A Biblical Response To Same-Sex Marriage
By Brannon S. Howse
Homosexual and lesbian activists are trying to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples. Although “redefining” something sounds simple enough, the proposition of redefining marriage is ludicrous and as a result should not be given legal sanction. Author and family expert Bob Knight explains why marriage cannot be redefined but only destroyed:
[quote] The term “marriage” refers specifically to the joining of two people of the opposite sex. When that is lost, “marriage” becomes meaningless. You can no more leave an entire sex out of marriage and call it “marriage” than you can leave chocolate out of a “chocolate brownie” recipe. It becomes something else. Giving non-marital relationships the same status as marriage does not expand the definition of marriage; it destroys it. For example, if you declare that, because it has similar properties, wine should be labeled identically to grape juice, you have destroyed the definitions of both “wine” and “grape juice.” The consumer would not know what he is getting. [end quote]
In an article in The Weekly Standard, Stanley Kurtz offered another current example of what happens when marriage is corrupted:
"Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, with children shouldering the burden of rising rates of family dissolution. And the mainspring of the decline—an increasingly sharp separation between marriage and parenthood—can be linked to gay marriage."
Peter Sprigg offered this caution in his address to the 2004 World Congress of Families in Mexico City:
[quote] And so, as one part of our broad-based efforts to support the traditional family, we oppose what is sometimes called “the gay agenda.” It is an agenda that demands the full acceptance of the practice of homosexuality: morally, socially, legally, religiously, politically, and financially. Indeed, it calls for not only acceptance, but affirmation and celebration of this behavior as normal. It even demands that homosexuality be seen as desirable for those who desire it. This is “the gay agenda”—and we are against it.
This agenda has already made remarkable progress. Homosexual activists knew that their behavior would never be accepted as “normal” if doctors considered it a form of mental illness. Therefore, in 1973 they forced a resolution through the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It is important for everyone to realize that the 1973 decision was not the result of new clinical research or scientific evidence. It was, rather, a political decision made in response to a vicious campaign of harassment and intimidation by homosexual activists.
Indeed, studies actually continue to show that homosexuals experience high rates of mental illness. For example, the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study, reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2001, found that “people with same-sex sexual behavior are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders.”241 The fact that this is true even in one of the most “gay-friendly” nations on earth—indeed, the first nation to grant same-sex civil marriage—undermines any argument that such mental illnesses are merely a reaction to society’s alleged “discrimination.” [end quote]
Peter Sprigg continued to click off the devastating impact that legalizing same-sex marriage will have on families in America:
[quote] The final harm done by same-sex marriage would undoubtedly be a slide down the proverbial “slippery slope.” Advocates of same-sex marriage seek to remove the potential for procreation from the definition of marriage, making gender irrelevant in the choice of a spouse, and re-defining marriage only in terms of a loving and committed relationship. If that happens, then it is hard to see how other restrictions upon one’s choice of marriage partner can be sustained. These include the traditional restrictions against marrying a child, a close blood relative, or a person who is already married.
While pedophile or incestuous marriages may be further off, polygamous marriages have much stronger precedents in history and culture than do even homosexual ones. Lawsuits have already been filed in American courts—with the support of the American Civil Liberties Union—demanding recognition of plural marriages. And—I am not making this up—news reports in recent weeks have carried stories of an Indian girl being married to a dog, and a French woman who was legally permitted (with the approval of the president of France) to marry her boyfriend—who is already dead. [end quote]
Lesbian activist Paula Ettelbrick, currently the executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, has said that homosexuality:
"means pushing the parameters of sex, sexuality, and family, and in the process transforming the very fabric of society,”
But as Peter Spring points out, the truth is, homosexuality and homosexual civil marriage would rip the fabric of society in ways that may be difficult, if not impossible, to mend.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of the legalization debate, though, is that gays are not interested so much in marriage as they are in their agenda. Numerous studies document that the average homosexual has hundreds of sexual relationships. Given this reality, it stands to reason that homosexuals are not interested in getting married and having one life partner but in using the marriage issue to further a liberal, anti-family, anti-Christian political agenda. Consider the following facts:
• The number of registered same-sex unions in Sweden is reported to be about 1,500 (for a total of 3,000 individuals) out of the estimated homosexual and lesbian population of 140,000.244 This indicates that only about two percent of Swedish homosexuals and lesbians choose to enter into legally recognized unions. Put another way, about 98 percent of Swedish homosexuals and lesbians do not officially register as same-sex couples. [Timothy J. Dailey, Comparing the Lifestyle of Homosexual couples to Married couples]
• A news report by the Gay Financial Network predicted that “some 10,000 gay couples could be married” in the first year following the legalization of gay “marriage” in the Netherlands. In reality, far fewer chose to solemnize their relationships. The Office of Legislative Research released a report in October 2002 stating: “The Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs reports that 3,383 of the 121,776 marriages licensed between April 1, 2001, and June 30, 2002, involved people of the same sex.” ["OLR Bacgrounder: Legal Recognition of Same-Sex Partnerhsip," OLR Research Report October 9, 2002., p. 1.]
