Where is Marriage Headed?

If you only go by what the activists, and much of the mainstream media, are saying you could be forgiven for thinking that the whole world is wildly in favour of same-sex marriage, and that most of the world has in fact been there and done that. One could be excused for thinking that most countries already allow homosexuals to marry.

Such is the propaganda value of the militant homosexual lobby and their MSM supporters. They create the impression that there is a steamroller of support under way, and soon the entire world will have homosexual marriage. While it certainly is true that the homosexual lobby and their media pals are doing their best to steamroll this issue through, the reality is a bit different.

In truth, there are actually very few countries which have legalised same-sex marriage. At last count there were only ten nations around the world which have gone down this path. Given that there are some 200 or so nations in existence, this is a very tiny minority indeed.

The math is very simple. What we are talking about so far is a mere five per cent of all nations which have embraced this radical social experiment. While it is bad news for all those countries, it is hardly any sort of majority. The overwhelming majority of the world’s nations have not gone for this activist agenda.

And it should be borne in mind that many, if not most, of these nations which passed same-sex marriage legalisation did so because of activist judiciaries, and not because of the popular will of the people. It is most often the case that a handful of judges have brought in these very revolutionary social changes.

And it has been all rather recent in human history. The first nation to approve of same-sex marriage was the Netherlands, back in 2001. Holland was followed by Belgium in 2003, Spain in 2005, and Canada, also in 2005.

Iceland and Argentina, of all places, were the most recent nations to move in this direction, both in 2010. Also, in America a handful of states have legalised same-sex marriage as well, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire.

It is not surprising that the US states which have moved in this direction are amongst the most politically progressive and liberal in the whole nation. And again, in most cases these decisions were due to the judgment of a very small number of unelected judges.

But the real story here is about all those places which have not legalised it, and/or have fought against it. The media tends not to play up these stories. But there have been a number of defeats for the homosexual lobby on this issue. For example just recently in France the Constitutional Council has ruled that there is no conflict between the current law banning homosexual marriage and the rights enshrined in the nation’s constitution.

Here is how the story has been reported: “France’s Constitutional Council, its highest court for constitution issues, ruled on Friday that the country’s definition of marriage as between one man and one woman is valid under French constitution.

“The definition was challenged by two lesbians who conceived children by artificial insemination and wanted to legally call their relationship a ‘marriage.’ They battled for rights reserved for married couples, including inheritance rights and joint custody. The case was passed to the Council by the French Court of Cassation in November and the court decision was issued on Friday.

“The Council ruled that the ‘difference in situations of same-sex couples and couples made up of a man and a woman … can justify a difference in treatment concerning family rights.’ The panel’s decision was supported by two articles in France’s civil code ‘in conformity with the constitution’ that define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, reported the Globe and Mail.”

If you have not heard about that recent decision, it is not surprising. The MSM will happily give a victory for homosexual activists front-page coverage, but any setbacks or defeats are either relegated to a few inches of column space in the back pages of the paper, or are not covered at all.

Consider also the number of American states which have passed legalisation declaring marriage to be only between a man and a woman. At a recent count, around 43 – out of 50 – US states have passed such laws. This includes some 30 constitutional amendments. And in California the will of the people reversed the decision of some activist judges.

Finally, we need to be reminded of a few fundamental truths here. Mere numbers alone do not determine if something is right or wrong. Majorities can and do err. As has been said, we do not have a right to do that which is wrong. Given the overwhelming importance of heterosexual marriage to individuals, to society, and to children, we should look beyond just numbers and trends.

Indeed, even if every nation on earth did opt for same-sex marriage, one still has to ask if this is right, proper and in society’s best interests. Mere numbers alone cannot determine this. Recall that at one point almost all nations were in favour of human slavery. Sometimes all or most nations can be morally adrift.

And of course over time things can change – for good or for ill. Some of the nations which have same-sex marriage today may repeal their laws tomorrow, as took place, for example, in California. So this supposed “tidal wave of support” for same-sex marriage needs to be looked at a bit more closely.

