property.” We defend the private ownership of property as a “right”. It forms a basis for our social, economic and political order. Let’s say that next year; a group among us had decided that “private property” should mean that our land also belongs to the neighbors on adjoining land. Why? Because they decided that approach was better and they changed the definition, first among themselves, and then they had decided to enforce that private opinion upon the broader society. Next, they insisted that the law recognize their new definition by giving it an equivalent status to the “traditional” notion of private property. Well, we can see where this is headed. You simply cannot have two distinctly different things being called the same thing. One has to yield to the other.

MARRIAGE MATTERS

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, speaking on behalf of the “Magisterium” (teaching office) of the Catholic Church, released a definitive document in 2003 concerning the defense of marriage. It unequivocally addressed growing efforts in some Western nations to redefine the word marriage and thereby eliminate the institution of the family.

In it they said:

“The Church's teaching on marriage and on the complementarity of the sexes, reiterates a truth that is evident to right reason and recognized as such by all the major cultures of the world. Marriage is not just any relationship between human beings. It was established by the Creator with its own nature, essential properties and purpose. No ideology can erase from the human spirit the certainty that marriage exists solely between a man and a woman, who by mutual personal gift, proper and exclusive to themselves, tend toward the communion of their persons. In this way, they mutually perfect each other, in order to cooperate with God in the procreation and upbringing of new human lives.”

True marriage is the most fundamental of all human social institutions. It is a relationship defined by nature itself and protected by the natural law that binds all men and women. It finds its foundation in the order of creation. Civil institutions do not create marriage nor confer upon anyone a “right” to marry. The institutions of government should, when acting properly, defend marriage against those who would redefine it. As a Catholic, I am seriously embarrassed by some of my fellow Catholics, such as Senators Biden and Kennedy, who errantly lead the efforts to grant legal equivalency between homosexual paramours and married couples. They should be ashamed of themselves! They are wrong in their policy position. They are also unfaithful to the teaching of their Church. Government has long regulated marriage for the common good.

For example, the ban on polygamy and age requirements were enforced in order to ensure that there was a mature decision at the basis of the Marriage contract. Heterosexual marriage, procreation, and the nurturing of children form the foundation for the family, and the family forms the foundation of civil society. In now “redefining” marriage, these renegade Justices and their complicit public officials have imperiled the stability of our society and struck a blow against the common good. To confine marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition.

To “confer” the legal benefits that have been conferred in the past to stable married couples and families to homosexual paramours is very bad public policy. Sadly, those who claim that this is simply a matter of “tolerance” are often the most intolerant. They insist on forcing their brave new world on the rest of us. Notice how intolerant they are of those who, though respecting the dignity of every person, including homosexuals, also insist that marriage is what it is.

HISTORY

The current cultural situation we face as Christians in America is not unfamiliar. We need to consider it in terms of our 2000 year Christian history. I do not care how “scientifically advanced” the contemporary West thinks it has become, or how “modern” the issues of the modern cultural revolutionaries purport to be, there is nothing new about it. The struggle we are engaged in as Christians in contemporary western culture concerns a clash of worldviews, personal and corporate, and competing definitions of freedom. In the circles of contemporary cultural and social revolutionaries, Christians (at least orthodox, faithful ones) are once again being presented as unenlightened, forcing “our view” on others.

Yet, our position on marriage and family, the nature of authentic human freedom, the dignity of every human person, the right to life and the reality of objective moral truth, are what brought freedom to those in bondage to disordered appetites and enslaved to totalitarian regimes, left and right, for centuries. ...