A REASONED RESPONSE TO THE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ISSUE
By Reverend Bill Banuchi
Executive Director
New York Christian Coalition
P.O. Box 7405 – Newburgh, NY 12550
Phone (845) 561-5980
March 9, 2004
Introduction: Recent events from Massachusetts to San Francisco have sparked a national debate on the question of gay marriage. This position paper is intended to provide a reasoned response to the question,
“Should we change the legal institution of marriage to
include same sex couples?”
PREMISE: Marriage is an institution recognized by the state because it contributes to the general welfare, the peace and prosperity of a society.
It has derived its definition from a Judeo-Christian common law, which is also common to all major world religions, as the union of one adult male and one adult female unrelated by blood.
REASON 1: - Including same-sex couples would redefine marriage and destabilize society in America.
To include same-sex couples in the definition of marriage is to change its definition.
Any reasonable person would agree that including objects with four corners in the definition of a circle is to change the circle. A circle can never have four corners and still maintain the integrity of a circle. Marriage can never include same sex couples and maintain the essence and integrity of marriage as it has been defined throughout history.
Only marriage, as it has been defined throughout history, can serve to help stabilize society in three important ways:
Scandinavian countries have already experimented with this idea over the last decade to their detriment. Marriage has been redefined, and as a result, devalued. The overall impact of accepting gay marriage and civil unions in these societies is that families have become more unstable. All the sociological evidence is in. Homosexual couples are 2 to 3 times more likely to divorce than heterosexual couples. Studies show that though the average traditional marriage in this country lasts only seven years, the average homosexual permanent relationship lasts only a year and a half.
In these countries marriage is no longer highly esteemed, or sought after by young people. In their view it’s just another family arrangement like cohabitation. It’s “no big thing.” The evidence is clear: this would only make a bad situation worse.
By redefining marriage we contribute to the further destabilization of society, thus adversely affecting the peace and prosperity of a nation. Our intent must never be to deny anyone of rights, per se, but to uphold that special institution that provides the best social structure for the peace and prosperity of a people.
REASON #2: Legitimizing same-sex marriage would be detrimental to our public health.
We are quick to issue warnings and pass taxes on behavior that proves to be detrimental to the health and safety of our people. For example, we have legislated that cigarette packs carry written warnings, and insure that they are heavily taxed, because they have proven to cause cancer and shorten the lifespan of a consumer by 1-2 years.
Yet the average lifespan of a homosexual man is 42 years old, a full 35 years shorter than his natural life should be. (Some studies show only a 20-year shortening of lifespan.) Where is the public outcry against those who promote this killer product that steals away the best of our citizens in the prime of their lives?
Just as tobacco companies are being held to account for marketing a product that they know causes premature death to those who use it, so should the Government be held accountable for sanctioning, and thus encouraging a destructive lifestyle.
We have a responsibility to protect our children from adopting a lifestyle of drugs, and violence. We must also protect them from a lifestyle that will cause their premature death.
In addition to AIDS, every type of sexually transmitted disease runs rampant in the homosexual community. This is why, as a matter of public policy, we must encourage traditional marriage, nothing else, if our society is to survive.
The cost of encouraging homosexuality will cause an even greater hardship on the American taxpayer.
Reason #3:
Legitimizing same-sex marriage would be detrimental to the proper care
and development of our children,
I would not want any child raised in a home where the parents go through two partners a year. I recently saw a news magazine TV program where the issue was gay adoption. It's interesting how they select the very best scenario they can possibly come up with, in an attempt to challenge our traditional views by asking, "Well what's wrong with this?” They present a gay couple that has been together for over ten years, both professionals, looking to adopt a handicapped child. What could be wrong with this? First of all, this is not reality in the gay community where the average gay man has over 100 partners during his lifetime. That's at least two per year, or less, because if you remember, chances are he's only going to make it to age 42.
We must not make public policy based on the exceptions to the rule, but we must base our public policy on what is generally true in public society. I believe that any reasonable person would agree that we must not sacrifice our children on the altar of gay rights.
Are we saying that a gay couple can’t provide the love a child needs?
First of all, let’s agree that we can’t talk about specific cases. For every good loving gay relationship one can point to there are many more abusive ones.
Generally, speaking, the mother and father provide different input into the emotional development of the child. The child is like a new tender shoot, the product of the grafting together of two trees, one male and one female.
In a healthy home, the Mother provides comfort and assurance, while the Father provides truth and authority. The child finds balance. This difference is validated by the fact that homosexual couples try to emulate the roles of husband and wife by each taking on the characteristic traits of one of those roles.
Children will not develop a healthy balance of comfort and assurance and truth and authority with same-sex parents. Raising a child in a homosexual home is like teaching one to dance with two left feet, or trying to build a house with bricks and no mortar.
There are exceptions to every rule, but we can’t base public policy on the exceptions. We need to base it on what is generally true.
God knows our kids are confused enough now, with our high
divorce rate, and single parent families. Add homosexuality to that mix, and
you’ve got confusion upon confusion. Our children deserve more than that.
Studies from gay & lesbian sources have shown that, overall, homosexuals are more promiscuous, than heterosexuals, they contract much more disease, because of unnatural sex practices, and they die sooner because of their deviant lifestyle. This is not a healthy environment for our children.
Reason #4:
It’s not a Civil Rights issue
Albert J.
Williams-Meyers, a professor of Black Studies at SUNY New Paltz, knows civil
rights.
