Patricia and Wesley Galloway could not have children of their own. Yet for them, the essence of marriage is rooted in procreation.
“It takes a man and a woman to create children and thus create a family,” Mrs. Galloway, 60, told a legislative panel in Connecticut last year as it was considering a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.
The bill never went to a vote, but on Friday the Connecticut Supreme Court eliminated the need for a bill when it struck down the state’s civil union law and ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.
The decision was cheered by gay couples who argued that civil unions, despite giving them the same rights as married couples, were something less than marriage. But it has caused consternation among opponents of gay marriage, many of whom, like the Galloways, say their objections are not based on religion or morality, but in nature.
Gosh, Hopper, you mean we’ve been lying to folks all these years about “the bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation…”? So glad we have the lawyers and judges to set us all (can I say this any more?) “straight” about these things.
Odd, Hopper. What makes you think marriage is an artificial institution. Or maybe someone is confused about what artificial means, do you suppose? LM
Welllll…If marriage is nothing more than an “artifice” then there can be no natural right to it.
Hopper, Is it possible to be without a worldview? Do you exist apart from yourself and form your views from nothing?
Recent court rulings in favor of allowing same-sex marriage have not been brought about by activist lawyers and judges who wish to thwart the will of the majority. It is absurd to think so.
The rulings reflect the laudatory aim of insuring equal application and protection of the law to all persons. Constitutional rights cannot be denied to anyone because of religious beliefs. Religious beliefs can only be enshrined in the law when they are congruent with constitutional law.
6, how is same gender marriage a constitutional right? Homosexuals can marry anyone they want of the opposite gender. If you are arguing that the requirement of opposite genders is unconstitutional then upon what basis do you defend limiting marrage to only two. The number of persons involved is equally arbitrary. Why is not a bisexual not entitled to two spouses?
St. James (#6) – homosexual men and women are free to marry anyone that will marry them. The problem is not that homosexual men and women cannot get married. The problem is that very few women will marry homosexual men and very few men will marry homosexual women. Marriage is, and always has been, between men and women. There is no culture where marriage has been between two or more men or between two or more women.
What people are asking for now is a change in the definition of marriage. Such a change should come from the legislatures or the people directly and not from any four or five individuals – no matter who they are.
Matt, by that definition, all sins are part of human nature. Should we, then, allow theft or murder or usury or or any other actions just because they are part of human nature? As opposed to arguing on the basis of fallen human nature, let’s argue based on “natural law.” Using Natural Law, we can see that homosexuality is not according to nature or according to design.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Sexual orientation (heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality) is without doubt part of human nature. It must be remenbered that sexual orientation is a trait identifying where one’s sexual desire is focused. Orientation is a morally neutral attribute, amd sexual expression can be good or bad, depending on the circumstances.  The church and heterosexuals generally believe that any sort of sexual expression outside monogamous heterosexual marriage is outside the borders of approved activity. This gives married homosexuals a monopoly on acceptable sexual activity, leaving persons with any other sexual orientaion to be characterised as sinful, abnomal, mentally ill, or criminal, leaving them without any sort of approved sexual activity at all. Such persons are then asked to refrain from all sexual activity, remaining chaste for life. There is certainly no element of fairness in that.
Here are some informative links:
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/uploads/rcp.html
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=60752
http://www.law.ucla.edu/Williamsinstitute/reading/resources.html
http://family.jrank.org/pages/1553/Sexual-Orientation-Sexual-Orientation-Social-Policy.html
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/index.html
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts.html
http://www.communities.gov.uk/archived/general-content/communities/sexualorientationlegislation/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_laws_of_the_world
11, what a bunch of crap.
You might as well argue that murder is a way of life and is morally neutral and can be good or bad depending on who you are killing,.
Matt (#10)
Natural Law is that part of God’s revelation that can be derived by reason. Natural law is not the same as “nature,” let alone “human nature.” As I remember from my Moral Theology class, to determine Natural Law, we need to look at nature and at our design. We need to look at cultures throughout history and we need to use reason to determine what is or is not according to our design.
In terms of homosexual sex, I’ll leave you to look at the design aspect. Men and women are designed complimentarily. In terms of nature, we do normally see homosexual activity only in very limited circumstances such as overcrowding or high stresses on the population. Among those animals that do mate for life we do not see homosexual parings. In terms of culture, no (or very, very few) culture has ever sanctioned homosexual marriage or life long homosexual pairings. If homosexual activity were as natural as you claim, then I would think that we would have seen more cultures in history welcoming it or sanctioning it.
Of course, the lack of life long homosexual unions leads me to believe that our cutlure is arrogant in the extreme to think that we are the only ones who really understand homosexuality. Perhaps our idea of orientation being fixed and permanent is just another cultural adaptation and not a scientific fact.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Hopper, do you even know what a worldview is?
#16 is essentially correct. Nature has no use for homosexuality because it is sterile, and for nature, sterility is species’ death. Mind you, I have seen homosexual animals on farms, but they are soon gone because they are useless in every sense of the word. I grant that I have never understood “Natural Law” as somehow different from nature’s means and methods. The physical universe obeys one set of laws invariably; this is nature – unless, as it is to some, nature only means organic nature, separating organic chemistry from physics. Human nature is different because it also obeys laws that are virtual only.
Hopper, you dodged my question: What makes you think marriage is an artificial institution? For the issue at hand, this seems an important question to answer. LM
In my comment No.11 I typed incorrectly; the sentence should read: “This gives married HETEROSEXUALS a monopoly on acceptable sexual activity.” Sorry for the error, it garbled the meaning. To Br. Michael I would say that consensual sexual activity between adult persons harms no one. Murder is quite a diffenent issue. Be sure to make comparisons between things that can actually be compared Re: your assertion that my links are “What a bunch of crap,” I assume that you have actually read all of them with an open mind?  The first two links are especially appropriate. They are two reports submitted to the Church of England on the topic of homosexuality by the Royal College of Psychiatrists (in 2007 and in2008), at the Church’s invitation, as part of the listening process on human sexuality, in order to give church authorities insights on an increasingly controsoversial topic, insights from the secular world of science and psychology.