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SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

Ten Q&A on Same-Sex Marriage Canards and Evasions – American Thinker

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Forces pushing for genderless marriage are a wellspring of fallacies and unanswered questions about the consequences.  Let’s explore some of them.

1. What’s love got to do with it?

Nothing.  Romanticizing this debate by claiming that any two people in love should have a civil right to civil marriage is a foolish distraction.  Neither judges nor legislators have any business discussing “affection” as a factor in defining civil marriage.  Clergy who bless marriages have a legitimate and separate role in discerning the internal dynamics of couples.  But not the state.

2. What is the state’s interest in marriage?

First, to recognize the union that produces the state’s citizens.  Second, to encourage those who sire and bear the citizens to take responsibility for rearing them together.  That’s all, folks.  Proponents of genderless marriage often answer this question with non sequiturs such as property rights (irrelevant), civil rights (extraneous to the question), and “love and stability” (not a function of state involvement).

3.  Why should state interest in marriage be about children if not all marriages produce children?

It’s thoroughly irrelevant that many heterosexual couples lack children because of intent, infertility, age, or health.  Claiming that this is relevant to the case for genderless marriage suggests the “fallacy of composition”: inferring that something must be true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole.  Citizens of the state can exist only through the female-male union, no matter how the union occurs — whether traditionally, artificially, or in a petri dish.  That’s the only fact that provides any grounds for state interest in marriage.

4. What about marriage for the sake of same-sex households with children?

We just don’t have the right to deliberately deprive children of knowing their biological mothers or fathers.  But genderless marriage ultimately requires us to do this.  It requires society to sanction the refashioning of familial bonds in alienating and experimental ways.   Use of surrogates and egg or sperm markets put children at ever-increasing risk of being treated more as commodities than as human beings.  Laws supporting genderless marriage cannot help but ramp up these trends to newer and crueler levels.

Read more:

American Thinker, April 6, 2013.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/04/ten_qa_on_same-sex_marriage_canards_and_evasions.html#ixzz2PluE44p3

Stella Morabito has published several op-eds on same-sex marriage in The Washington Examiner.

Same-sex ‘marriage’ threatens civil liberty – Bruce Logan – Opinion – NZ Herald

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Same sex marriage is not an issue of equality nor the success of any couple’s marriage. It is not about the value or validity of homosexuality. The issue is about the link between the state and marriage in civil society. Who decides what marriage is and what it’s for?

Marriage is neither essentially religious nor a product of tradition. It is not the child of the state.

Neither is marriage what Lynne Featherstone the British Equalities Minister claims. “Marriage is a right of passage for couples who want to show they are in a committed relationship, for people who want to show they have found love and wish to remain together until death do them part.” Her historical vision is limited; her logic is deficient and her fusion of the Anglican Prayer Book with modern idiom disingenuous.

Marriage is the consequence of who we are. We do not make it; it makes us. Marriage would not exist if there were not two complementary sexes. And that’s why it does exist.

We are male and female. In the simple and hopeful business of being alive we have children in a union of consenting responsibility, love and thankfulness.

It is the fusing of two opposite halves of the human being through which new life may be created.

That some couples decide not to get married does not change the biology. That some cannot have children or decide not to is beside the point.

The so-called conservative case for same-sex marriage favoured by the British Prime Minister (and apparently by our own Prime Minister) tumbles out of a category error. “Marriage is a good thing. It stabilises the lives of those who participate; especially men. Therefore they should be able to marry each other if they are committed.”

But as soon as same-sex marriage is granted, marriage has been changed to something profoundly different; from an institution prior to the state to one determined by the state.

Of course the state has had regulations around marriage for a very long time. But with the advent of same-sex marriage we have given the state a role it never had.

If the state defines marriage the family is no longer an independent institution of civil society declaring daily to the state its limitations. While we are a long way from Stalinism in New Zealand this was the kind of power Stalin wanted.

If the state passes a law that changes the nature of marriage, and consequently family, then every citizen’s liberty is endangered. Why? That area of most intimate human life that was once outside the power of the state to control will be watered down. In becoming the author of marriage the state must eventually erode religious freedom and then freedom of speech.

