Defend Marriage! Sign the Pledge in Solidarity for Marriage, Join the March

Homosexual and lesbian couples are incapable of achieving the ends of marriage. To state this is not to be 'anti-gay'; it is simply to defend the truth about marriage - and to serve the real common good.

One of the leaders I have the privilege of calling my friend is a great evangelical Christian and constitutional lawyer named Mat Staver. Mat is the Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Liberty Counsel Action.  We have joined together on many fronts, and will be doing much more together in the months ahead. One of the most important of our collaborative efforts is the defense of marriage and family.  Mat and I were co-drafters of a Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage which I am asking all of my readers at Catholic Online to carefully and prayerfully read and sign. Then join us, along with thousands of others on April 25, 2015 in Washington, DC at the National March for Marriage.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - I have covered the growing global marriage movement for Catholic Online and other Christian news sources for years. If you only read 'main stream' news sources, you read mostly the propaganda of the opponents of marriage as solely between one man and one woman.

Such coverage is filled with the sophistry of a fringe group of homosexual activists who use Orwellian language aimed at deconstructing marriage and the family based social order. They want to replace it, and are engaged in a new cultural revolution. The propaganda press routinely berates those who defend true and natural marriage.  They have embraced the newspeak of well-funded  groups such as the Human Rights Campaign which oppose marriage.   

They use phrases such as anti-marriage equality and anti-gay marriage, both taken from their new politically correct lexicon, and wield them as weapons. Like propagandists of the past, they seek to re-frame public perception. By insisting that those who defend marriage are against a  manufactured phrase called 'marriage equality' they engage in verbal and social engineering. 

To limit marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory. Homosexual and lesbian couples are incapable of achieving the ends of marriage. To state this is not to be 'anti-gay'; it is simply to defend the truth about marriage - and to serve the real common good. 

Civil institutions do not create marriage. Neither can they create some new right to marry for those who are incapable of marriage. Government has long regulated marriage for the common good. 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.

The blackout of news on the growing marriage movement around the world is astounding. Let me point to only one example. Did you read that in March of 2013, hundreds of thousands of French citizens marched along the Champs-Elysees Avenue toward the Presidential palace of Francois Hollande to defend marriage, the family, the rights of children and the family based foundation of the social order?
 
Did you read that these defenders of marriage faced tear gas and clubs from the riot police of the French Socialist regime? They sang La Marseillaise, the French National Anthem, and called for the resignation of the President. Most US news sources did not even report on the Paris March. It was led by a growing movement in France called La Manif  Similar marches have occurred in Taiwan and around the world.

Marriage is ontologically between one man and one woman, intended for life, open to life and formative of family. It has been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the natural order. That cannot be changed, by court, legislature or chief executive.

Family is the first society into which children are meant to be born, learn to be fully human, grow in virtue, flourish and take their role in extended communities. Children also have a right to a mother and a father and someone must speak for those rights.

The fact that marriage can exist solely between one man and one woman is not some outdated notion of a past era or even simply a religious position. It is rooted in the Natural Moral Law which can be known by all men and women through the exercise of reason. History affirms this cross cultural truth.

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

I write as a Catholic Christian. The position of the Catholic Church on the nature of marriage is crystal clear. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church explained it well in 2003.

"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."

Like the movement defending the Rights of children in the womb, the Movement to defend Marriage is an example of what the Catholic Church calls spiritual ecumenism.  Over the years I have joined with Christians from across the confessional spectrum in defending marriage.This growing collaboration is a silver lining in a dark cloud threatening true freedom and human flourishing.

One of the leaders I have the privilege of calling my friend is a great evangelical Christian and constitutional lawyer named Mat Staver. Mat is the Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and Liberty Counsel Action.  We have joined together on many fronts, and will be doing much more together in the months ahead. One of the most important of our collaborative efforts is the defense of marriage and family. 

Mat and I were co-drafters of a Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage which I am asking all of my readers at Catholic Online to carefully and prayerfully read here.

Next, I invite you to read Mats latest article on The STREAM entitled, On Marriage, We Will Not Render to Caesar What Is God's. The STREAM was founded by another great evangelical Christian leader I now have the joy of calling my friend, James Robison.

Finally, I ask you to sign the Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage and join us, along with thousands of others on April 25, 2015 in Washington, DC at the National March for Marriage.

It is vital to remember that this is not the first time that the Christian Church has been called into a culture which has forgotten God and strayed from the Natural Moral Law. We must do what Christians always do, transform the culture from within by the witness of both our words and our lifestyle.

I recommend to my readers an excellent article from May of 2012 which was written by Benjamin Riker for Catholic World Report which will help to give you an historical perspective. It is entitled Gay Marriage- Nothing New Under the Sun.

It is time to build alliances of solidarity and support with other Christians across the confessional spectrum. There will be increasing indirect and direct persecution ahead. Ask the Holy Spirit for a missionary heart and the grace we need to not only persevere - but be used by the Lord in His loving rescue plan for this age. Please read the Pledge in Solidarity to Defend Marriage, sign it, and circulate it. 

The parallels between the first Millennium of Christianity and the Third Millennium of Christianity are becoming obvious. We truly are living in a new missionary age. There are two historic facts upon which we can rely. Our vital work defending marriage and the family will be accompanied by increasing persecution - but the truth about marriage and the family will prevail. 

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Deacon Keith A. Fournier is Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Common Good Alliance. A married Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, he and his wife Laurine have five grown children and seven grandchildren. He is a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties and has long been active at the intersection of faith and culture. He serves as Special Counsel to Liberty Counsel. He is a senior contributing writer to The Stream.

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