While the activists are certainly doing their best to create such a tidal wave, for the moment the great majority of nations are not falling for it. How this pans out in the future remains to be seen. As always, vigilance is the order of the day.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/top-french-court-upholds-gay-marriage-ban?utm_source=LifeSiteNews.com+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=e24bd3f322-LifeSiteNews_com_Intl_Headlines01_31_2011&utm_medium=email

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34 Replies to “Where is Marriage Headed?”

  1. Hi Bill – I think same sex marriage is also legal in South Africa. Good article!
    Ed Sherman

  2. France: As could be expected, thé mayor of a big southern city immediately “celebrated” a “marriage” between two gentlemen.
    See “Montpellier mayor marries gay couple”, Connexion.
    Claude Boisson, France

  3. It seems that the silent majority are not falling for the “tidal wave of support for same sex marriage” whereas the vociferous minority are bellowing their demands to all and sundry, strengthened in Europe by recent Human Rights Act legislation to back them up. What a shocking concept, which these days we take for granted: “activist judiciaries” and “a handful of judges who brought in these social revolutionary changes”! I have often seen reports of a verdict by a judge or the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service which seem warped by a political agenda, and incomprehensible to the public at large.

    It’s time we heard more from the silent majority about their concerns as to where marriage and indeed civilisation is headed and to face down these rebel yells.

    Marriage where a man and woman complete each other isn’t easy but a goal worth trying for. I don’t see how love of another person can survive rejection of oneself, as in the case, for example, of a lesbian woman who felt she would make a better man in a same sex relationship than a real man and therefore strived to emulate a man instead of accepting herself as the woman she is.

    The same sex protesters who shout abuse, ridicule and threaten death to anyone who disagrees with them appear ill-equipped to sustain a relationship as they seem to spend more time nurturing their grievances.

    Rachel Smith, UK

  4. Thanks Ed

    I did not list all the ten nations here, but yes South Africa was the fifth to head down this path, back in 2006. It is interesting that 6 of the 10 nations to do so are found in Europe, the most secular lefty continent on earth. In the same way, most of the US states to do so are found in the northeast, the most secular lefty part of the nation.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  5. A good way to look at this is to observe the timeline of how it came about, that is, the timeline of growing acceptance of non-monogamous sexual behavior, and to do that in conjunction with the reality that such behavior is the root cause of social dysfunction in general. An online gay encyclopedia is a surprisingly good source for this (glbtq.com,search “sexual revolution”). The progression was: (1) growing acceptance of sexual encounters between unmarried adults; (2) acceptance of divorce; (acceptance of obscenity and pornography (and drug-related nudity in the counterculture); (3)new sexual territories, such as mate-swapping and communal sex; (4) acceptance of homosexual behavior; and (5) some acceptance of sadomasochism and even pedophilia. The article, of course, doesn’t mention how the decline of family means general instability, with such indicators as the prison population being composed almost entirely by people without good experience with their fathers. It only suggests that this erosion of the standard is desirable. We need broad-minded analysis, disseminated vigorously, if our culture is to be restored to health.
    John O’Connor

  6. Hi Bill, Same sex couples want to be seen as being the same as heterosexual couples but they have a problem. I am yet to see a same sex couple produce a baby without outside intervention.
    Ben Green

  7. Thanks Ben

    Yes quite right. Marriage has always been about the regulation of sexuality, and sexuality has always been about procreation – or at least openness to it. The homosexual lifestyle is a sexual dead end. It deserves no special recognition or affirmation by governments. What does deserve support is heterosexual marriage, with all the benefits it brings to the rest of society. Heterosexual couples who help raise the next generation are the real heroes here.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  8. Hi Bill, last year the High Court of Malawi convicted 2 men under the country’s laws that do not recognise homosexual marriage, in fact they ban homosexual relationships. They were jailed. The Sec-General of the UN, no less, paid a visit to the President expressing the UN’s disapproval and, presumably threatened to cut off aid, which the country is reliant upon. The President subsequently pardoned them, as he was economically forced to do. But the front page of 1 of the 2 dailies in Malawi, carrying this news, quoted the President as saying that he pardoned them (with no comment at all about the rights or wrongs of their case). But he immediately went on to say that homosexuality is contrary to Malawian society. So he was only paying lip service to the UN and other donors. Most newspaper commentators seemed to agree with his comment.
    Graham Keen, Melbourne and Malawi

