OPINION:
Over the past few weeks, the “war on marriage” has turned into a blitzkrieg.
It’s all designed to sway the Supreme Court, which will be hearing arguments this week on California’s voter-approved constitutional marriage amendment and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
A day doesn’t pass without another bomb dropped on the oldest human institution. If it’s not another slanted poll, negatively worded to elicit the “correct” response, it’s a politician sharing his sudden revelation that God didn’t know what He was doing when He created marriage as the union of male and female.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, one of many formerly credible professional associations compromised by political correctness and junk science, has announced that children no longer benefit from a mother and a father in the household. Any two adults will do. Mothers and fathers provide no unique influence.
If you believe that, ask yourself: If your father had been replaced by a lesbian, would your upbringing have been any different? Did your mother provide anything unique to you that your dad didn’t? In the best interests of children, why create motherless or fatherless households by design?
Washington Post columnist George Will on Thursday wrote that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it tramples states’ rights. If you substitute “slavery” wherever Mr. Will uses the word “marriage,” you’ll quickly see the absurdity of his argument.
DOMA defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of a man and woman, but it also says states can’t be forced to adopt faux marriage from other states.
Mr. Will also ignores key Supreme Court cases, such as Murphy v. Ramsey (1885), in which the court held that Utah could not be a state until it abandoned polygamy. By Mr. Will’s reasoning, that should be overturned.
In Baker v. Nelson (1972), the high court upheld the Minnesota Supreme Court’s rejection of a comparison to the Loving v. Virginia (1967) ruling that struck down a ban on interracial marriage: “In common sense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex.”
Recently, Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republican, announced support for homosexual “marriage” because his son is homosexual.
It’s one thing to have unconditional love and compassion toward a friend or loved one, and another thing to redefine marriage for the whole nation. Public policy is the force of law. Civil libertarians who are jumping aboard the homosexual “marriage” bandwagon might want to stop and consider why this will lead to less freedom and more government.
Sundered by no-fault divorce and cohabitation, marriage as a “genderless” institution will lose even more legitimacy and contribute less to stability, prosperity and self-sufficiency. As nuclear families fail, government grows to pick up the pieces — and to enforce the new reality.
This brings us to the bigger picture. The left’s drive for “gay rights” poses the greatest domestic threat to the freedoms of religion, speech and assembly. When traditional morality is equated with racist bigotry, civil rights enforcement becomes a gun aimed at the head of citizens, forcing them to choose between God and Caesar. That should never happen in America, where our Founders said rights come from our Creator, not capricious man, who can mistake fashion for morality.
In Massachusetts, which legalized homosexual “marriage” in 2004, public schools openly entice children to try homosexual behavior despite well-documented health risks. Penalties are enforced against dissenters. People are losing jobs. Catholic Charities, the largest Massachusetts provider of foster homes for orphans, closed its doors rather than give up placing children only in married, mother-father homes. Tyranny is masquerading as enlightenment.
Cases are piling up across the nation. Counselors are being denied certification. Christian wedding photographers in New Mexico were hauled into court and fined for declining to shoot a lesbian ceremony. A college official who merely signed a petition in Maryland to place marriage on a state ballot was suspended. The Boy Scouts have been pushed out of United Way chapters and denied corporate funding. Mayors of major cities have told Chick-fil-A that the fast-food chain is evil because its founder defends marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In Washington, D.C., the Family Research Council, thanks to courageous security guard Leo Johnson, narrowly avoided a mass killing by a shooter who cited as motive the Southern Poverty Law Center’s slanderous designation of the council as a “hate group.”
In New Jersey, the Southern Poverty Law Center is suing Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) under consumer fraud law. They contend that no one can overcome this particular temptation, despite ample evidence to the contrary.
In California, legislators passed a law making it criminal for parents to take their children to counselors for help in overcoming unwanted same-sex desires — even children who have been molested. A court has enjoined the law for now, but is this still America, land of the free and home of the brave?
Yet, conservatives, the GOP and even the Tea Parties are told they must bow before this increasingly intolerant movement. President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Lady Gaga and the Democratic Party embrace homosexual “marriage,” so it must advance conservative principles, right?
Laurie Higgins, a perceptive writer for the Illinois Family Institute, asks this question: “What if Portman’s son had announced he was bisexual or polyamorous? Would Portman then seek to have the government recognize plural unions as marriages? Imagine if everyone decided that the ’Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion’ and the ’belief that we’re all children of God’ compel us to affirm all the feelings, beliefs and life choices of our loved ones. The truth is, it is entirely possible to deeply love people while finding their feelings, beliefs and life choices disordered or false. In this wildly diverse world, most of us do it all the time.”
Instead, we’re being asked to repeal reality, which is an unreasonable and dangerous request.
Robert Knight is senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union and a contributor to The Washington Times.
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