The Dutch study of partnered homosexuals, which was published in the journal AIDS, found that men with a “steady” partner had an average of eight sexual partners per year. [Maria Xiridou, et al, "The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnership to the Incidence of HIV Infection Amrong Homosexual Men in Amsterdam" AIDS 17 2003. p. 1031. Bell and Weinberg, in their classic study of male and female homosexuality, found that 43 percent of white male homosexuals had sex with 500 or more partners, with 28 percent having one thousand or more sex partners. [A.P. Bell and M.S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978, pp. 308, 309:]
In their study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in the Journal of Sex Research, Paul Van de Ven, et al, found that “the modal range for number of sexual partners ever [of homosexuals] was 101-500.” In addition, 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent had between 501 and 1,000 partners. A further 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent reported having had more than one thousand lifetime sexual partners. [Paul Van de Ven et al., "A Comparartive Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older homosexually Active Men", Journal of Sex Research, 34, 1997, p. 354.
A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than one hundred sexual partners. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category for those who had had more than one thousand sexual partners. [Sex Survey Results, Genre October 1996, quoted in "Survey Finds 40 Percent of Gay Men Have Had More Than 40 Sex Partners", Lambda Report, January 1998, p. 20.]
Homosexual activist Michelangelo Signorile acknowledges the way the homosexual world operates and has said concerning the desire of homosexuals to get married and live in a monogamous relationship:
[quote] For these men the term “monogamy” simply doesn’t necessarily mean sexual exclusivity....The term “open relationship” has for a great many gay men come to have one specific definition: A relationship in which the partners have sex on the outside often, put away their resentment and jealousy, and discuss their outside sex with each other, or share sex partners. [end quote]
Former homosexual William Aaron explains why homosexuals are not interested in monogamy:
[quote] In the gay life, fidelity is almost impossible. Since part of the compulsion of homosexuality seems to be a need on the part of the homophile to “absorb” masculinity from his sexual partners, he must be constantly on the lookout for [new partners]. Consequently the most successful homophile “marriages” are those where there is an arrangement between the two to have affairs on the side while maintaining the semblance of permanence in their living arrangement. [end quote]
To those who would suggest that restricting marriage to opposite sex couples is discriminatory, Bob Knight explains the fallacy in that thinking:
[quote] Marriage laws are not discriminatory. Marriage is open to all adults, subject to age and blood relation limitations. As with any acquired status, the applicant must meet minimal requirements, which in terms of marriage, means finding an opposite-sex spouse. Same-sex partners do not qualify. To put it another way, clerks will not issue dog licenses to cats, and it is not out of “bigotry” toward cats. Comparing current laws limiting marriage to a man and a woman with the laws in some states that once limited inter-racial marriage is irrelevant and misleading. The very soul of marriage—the joining of the two sexes—was never at issue when the Supreme Court struck down laws against inter-racial marriage.
Requiring citizens to sanction or subsidize homosexual relationships violates the freedom of conscience of millions of Christians, Jews, Muslims and other people who believe marriage is the union of the two sexes.
Civil marriage is a public act. Homosexuals are free to have a “union” ceremony with each other privately, but they are not free to demand that such a relationship be solemnized and subsidized under the law.
Homosexual activists say they need legal status so they can visit their partners in hospitals, etc. But hospitals leave visitation up to the patient, except in very rare instances. This “issue” is a smokescreen to cover the fact that, using legal instruments such as power of attorney, drafting a will, etc., homosexuals can share property, designate heirs, dictate hospital visitors and give authority for medical decisions. What they should not obtain is identical recognition and support for a relationship that is not equally essential to society’s survival. [end quote]
Bob goes on to describe the legal and social fallout of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples:
If same-sex relationships acquire marital-type status in the law, several things will occur:
• Businesses that decline to recognize non-marital relationships will increasingly be punished through loss of contracts and even legal action. This is already occurring in San Francisco and in Canada.
• Other groups, such as bisexuals and polygamists, will demand the right to redefine marriage to suit their own proclivities. Once the standard of one-man, one-woman marriage is broken, there is no logical stopping point.
• As society rewards homosexual behavior, more young people will be encouraged to experiment and more will be discouraged from overcoming homosexual desires.
• Popular understanding of what marriage is and what it requires will undergo change. Homosexual relationships, which usually lack both permanence and fidelity, are unlikely to change to fit the traditional model of lifelong, faithful marriage. Instead, society’s expectations of marriage will change in response to the homosexual model, thus leading to a further weakening of the institution of marriage. Some homosexual activists have acknowledged that they intend to use marriage mainly as a way to radically shift society’s entire conception of sexual morality. [facts posted at nogaymarriage.com]
Dr. Timothy J. Dailey also describes why same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue:
[quote] Defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman would not deny homosexuals the basic civil rights accorded other citizens. Nowhere in the Bill of Rights or in any legislation proceeding from it are homosexuals excluded from the rights enjoyed by all citizens—including the right to marry.
However, no citizen has the unrestricted right to marry whoever they want. A parent cannot marry their child (even if he or she is of age), two or more spouses, or the husband or wife of another person. Such restrictions are based upon the accumulated wisdom not only of Western civilization but also of societies and cultures around the world for millennia. [end quote]
Finally, America’s Founders also proclaimed a crucial reason same-sex marriage should not be legalized. They told us that under our constitutional republic, we are not to make laws that contradict the laws of nature and nature’s God. Homosexuality and lesbianism are against the laws of God and nature. God calls homosexuality an abomination, and He set marriage apart in the Garden of Eden when He said “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Copyright 2006 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.
