28 Responses

1. The focus of the Church’s involvement is specifically same-sex marriage and its consequences. The Church does not object to rights (already established in California) regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights, so long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the family or the constitutional rights of churches and their adherents to administer and practice their religion free from government interference.

   http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/the-divine-institution-of-marriage

2. The church does not want any form of non-traditional marriage to have state approval for one reason only: it will open the Pandora’s Box that is polygamy. That is the last thing in the world, literally, the church wants to happen.

3. Did they mean that empires like Rome fell because of toleration for homosexuality, I think it safe to say that all empires eventually fall. Regardless. There is always a bigger bully.

   I’m not sure what civilization means in this context. Even though Rome fell (and all those empires before and after), civilization somehow soldiered on.

   By civilization, what do they mean? That we will be reduced to being hunters and gatherers eating nuts, berries and squirrels? Do they mean that the Chinese, the next big bully–after us–will roll over the ocean and conquer us? And this will be because we ‘tolerate’ homosexuality?

   Of all the lousy arguments, this may be the winner.

   Sheesh.

4. I too have prayed about this. I am comfortable with not supporting it. I think that is makes it more acceptable and it shouldn’t be. There are so many reasons which everyone has has heard before so I wont go over them here.

   I am so glad I have been able to read these comments etc., and learn the other side of the argument. It doesn’t change how I feel but I has giving me great understanding in why people are for it.

   I see that many have a great ability to show compassion and love for others. I have learned the motives behind others decisions and have learned to respect them even though they are different from my own.

   I don’t think this single thing will bring the fall of our nation. There are so many things that are causing that. But the more acceptance we have of any sin the quicker we will fall.

5. “The church does not want any form of non-traditional marriage to have state approval for one reason only: it will open the Pandora’s Box that is polygamy.”

   I agree that polygamy is the elephant in the room that the Church is not talking about, but also I wonder if there is some fear concerning the issue of bishops being asked to perform same sex marriages or even a press for gay temple marriages.

   I was a wee lad when interracial marriage became the law of the land so I don’t know how churches that had denied interracial couples came to embrace them. Did they undergo internal changes? were there law suits filed? Is it acceptable for religious groups to discriminate based on gender, race, or sexual orientation? It would appear they can do so in hiring. . .

6. While we are asked to do all we can, The Divine Institution of Marriage (8/13/08) seems to allow members decide their own appropriate level of involvement.

7. I don’t see gay marriage bringing down our civilization. Not by a long shot. If it goes down, I think it will be due to war-mongering and over consumption of the world’s resources.

   For the life of me, I just can’t see how gay marriage will hurt our society. Seems to me like any time that people form committed relationships in which they vow to love and care for another person, that’s a good thing. Granting legal status to gay couples certainly does nothing to hurt my marriage.

8. What troubles me is that the Church has taken such a firm stance in an area where so little is known. There is so much we don’t understand about homosexuality and what does or does not cause it that I just can’t support speaking in absolute terms about it.

   When the church can tell me why one person is homosexual and another is heterosexual, and give a clear plan regarding what they expect homosexuals to do about it, then we can talk about legislation.

9. I write here as a man who was married in California on June 17. We will have been together nine years in September. We are raising two children, a daughter, 7, and a son, 2-1/2. None of the arguments I hear against gay marriage ever mention the children who are being raised by gay parents. Over 25% of gay households in California are raising children. They are the main beneficiaries our our newly-won right to marry. The security and legal protections that flow to them from our marriage are the main reason we got married.

   Most of the comments here seem to be coming from a religious point of view. I happen to be a Christian. I also met my spouse at church, where we continue to worship with our family. However, the California Supreme Court decision went to great lengths to make clear that this decision had nothing to do with religious marriage ceremonies. In fact, it specified that any church or temple or mosque that does not support marriage of same-sex couples cannot be compelled to perform religious ceremonies.

   What this decision did do was to confer all of the LEGAL dignities, rights, responsibilities and protections of marriage on same-sex couples and their families. The decision was meant to make such families stronger, not bring down civilization.

   Whether or not you agree with gay couples raising children is not the issue here. It’s a fact of life. Would you deny my children, who have no say in the sexual orientation of their parents, the rights and protections your take for granted that your children should have and do have? It would seem so.

