Posted on 04/28/2015 7:23:44 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
’ve evolved. In the not-so-distant past, I held a view that has since proven to be oppressive, a view of the law and culture that I now see as stifling the rights of others and damaging the fabric of our families and our democracy.
I supported same-sex marriage.
The year was 2004, and I was a partner in a large commercial law firm. Despite working mainly in commercial, contract litigation, I’d cultivated a constitutional practice and represented a number of Christian ministries. So, when the Massachusetts supreme judicial court legalized gay marriage, a number of fellow Christians asked for my thoughts. And in a January 2004 op-ed in our local newspaper, I shared them.
While I can’t find the full piece online anymore, this excerpt should give you the flavor:
"Unfortunately, the conservative argument against gay marriage often reeks of hypocrisy. Our society stopped viewing marriage as a sacred (God-ordained) institution long ago. Since the invention of no-fault divorce laws, divorce rates have skyrocketed. Now, almost half of all marriages end in divorce."
I continued:
"For those who believe gay marriage is morally wrong for Biblical or other religious reasons, this decision changes nothing. Churches can still speak out against sexual immorality and can still choose not to perform gay weddings. The gay couple down the street in no way makes our own straight marriage more difficult or challenging, nor can any decision of any court of law change the definition of marriage in the eyes of God."
My thesis was rather simple: Since the advent of no-fault divorce, the secular definition of “marriage” had become nothing more than a voluntary arrangement less binding than a refrigerator warranty. Adding same-sex couples to that already thoroughly secular institution would be, at most, an incremental, largely irrelevant cultural and legal change.
I could not have been more wrong. Indeed, this sentence — “For those who believe gay marriage is morally wrong for Biblical or other religious reasons, this decision changes nothing” — may have been among the most inaccurate predictions in the history of punditry. As recent history decisively demonstrates, if you believe gay marriage is morally wrong, virtually everything is changing.
"Christians must lose their jobs, lose their businesses, and close their schools, unless they bend the knee to the sexual revolution."
As I noted in a piece last week, there is a concerted legal and cultural effort to not just carve out a legal space for same-sex couples but to essentially banish orthodox Christianity from public life — to treat it with the same respect that mainstream culture treats abhorrent ideologies like white supremacy. Christians must lose their jobs, lose their businesses, and close their schools, unless they bend the knee to the sexual revolution. Bonds of friendship and loyalty are meaningless if the cultural conservative holds the wrong view on same-sex marriage, and Christian clubs are vile discriminators if they simply want to be led by Christian leaders. In the “blue” sectors of America, particularly the academy, some Christians feel that they have to live under deep cover to protect their careers.
It’s important to understand that this wave of coercive intolerance is not mere aberrational excess but the natural and inevitable byproduct of grafting same-sex relationships into an institution that is a key building-block to civilization itself. Even in the face of strong sexual-revolution headwinds, our law and culture continue to not only protect marriage and incentivize marriage, it is still seen by hundreds of millions of Americans as the ideal family relationship. In other words, by grafting same-sex relationships into marriage, activists want their relationships to enjoy all the legal and cultural protections marriage has built up through millennia of human experience. To oppose “marriage” is to oppose civilization.
But marriage did not become an “ideal” or civilizational building-block by simply being the most intense and committed form of adult relationship. In fact, at its core, marriage is not about adults — or adult happiness — at all. It has been at the heart of every enduring world culture not because these cultures share the same faith, or share the same ideals about romantic love and adult happiness, but because life has long taught us cultures thrive when children are raised in stable, two-parent, mother-father homes. Indeed, spouses from many cultures would laugh at the notion that “happiness” or “romance” has anything to do with the nature and familial bond of their marriage.
I agree with the notion that gay couples should be able to make health-care decisions for each other, write each other into wills, solemnize their relationships if they wish, and otherwise enjoy many of the same bundle of rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples, but it is easy and simple enough to write those protections into law without changing the very definition and nature of marriage.
Cultures that have sought to alter marriage from its fundamental norms do not have a happy history. Polygamy has hardly proven conducive to enduring cultural strength, and when segments of the young American nation changed thousands of years of marriage traditions by injecting white supremacy into what was once a color-blind institution, it commandeered marriage into the unsustainable and ultimately ruinous practice of race-based chattel slavery and race-based economic, cultural, and legal discrimination.
But now we’re racing off on our own cultural experiment, one that began two generations ago when Baby Boomers decided they needed to shed their spouses at will, and continues now with the equally radical step of redefining who a “spouse” can be and re-ordering marriage to center completely and totally on adult emotional contentment. And we’re racing on despite the clear record that families who maintain the traditional bonds do far better — in aggregate — emotionally, socially, and economically than families who shun tradition to carve out their own definitions of “ideal.”
In 2004, I was wrong and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were right. The definition of marriage should not change. In fact, Ms. Clinton was so right, that I’ll close by quoting her:
She said then:
"I believe that marriage is not just a bond but a sacred bond between a man and a woman. [It’s a] fundamental bedrock principle that exists between a man and a woman, going back into the mists of history as one of the founding, foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization, and that its primary, principal role during those millennia has been the raising and socializing of children for the society into which they are to become adults."
