The oxymoronic attempt to legalise same-sex marriage is a recipe for disaster. But don’t take my word for it. Indeed, don’t listen to anyone on this issue but the homosexual militants themselves. They are the ones who are proudly proclaiming how they will destroy marriage if they get their way.
The truth is, for all the talk about same-sex marriage, few homosexuals actually have in mind the same thing that heterosexuals have in mind. Most seek to radically expand and alter the common understanding of marriage. Long-term monogamous fidelity is seldom part of this new understanding.
Simply reading through the homosexual press this becomes clear. Many seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. Article titles such as “How to Stay Married and Still Be a Slut” are not all that uncommon. Many homosexuals happily admit that traditional heterosexual marriage constraints are not exactly their cup of tea.
One homosexual writer for example, Andrew Sullivan, writes that if homosexual marriage contracts come into force, they would have to be “different”: that is, they would have to allow for “extra-marital outlets” and other major changes. Of course that undermines the very essence of marriage, which is the covenant of life-long sexual faithfulness.
It is worth quoting Sullivan further here. He speaks about the “foibles of a simple heterosexual model” for homosexual relationships. And then he makes this telling admission:
“I believe strongly that marriage should be made available to everyone, in a politics of strict public neutrality. But within this model, there is plenty of scope for cultural difference. There is something baleful about the attempt of some gay conservatives to educate homosexuals and lesbians into an uncritical acceptance of a stifling model of heterosexual normality. The truth is, homosexuals are not entirely normal; and to flatten their varied and complicated lives into a single, moralistic model is to miss what is essential and exhilarating about their otherness.”
Elizabeth Kristol offers some trenchant commentary on this: “Rote? Stifling? Moralistic? These are strange epithets to come upon in the final pages of a book whose goal is to convince readers that homosexuals want to marry and deserve to marry; that homosexual love is as dignified as heterosexual love; that it is inhumane not to allow the dignity of this love to find fruition in marriage; that marriage is so venerable an institution that it is single-handedly capable of leading men out of lives of empty promiscuity into unions of commitment and fidelity. Suddenly we learn, almost as an afterthought, that the institution of marriage may have to change to accommodate the special needs of homosexuals.”
Same-sex marriage proponent Richard Mohr openly affirms the importance of “flexibility” in same-sex unions. He is unashamed in saying this: “Monogamy is not an essential component of love and marriage.” Lesbian activist Paula Ettelbrick put it this way:
“Being queer is more than setting up house, sleeping with a person of the same gender, and seeking state approval for doing so. . . . Being queer means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process, transforming the very fabric of society. . . . As a lesbian, I am fundamentally different from non-lesbian women. . . . In arguing for the right to legal marriage, lesbians and gay men would be forced to claim that we are just like heterosexual couples, have the same goals and purposes, and vow to structure our lives similarly. . . . We must keep our eyes on the goals of providing true alternatives to marriage and of radically reordering society’s views of reality.”
I can produce many pages of such quotes. What is of real interest here is that even some of the mainstream media are beginning to catch on. Indeed, in no less of a leftist stalwart as the New York Times appeared this very telling article about the fundamentally different nature of homosexual relationships.
The NYT piece mentions a “study to be released next month is offering a rare glimpse inside gay relationships and reveals that monogamy is not a central feature for many”. The article continues, “New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years – about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.
“That consent is key. ‘With straight people, it’s called affairs or cheating,’ said Colleen Hoff, the study’s principal investigator, ‘but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations.’ The study also found open gay couples just as happy in their relationships as pairs in sexually exclusive unions.”
An article in Christianity Today commenting on the NYT piece says: “Other same-sex marriage advocates say a legal change would transform the institution. New York University professor Judith Stacey, testifying before Congress against the Defense of Marriage Act, said changing the law to allow same-sex partners to marry would help ‘supplant the destructive sanctity of the family’ and help it assume ‘varied, creative, and adaptive contours,’ including ‘small group marriages.’
The CT article concludes with these thoughts: “Whether or not marriage law should change, the fact is that changing it to include same-sex partnerships would teach people that marriage is fundamentally about the emotional union of adults and not primarily about the bodily union of man and wife (let alone the children who result from such a union). The norms of permanence, monogamy, and fidelity would make less sense under such a change.