The ‘new marriage’ will become an institution that the state must enforce. Any exemption given initially to the church will be temporary and dependent only on threatened moral sensitivities. It will not be enough for the church to be good or even right when all the social forces are moving against it.

Human rights were once seen as a cornerstone of liberty because they were the consequence of a free society aware of state limits. They protected the independent spheres of authority in civil society (marriage, family and religion and others).

If marriage becomes what the state determines citizens will no longer have any legal, or ultimately moral framework independent of the state to argue their case about family form. Families will become what the state decides. In France this is probably the pivotal constitutional issue around which the same sex marriage debate spins.

It is doubtful there is any society known to history or anthropology where social order has not been based on marriage between a man and a woman.

It has always been an historical and universal understanding of a binding contract to enhance social order and encourage responsible child care. Societies that fail to understand this devalue their children. We should know that. We have plenty of evidence.

We have never had such a plethora of data pointing out the fundamental economic, social and psychological benefits of vigorous and enduring married families. Marriage is pivotal to intergenerational order. Without it we have a shambles and increasing poverty.

* Bruce Logan is a former Auckland schoolteacher now living in France.

Source: Bruce Logan: Same-sex marriage threatens civil liberty

New Zealand Herald 29 August 2012

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10829995

Make a “Marriage Pledge” to Uphold Marriage definition as one man-one woman – Family First NZ

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Family First NZ is calling on all New Zealanders who oppose the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill that is scheduled to have its Third Reading in Parliament on Wednesday 17th April 2013, to go online (see link below) and make a “Marriage Pledge” that:

(1) they will not use their electorate vote to vote for an electorate MP who supports changing the definition of marriage, and

(2) they will not use their party vote to vote for a party whose leader supports changing the definition of marriage.

Family First states in an explanatory note assures those making the pledge:

“The politicians have ignored thousands of your submissions. They have ignored calls for a referendum on this massive cultural change – at the same time as demanding a referendum on state asset sales! They have demanded their right for a conscience vote, yet have voted to ignore the consciences of celebrants, registrars, churches hosting weddings, and others in the wedding industry etc. They are ramming this bill through without giving it the due consideration and debate it deserves.

“BUT THEY CAN’T IGNORE YOU AT THE BALLOT BOX! In fact, it’s the one time that they DO have to listen – so they will take notice of this”

WEBSITE ADDRESS TO SUBMIT YOUR PLEDGE:

See: http://www.mymarriagepledge.org.nz/

To download poster/advert on pledge go to:

http://www.protectmarriage.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/My-Marriage-Pledge-Full-Page-Advert.pdf

Gay marriage and preserving religious freedom for celebrants – Prof Rex Ahdar, Law Faculty, Univ. Otago

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Professor Rex Ahdar, Faculty of Law, University of Otago, comments on the conscience clause inserted into section 29 of the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill by the Government Administration Committee, to protect religious liberty. He asks:

“Will all marriage celebrants be immunized?

“Will marriage celebrants who object, on the ground of religious belief or conscience, to conducting marriage ceremonies for homosexual and lesbian couples be protected in law?”

Read his blog post:

Gay marriage and preserving religious freedom for celebrants

http://pundit.co.nz/content/gay-marriage-and-preserving-religious-freedom-for-celebrants

Same-sex ‘marriage’: Religious objectors face pressure to capitulate

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“As this movement to legalize and normalize gay marriage continues, those who object on religious grounds will find themselves increasingly pressured to capitulate.

“Consider Canada, where gay marriage was legalized in 2005. In the years since, there have been between 200 and 300 legal proceedings against opponents of same-sex marriage. For instance, in Saskatchewan, a homosexual man asked a state marriage commissioner to conduct his wedding. The commissioner, an evangelical Christian, declined to conduct the ceremony and referred the man to another commissioner. The gay couple sued, and the commissioner was fined $2,500. Are we seeing the same pressures brought to bear against those who object to gay marriage in America?

“On March 10, 2006, Catholic Charities in Massachusetts was forced to end its adoption ministry because it would not place children with homosexual couples. eHarmony was sued in California for refusing to offer its dating service to gays. A Methodist camp in New Jersey lost its state tax exempt status for not hosting a same-sex union in its marriage pavilion.”

Extract from What you can do about same-sex marriage

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