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Revolutionaries in America: Who Will Stop Gay Marriage?
Who will stop them? That is a question asked many times in history by defenders of religion, family, property, and tradition in the face of various fanatical revolutionaries.
Despite the question, the guillotine kept snapping heads in 18th century France until the revolutionaries exhausted themselves, in part by killing each other off, leading to military strongman Napoleon Bonaparte. At one point Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was declared a “Temple of Reason” and about 2,500 Christian churches were closed by government decree. To this day, France has not fully recovered from its frenzied revolution.
Despite the question, red terror ruled a massive, artificial Soviet Union for most of the 20th century before Marxism collapsed as a self-evident laughingstock, even to Communists. Of course, the laughter cannot erase the fact of millions of innocent people murdered and imprisoned, often for their Christian faith, by Communist fanatics. Nor does it change the pitiful spectacle today of Russia and other former “Soviet Socialist Republics” struggling to establish some semblance of justice after so many generations of systematic injustice.
Who will stop them is also a relevant question in America today. We don’t ask it while watching heads chopped off by guillotines or the erection of a far-flung gulag archipelago. We ask it, instead, in view of the revolutionaries hacking away at what it means to be a human being with gender and humanity’s oldest institution, marriage.
Those leading the homosexual movement may be less violent than their French and Russian revolutionary brethren, but their aims are just as radical. Listen to what they say.
The Human Rights Campaign, self-styled as “America’s largest gay and lesbian organization,” has included the following among the “top 10 reasons for marriage equality”:
* “Marriage equality would build on America’s tradition of moving civil rights forward and erasing the inequities of the past.”
* “Separate is not equal. Although any step toward legal recognition of same-sex couples and their families is a step in the right direction, GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] families will not be truly equal until they, too, can receive marriage licenses.”
* “GLBT people deserve equal access to the American dream. Gay, lesbian bisexual and transgender people grow up dreaming of falling in love, getting married and growing old together. Just as much as the next person, same-sex couples should be able to fulfill that dream.”
The basis for the arguments in favor of “gay marriage” is an ideology of radical equality, even absolute equivalence. Gender represents no difference at all in human beings. Thus, it becomes “unjust” to reserve marriage for two people of the opposite sex, and marriage must be open to couples of the same sex.
Like all man-made ideologies, this one is fatally flawed. First, it allows an abstraction to trump a fact. As to gender, there are indeed differences in human beings. They are created male and female, different physically and psychologically, and there is a natural order and beauty built into that design. You can ignore gender, but that doesn’t make the reality go away.
Second, homosexual ideology disregards the most fundamental truth in the history of man: Humans are prone to go wrong, to choose evil — they need wise guidance as to what is good.
No government on earth can abolish evil and evil choices. But societal rules, laid down with restraint and prudence, can encourage virtue and discourage vice, can help create a civilization of ordered liberty. Such efforts in the past partly explain why our law has always limited marriage to a man and a woman and why sodomy has traditionally been a criminal offense.
As with other radical revolutionary movements, the homosexual movement has higher goals than simply amending laws. At bottom, movement leaders really object to the created order and the one who made it. Rather than rejoicing in creation, its wonders, mysteries and limits, they resent nature and seek to overturn it.
They also want society to acknowledge their bogus claims as legitimate. If marriage open to homosexuals becomes the new standard, they will have achieved an official repudiation of the understanding of virtually all civilization to date, including the great religions. They will have been “proven right,” shown to be “more enlightened,” than all recorded history.
Who will stop them? The American voters might, though they are more hemmed in every year by court rulings creating new “rights” beyond the reach of regular legislation.
If they don’t, reality itself, after exacting a heavy cost, will eventually come crashing in. Just take a look back at the Jacobins and Communists.
[This column was first published in July 2004.]
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Tom Ashcraft, a Charlotte native, is a lawyer and former Reagan-appointed U.S. Attorney . Write him at TAshcraft@bellsouth.net Special to PunditHouse.com. ©2010 Tom Ashcraft. Used by permission.
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Interesting post Tom.
I think we agree on some aspects, but not on others.
I agree that marriage is more than a “contract”. It is a sacred commitment between a man, a woman, and God. That is why I take exception to homosexuals pursuing the goal of “gay marriage”. It isn’t marriage. See my recent post on the subject.
I just don’t believe that government should be in the business of ANY marriage, hetero or homosexual. To government, it is simply a contract between two individuals.
I don’t want government officially sanctioning a religious concept, even one that I share. If government makes the exception for Christianity, it then has precedent to make religious sanctioning of, say, a tenant of sharia law.
I prefer government to remain neutral and treat all parties equal. I, as an individual, will support my religious views. I don’t need government to do it for me.
