What Nature Joins Let No Gays Put Asunder
For all the damage the institution of marriage sustained during the sexual revolution, its recognized significance as the fundamental social unit remains intact.
If nothing else, this one conviction at least remains: that marriage should be strengthened. It remains our achievable ideal and the reason President Bush proclaimed Oct. 12-18 "Marriage Protection Week."
Yet the state of marriage today is fragile. Battered by divorce, eroded by rising rates of cohabitation and shaken by infidelity, marriage is now imperiled by a proposal to redefine it. This challenge has been advanced by gay activists in the culture and the courts.
Though we are the most open, tolerant, forgiving and embracing of people, it is important that the movement toward gay marriage be resisted. It would in no way strengthen marriage to redefine it by embracing gay marriage.
Marriage is rooted in the proper order of life. To be human implies purpose; human beings are set apart from the rest of the material world, even from other animate beings, by that purpose.
By way of contrast, the essence of a tree presents no moral limitations for the uses we may develop for it. But the nature of man does limit how we may treat him: This we have affirmed from the Declaration of Independence to today's human rights movement. It is why we should not clone humans, why we do not experiment on human subjects and why we oppose sexual subjugation.
Just as human nature has inherent purpose, so does human sexuality. There is a natural sexual order, a proper order for love -- an ordo amorum, as St. Augustine put it. We are made male and female, and these immutable characteristics define proper sexual behavior. Because this proper sexual behavior quite commonly results in childbearing, these characteristics also define the appropriate relationship for sexual behavior: marriage.
In marriage alone do men, women and children find the relationship that balances their sometimes mutual, sometimes competing, needs.
"Marriage is our attempt to reconcile and harmonize the erotic, social, sexual and financial needs of men and women with the needs of their partner and their children," says Maggie Gallagher, co-author of "The Case for Marriage."
