Seems that New York has followed the lead of my fellow sophisticated Iowans. Same-sex “marriage” has just become law there, too. People like me who don’t believe we have the right to define an institution created by God justifiably oppose tampering with marriage and parenthood. But, we are told, not to worry! Legalizing same-sex “marriage” won’t hurt a thing.
I disagree. So does Michael Cook, the editor of Mercatornet. In his article of July 11, he asks: “Anything else on the menu?”
He offers three reasons why the legalization of same-sex “marriage” will, indeed, affect our culture. All come from authors featured in the New York Times. First, Michael Cook notes the commentary of Katherine M. Franke, a Columbia University law professor. She confessed that she really didn’t want to marry her long-time lesbian partner anyway. Why lose the flexibility and benefits of living as domestic partners? Cook quotes professor Franke, saying as far as she was concerned, “we think marriage ought to be one choice in a menu of options by which relationships can be recognized and gain security.”
“One choice in a menu of legally supported relationships?” Cook asks. “How long is the menu?”
Cook offers a second reason why legalizing same-sex “marriage” will impact society by highlighting another article in the Times by Ralph Richard Banks. Banks is a professor at Stanford Law School. What comes after gay “marriage”? Banks “puts his money on polygamy and incest” because legal prohibitions on either practice are losing strength. Society forbade them in the past because they were seen as “morally reprehensible;” therefore, society felt “justified in discriminating against them.” I follow Banks’ reasoning. Just as homosexual advocates are working hard to shift our thinking and normalize the behavior God calls a sin, so will advocates of polygamy and incest.
Two more behaviors, Cook notes, are added to the “menu of [sexual] options.”
The third reason why legalized same-sex “marriage” will have a domino affect on the culture is voiced by Dan Savage. The Times describes Savage as “America’s leading sex-advice columnist.” He is syndicated in at least 50 newspapers. Here’s what Cook writes about Savage. “Savage, who claims to be both ‘culturally Catholic’ and gay, thinks that gay couples have a lot to teach heterosexual couples, especially about monogamy. Idealising monogamy destroys families, he contends. Men are simply not made to be monogamous. Until feminism came along, men had mistresses and visited prostitutes. But instead of extending the benefits of the sexual revolution to women, feminism imposed a chastity belt on men. ‘And it’s been a disaster for marriage,’ he says. What we need, in his opinion, is relationships which are open to the occasional fling — as long as partners are open about it.”
Cook continues, “Traditional marriage — well, actually real marriage — is and has always been monogamous and permanent. There have been and always will be failures. But that is the ideal to which couples aspire. They marry ‘for better or worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part’. The expectation is exclusivity in a life-long commitment.”
Cook believes that legalization of same-sex “marriage” will most assuredly “affect the attitudes of young couples who are thinking of marriage a decade from now . . . it will be one of a number of options . . . they will have different expectations . . . marriage will include acceptance of infidelity, will not necessarily involve children, and will probably only last a few years.”
Advocates of same-sex “marriage” in New York say it’s good for marriage. Cook concludes:
“In a way, they’re right. Just as World War II was good for Germany because out of the ashes, corpses and rubble arose a heightened sense of human dignity and a democratic and peaceful government, same-sex marriage will heighten our esteem for real marriage. But in the meantime, the suffering will be great.”
Amen.
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Marriage: It Is What It Is
Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Commentaries of others, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Relationships, tagged " homosexuality, agape love, Aristotle & marriage, children, civilization, Defense of Marriage Act, eros, family, gay marriage, Greek culture, homosexual marriage, husband and wife, Mercatornet, passion, Plato & marriage, Robert Reilly, sodomy, state, Supreme Court, truth on March 29, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Marriage is defined by the One who created it. That would be God.
Marriage is time-honored for a reason. It benefits men, women, children and civilization itself.
Marriage, reasoned the Greeks, was upheld for the good of the state.
Proponents of homosexuality often point to ancient Greece as a culture that embraced men with men and women with women. But Robert R. Reilly, writing for MercatorNet (3-11-13), has helped me understand that the great classical philosophers would have regarded such pairings as destructive for society. Socrates and Plato condemned homosexual acts as “unnatural.” The notion that someone was a “homosexual” for life — or found his identity in this behavior — would have struck them as quite odd. The practice of sodomy was accepted between an adult male and a young boy, but only temporarily because the youth was expected to get married and start a family as soon as he reached maturity.
Plato called the act of men with men “contrary to nature” and “due to unbridled lust.” Socrates loathed sodomy, noting that it is the practice of one enslaved to his passions rather than one who seeks the good of others. “The lesson,” writes Reilly, “is clear. Once Eros is released from the bonds of family . . . passions can possess the soul. Giving in to them is a form of madness because erotic desire is not directed toward any end that can satisfy it. It is insatiable.”
“That which causes evil in the soul,” said Plato, will ultimately result in political disorder. Plato understood the unbridled practice of sodomy to cause such evil and, thus, bring chaos to a nation built on order and logic.
It is for this reason that Greek philosophers spoke of the virtues of chastity and procreation within marriage. Aristotle described man and woman together in family without which the rest of society cannot exist.
Reilly explains, “Without family, there are no villages, which are associations of families, and without villages, there is no polis. ‘Every state is [primarily] composed of households,’ Aristotle asserts. In other words, without households – meaning husbands and wives together in families – there is no state. In this sense, the family is the pre-political institution. The state does not make marriage possible; marriage makes the state possible. Homosexual marriage would have struck Aristotle as an absurdity since you could not found a polity on its necessarily sterile relations. This is why the state has a legitimate interest in marriage, because, without it, it has no future.”
The Greeks understood the importance of marriage which is, as they saw it, the pairing of male and female as husband and wife. With that in mind, Reilly explains, “then chastity becomes the indispensable political principle because it is the virtue which regulates and makes possible the family – the cornerstone unit of the polis. Without the practice of this virtue, the family becomes inconceivable. Without it, the family disintegrates.”
“Homosexual” marriage, to Aristotle, would have been a self-contradiction. Perhaps that is why the word “homosexuality” did not exist in Greek, or any other language, until the late 19th century. Why would it? Truth dictates that “homosexual” is an oxymoron.
Jesus is Truth. He is also Love and Life. He instituted the agape love of marriage so that life might abound. He mourns the consequences of sinful choices. He does not rejoice in the pain that comes from confusion and slavery to selfish passion. But, He is faithful to the repentant who call upon His name.
Sin deceives. It distorts the meaning of love and alters relationships. But, the wisdom of Truth prevails.
The Greeks might not have acknowledged the source of truth, but they saw the wisdom of it.
Appreciation to Robert R. Reilly, MercatorNet, 3-11-2013
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