I also disagree with the statement that homosexuals “resent nature and seek to overturn it”. I doubt seriously that homosexuals awaken each day and think to themselves, “How can I overturn nature today? I know! Perhaps I will have sex with another man, even though I’m not really attacted to them and naturally prefer the embrace of a woman. That’ll show em!”. We may not have found the actual “gay gene” yet, but I’m quite confident it’s there.
There is one more quote I found interesting. “But societal rules, laid down with restraint and prudence, can encourage virtue and discourage vice, can help create a civilization of ordered liberty.”
Ordered liberty? I understand what you are saying, but I suppose my fear is that while society evolves, as it is apt to do, I don’t want to eventually be stuck on the losing side of who gets to determine what is virtue and what is vice. It’s sort of like giving government additional power when the GOP is in charge, but forgetting that that same granted power will be in the hands of the Democrats when the power structure shifts. Suddenly there may be some second thoughts about having granted such powers.
Anyway, good post and thanks for sharing.
For some reason I enjoy this debate. I’m usually more of an economics guy. I don’t get uber passionate about this issue. I’ll defend my side but don’t really care if I lose. I don’t think the world will crumble around us. There’s also probably 6 or 7 different takes on this issue, which makes it even more interesting.
Thanks for the discussion.
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My friend Christian Hine objects to my defense of traditional marriage, recognized and supported by ancient Anglo-American and other law, on the ground that government has no business at all with marriage. For government, marriage is “simply a contract between two individuals,” to be enforced like any other. Government should “remain neutral” and “treat all parties” equally, he says. Despite these libertarian flourishes, Mr. Hine turns around and says marriage is a sacred commitment between a man, a woman, and God, and hence there is no such thing as “gay marriage.”
Needless to say, this is a confusing posture, as so often happens when abstract libertarianism meets human history.
The American founders, overwhelmingly realists, believed that the self-governing society they built and the constitutions they enacted were fit only for a virtuous people. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He also said, “Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.” Benjamin Franklin, no orthodox Christian, said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”
Government, though limited, has a role to play in encouraging virtue and discouraging vice – not subjective concepts – among its people. Marriage and family life are indispensible in laying the groundwork for virtuous citizens. That is partly why government has traditionally had age requirements for marriage, puts duties on spouses, makes divorce difficult, imposes obligations on parents toward children, creates rules relating to inheritance for family members, and tries in countless ways to encourage marriage (e.g., tax code provisions).
No civilized society in history has ever taken the hands-off libertarian approach toward marriage outlined by Mr. Hine.
Mr. Hine also takes exception to my point that, pushing “gay marriage,” militant homosexuals are seeking to overturn the nature God has given human beings. He posits the eventual discovery of a “gay gene,” evidently as part of a new and better understanding of human nature. Utopian and politically correct at the same time?
As others have said, original sin is the most self-evident fact of human history. Simply put, we humans have a tendency toward evil. (Libertarians should grasp this reality, as they’re quite astute in pointing out the evils done by humans who run governments.)
The details of how evil works are indeed a mystery, but its existence is an obvious fact. The alcoholic may have a chemical predisposition to drink too much, but his habitual drunkenness is a vice. We have enough sense not to celebrate alcoholism but to offer help to overcome it. Why shouldn’t the same wisdom apply toward those who seek to use the human body in ways its anatomy was never intended for? Indeed, this was the nearly universal understanding of our
forebears, the same people who helped build the ordered liberty which is the American hallmark.
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Tom and Christian miss part of the issue. Marriage, as many other social institutions, evolved from tribal man and is sanctioned by government due to the demands of the governed. It is not the other way around. That is the point of the homosexual as equal to heterosexual agenda. That want government to sanction something which is not (yet) approved of by the people, forcing the society to accept something because it is law. This is always the problem with the law and society.
Further, the only reason the homosexual agenda has made any progress is because of the degrading effects of larger conglomerations of people. Usually called cities, large conglomerations allow behavior, in fact encourage behavior, not acceptable in small communities. This is true because in small communities everyone knows who did what and unacceptable behavior follows you wherever you go. You can’t get away from it. In the city, where you can be rude or steal or live with the same sex and everyone doesn’t know it, allows and thus legitimizes that anti-social behavior. Thus San Fransisco was the original ‘gay’ city, but others follow quickly.
My libertarian inclination is to accept the choices. But the truth is the behavior is a detriment to society. People know that and so vote against it. The politically correct, who don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings – unless they are ‘conservative’, say the opposition is mean spirited. Anything but. The opposition by most people, not those like Tom or myself, is by those, who without deep thought, know in their hearts, this is wrong.
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