CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic online) - It seems that almost weekly there is another assault on true marriage. The unrelenting efforts of an activist wing of the homosexual community have nearly succeeded in reframing the issues of the debate. They aim to enforce a Cultural Revolution. They have been joined by eager collaborators in the Judiciary and elected officials who believe they are some kind of new "liberators".

Notice the pervasive use of the language of this new Cultural Revolution. There are few news reports using the word marriage for what it is, ontologically, the lifelong union between one man and one woman ordered toward love, the conception and rearing of children and the formation of family, which is the foundation of society because it is its first vital cell.

The verbal engineers have changed the language and convinced everyone, even many Christians who should know better, to use their new revolutionary vocabulary. Everything is recast to sound as though those who seek to defend true marriage somehow oppose its extension to homosexuals and lesbians, who are incapable of it.

The distinction between so called "traditional' Marriage and all other "marriages" is a serious mistake, the most decisively fatal volley in this early verbal skirmish. I warned many with whom I share this monumental struggle to defend true marriage against this assault and not to use the term "traditional" as an adjective. There were a number of reasons I opined about the dangers of this propaganda ploy. All have proven to be correct.

It sounds like those who defend true marriage want to turn the clock back and live in the past. It paints us as opposed to progress, as though we oppose a new advance in social and cultural evolution which will lead to greater freedom and cultural sensitivity. Nothing could be further from the truth! The fact is that those who seek to redefine the word marriage and then destroy the institution which is the cornerstone of civil society are involved, knowingly or unwittingly, in a return to a pagan practice. They are unleashing moral and legal anarchy.

In my writing I warned against ever using the word "marriage" when referring to homosexual partnerships. This warning did not come from some personal hostility toward homosexual persons, but out of honesty and verbal integrity. Homosexual relationships simply cannot constitute a marriage.

As a lawyer and activist of many years, working for authentic freedom, I knew that in the battle to change culture, the softening of the language is the most effective early action before a wholesale assault waged in the courtrooms, the legislatures and the media. Also, I know that such language softens and eventually destroys the vigilance of those who are caught unaware of its ruthless and corrosive effect on the long term struggle.

Finally, I warned of the use of "rights" and "freedom" language is the greatest weapon in this new Cultural Revolution. When the effort to legalize the killing of innocent children in the first home of the whole human race, their mother's womb, was couched in the language of "privacy", "choice" and "freedom", the effort advanced and the infamy of abortion on demand was accomplished. There is an accelerating effort to make homosexual partnerships the legal equivalent of marriage in the positive law and to then use the Police Power of the State to enforce such a restructuring on the rest of civil society.

When sexual behavior between two men or two women is viewed as the foundation of some "right" to marry and those who oppose this equivalency movement are characterized as being against the "freedom" to marry and "equal rights", we are in serious danger of losing the struggle to the wordsmiths. Sadly, that is precisely what has now happened.

True marriage is the preeminent and 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 can they create a "right" to marry for those who are incapable of marriage. The institutions of government should, when acting properly, defend marriage against those who would redefine it.

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.

To "limit" marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory now, nor has it ever been. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition. To now "confer" the benefits that have been conferred in the ...