"In terms of
the civil rights movement of the '60s and '70s, there isn't much parallel there
at all," he said. “People from the African continent were
brought to America as slaves because of their skin color. Such factors don't
figure into the discrimination that affects gays and lesbians,” Williams-Meyers
said.
The Rev. Sylvester
McClearn of Newburgh was part of the black civil rights era. He doesn't think
the gay marriage movement will spark the kind of response that he witnessed
more than 40 years ago.
"They
are not deprived of anything," McClearn said. "They are rich people.
They are middle class. They are all kinds of people coming from all walks of
life, not just poor people. They are a special interest group that is fighting
for what they want."
Civil rights
movements are always characterized by the defense of an oppressed minority, a
people who demonstrate disadvantage in three areas: economically, politically
and socially.
In every area the
homosexual community enjoys not only equality, but also superiority. They earn
more, they have greater political clout, and they are the only protected social
class.
They simply are not an oppressed ethnic minority, and it is an offense to legitimate minorities to place a group characterized by deviant behavior in the same class.
If you want to properly place them in a class it would have to be with people who are addicted to destructive behaviors, such as drug addicts, or alcoholics.
Reason #5: Same–sex marriage is immoral.
Even valid civil rights issues have always been debated, since the founding of our nation, on different interpretations of the Bible and our Judeo-Christian worldview. Our appeal to the Bible has always produced positive change.
Our inalienable rights are given to us, not by the generosity of the state, but by the hand of God. This has always been generally true as affirmed by our founding documents and reaffirmed by such leaders as Thomas Jefferson,[1] Abraham Lincoln[2], John F. Kennedy[3] and others.
The desire to legalize same-sex marriage is an appeal to another standard of morality, as Jason West, mayor of New Paltz N.Y. said when he performed illegal marriage ceremonies, “Just the looks on their faces… That’s the highest moral calling I could possibly imagine.”
The “looks on their faces…” is not an acceptable standard of morality for a civilized nation.
Our standard of morality, if we are to remain a civil and prosperous nation, must always be derived from our understanding of the Bible, knowing that as Noah Webster said,
"It is extremely important
to our nation, in a political as well as religious view, that all possible
authority and influence should be given to the Scriptures; for these furnish
the best principles of civil liberty, and the most effectual support of
republican government. They teach the true principles of that equality of
rights which belongs to every one of the human family, but only in consistency with
a strict subordination to the magistrate and the law…”
Then comes the question:
“Are we pushing our morality on others?”
If I was to say 2 + 2 = 5. You would say, that’s wrong. Not because its immoral, but because it doesn’t work. Homosexual marriages don’t work as a matter of public policy to maintain a stable society. Look at Rome, The Greek Empire, Scandinavia today, and others who have tried it. Only a fool would think he could repeat history and expect a different result.
A reasonable person would agree that we need to move toward, not away from, the standard that works. Same-sex marriages are wrong because they simply won’t work for America.
The irony is that the very people who have previous told us that “You can’t legislate morality,” are now demanding that we legislate their standard of morality.
Reason #6:. Same Sex Marriage is the Roe v. Wade of
the Gay Movement.
This is a watershed event for Gay Activists. They know if the courts legitimize homosexuality they way will be paved to legislate a new morality that is the antithesis to traditional morality. Those who continue to hold traditional views will be labeled as racists, bigots or homophobes, because they hold a different opinion.
The radical homosexual agenda won’t be fulfilled until all of society is coerced into saying that gay is OK, and we teach our children the same.
However, just as Roe v. Wade was never accepted by many Americans, and certainly most Christians, and has instead brought social tension and strife into our culture over the issue, so will the legitimization of gay marriage. This will further divide Americans, as it is more clearly stated in Scripture to be wrong, even more so than the taking of innocent life in the womb. It will never be accepted by American Christians, or by true Christians in any other part of the world.
Reason #7 : There will be adverse unintended
consequences
To discard our Judeo-Christian standard of moral authority is to place morality within the whims of human thought. Why shouldn’t a 50-year-old man marry his twenty-year-old daughter if “love” is the sole criteria for the right to marry?
If we insist on allowing two people who love each other to marry, then we cannot discriminate by arbitrarily deciding who can, and who can’t. We would have to allow a mother to marry her son, a father to marry all his daughters, and so on.
There is no rational basis for legislating against incest, polygamy or any other socially deviant relationship as long as “love” and “mutual consent” provide the only criteria.
These are unacceptable effects of a public policy that would sacrifice the public good for a special interest group.
I believe I’ve presented seven reasons that warrant serious consideration for preserving the integrity of traditional marriage as we have known it throughout our American history.
Because we are a government “of the people” I recognize that the people may choose to forego traditional marriage to appease this special interest group, but it will not be without consequences to the generations that will follow.
The “Father of our country,” George Washington reminds us that
“The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.[4]”
I think he was concerned that if we turn our backs on God, God will surely turn His back on us. That, too, is my concern.
[1] God who gave us life gave us
liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have
removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that
these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but
with His wrath?
Indeed,
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice
cannot sleep forever.”
--1781
Notes on The state of Virginia
[2] On March 30, 1863, President
Abraham Lincoln Proclamation Appointing a National Feast Day
[3] January 20, 1961, President
Kennedy proclaimed: “The rights of man come not from the generosity of the
state but from the hand of God.”
[4] Inaugural speech April 30, 1789