“Consider changes in divorce laws. The spread of no-fault divorce in the 1970s didn’t just make it easier for men and women to get out of troubled marriages. It also changed people’s ideas about the permanence of the institution and the responsibility parents have to their children. It had other unintended consequences as well. Studies showed that after divorce laws were changed, spouses tended to invest less in their marriages. Economists found that spouses in states that had passed no-fault divorce laws were 10 percent less likely to put the spouse through college or graduate school and 6 percent less likely to have a child together.
“Marriage rates fell and cohabitation rates increased as men and women lost confidence in the institution. Some 20 percent of children are now born to cohabiting couples, the majority of whom will see their parents split up by the time they reach adolescence. Legal changes have consequences. But no matter how marriage laws may change, we can, paradoxically, find more freedom in chastity – which calls for abstinence when unmarried and sexual fidelity when married – than in any form of open marriage.”
The attempt by homosexual activists to radically alter the fundamental nature of marriage will mean nothing less than its destruction. Of course, as has been demonstrated above, that will be very good news indeed for the militant social engineers. But it will be bad news for society, for couples, and especially for children.
Wondering what you thought about George Gilder’s observation that because many women are turned off younger men these days and they are more likely to go for older and sometimes divorced men on their second or third time around. Women prefer maturity and stability which these men are seen to offer.
He then pointed out that this has left an over abundance of young men without partners (indeed it is true that there are many more single young males than females today). With all these young men feeling estranged from women and rejected they seek refuge with each other and in homosexual unions.
It’s an interesting theory and wondering if you would see anything in it.
Damien Spillane
Hi Damien,
I think that idea is probably misguided. At least in terms of men turning to homosexuality.
Jason Rennie
Hi Bill,
It is frustrating how dishonest these people are. I guess activists know that if they were honest and upfront they would face rejection for their clear insanity.
But they do slip and talk honestly at times. Why are people so unwilling to see the obvious contradiction and at least entertain the possibility that the lunatic talk is actually what they think?
Jason Rennie
I doubt men turn to other men due to a lack of female partners available. Studies would rather show that men who never received pure love from other men (mainly their fathers or father figures) or carry the so-called “father wounds” due to bad fathering would seek it through homosexual relationships and sexual intimacy. The same goes for girls who are victims to sub-standard fathering. Does Gilder’s study actually show that there are more single men than possible female partners available?
Servaas Hofmeyr
A good question to ask both sides of the same-sex marriage debate is what they understood by marriage. I suspect the main thing they have in common is the word.
Katherine Fishley
Dear Bill, As teenagers my husband and I stood before God’s sacred altar and vowed amongst other things to love and care for each other in sickness and in health. However, when you are young, healthy and strong you do not fully appreciate just how hard that can be. It is only since we have reached old age and sickness and injury has caught up with both of us that that vow has truly been put to the test. Through God’s grace and blessing which we received through the sacrament of marriage fifty five years ago we have found the strength to be true to it. Recently my husband has been put to the test again as I have just suffered a nasty ankle fracture which required two operations and I know how much strength and patience he needed as being an active person I was far from a model patient at times. If I didn’t really know what becoming ‘one flesh’ meant I certainly know now because of my loving, faithful spouse whom God gave to me all those years ago. In my opinion people these days have no foresight. They give up too easily on their marriage vows for often trivial reasons. If only they would persevere they would find that perseverance reaps its own reward. I am finding that out now. Life gets harder in old age. You can help to make old age so much easier for each other but you have to persevere when you are young and headstrong.
Homosexual ‘marriages’ are unnatural. They are not what a benevolent God intended so would not have His blessing. Neither would the ‘spouses’ be given the grace needed to keep their vows. Hope my comments are useful.
Patricia Halligan
So, they don’t really want to be married at all, they just want to destroy it for the rest of us.
Hilary Gilbert
Thanks Damien and Servaas
I am not sure if Gilder has said something recently on this topic. I do have his important 1986 book, Men and Marriage. He does have a chapter on homosexuality there, which makes a number of interesting and cogent points, but he does not seem to make that argument directly there.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Homosexuals want to appropriate marriage for one reason and one reason only and that is because it the ultimate passport into social acceptance and endorsement.
