Why Marriage Matters
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Marriage on Monday, June 30, 2008 2:00 PM
Since same-sex marriage is in the news lately, here’s a column of mine from Sept. 2007 on the issue.
Marriage can seem like a hot new topic amid all the fights over same-sex “marriage.” But this isn’t our first national debate about marriage.
In the 19th century, Mormons in Utah forced a different debate. The Supreme Court upheld a ban on polygamy in 1885 with these words:
Certainly no legislation can be supposed more wholesome and necessary in the founding of a free, self-governing commonwealth … than that which seeks to establish it on the basis of 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 family is the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization; the best guarantee of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.
The court held what once was obvious: “traditional” marriage is the basis of a free society. If the connection now seems obscure, it’s because of the contemporary tendency to frame all questions from the perspective of the present desires of the individual, rather than the nation’s common good and future stability.
“How does my living my life my way threaten you?” a loved one might ask us.
In the immediate sense, it doesn’t. When the Supreme Court of Massachusetts divined a “right” to same-sex “marriage” in the state constitution, neither my husband nor I discerned a sudden urge to “switch sides,” as they say.
Neither did you, I’ll wager.
Nevertheless (saving what harm homosexual activity does the individual for another time), same-sex “marriage” represents a complete re-ordering of our entire culture. How?
Marriage is for babies and bonding, and therefore marriage is a national concern. To survive, nations need new people to replace the old. For stability, they need to forge these isolated individuals into citizens — people capable of self-restraint and self-sacrifice for the common good.
Marriage uniquely produces children as the concrete result of a loving union of souls and bodies. Adoptive parents are necessary and vital, but they are the exception, not the rule. As to stability, there are three ways a nation can seek it: through tyranny (compel compliance by force), theocracy (teach people they’ll go to hell if they don’t comply and compel them by force), or family — which harnesses the power of the parent/child relationship to drive one generation’s commitment to the next.
Free societies have always grounded themselves on the family, recognizing that in the long run, love is a lot more civilizing than sheer force. It’s true that human love relationships can fail. That’s why society has an interest in supporting and protecting the institution of marriage, which strengthens them.
Simply put, having and rearing kids is the engine of culture, because they direct us to the future. Children are what make it worthwhile for a scientist to spend his life in a lab searching for a cure that won’t be ready in time to save him. They are what keep cops on the beat and volunteers in the army even at the risk of their lives. They make our Social Security system possible. They inspire public service.
To create same-sex “marriage” is to say, as a matter of law, that the most fundamental thing is not the future, children, and the perpetuation of our society; but the now: our personal affections, which are frail and fickle.
Once a people decides it’s not important there even be a next generation (by making romance, not fruitfulness, its foundation stone), it has radically re-ordered itself in the direction of living for the moment, self-centeredness, and radical individualism. This severely undermines the sense of the common good required to enact just laws and prevent tyranny of the majority.
Contraception and no-fault divorce have already taken us far down the road of caring more about our feelings than the future. Same-sex “marriage” would enshrine it in law.
We can have the greatest love possible for people with homosexual orientation and still insist that “gay marriage” must not be allowed. As John Paul II put it, “The future of humanity passes by way of the family.”
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