10. I really appreciate Bill’s comments. This is an aspect of this issue that I have not seen discussed on the blogs.

    Many gay couples are raising children (and doing a wonderful job of it). I don’t believe that partner rights that already exist protect children the way actual marriage does. I am not a lawyer, so I can’t speak to all the legal ramifications, but I have seen the instability that can occur with children who do not have the benefit of parents who are legally married to each other (regardless of the gender of the parents).

    As a long-time child advocate, my first question in this whole issue is, “What is best for the children?” And Bill is right. Whether or not you agree that gay couples should raise children is not the issue, because they already are. Surely it is in the best interest of any civilization to protect its children.

11. Caroline said:

    I don’t see gay marriage bringing down our civilization. Not by a long shot. If it goes down, I think it will be due to war-mongering and over consumption of the world’s resources.

    So true–the burden of proof is definitely on anyone who wants to link gay marriage to downfall of civilization (I’m a historian, and no matter how far I open my mind, I just don’t see the connection). But we’ve got global warming accelerating and enough WMDs to bring about the end of humanity in this nation alone–where is the Church’s strong position on these truly civilization threatening issues?

12. It must be so hard to be a member of the church and have the conflicting desire of a gay lifestyle. I don’t envy you your struggle, but I will commend your desire to follow the prophet.
    Gay marriage will alter our society, perhaps for the worse, perhaps not. My concern is that the CA educational system regulates that children are taught the concepts and principles of marriage in grade school. I would be sorrowful to hear that little children would be taught that homosexuality is embraced and considered a perfectly normal and acceptable lifestyle. Some parents have no problem with that, but I certainly do. I don’t agree with homosexuality being an acceptable way of life. Granted my children will make their own decisions, but it doesn’t feel right to involve this lifestyle within the public educational system.
    Abe Lincoln once said “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” If there is any truth in that, it is because we are ignoring our Father in Heaven’s commandments and convincing ourselves of the ways of the world.

13. I’m unclear on exactly when and where marriage is discussed during school.

14. Jenny –

    I grew up in the Ozarks. If you were to poll the population of our small town, I can assure you that a solid majority would agree that Mormon baptism was no baptism at all and that the LDS church was leading its members straight down a path to hell.

    You’re free to believe and teach your own children that “I don’t agree with homosexuality being an acceptable way of life.”

    But how would you feel if the majority of folks in my town decided that they were going to teach a similar belief about Mormonism in the local public school? I mean, the majority don’t agree with the LDS church being an acceptable choice for conducting Christian worship, so what’s stopping them from teaching that in the schools? From their perspective, if they were to take a tolerant attitude towards Mormonism, that’d be allowing their kids to be led astray by an overly-tolerant public school system, wouldn’t it?

    I don’t know where you’re from, but I wonder if folks in the Mormon Corridor out West aren’t sometimes a little too quick to forget that the LDS church benefits from the protections afforded by our laws that prevent the majority from lording it over those with minority views or beliefs.

    Anyway, all this talk about grade-schoolers getting taught about marriage in the public schools is just more scare tactics from the Yes on 8 campaign. The courses they’re referring to are taught in high school, and parents have the choice to opt their children out of classes where the subject is discussed.

    On the other hand, who cares if it is discussed? The reality is that gay marriage is legal in other countries and is currently legal in the state of California. What kind of educational system do you envision for our kids? One where we actively seek to deny the reality of the world that they are growing up in?

    No matter what happens with Prop 8, kids are gonna hear about and wonder about gay marriage, and the public schools have no right to say anything negative about gay marriage for exactly the same reason they have no right to tell LDS kids that their religion is a cult.

    You bring your religious beliefs into a discussion about public policy at your own peril. Someday, what’s good for the goose will be good for the gander, and you’re not going to have the standing to push back against the majority’s discrimination against your beliefs.

    The prophet Heber J. Grant once said:

    “Many of the Latter-day Saints have surrendered their independence; they have surrendered their free thought, politically, and we have got to get back to where we are not surrendering the right.”

    Since I’m going long anyway, I’m just gonna drop a little food for thought here:

    Senator Barry Goldwater:

    The founder of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and nominee for President in 1964 was very outspoken on civil rights. He stated, “To see the party that fought communism and big government now fighting the gays, well, that’s just plain dumb.”

    Conservative activist Ward Connerly:

    “For anyone to say that this is an issue for people who are gay and that this isn’t about civil rights is sadly mistaken. If you really believe in freedom and limited government, to be intellectually consistent and honest you have to oppose efforts of the majority to impose their will on people.”

