while I was a Dean at Franciscan University of Steubenville.

I proposed the idea to Tom Monahan and Dick Thompson, the Chief Counsel, years later in a cabin in Michigan after I had left the ACLJ. They took the idea. Sadly, I now feel like much of the fundraising in these legal efforts, Catholic and evangelical Protestant, is duplicative.

POOR LANGUAGE

In addition, well intended “orthodox” (by which I mean classically faithful) Christians and Jews, in trying to defend marriage, have sadly used expressions such as “traditional marriage”. They might as well walk around with a huge bull’s eye on. The expression has become fuel for the homosexual activist war machine which is intent on redefining “marriage” to include those who engage in homosexual sex with one another for a protracted period of time. The proponents of equal status for homosexual paramours with authentically married heterosexual couples can now simply ask the question “whose tradition”?

They can also argue that we Christians are trying to force our “religious” views on the Nation. They follow this by painting the effort to defend authentic marriage as a “religious” bigotry.

Philosophers speak of ontology as the science or philosophy of being, the essence of a thing. For example, a rock is a rock and not a cabbage; a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Marriage is ontologically between a man and a woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses, open to life through the conjugal act in procreation. It also forms the foundation of family. There can be no such thing as “marriage” between two same sex people engaging in sexual acts, even if they engage in such acts only with one another and for a protracted period of time. This is true no matter what a Court or legislature may try to impose to the contrary.

The late great C. S. Lewis coined the phrase, “verbicide” in his Book entitled “Studies in Words”. The term referred to the murder of a word. In the past, when I wrote concerning the fundamental human rights issue of our age, the right to life, I referred to the current assault against words as “verbal engineering” and maintained that it is always the first step in social, legal, political, and cultural engineering.

Remember, it was by using the word “choice” to describe the killing of a child in the womb that advocates of legalized child killing paved the way for abortion on demand, once universally opposed, and opened the door for it to be heralded as a “right” in America - and throughout the West. The same deluded revolutionary trajectory has been at work in marriage.

Monogamous Marriage between a man and a woman is the first cell of civil society. Monogamous two parent marriages form the healthiest framework for the rearing of children. This fact was once widely accepted by the overwhelming majority of sane people. Marriage between a man and a woman was not seen as simply a “religious” idea but a human understanding, a natural institution. Monogamous heterosexual marriages and in tact families formed the basis of civil society. Even those who broke their marriage vows and divorced did not call for scrapping the institution. Marriage and the institution of family were viewed as promoting the common good of society. Stable marriage between a man and a woman was seen as a “good” that promoted human flourishing. Marriage was viewed as a “good” of persons which promoted and protected the “common good” of the society as a whole by forming the foundation of family, the first society.

Let me be clear. To defend marriage- as what it is and not what cultural revolutionaries seek to redefine it to be - must never be used to justify discrimination against those with homosexual tendencies, desires - or even those who choose to live in homosexual relations. However, genuine tolerance does not mean the re-ordering of civil society to accommodate these “alternative” lifestyles and the use of the police power of the State to enforce them. There is a difference between freedom liberty and libertinism. Yet, that is what the “Human Rights Campaign” seeks to do with their carefully orchestrated legal campaign.

In order to help us to comprehend what is occurring let me borrow a Property Rights Analogy. It does not even come close in terms of the magnitude of the danger we now face because persons and their flourishing are so much more vitally important than the ownership of property. However, it may help to unmask the tactics being used. In order to comprehend what is occurring let me borrow a Property Rights Analogy. It does not even come close in terms of the magnitude of the danger we now face because persons and their flourishing are so much more vitally important than the ownership of property.

However, it will help to unmask the tactics being used.

We still accept a uniform definition of “private ...