Marriage Wins in Illinois: Alliance of Pro-Marriage Voters Stops the Advance of the Anti-Marriage Movement

The Illinois Legislature did not pass legislation which would have mandated by legislative fiat that homosexual and lesbian partnerships be given the same legal status as real marriage. We must all become aware of the pattern of the Cultural Revolutionaries and their Press collaborators. They change the language, declare the existence of a counterfeit 'right' and then accuse those who oppose their social experimentation of being against that 'right' and opposing progress. Their plan for the future of this culture is anything but progress. 

P>SPRINGFIELD, IL (Catholic Online) - On Friday, May 31, 2013, the Illinois Legislature did not pass legislation which would have mandated by legislative fiat that homosexual and lesbian partnerships be given the same legal status as real marriage.  Thus, the title of my article, Marriage Won in Illinois.

If you read many of the reports that the Bill did not come to a vote in Springfield, you read something quite different than this article. For example, the multitude of articles in the Huffington Post referred to this anti-marriage legislation as a marriage bill. It reminded me of the backward bizarre world of the Superman Comics of my youth.

This legislation which did not come up for a vote in Illinois was an anti-marriage bill.

Those who opposed the legislation were referred to in many of the same press reports as being against what is now routinely called marriage equality. In fact, they are Pro-Marriage. They defended marriage against a movement which actually opposes marriage.
 
The Anti-Marriage Bill did not pass because an alliance of Pro-Marriage and Pro- Family voters, facing the perfidy of the propaganda press and the hostility of those dedicated to a Cultural Revolution, defended the common good together.  They are a seed of that new alliance of which I wrote about in my article entitled Time for an Evangelical and Catholic Alliance for the Common Good.

We must all become aware of the pattern of the Cultural Revolutionaries and their Press collaborators. They change the language, declare the existence of a counterfeit 'right' and then accuse those who oppose their social experimentation of being against that 'right' and opposing progress. Their plan for the future of this culture is anything but progress. 

They followed this approach back when they opposed the fundamental Human Right to Life. That Right is revealed in the Natural Law and confirmed by medical science. They opposed the Right for our youngest neighbors in the womb. So, they manufactured a 'right' to take their life in the first home of the whole human race, at any time and for any reason, through legalizing procured abortion.

Then, they changed the language. They now call this always deadly action an 'abortion right' and have convinced a complicit media to do the same. They changed the public debate with the assistance of collaborators in the propaganda media. Sadly, their terminology is now even used by some who are Pro-Life!

Abortions have no rights, only human persons do. The first Right, the fundamental human Right to Life, is taken away in every procured abortion. The positive law which denies that Right to Life and protects those who take the lives of children in the womb is an unjust law.

Because this kind of verbal engineering has been embraced by much of the media we must not trust their reporting. That is why having alternatives such as Catholic Online and others is so vitally important in our effort to defend the true common good and promote real progress.

What is happening in this hour is a clash of worldviews with competing definitions of human freedom, human dignity, and human flourishing. We are engaged in a contest to recover the moral foundations of a truly free society. This involves conflicting definitions of true progress and the real common good.

We insist that true marriage and the family have been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of the universe. That is because they have. Heterosexual marriage, procreation, and the nurturing of children form the foundation for the family, and the family forms the foundation for civil society as its first vital cell.

Defending marriage serves the common good. Redefining it does not. Those who engage in this movement which wants to call itself 'marriage equality' are opposing marriage. They seek to redefine it out of existence and eliminate its primacy in the social order.

Marriage and the family and society founded upon them are under a frontal assault.

We must reject the Orwellian newspeak of those who oppose marriage. I once again plead with my fellow writers to reject the loaded language of the Cultural Revolutionaries. They frame the debate by calling those of us who defend marriage as being against it.

We must stay crystal clear in our message. We are the ones defending marriage. Homosexual partnerships are incapable of being marriages. The supporters of this kind of legislation are participating in an Anti-Marriage Movement.

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 insist with the police power of the State that we pretend otherwise does not serve the common good.

To confer by governmental fiat the benefits that have been conferred in the past only to stable married couples and families to homosexual paramours is bad public policy. To state this is not to be "anti-gay". It is to defend marriage and the family. It is to serve the common good.

Marriage - and the family founded upon it - is the first society into which children are to be born, learn to be fully human, grow in virtue, flourish and take their role in families and communities. We must not be afraid to make the claim that children have a right to a mother and a father. They do.

Of course we care about the single parent family and the many broken homes and provide a social embrace of them. However, neither their existence - nor our obligation in solidarity to them - changes the norm which is necessary for a stable society. In tact marriages and families are the glue of a healthy and happy social order.

Our claims concerning the right to life and the true definition of marriage are not outdated notions of a past era but provide the path to a future of true freedom and human flourishing. Their recognition and implementation is the path to true progress.

Nor are our positions on these fundamental social matters simply our religious position - meaning in the parlance of the Cultural Revolutionaries that they should be kept within our church walls. There is a Natural Moral Law which can be known by all men and women through the exercise of reason.

This Natural Moral Law gives us the moral norms we need to build truly human societies and govern ourselves. It should inform our positive law or we become lawless and devolve into moral, legal and social anarchy. This is the ground upon which every great civilization has been built. It is the source for every great and authentic human and civil rights movement.

There is a growing intolerance of our rights to free expression, association and participation. This was reflected in the reporting concerning the new alliance which came together in Illinois to defend marriage against the effort to redefine it.

Among the many accurate Press Reports was the fine article from the catholic bishops of the United States entitled USCCB Subcommittee Chair Applauds 'Victory in the Land of Lincoln' It is set forth below.

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USCCB Subcommittee Chair Applauds 'Victory in the Land of Lincoln'

WASHINGTON-Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, applauded the "victory in the Land of Lincoln" as the Illinois state House failed to vote on a bill to redefine marriage before the legislative session ended last Friday.

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"The fact that the Illinois state House did not vote on the marriage redefinition bill reflects a failure to have the votes to pass the bill," said Archbishop Cordileone."This victory in the Land of Lincoln demonstrates that marriage redefinition - even in the face of intense political pressure - is not inevitable, a likely reason we haven't heard much about it in the national media."

A diversity of faith leaders joined together to defend marriage in Illinois.

"Leaders of various faith traditions spoke eloquently on the reality that nature and nature's God make clear that marriage is the union of one man and one woman," Archbishop Cordileone said."Catholics will continue to proclaim with people of other faiths and of no particular faith that marriage is the one-flesh union of one man and one woman. Indeed, both faith and reason lead us to this truth."

Archbishop Cordileone also addressed the claim that equality requires redefining marriage in law.

"All persons have inherent dignity and must be treated equally with the respect and justice that is their due," he said."That is part of the purpose of the law; it is not the purpose of the law, though, to give people social status, as the advocates for marriage redefinition contend.

"For a well-ordered society, laws must reflect reality; for them to contradict reality would be simply irrational. Our children deserve as much and depend upon all of us, especially our leaders, to protect the reality of marriage, not redefine it in the law. Many thanks go to all those who let their voices be heard in defense of marriage in Illinois," Archbishop Cordileone said.

The bill to redefine marriage that was not brought to a vote in the Illinois state House had passed the Illinois state Senate earlier in the year. Proponents of marriage redefinition in Illinois may try again to advance the bill in the Illinois legislature later this year.

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