    Oregon Republican (and Mormon) Sen. Gordon Smith:

    “Part of what I fear, as you start defining marriage — we have a long history of doing that in this country, and my Mormon pioneer ancestors were the victims of that. They were literally driven from the United States in the dead of winter for following their religious beliefs. I don’t want that coming back, but there are some on the front pages of your newspapers who are trying to now.”

    But my favorite quote o’ the day is this one from Heber J. Grant:

    “Many of the Latter-day Saints have surrendered their independence; they have surrendered their free thought, politically, and we have got to get back to where we are not surrendering the right.”

15. I guess it’s fair to say I *really* liked that Heber J. Grant quote.

16. And, by the way, I think the commercial that Zenaida referred to in her post is this one:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkhhD6Gqz34

    Please excuse the threepeat commenting.

17. Just as evolution is taught as science in public schools, eventually citizens will learn that homosexuality is a normal part of the diversity of the world and of humankind. Because that is where the scientific consensus appears to be headed. Whether or not the government sanctions same-sex marriages will not really matter in terms of eventual school curriculums. Homosexuality is becoming normalized in society, and all the constitutional amendments defining marriage will not slow it down.

18. Chino Blanco,
    Thanks for all the great quotes!

19. The decision as to whether to be public about not supporting Proposition 8 can be a difficult one. Most Mormons were raised in a culture where conformity within the church is pretty important and anyone deviating from the norm is often viewed as “not as faithful”. Let me share a few stories with you as to why it is important to not keep your opposition to Prop 8 a secret.

    In 2000 during the Proposition 22 campaign, I made enough statements in church (usually correcting inaccurate information that was being disseminated regarding the gay and transgender community) that most people in my ward soon figured out that it would be rather pointless to offer me a yard sign or sign me up for canvassing. I did worry though about whether my public dissention was embarrassing to my then 15-year old daughter. My fears were put to rest one Sunday morning when my daughter and her friend came up to me after church. The friend covertly said to me, “Don’t tell my parents, but several times I’ve pulled up our yard sign, thrown it in the gutter, and stomped on it.” She smiled and walked away.

    A Unitarian minister told me about a group of her church’s teenagers who showed up at a youth activity and proudly presented her with a stack of yard signs that they had commandeered en route. A gay man who was working on the campaign also told me that teenagers in his neighborhood frequently presented him with yard signs that they had taken. Both he and the minister had to delicately let the teens know that their support was greatly appreciated but stealing yard signs was not OK.

    One more story… At a national PFLAG conference in Salt Lake City several years ago, I was with a group of a dozen or so parents and two gay young men, waiting to cross the street back to the hotel. In front of the hotel were two dozen anti-gay protestors with the most hate-filled posters you can imagine. “We got your backs,” said one mom to her gay son. We all took a deep breath, preparing to enter the gauntlet. Sitting on the grass by the pedestrian crossing on our side of the street were three rather punk-looking boys about 12 or 13 years old with their skateboards. Assuming that they were afraid to cross the street because of the protestors, we offered to let them cross with us. One of them looked at us and quietly replied, “That’s OK. We’re on your side. We’ll stay here for the others in your group.” When we got to the other side of the street, several of us were wiping tears from our eyes because of this unobtrusive show of support.

    I remember wondering whether they were LDS. It was a Sunday. They probably should have been in church. But by their dress and the length and style of their hair, I doubt that they fit in with most deacons’ quorums. I wondered if some LDS parents were lamenting about how these misfit sons were such a disappointment. But these boys had just demonstrated that Christ-like love is not about wearing a white shirt with tie and passing the sacrament. No other Mormon in the entire city of Salt Lake City had thought it important to skip church that day in order to support families who were confronted by a hate-group.

    Our teens can’t vote. They often don’t have the words or the opportunity to make their feelings known about these issues. But they observe what we do and say—and they learn from it. I’d be willing to bet that many of the teens in your ward may actually disagree with their parents’ support of Prop 8. Your example may not change the minds of the adults in the ward, but it may have a huge impact on the teenagers.

    (And by the way… the sign-stomping teenager is now a 24-year-old registered Mormon voter who came to my house to tell me that she is opposing Proposition 8.)

