Virtually everyone who draws breath in America these days is aware that a furor has erupted over the issue of gay “marriage.” Unfortunately, there are many who fail to grasp the significance of what has happened in Massachusetts—and is now happening in San Francisco and New Mexico—and will be spreading to other areas of the country.

In 1996, the U.S. House and Senate overwhelmingly passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a bill denying federal recognition of same-sex marriages and giving states the right to refuse same-sex marriage licenses from other states and deny benefits associated with marriage. President Bill Clinton signed the bill. Some 38 states have since adopted similar state legislation.

Nevertheless, lawsuits have been filed across the country, challenging DOMA because it denies federal recognition of same-sex marriages and gives the states the right to refuse same-sex marriage licenses from other states. In Georgia , two lesbians who obtained a “civil union” certificate from Vermont are now suing to be recognized by the state of Georgia as a married couple.

In Massachusetts , liberal judges thumbed their noses at DOMA on February 4, 2004 . The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled by a vote of 4-3 that the state legislature's attempt to bypass the court's earlier decision upholding same-sex “marriage” by granting civil union partnerships would not be acceptable. In a blatantly arrogant and unlawful decree, the court ordered the Massachusetts legislature to come up with legislation allowing “full marriage rights” for gay couples. Thus, the Massachusetts court unilaterally, and without constitutional authority, declared gay marriage to be legal.

Encouraged by this action, defiant leaders of the homosexual activist movement in California demanded that marriage licenses be issued, and the mayor of San Francisco was happy to oblige. The floodgates were thrown open and the city indulged in an orgy of gay marriage. At this writing, thousands of gay couples have obtained marriage licenses and have “married” in San Francisco . All this, despite the fact that in 2000 the people of the state of California voted by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent to pass Proposition 22, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The city of San Francisco is suing to overturn Proposition 22 on the grounds of the equal protection and due process provisions of the state constitution.

Bush Calls for Constitutional Amendment

On Feb. 24, 2004 , President George W. Bush announced that he supports an amendment to the United States Constitution that would ban same-sex marriages, adding that such a measure is needed to stop judges from changing the definition of the “most enduring human institution.”

“After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization,” the President said. “Their action has created confusion on an issue that requires clarity. Unless action is taken, we can expect more arbitrary court decisions, more litigation, more defiance of the law by local officials . . .”

Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation described the lawless situation that has developed in the courts around the issue of gay marriage: “Activist judges and local officials in several states have shown a disregard for laws which protect traditional marriage. By their precipitous action, these officials have sought to freeze out the voice of the people, creating a new social order by judicial fiat.

“It is now the prudent course—for the sake of constitutional government and the sake of marriage—to amend the United States Constitution to define marriage as the legal union between one man and one woman.”

Forcing the Country Into Social Chaos

In a web memo published by the Heritage Foundation on Nov. 19, 2003 , there was the following statement: “ It would be a dangerous folly to weaken this institution [marriage] by elevating non-marital unions to the same position as marriage, or relegating the institution of marriage to the status of merely one form of household. To the extent that homosexuals or other individuals face obstacles to claims of benefits, legislative bodies may choose to address these matters. Such questions must not be addressed, however, in a way that endangers the centrality and distinctiveness of marriage to the welfare of society.”

In his State of the Union speech a few months ago, President Bush reinforced the importance of marriage, emphasizing that marriage is the cornerstone of family and that children are safest and have the best life prospects when they are born and raised in a household with a mother and father married to one another. The president's speech reinforced the significance of the family, as well as the importance of preparing young people to make healthy decisions about their sexual behavior and family formation.

Joseph Farah wrote recently, “Homosexuality is nothing new. It has always been around. But it does thrive and flourish when it is condoned. In fact, it has led to the downfall of more than one civilization when it has consumed societies – blinding them to right and wrong, robbing them of prosperity, infecting them with diseases of the mind, spirit and body” (“It's Sin, Stupid!” WorldNetDaily, Feb. 25, 2004 ) .

Farah added, “Marriage is not an institution invented by man. It is an institution created by God. It was created not just to make man happier on earth, but as a way for men and women to better know God.”

