On Same-Sex Marriage

 

Thomas Martin

      Thomas Martin teaches in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. You may contact Thomas Martin at: martint@unk.edu.

      On March 12, Tim Butz, the executive director of the ACLU in Nebraska, argued in “Marital Amendment Would Discriminate” that a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman “would for all practical purposes deny same-sex couples the right to marry and proscribe any form of official recognition of their relationship.”

      Mr. Butz begins his article lamenting that his homosexual friends, who have

. . . a commitment based on a loving relationship and friendship—things [his] friends have demonstrated since they married in their hearts three decades ago, [have a] marriage of the heart which is not the same as a marriage sanctioned by the state.

      He continues his argument, noting:

Opposition to granting same-sex couples the rights afforded by marriage often comes from religious beliefs. [And concluding] The state, however, is not a religion, and it has an obligation to ensure that all citizens are treated equally. The Federal Marriage Amendment would do just the opposite and enshrine discrimination in our Constitution.

      In addressing Mr. Butz’s claims to the rights of homosexuals to marry, it is important to remember that marriage is at the foundation of civilization, being intertwined with the vocabulary of creation, sacrament, procreation, family, chastity, adultery, and fornication. Marriage has always been understood as the union of a man and a woman. Thus, Mr. Butz and those he wishes to defend are forced to preface marriage with the adjective “same-sex,” though marriage is never prefaced with “different-sex.”

      Mr. Butz is correct in stating that marriage is based on a loving relationship; however, it is essential to note that love between friends is not the same as the binding spirit of love between a husband and wife. Nor is it the same as the love between parents and their children, siblings, friends, or neighbors.

      To argue the state should “ensure that all citizens are treated equally” would overlook the fact that a father is not treated as a son, nor a son a father, a father as a mother, etc., as they are relationships which are not like in kind.

      In his argument, Mr. Butz generally refers to religious opposition to same-sex marriage; though this would be most any religion, I assume Mr. Butz means Christian religion and perhaps even Catholicism.

      In Christianity, marriage originates as a sacrament administered in the wedding vow between a man and a woman, uniting them with the spirit of God. Love is beyond an intense emotion or feeling; it is the spirit of God. In the words of Christ,

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

      Marriage involves the trinity of husband, wife and God united as one in Christ. Husband and wife do not love each other directly, but it is through loving Christ that husband and wife are joined together, and it is by loving Christ that they love one another throughout their lives and beyond.

      In other words, marriage is a creative act which requires sacrifice from each to be united in the mystery of one flesh until death. The conjugal union of husband and wife is a procreative act in which each gives himself to the other. The conjugal act is an act of love, which lasts beyond the act itself into the life of the child who is meant for eternal life with God. The spousal love is transformed into parental love in conception and the miracle of birth, which holds parents responsible, as the first teachers of their child for raising him or her in the image of God, in whom they will become complete.

      In the promiscuous act of fornication, you do not give yourself to the other but you take from the other at your own leisure and for your own pleasure. Without the marriage vow, a man does not sacrifice himself to a woman: he has sex but he is not united with the woman nor the woman with the man—there is no promise in promiscuity.

      Chastity is the virtue of abstaining from sexual intercourse before marriage, and once married, the virtue of the couple remaining chaste by their fidelity.

      Animals instinctively mate to reproduce that which is the same kind as them. Human beings do not reproduce in the sense of making offspring of a like kind (as a copy) of themselves, but procreate; they are co-creators in the introduction of a living soul, unique in personhood, into life.

      Same-sex marriage is an oxymoron as shown in the very function of the sexual organs in the procreation of humans. The union of like kinds goes against the function of the sexual organs in nature and so is an unnatural act.

      Living souls are also born out of wedlock after fornication, adultery or rape. However, there is a difference between an act of nature and a supernatural act in nature. The difference is the sacramental vow of marriage which calls a man and woman to a higher order which binds them to their ancestors and progeny.

      The family is a not civil union; it is a divine institution initiated by God whether Christian, Judaic, Muslim or otherwise. While the state may sanction marriage, it cannot redefine marriage; nor can it redefine, chastity, adultery, fornication, incest, rape, and polygamy in Creation.     Ω

 “It is not democracy alone that is a failure; it is ourselves. We forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. We thought there was power in numbers, and we found only mediocrity.

“Voltaire preferred monarchy to democracy, on the ground that in a monarchy it was only necessary to educate one man; in a democracy you must educate millions, and the grave-digger gets them all before you can educate ten percent of them—the propagation of intelligence cannot keep pace with the propagation of the ignorant.” —Will Durant, The Pleasures of Philosophy (p. 293), published in 1953