20. WHY CALIFORNIA SHOULD RETAIN CURRENT MARRIAGE STATUTES
    Marriage is the legal, social, economic and spiritual union of a man and a woman. One man and one woman are necessary for a valid marriage. If that definition is radically altered then anything is possible. There is no logical reason for not letting several people marry, or for eliminating other requirements, such as minimum age, blood relative status or even the limitation of the relationship to human beings. Those who are trying to radically redefine California’s marriage laws for their own purposes are the ones who are trying to impose their values on the rest of the population. Those citizens opposed to any change in California’s marriage statutes are merely defending the basic morality that has sustained the culture for everyone against a radical attack.
    When same-sex couples seek California’s approval and all the benefits that the state reserves for married couples, they impose the law on everyone. According non-marital relationships the same status as marriage would mean that millions of people would be disenfranchised by their own governments. The state would be telling them that their beliefs are no longer valid, and would turn the civil rights laws into a battering ram against them.
    Law is not a suggestion, as George Washington observed, “it is force”. An official state sanction of same-sex relationships as “marriage” would bring the full apparatus of the state against those who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. The California Protect Marriage Coalition views this as outlawing traditional morality.
    Eliminating one entire sex from an institution defined as the union of the two sexes is a quantum leap from eliminating racial discrimination, which did not alter the fundamental character of marriage. Marriage reflects the natural moral and social law evidenced the world over. As the late British social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin noted in his study of world civilizations, any society that devalued the nuclear family soon lost what he called “expansive energy,” which might best be summarized as society’s will to make things better for the next generation. In fact, no society that has loosened sexual morality outside of man-woman marriage has survived.
    Analyzing studies of cultures spanning several thousands of years on several continents, Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin found that virtually all political revolutions that brought about societal collapse were preceded by a sexual revolution in which marriage and family were devalued by the culture’s acceptance of homosexuality.
    When marriage loses its unique status, women and children most frequently are the direct victims. Giving same-sex relationships or out-of-wedlock heterosexual couples the same special status and benefits as the marital bond would not be the expansion of a right but the destruction of a principle. . If the one-man/one-woman definition of marriage is broken, there is no logical stopping point for continuing the assault on marriage.
    If feelings are the key requirement, then why not let three people marry, or two adults and a child, or consenting blood relatives of any age? . Marriage-based kinship is essential to stability and continuity in our state. Child abuse is much more prevalent when a living arrangement is not based on kinship. Kinship imparts family names, heritage, and property, secures the identity and commitment of fathers for the sake of the children, and entails mutual obligations to the community.
    The US Supreme Court declared in 1885 that states’ marriage laws must be based on “the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.”

21. Sorry to be commenting again so soon, but Jeanie Mortensen-Besamo’s story and mention of yard signs made me wonder:

    Is anyone else aware that Boyd K. Packer wrote a letter to the California stake presidents on July 28th, in which he mentions that one million ‘Yes on 8’ signs will be put up in yards around the state at 7:00 am on Sept. 22nd?

22. Bot writes:

    “Marriage is the legal, social, economic and spiritual union of a man and a woman. One man and one woman are necessary for a valid marriage. If that definition is radically altered then anything is possible. There is no logical reason for not letting several people marry, or for eliminating other requirements, such as minimum age, blood relative status or even the limitation of the relationship to human beings.”

    Lets take a few points shall we:

    1) Minimum age: This actually has nothing to do with marriage per se. Its about the legal definition of who can consent to enter into contracts. Gay marriage has the same relation as heterosexual marriage regarding the laws concerning minors and consent -None! No one who is under the age of legal consent can marry, their sexual orientation has no bearing, it simply can not be extrapolated.

    2) blood relative status: The denial of marriage to closely related relatives is based on the possible outcome of procreation. The offspring of closely related blood relatives will still have the same genetic risks after gay marriage as they did before, so gay marriage has no bearing. Further states such as Utah already have laws allowing closely related blood relatives to marry in chases where no children can be produced. The law in Utah went into effect years before gay marriage became an issue.

    3) Human beings: Look, consent is consent. Non-humans may be granted certain protections under the law, but non-humans can not consent to anything, including marriage or entering into any other contract. That is the way it is and will remain.

    4) There is no logical reason for not letting several people marry: On one hand you may have a point in that there is could be some sort of “if they can marry, why can’t we?” But I’n not convinced that gay marriage really provides the logic that would function in such a case. It seem to me that the logic for those arguments is already formed in marriage itself as a concept with or without gay marriage. But also, why not question the traditional definition of and logic behind marriage? Asking the questions could strengthen the argument for marriage being restricted to two people, but usually the strident defenders of the current understanding of marriage rely on a rather uncritical notion of “tradition” (how every they choose to define it.) and fear mongering. in and of themselves those are not even close to being actual arguments for not extending civil liberties to same sex couples.

