Joseph: Don't Fall for the 'Same-Sex Marriage' Scam
The trendy fabrication of so-called “same-sex marriage” is merely a pathetic mimicry of the honorable age-old institution of genuine marriage.
It seeks a parity that, by its own very wrong-headed nature, it can never achieve. It resembles some poor little children’s sad game of “let’s pretend.”
Unfortunately, this “let’s pretend” game has real-world consequences — especially for real children who are roped into having their own mothers and fathers replaced and are artificially redealt two mothers or two fathers.
This de-mothering and de-fathering of children is the most serious consequence that will emerge from the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act passed this week in the Senate.
A foolish delusion
Legalizing radical distortions to accommodate deviations from the natural institution of marriage is not only unacceptable — it is just plain foolish. It’s the outcome of a delusional new ideology that is set to do great damage to families before it fades, like all fake start-ups, into disrepute.
“Same-sex marriage” is an absurdity. Logical consistency and legal coherence require that marriage as an institution maintain an inherent and irrevocable regard for the sex and sexuality of the husband and wife.
Few congressmen understand that legalizing the imaginative novelty of “same-sex marriage” is in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights solemnly ratified by the U.S. in 1992.
No democracy can justify amendments to marriage law that are incompatible with specific universal human rights requirements such as state provision of protection for the family: “The family is the natural … group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” (ICCPR, Article 23-1).
The right “to marry and to found a family” is one right, not two, and is predicated exclusively on the biological complementarity of men and women (not men and men and not women and women).
Restricting this right to marry and found a family to “men and women of marriageable age” was recognized at the time of negotiating the covenant as essential.
“Same-sex marriage” lobbyists screech “discrimination!”
Naïve politicians, taking up the shrill, false “same-sex marriage” rhetoric, have fabricated a law that is logically incompatible with fundamental provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Take, for example, UDHR Article 16-3, in which all governments agreed: “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State. “
Procreation was always the agreed rationale behind the state’s obligation to protect the natural law right to marry and found a family.
Professor Leon Kass, a leading authority on the natural and sociological anthropology of sexual reproduction, says that human societies virtually everywhere have structured child-rearing responsibilities and systems of identity and relationship on the bases of the deep natural facts of begetting.
“The mysterious yet ubiquitous love of one’s own is everywhere culturally exploited to make sure that children are not just produced but cared for and to create for everyone clear ties of meaning, belonging and obligation.” It is wrong, he says, to treat such naturally rooted social practices as mere cultural constructs that we can alter with little human cost.
Protecting marriage
Indeed, it is ludicrous to claim now that marriage laws enacted originally to protect the family are to be deemed discriminatory against same-sex coupling, which by its very nature has nothing to do with procreation.
Certainly, the generic non-discrimination clause of human rights jurisprudence was never intended to override legitimate protective restrictions and distinctions both expressed and implicit.
Article 16 of the UDHR requires that men and women (not men and men nor women and women), in exercising the right to marry and found a family, do so in conformity with Article 16’s definition of the family as “the natural group unit of society,” that they are “of full age” (not considered age discrimination), and that they enter into marriage “only with free and full consent.”
It is immensely significant what Article 16 deliberately omits: “sex or other status.” The non-discrimination clause extends only to “race, nationality or religion.”
The concept of “special care and assistance” for motherhood, childhood and the family (UDHR Article 25) means just that — it is special. It is illogical to extend what is special to absolutely everyone homogeneously. The net effect of such an artificial reinterpretation is that these special human rights obligations are gutted. They become meaningless.
Dishonest grab for marriage rights — an element of fraud
Socially prudent human rights advocates argue successfully that all people (irrespective of homosexual or lesbian proclivities) are entitled to all basic human rights. But these rights, it is agreed, are theirs not by virtue of their “sexual orientation” but rather by virtue of the fact that they are human beings.
They have equal rights to protection from violence, from vilification, from unjust imprisonment. They have equal rights to all the usual social goods like basic education and health care. But they may or may not be entitled to other social goods referred to as qualified human rights. For example, they need to be of a certain age to qualify for aged pensions.
Where the problem arises is that these men and women under their strident “same-sex marriage” banner are now making a grab for a set of special human rights that exist to protect motherhood and childhood and the integrity of the natural family.
It is a dishonest grab — a greed for benefits from which the nature of their lifestyles excludes them. It has the same element of fraud as amending a birth certificate to collect an aged pension, or pretending to have a bad back in order to claim a disability pension.
It is rational thought and rigorous logic, not homophobia, that forces us to recognize that “same-sex marriage” must remain a hollow concept, an elaborate pretense at parity belied by nature itself.
Hankering to alter what is good
Marriage is, as it always has been, a natural good built primarily on the duty of care owed to any children of that marriage, and it is ordered toward securing children’s natural right to life, survival and development.
It was never an arbitrary or capricious distinction that two women or two men were not entitled to enter into marriage. In the natural order, there was simply no need for it where in principle the possibility to procreate was not present.
Recognition of the natural law principles of marriage and procreation is as impartial as recognition of the natural laws of science. The assumption of plasticity without ill consequences in the artificial deconstruction of families is not justified.
We are not naïve children engaged in child’s play, remodeling ourselves and our families in plasticine. Wilfully tampering with natural family formation is an imprudent rejection of what is real and true.
Reconstruction of the self involves disdain for the given — an echo of Eve’s arrogant revisionism of God’s original creation — spurning, despising, scorning the truth.
Reversing good and evil is the oldest fault in the world.
In every age, sadly, the old hankering lingers on — the hankering to alter what is a given. In vain do we try to recast for the satisfaction of our baser appetites the forbidden fruits of the Tree of Knowledge and then foolishly declare them to be good.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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