Exactly right, Hillary. As I said once before when discussing my own intellectual journey, the tides of history and opinion are not irreversible. It’s not inevitable that everyone will follow the Obama/Clinton path to transform the very nature of this “foundational institution.” People can, in fact, move back towards time-tested tradition. I’m living proof.
— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.
You are not going to be left alone, everyone is going to be forced to make their stance public so that the sodomite nazis know who to destroy.
That’s exactly what it’s really about. If it about the anything else, the group which shows the most stringency against sodomites-Muslims-wouldn’t be getting a pass. Eventually those two stances-Muslim vs sodomite-will have to meet (probably once Christians have been well and truly marginalised in the public square, and that’s happening faster than almost anyone expected), then we will see the real agenda, by whoever wins that stand-off. I wouldn’t place a bet myself-the Muslims are more liable to inflict violence, the sodomites have the power of money and the compliant business sector at their backs.
I don’t know what hypergamy is. Maybe I don’t want to know.
What is clear to you and me seems to have lost clarity to others. I was focusing on what they cannot deny: Every person on earth was the product of a heterosexual union. They have complimentary body parts. However it is they like to do what it is they do, it does not change the reality of how they are made or of how this world of people will continue to exist.
IIRC, the first no-fault divorce law was signed in California back during the 1960s.
They won’t be a problem for the military to take care of, especially since the military are loyal to the secular agenda, for the most part, with some exceptions. Muslims have nowhere near the population proportions or power that they have in Europe, or even Russia, for that matter.
They don’t want to drive Christianity just from the public square, but from the earth.
I don’t think there will be much of an “after”.
The man-woman relationship is also an important template for the children, regardless of whether the mother and father are adoptive or biological.
Well yes, that’s the end game. A few are laying the groundwork for that to be admitted publicly, just like a few “radicals” laid the groundwork for silencing Christians back when they were saying “we just want government out of our bedrooms”.
No can do. They aren’t happy, they think they’ll only be happy when everyone not only tolerates, but openly celebrates their particular fetish, so you simply MUST bake that cake.
The Muslims need to figure out whose side they are really on, because once the Christians are gone, which I believe will not entirely happen, just go with casualties, the Muslims will be a snack for the leftists.
Good points-
I want to add- marriage is a CONTRACT between the gov and the peoipel wishing to be married, and contracts are NOT a ‘right’- they are NOT issued to everyone simply because someone htinks they have aq right to it- people can not marry their flowers, they can’t marry underage people, they can’t marrty close relatives, thay can’t marry dead people, they can’t marry ... etc etc etc
Marriage is NOT a right, it is a contract issued to people who meet a requirement-
This contract is granted for the sole purpose of incentivizing couples to procreate In order to raise future tax payers, and to allow people of opposite sex the ability to marry even if they can’t procreate because it is a natural right, AND not a natural EXCEPTION like homosexuality, necrophilia, pedophilia, bestiality, etc etc etc- all DEVIENT divergences from the NORMAL order of things, and ALL DEVIENT practices which cause harm not just to the people practicing it, but also to the victims, AND to society
Gays claim denial of gay marriage is a violation on the order of racism- however, denying people marriage based on skin color is unconstitutional because it denies it based on CHARACTERISTICS of a person- but denying gay marriage is basing it on the ACTIONS of a group of people ie: homosexual acts- and society IS allowed to step in and declare acts immoral- Gay people don’t like this- yet societies have ALWAYS decided what is moral and what isn’t based on a group of people’s ACTS- Like IO stated above, a man can not go into a court and demand that he be allowed to marry a child, and claim the court must allow it because if it doesn’t, it is violating his right to feel the way he feels- he can NOT claim discrimination when there are clear laws against IMMORAL Behavior
That is what is at stake here- does the supreme court consider gay marriage IMMORAL or not? The answer should be clear- it IS a deviant lifestyle every bit as immoral as polygamy, pedophilia, necromancy, bestiality etc- REGARDLESS of whether or not the two participants ‘consent’ or not!
Marriage is NOT a right, it is a privilege, it is a contract where those wishing to engage in it MUST meet certain criteria- if it was a ‘right’ then no one could be denied it, and there would be NO laws against ANY DEVEINT marriage
And to reinforce a child's natural right to be raised by his natural parents.
This is why marriage is a lifetime commitment.
Conservatives must realize that when they make the argument for natural marriage, they must also reject no-fault divorce.
Homosexual "marriage" deprives children of the right to be raised by at least one of their natural parents. It is a violation of human rights.
Good point about the contract issue. They claim that it is a characteristic. Of course they are wrong. At best it is an emotion. A feeling. DNA, the reproductive system and all the mechanics of it remain solidly heterosexual. Theirs is a deviation from what is natural. That is all that has ever been said about it. Of course they will give an example of someone born with abnormalities and say that is proof that they are born that way— not a solid argument, imo.
Anyway, regardless of ones opinion of the act itself (they are attracted to themselves), it is not equal to heterosexuality and deserves no legal status and benefits.
Admitting your mistakes and accepting your mistakes is step #1 toward CORRECTING those mistakes.
I’ll bake it, but I bet it will taste funny.
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