23. WHY CALIFORNIA SHOULD RETAIN CURRENT MARRIAGE STATUTES

    Bot, What you really meant to say is that California should CHANGE its current marriage statutes. After all, statutes in California currently extend marriage to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Prop. 8 will strip many tax paying citizens of their constitutional right to marry the person of their choice.

24. LDS (Mormon) ‘Yes on 8’ Game Plan

    I’ve posted a letter sent from Boyd K. Packer on July 28th to the LDS stake presidents in California:

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/19/224211/910/755/570793

    Apparently, there is a plan in place to put up one million ‘Yes on 8’ yard signs at 7:00 am on September 22nd.

25. Bot:
    The protestations about plural marriage from Mormons seems so strange to me since the state government in Utah seems to tolerate the practice among the fundamentalist Mormon sects. I mean there’s no coordinated movement from mainstream LDS to force the government to stamp out these practices among the fundamentalists.

26. “WHY CALIFORNIA SHOULD RETAIN CURRENT MARRIAGE STATUTES

    Bot, What you really meant to say is that California should CHANGE its current marriage statutes. After all, statutes in California currently extend marriage to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. Prop. 8 will strip many tax paying citizens of their constitutional right to marry the person of their choice.”

    My response is that Bot is correct in that California law currently was written that the state does not recognize gay marriage due to Proposition 22, passed years ago. It was the few judges who overruled the people’s vote that makes gay marriage recognized. The fact that the few judges can overrule the votes of the majority of the state is what is so outrageous for us Californians.
    So… whether prop 8 ‘elimates’ gay right to marriage is debatable, whether they REALLY already have the right or not.

27. Looks like they might have shut down the other thread, so for RJW:

    RJW: I’m glad you thought it was nuanced.
    Jim R: That was being gracious.
    RJW: Jim, I feel great pains in my soul that it is even necessary to point this out, but there is a *huge* difference between a child-sacrificing cult and a homosexual union. Consider just a few (so-totally-obvious-I-can’t-believe-I’m-writing-this) differences:
    Jim R: For being “in” to nuance, you don’t seem to grasp that the law I’m referring to is the ancient law that informs most of Western Civilization. The comparison of homosexual union to child killing is instructive in that they are both hideous violations of God’s law—and man’s law for most of the last 2,000 years. Some Mormons tend to avoid, for example, criticism of the death-worshiping ways of Islam, simply because they once experienced persecution as a religious minority. Failing to distinguish between unmerited persecution and the just administration of the law is simple idiocy—pure and simple. I would argue, moreover, that homosexual union, particularly the eroticizing of the anal cavity, is very much death-dealing, and child killing, since selling the fecal-smearing act of anal intercourse as a kind of “love” is a public health lie of the worst order. It would be like telling children to play with a toilet. Homosexuals need to recruit. They very much need the “normalizing” stamp of civil approval to break down the very natural revulsion that most children are born with as a gift from God. (The ones who aren’t born with that abhorence need pastoral care to overcome their weakness, just as someone prone to theft needs counseling, and perhaps punishment, to encourage a change in their ways.) In standing with homosexuals, you stand against history, health, order, and God’s law. You call evil good and good evil. Is that a comfy spot to be standing in? If my guess is correct, I’ve done you the justice of believing you still have eyes to see. Do you?
    RJW: I don’t see why one has to be a Christian to argue against human sacrifice or even abortion. You can certainly believe that life is precious and that people should have basic human rights without necessarily believing in Christ.
    Jim R: Sounds nice doesn’t it? Sounds logical doesn’t it? It wasn’t “nice” or “logical” to the Mayans, the Hurons, the Aztecs, the Druids, the Celts, the Romans, the Greeks, the Goths, or virtually any of the cultures before Christ. Even cultures such as China, who remain largely impervious to Christ’s message, remain child killing heathens. You are probably a nice, Sunday-school educated Mormon with limited historical perspective. You simply don’t know the state of the savage mind, devoid of your assumptions about humanity. Put yourself in a time machine and try “Hands Across America” with Ghenkis Khan and his boys. Right before they put your head on a pike, you would be saying something utterly inane like, “I don’t see why one has to be a Christian to argue against human sacrifice…”
    RJW: Perhaps you could explain what possible relevance the New Hampshire Justice of the Peace Manual from 1830 possible has for the discussion at hand. Am I to believe that because a New Hampshire governmental manual said something in 1830, I should believe that? And I’m even a little confused by what you seem to be implying. Do you also believe that atheists should not be allowed to testify in court? If so, then wow. That’s really bad. I mean really, really bad. In your world, in a dark alley, a Christian could come upon two atheists, murder one of them, let the other one survive, and there’d be no one to testify against him (except that I’m starting to wonder if in your world the other one would survive at all). Perhaps you should consult that other “Peace Manual” (the bible) about that one.
    Jim R: One of the earlier posters incorrectly lamented, and improperly identified, the current crisis as the emergence of a theocracy, that the California ruling was deeply American and supportive of liberty of conscience. This reflects an extremely shallow understanding of the American tradition. Liberty has never, nor will it ever be, utter personal license to do anything anyone feels like, so long as you paint a fresh coat of “virtue” on it by callling it a lifestyle. It personally annoys me that Mormons can be such lazy thinkers. So I guess I need to connect the dots for you. New Hampshire was the home of various Christian traditions at the time—Congregatioinalists, Quakers, Presbytereans, Baptists, Methodists, you name it. They ALL agreed that it was imprudent to allow an atheist to testify in court, because, really the atheist has no stake in any final Great Judge. He has no ultimate truth, no immutable final reality, no, reason in short to tell the truth. This was one of many instances properly testifying to the deeply Christian roots that nurtured the early republic. There is nothing particularly “American” or “virtuous” or “liberty-loving” about allowing homosexuals to pretend they are merely making one of several valid orientation choices, any more than it would be deeply “American” to allow Muslim husbands to beat their wives senseless in public, simply because it’s part of their tradition.

