Regrettably, we all know that the bond between marriage and procreation was ruptured some decades ago. Today about 40% of children in America are born outside of marriage and in some groups that percentage rises to about two-thirds of all births.
Now, the state tells us that even being male and female has nothing to do with marriage. So if you eliminate openness to permanence, fidelity, openness to children, and male and female, what is left of marriage? It becomes no more than a relationship for mutual support and sharing of property and, since the state cannot legislate mutual support, it ends up little more than a contract regarding property rights. Marriage has been reduced to the least common denominator.
Now I am no hopeless romantic, but this sounds to me like a frightening reduction in the nature of marriage, a social structure so necessary for the well-being of society. At this point, you can see that what the state does is never more than civil unions. An individual couple may, by their own consent, choose to bind themselves in a religious or even nonreligious ceremony to more than a mere contract regarding property rights, but the state makes no such demand. The state sees no difference between marriage and civil unions. But, is that really the “marriage” we want as a society, and, for that matter, as voters?
If marriage means marriage, with all the elements of that definition I have listed above, and if marriage is not just civil union, then there is nothing discriminatory about restricting marriage to one man and one woman. That’s simply the definition of the thing.
“In every society, in every culture, from the dawn of human civilization, the definition of marriage has included certain elements… It has always been seen as a permanent state. It has always required faithfulness.”
This is demonstrably wrong, even if you restrict yourself to biblical marriage (which this quote does not). Divorce takes place throughout the bible (condemned by Jesus) and so does polygamy and concubinage (likewise condemned). It is a slippery slope to confuse what ought to have been with what was with language such as “In every society, in every culture, from the dawn of human civilization…”
This is a Roman Catholic piece, but divorce existed in the Church Courts in England before and after the reformation. Until the twentieth century, adultery by the man was NOT grounds for a divorce, since fidelity by the man was not regarded as essential to marriage (although called for by the church).