  9. Rachel, your point about a woman in a lesbian relationship going ahead with a gender change in order to become a man has always left me wondering whether the relationship she is in is now is “heterosexual ?” The case of Thomas Beattie, in America, who went ahead with hormonal change and breast removal but kept her (back dated) gender reproductive bits, which enabled her to have a two children through IVF, makes her/him simultaneously a lesbian and a “heterosexual.”

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article4265368.ece

    Or what about Katherine Dalton, who at one time was a curvy blonde model, but who is now, following an operation, Adrian? According to the tabloids she felt like a man but was attracted to girls before her/his sex change. He/she considers himself/herself to be gay because his/her orientation is back dated to when she was a woman attracted to women. http://www.news.com.au/model-katherine-dalton-becomes-a-man-in-sex-change/story-e6frf00r-1225714438781

    Another thing I have never understood is why the gay lobby insist that is impossible to change one’s sexual orientation, but that changing one’s gender is easy peasy? Why indeed does Stonewall fight for gay rights but refuses to recognise transsexuals and transgender people?

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/20/stonewall-holding-back-transgender-equality

    All these questions are they not vanity of vanities, a striving after wind?

    Surely if I have always felt like a teapot trapped in the body of welsh cross dresser, lusting after tea leaves rather than tea bags, there is nothing better than I should go and make for my wife and myself a cup of tea.

    David Skinner, UK

  10. Congratulations Bill on another very well reasoned and encouraging story and some good news that would not be normally reported in our anti-family media.
    Warwick Marsh

  11. John O’ Connor absolutely. People need to understand the history of this, perhaps going back to Darwin and the philosophy before, which enabled evolution to become the new religion. Plus our present useful idiots, ecclesiastical collaborators, quislings and enlightened chattering classes do not for one moment raise their eyes to look at the consequences of gay ideology and the present state of our children.

    ET IN ARCADIA EGO

    EVEN IN GAYTRANSELVANIA DEATH EXISTS.

    David Skinner, UK

  12. The essential nature of marriage, that makes no biological, emotional or spiritual provision for homosexual or lesbian acts has not changed, cannot change, for it is not a man made institution – not in two thousand years, not since the first man walked this Earth. Yes, there might slight differences due to cultural and religious considerations, such as various polygamous cultures, but in essence they are uniformly the same. As the birth of new life manifests itself into male and female constituent parts is not a human invention, so also is the re – uniting of these divided complementary parts to form one new flesh, which in turn has the potential to create more male and female life. It is a part of the created order, which not even divorce can terminate.

    In Matthew 19: 4-6, Jesus Christ said, “At the beginning the Creator made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

    It is only in our own day when western civilisation, just like that of ancient Rome and Greece, appears to be in melt down, that judges are able to arbitrarily destroy boundaries and categories and do whatever they think is right in their own eyes. Far from being signs of progress, they are the symptoms of the last phases of decay.

    David Skinner, UK

  13. The institution of marriage in Western societies has been disintegrating for at least a couple of decades. The strident demands of homosexual activists who are determined to get “gay marriage” accepted as a “life-style option” is just part of a hideous picture of decay.

    A feminist fantasy has taken hold that casual relationships and co-habitation are more liberal alternatives, from a woman’s point of view, than the slavery of being a wife and mother with children born in wedlock.