28. Marriage is the legal, social, economic and spiritual union of a man and a woman. One man and one woman are necessary for a valid marriage. If that definition is radically altered then anything is possible. There is no logical reason for not letting several people marry, or for eliminating other requirements, such as minimum age, blood relative status or even the limitation of the relationship to human beings. Those who are trying to radically redefine California’s marriage laws for their own purposes are the ones who are trying to impose their values on the rest of the population. Those citizens opposed to any change in California’s marriage statutes are merely defending the basic morality that has sustained the culture for everyone against a radical attack.
    When same-sex couples seek California’s approval and all the benefits that the state reserves for married couples, they impose the law on everyone. According non-marital relationships the same status as marriage would mean that millions of people would be disenfranchised by their own governments. The state would be telling them that their beliefs are no longer valid, and would turn the civil rights laws into a battering ram against them.
    Law is not a suggestion, as George Washington observed, “it is force”. An official state sanction of same-sex relationships as “marriage” would bring the full apparatus of the state against those who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. The California Protect Marriage Coalition views this as outlawing traditional morality.
    Eliminating one entire sex from an institution defined as the union of the two sexes is a quantum leap from eliminating racial discrimination, which did not alter the fundamental character of marriage. Marriage reflects the natural moral and social law evidenced the world over. As the late British social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin noted in his study of world civilizations, any society that devalued the nuclear family soon lost what he called “expansive energy,” which might best be summarized as society’s will to make things better for the next generation. In fact, no society that has loosened sexual morality outside of man-woman marriage has survived.
    Analyzing studies of cultures spanning several thousands of years on several continents, Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin found that virtually all political revolutions that brought about societal collapse were preceded by a sexual revolution in which marriage and family were devalued by the culture’s acceptance of homosexuality.
    When marriage loses its unique status, women and children most frequently are the direct victims. Giving same-sex relationships or out-of-wedlock heterosexual couples the same special status and benefits as the marital bond would not be the expansion of a right but the destruction of a principle. . If the one-man/one-woman definition of marriage is broken, there is no logical stopping point for continuing the assault on marriage.
    If feelings are the key requirement, then why not let three people marry, or two adults and a child, or consenting blood relatives of any age? . Marriage-based kinship is essential to stability and continuity in our state. Child abuse is much more prevalent when a living arrangement is not based on kinship. Kinship imparts family names, heritage, and property, secures the identity and commitment of fathers for the sake of the children, and entails mutual obligations to the community.
    The US Supreme Court declared in 1885 that states’ marriage laws must be based on “the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.”