Controversy and Arguments Against Gay Marriage
Uploaded by obcd21212 on Jun 09, 2005
Gay Marriage: Off With Its Head
What we are puzzled on are the fundamental questions of what marriage is, and its purpose. It was the answers to these questions that allowed the western civilization to place their authority over the status of marriage and its monogamous heterosexual identity from the very beginning, and though these ancient answers may have been recently forgotten, or have fallen reprobate, they remain as sound and as compelling as ever. To understand what is at the other edge of that outcome—that is, what stands to be undone by gay marriage—we also have to distinguish marriage in its essence from an assortment of other goods and values with which it is usually grouped (Schulman). Those values—love, monogamous sex, establishing a home, fidelity, childbearing and childrearing, stability, inheritance, tax breaks, and all the rest—are not the same as marriage (Schulman, Orthodox Today). True, a decent marriage generally has these values; a failing marriage is often deficient in them, and in religion, custom, and law. To understand why it is necessary to oppose legal recognition of homosexual unions, ethical considerations of different orders need to be taken into account. Among the most likely effects of the recognition of such unions is to take us down a “slippery slope” to legalized polygamy and “polyamory” (group marriage). Marriage will be radically changed into a variety of relationships of male and female adding up to three or more people (Kurtz). A scare scenario? Barely. The bottom of this slope is clearly visible from where we stand on this issue. Homosexual unions are also totally lacking in the conjugal dimension, which represents the human and ordered form of sexuality; sexual relations are human when and insofar as they express and promote the mutual assistance of the sexes in marriage and are open to the transmission of new life (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith). Furthermore, lifestyles of homosexuals and the core premise civil laws express not only on the surface, shape the life of society, but also tend to alter the children’s discernment and assessment of forms of behavior. Legal recognition of homosexual unions would confound certain basic moral values and cause a depreciation of the establishment of marriage. Civil laws “play very important and sometimes decisive roles in the influencing patterns of thought and behavior” (Pope John Paul II).
In restricting marriage to one man and one woman, aren’t you imposing your...