    So where is marriage headed? The answer seems to be down the drain right now in the Anglosphere – where feminist attacks on it and homosexual perversion of it are supported by the intelligentsia.

    Christians of course are trying to defend the moral integrity and social utility of married life. Perhaps it’s not too fanciful to say that the Christian task (with regard to marriage) is nothing less than to repair one of the foundations of our civilization. As things stand, this seems to require an almost superhuman effort.

    So is there any sign that a Christian Renaissance is about to dawn? Or is it wiser to admit:

    This is the midnight—let no star?
    Delude us—dawn is very far.?
    This is the tempest long foretold—?
    Slow to make head but sure to hold.?

    Alex Anderson

  14. I am yet to see a same sex couple produce a baby without outside intervention.

    Actually, a same sex couple never has and never will “produce” a baby, intervention or no intervention. It is impossible for both partners to parent the child — only one of the partners is a true biological parent. The other partner is a step-parent. The second biological parent is always a subcontractor.

    Jereth Kok

  15. Many thanks Alex

    Great lines there. I must confess I had to do a quick google. Kipling. Quite appropriate. Thanks for sharing it.

    Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

  16. Bill, on the money as always. Our campaign Stand for Righteousness in Sydney has been targetted very strongly by this lobby.
    Charles Northcote

  17. “activist judiciaries” and “a handful of judges who brought in these social revolutionary changes” are essentially ‘state’ hires. Which is why the “left” hunger for more and more centralised state power to promote and parade their elected wares. In the bigger picture I like Rushdoony’s take on it.

    “The incompetence of the state as a family has made more obvious the competence of the family as a family. The prevalence of sickness does not make health obsolete, but only all the more urgently needed and desired. Historically, every period of statism is followed by an era of an intensely family-oriented society as men turn from sickness to health.”

    Jamie Bowman

  18. “This is the midnight …” – so, Kipling, but what exactly is it from? Do tell us, Bill / Alex.
    – I wasn’t sure about Stonewall’s attitude to transsexuals, so thanks, David. (And their attitude to polys … ?)
    John Thomas, UK

  19. John Thompson, Stonewall are not the flavour of the month with transsexuals. The excuses that Ben Summerskill, its chief executive, gives for not supporting them are based on arguments from the medical world!!!

    That’s what he says. I think that he is worried about all the other hobgoblins who putting pressure on him to also have their share of the cake. He is worried lest the public suddenly wake up to what is going on.

    http://www.complicity.co.uk/blog/2008/11/trans-community-protest-against-stonewall/
    http://www.complicity.co.uk/blog/tag/stonewall/page/2/

    Listen to the rage of this transsexual woman at the end of her short speech:
    http://www.pfc.org.uk/2006/08/pride-2005-by-christine-burns

    David Skinner, UK

  20. Bill, it is strangely efficient that MSM stands for both ‘main stream media’ and, in medical publications, ‘men who have sex with men’… Perhaps, once we get same-sex marriage and move on to polygamy, and given that there are now officially 7 genders identified by the UN, MSM can become the New ProgressiveThing: ‘multi-sex marriage’.
    David van Gend

  21. David Skinner (I guess you meant Thomas, not Thompson): Thanks. Yes, the polys, zoos and paedos do use just the same arguments as the gays did 30+ years ago – sure to be an embarrassment to Stonewall,etc. It’s clear, now, that gay marriage was not the end of a process but the beginning (I gain a lot from Lisa’s Lookout on the Anglican Mainstream site – only sources like that and CultureWatch tell you what is actually going on in our former-civilisation).
    John Thomas, UK

  22. Well put – and it’s also good to see the Australian Christian Lobby sating up for marriage.
    Ben-Peter Terpstra

  23. On this subject I am amazed that many heterosexual couples are avoiding marriage, entering a defacto relationship (Partners) presumably due to some rebellion to our Christian background and yet the homosexual community, already in rebellion, want “marriage”. Something does not add up.

    Both are threatening marriage.