The eternal perspective that Farah presents is certainly a far cry from the politicized “equal rights” angle that the homosexual activists have adopted in order to force acceptance of gay marriage in our society. For over 5,000 years, the overwhelming majority of the civilized world has defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman. That is still true today. A recent nationwide CNN poll found that by a margin of 64-32, those surveyed said gay marriages should not be recognized in law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages.

What the American people need to remember as they formulate their thinking on this issue is this: No one is telling homosexuals what they can or cannot do with each other in the privacy of their own homes, but it is highly irresponsible for the citizens of a free and self-governing society to allow homosexuals to force the rest of the country into social chaos.

End Run Around Democratic Process

With opposition to gay marriage so widespread, homosexual activists know they will not be able to force acceptance of gay marriage on the American people through legislation. Therefore, they are sidestepping the legislative process and working through liberal, activist judges who support their agenda. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who opposed the Lawrence v. Texas pro-homosexual agenda ruling, warns that the Supreme Court has “largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda.” Such a statement coming from a Supreme Court “insider” should send a clear message about the dangers of trusting activist courts to protect the most fundamental institution of our civilization.

NOT a Civil Rights Issue

This writer recently read a comment by a political strategist who said that the first candidate to define the other in the minds of the American voters will win the election. If homosexual activists can define their agenda in the minds of the American

people as a “civil rights” issue, they will win. They complain that the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman confers a “second-class” status on same-sex couples. They would have us believe that their demand for legalized gay “marriage” is equivalent to the historic struggle for equality among black Americans subjected to the evils of segregation.

Andrew Sullivan, probably the nation's most prolific defender of gay marriage, offered this opinion recently: “...under almost any rational understanding of equal protection, civil marriage has to be extended to gay couples.”

In making his statement about “equal protection,” however, Sullivan relies on an unprovable and unsound assumption—the assumption being that there is a class of people who are inherently separate and distinct from other people based simply on their announcement of a preference, even a temporary one , for sexual relations with a person of their own gender.

In other words, Sullivan and other gay rights activists believe the Constitution requires the law to accommodate the notion that these individuals have determined for themselves—namely, that they represent a distinct class under the law. Such an accommodation of that idea would require the rewriting of long-held laws and the abandonment of fundamental assumptions about society and morality.

Based on Sullivan's reasoning, any group anywhere could announce themselves to be a distinct class under the law, simply by asserting a preference contrary to the established norm in a matter regulated, subsidized, or affected by government policies.

That is essentially what the homosexual advocacy organizations have done, in their strategy to frame the issue of gay marriage as a “civil rights” issue.

The Ultimate Losers: Children

Nationally known speaker and author William Federer writes of exchanges he had with students at the University of Indiana when he delivered a speech entitled, “Preserving the Traditional Marriage.”

In his address, Federer cited statistics that show there is a 300% greater incidence of child abuse in homosexual households than in households created through traditional marriage.
It is a fact that individuals exist who desire to sexually abuse children, Federer pointed out, and it is logical to assume that many of those people would adopt children if given the opportunity. Federer then asked of his student audience, “Who is going to police to make sure pedophiles don't adopt?”
 
The students answered that it would be impossible to have such assurances. “That is exactly the point,” Federer said. “There would be no way to protect children from sexual predators if homosexuals were allowed to marry and adopt. In time we would see that the real losers would be innocent, vulnerable children.” ( William J. Federer, “Gay Marriage Chaos,” TownHall.com, February 23, 2004 )

It is becoming clear that “gay marriage” is not the end, but the beginning of an agenda to change our entire culture. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas last year that sodomy is a constitutional right, the Director of the Lambda Legal Fund—a radical homosexual-agenda pressure group—gleefully exclaimed that this “marks the beginning of the end to . . . [traditional] marriage.”

Where will America be a generation from now if we allow marriage to be redefined apart from the traditional concept of a union between one man and one woman? One can only imagine the abominations that will eventually result if we allow the destruction of the foundational unit of society as ordained by Almighty God and recognized for thousands of years by civilized societies.

Don't think it can't happen. What was unimaginable a generation ago is reality today.