wikipedia- In the 1920s, they were used by 38 states to prohibit whites from marrying blacks, mulattos, Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Mongolians, Malays or Filipinos without a state approved license.
Gotta love progressivism.
Marriage is not the Government's business to encourage or enforce.
And no, children don't have a legal or human "right" to the love of a married mother/father or any other numerical multiple thereof. If so, children could sue their biological parents who never marry, divorce, or re-marry as a violation of their "right."
The Government is failing miserably to uphold and defend the actual Rights we do have. Let's not imply rights as part of a fictional "social contract" for Govt to waste scarce time and resources on.
“There is no such thing as gay marriage.” — Exactly. It is, as you say, a farce. Like someone saying “I’m a horse,” and expecting others to affirm such silliness.
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