Editorial: The Homosexual Equivalency Movement and their Judicial and Legislative Accomplices

Marriage is ontologically between a man and a woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses and open to procreation which forms the foundation for family. These new judicial and legislative alchemists are as mistaken in this claim as their ancestors were in their claim that they could change cheap metal into gold or mix an elixir which would overcome death.

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P>LONDON, England (Catholic online) - On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 the British House of Commons decided they were legislative alchemists able to change the structure of reality by passing bills which amount to nothing but a form hocus pocus. So, they passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, backed by Prime Minister David Cameron.

The bill grants equivalent legal status between homosexual paramours and true married couples. It states specifically that homosexual and lesbian couples can now get 'married' in both civil and religious ceremonies. The only caveat is that the religious institution must consent. It may be only a matter of time before they are compelled to do so.

The bill was rightly opposed by the Catholic Church. Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth told Vatican Radio, "Naturally, I am very disappointed that Parliament wishes, in an Orwellian manner, to redefine the concept of marriage for England and Wales. The proposed change will have catastrophic consequences for marriage as an institution, for family life in Britain, and for all human relationships, not least among our young."

This effort is spreading throughout the West as she rushes headlong into decline. In the United States, one of the clearest defenders of marriage is Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. In a recent column entitled "Legislation creating "same-sex" marriage: What's at stake?" he gives one of the most lucid and compelling presentations of the Natural Law basis of our position on the unchangeable nature of marriage.

It should be read by all people of good will who seek to defend against the effort to destroy marriage. Efforts to simply appeal to the Bible, though well intended, used by so many of our evangelical protestant friends, have little weight in a society which has rejected the authority of the Bible. This is why the Catholic Church must take the lead as she has done in the Struggle to defend the Right to Life. We have a developed Natural Law Tradition to speak from in this epic moral and social struggle. 

We are in the midst of a Cultural Revolution in the West. The foundation of our Western societies has always been the first society, marriage between one man and one woman and the family founded upon it. It is the first government, first economy, first school, first religious institution and first mediating institution. Marriage has been clearly understood as arising out of the consent between one man and one woman and intended for life. It has been given a privileged and protected legal and social status because it serves the true common good of society.

Marriage has been the primary civilizing institution, constituted for the bearing and caring of children wherein they can be nurtured, loved, taught and prepared for life in broader communities. This understanding of marriage has long been accepted in the West as having been revealed by the Natural Law. It was the basis of our organizing vision of society and informed our philosophy of governance, including the place of subsidiarity. Even our educational system recognized that the family is the first school and parents are the first teachers.

These judges and legislators are trying to make something which is ontologically incapable of being a marriage, Homosexual Partnerships, into a marriage by Judicial Fiat or legislative dictate. This is why I call it a new form of alchemy. In the Middle Ages, some Alchemists purported that they were able to transmute common metals into gold. Others claimed they could create an elixir of life which would prevent death. Neither claim was true. Folklore grew up among people of that age alleging the existence of a philosopher's stone which held the key to their being able to accomplish these impossible claims.

Now, fast forward with me into our own day and consider the claims of those who want to use the Court system or the legislature as a new kind of philosopher's stone. This is precisely what homosexual equivalency groups are doing. I use that phrase to refer to those who seek to use the Police Power of the State to enforce a new social order. 

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They mouth the language of constitutional law, they frame their debate in the language of rights, they purport to be defending equality, but their arguments have no Natural Law basis. A Judge can call anything a right in this age of legal positivism but that does not make it one. A tyrannical legislature can call something what it can never be but it does not change the structure of reality.

The architects of this cultural revolution are skilled wordsmiths who use language as a weapon. They have shifted the popular argument with words which they have stolen and claimed as their own. Now, instead of defending marriage against those who seek to undermine it by making any cohabiting relationships its equivalent, the dominant media culture is using the homosexual equivalency movement's language of marriage equality.

Homosexual equivalency activists have even persuaded many to say that there is some new civil right for those who engage in homosexual practices and live under the same roof to be married. The bad guys are those who defend authentic marriage and insist that it is the best foundation for civil society. The intolerant are those who refuse to recognize such new rights, like this right to marry for people who are incapable of fulfilling the ends of marriage.

We are now branded as opposing equality! The effort also has as its clear intent the inclusion of practicing homosexuals as a suspect class under civil rights legislation. In other words, through the use of legislation and judicial opinions, the cultural revolutionaries intend to equate being a practicing homosexual with being a member of a legally protected minority class involving gender or race.Any who oppose them will face the police power of the State. 

In this new judicial and legislative alchemy, complicit judges and legislators claim the power to change the truth. Theologians and Philosophers speak of ontology as the science or philosophy of being. 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 and open to procreation which forms the foundation for family. These judicial and legislative alchemists are as mistaken in this claim as their ancestors were in their claim that they could change cheap metal into gold or mix an elixir which would overcome death.

Unchecked by any balance of power, the judicial alchemists follow what the legal positivists have long proclaimed, asserting that law is what the courts say it is. The legislative alchemists are complicit in the madness, building a tyrant State in the place of a society of true freedom.  Freedom can never be advanced through decisions made against the true and the good. In his powerful 1995 defense of Life, Blessed John Paul warned of a situation developing in the West wherein:

"The State is no longer the "common home" where all can live together on the basis of principles of fundamental equality, but is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenseless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part."

He warned that "the appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations."

We know this has already happened in the struggle to defend our youngest neighbors in the womb from being killed at any time and for any reason through procured abortion. Their Natural Law Right to Life has been denied. Now, the same fate may soon befall Marriage. As we are responding in our defense of the Fundamental Right to life so we must respond in our defense of marriage. The future of authentic human freedom and a truly just society depend upon it.

We must expose and oppose the Homosexual Equivalency Movement, their Judicial and Legislative Accomplices and the New Alchemy. 

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