    Denis Colbourn

  24. The bible is very clear on this subject. I am totally disgusted at various Government’s allowing homosexuality to be practiced in our society.

    There is much evil pervading in our Nations right now, and it is about time it was stopped in its tracks.

    Leonce Kealy

  25. Sorry John. Denis, it does all add up. Gays do not want what you and I would define as marriage – as post of responsibility that is good in itself and needs to be defended at all costs from constant attack. For gays marriage is merely a stamp of social approval and standing within the community. But having procured marriage status they go off and behave however they wish. Peter Tatchell, in his article, Beyond Equality, talks a great deal about how gays do not want the restrictions and boredom of straight marriage.

    Straight people on the other hand, who do not need public acceptance, the golden seal called, ‘marriage,’ with regard to having their binary, complementary, man/woman relationships accepted, want the same thing as the gays: civil partnerships. These allow the partners to draw up their own contracts and to taylor make them to fit their own requirements. What the gays really want is the abolition of marriage and instead everyone entering into civil partnerships. In other words we all become gay in our relationships. Read your Tatchell, their gay Bible.

    David Skinner, UK

  26. Bill,

    You wrote “It is not surprising that the US states which have moved in this direction are amongst the most politically progressive.”

    I always correct opponents who refer to themselves as “politically correct” by saying that “correct is like beauty, in the eye of the beholder”.

    Similarly “progressives.” I let them know I consider them regressives.

    Let’s not let them claim “positive language” like the above 2 examples and also “pro-choice” – does the unborn have a choice?

    Let’s take the langtuage back.

    Graeme Cumming

  27. Yes, that’s right, David. Things fail to add up until you realise that “gay marriage” – as understood by gay activists, but not politicians, media and the general public – is not at all what we understand by marriage, or the traditional idea of marriage that most people have. Yes, it’s not marriage of any kind they ultimately want, just the abolition of real marriage.
    John Thomas, UK

  28. David (re. 6pm) ..or hermaphrodite, which is possibly one of the UN’s official genders – I must look into that – I’m disappointed in the UN for such nonsense. I know a trans person and everyone refers to the person as “them” as his/her gender is no longer clear.
    Rachel Smith, UK

  29. Graeme, right on. ‘Progressive’ is too often regressive, and ‘pro choice’ is no choice for babies.
    Stan Fishley

  30. Thanks again Bill, Excellent article.

    GetUP is now pushing the Gay Marriage barrow hard with expensive adverts. Christians better get organised or the christian definition of marriage will be undermined forever.

    I have tried again to have a pro-Hetero marriage letter printed in the SMH. I don’t hold much hope.

    The old and weak argument has come up again today 16 Feb 2011 in the SMH that Jesus mentioned nothing about homosexuality and did not publicly condemn it so obviously he supported it. Let’s totally ignore that Jesus knew the Old Testament law backwards and so did the Jews. Leviticus 18 and Deuteronomy 22 were well known. I think someone who claims to be a christian wrote this silly letter. In addition Paul the apostle makes some strong remarks that same sex relationships. Those who participate in these relationships have a depraved mind.

    I note Jesus also didn’t condemn pornography or child molestation so maybe some people think these horrors are okay with Jesus as well. There are some shallow thinkers in the Christian Community.

    regards
    Phil Browne

  31. Here is an extract of a comment I included on the Counterpoint website. Thought I would include it here for interest. I am sure you are familar with the last paper mentioned. Published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy…..
    Any balance in this “debate” or depth for that matter, is sadly lacking. Any view contrary to the pro same sex marriage position is loudly shouted down with many labels thrown around. I applaud online opinion for publishing this piece and congratulate the author. Unfortunately, the approach of delegitimising the contrary view adopted by many same sex marriage activists is consistent with the approach adopted in the US, see this piece from the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/17/AR2010121702528.html. If you are interested in exploring the real issue, can I also recommend the following paper which is an excellent exploration of the matter http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1722155
    Patrice Daly

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