Let’s hear it from the homosexuals themselves: http://www.johncorvino.com/article_archive/31583.html
David Skinner, UK
Men and women are different for Man was formed from the ground and the woman was formed out the man. The woman reconnects with that from which she was formed. The man is incomplete until rejoined to that which was taken from him.
Man was divided into two constituent parts, not three, ten or into something the same.
Only two complementary halves will fit.
David Skinner, UK
But in the same way Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles required more than tolerance to their adulterous affair but national acceptance and the blessing of the Church. Hey ho.
Bill
Wondering what you thought about George Gilder’s observation that because many women are turned off younger men these days and they are more likely to go for older and sometimes divorced men on their second or third time around. Women prefer maturity and stability which these men are seen to offer.
He then pointed out that this has left an over abundance of young men without partners (indeed it is true that there are many more single young males than females today). With all these young men feeling estranged from women and rejected they seek refuge with each other and in homosexual unions.
It’s an interesting theory and wondering if you would see anything in it.
Damien Spillane
Hi Damien,
I think that idea is probably misguided. At least in terms of men turning to homosexuality.
Jason Rennie
Hi Bill,
It is frustrating how dishonest these people are. I guess activists know that if they were honest and upfront they would face rejection for their clear insanity.
But they do slip and talk honestly at times. Why are people so unwilling to see the obvious contradiction and at least entertain the possibility that the lunatic talk is actually what they think?
Jason Rennie
I doubt men turn to other men due to a lack of female partners available. Studies would rather show that men who never received pure love from other men (mainly their fathers or father figures) or carry the so-called “father wounds” due to bad fathering would seek it through homosexual relationships and sexual intimacy. The same goes for girls who are victims to sub-standard fathering. Does Gilder’s study actually show that there are more single men than possible female partners available?
Servaas Hofmeyr
A good question to ask both sides of the same-sex marriage debate is what they understood by marriage. I suspect the main thing they have in common is the word.
Katherine Fishley
Dear Bill, As teenagers my husband and I stood before God’s sacred altar and vowed amongst other things to love and care for each other in sickness and in health. However, when you are young, healthy and strong you do not fully appreciate just how hard that can be. It is only since we have reached old age and sickness and injury has caught up with both of us that that vow has truly been put to the test. Through God’s grace and blessing which we received through the sacrament of marriage fifty five years ago we have found the strength to be true to it. Recently my husband has been put to the test again as I have just suffered a nasty ankle fracture which required two operations and I know how much strength and patience he needed as being an active person I was far from a model patient at times. If I didn’t really know what becoming ‘one flesh’ meant I certainly know now because of my loving, faithful spouse whom God gave to me all those years ago. In my opinion people these days have no foresight. They give up too easily on their marriage vows for often trivial reasons. If only they would persevere they would find that perseverance reaps its own reward. I am finding that out now. Life gets harder in old age. You can help to make old age so much easier for each other but you have to persevere when you are young and headstrong.
Homosexual ‘marriages’ are unnatural. They are not what a benevolent God intended so would not have His blessing. Neither would the ‘spouses’ be given the grace needed to keep their vows. Hope my comments are useful.
Patricia Halligan
So, they don’t really want to be married at all, they just want to destroy it for the rest of us.
Hilary Gilbert
Thanks Damien and Servaas
I am not sure if Gilder has said something recently on this topic. I do have his important 1986 book, Men and Marriage. He does have a chapter on homosexuality there, which makes a number of interesting and cogent points, but he does not seem to make that argument directly there.
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Homosexuals want to appropriate marriage for one reason and one reason only and that is because it the ultimate passport into social acceptance and endorsement.
Let’s hear it from the homosexuals themselves:
http://www.johncorvino.com/article_archive/31583.html
David Skinner, UK
Men and women are different for Man was formed from the ground and the woman was formed out the man. The woman reconnects with that from which she was formed. The man is incomplete until rejoined to that which was taken from him.
Man was divided into two constituent parts, not three, ten or into something the same.
Only two complementary halves will fit.
David Skinner, UK
But in the same way Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles required more than tolerance to their adulterous affair but national acceptance and the blessing of the Church. Hey ho.
David Skinner, UK