US Supreme Court To Hear Cases on Changing What Can Never Be a Marriage Into a Marriage

The institutions of government should defend marriage against those who would redefine it.

True marriage is the preeminent and the most fundamental of all human social institutions. It is a relationship defined by nature 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.

P>WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - On Friday, December 7, 2012, the order List was released and the Supreme Court granted Certiorari (Review) in two cases, United States v Windsor, Edith, S. et al. and Hollingsworth, Dennis, et al, v Perry, Kristin M, et al.

At stake in these two cases is whether or not marriage as between one man and one woman will continue to receive the protection of the State and Federal Government in the United States.

As usual, the orders were brief. On the Windsor case, "The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. In addition to the question presented by the petition, the parties are directed to brief and argue the following questions: Whether the Executive Branch's agreement with the court below that DOMA is unconstitutional deprives this Court of jurisdiction to decide this case; and whether the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the United States House of Representatives has Article III standing in this case."

On the Hollingsworth case, the order was not only brief, it was more obscure, "The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted. In addition to the question presented by the petition, the parties are directed to brief and argue the following question: Whether petitioners have standing under Article III, §2 of the Constitution in this case."

The Windsor case involves two women in a lesbian partnership for forty four years. They civilly married in 2007 because Canada granted legal equivalency between homosexual or lesbian partnerships and authentic marriage.

One of the women died and the Federal Government of the United States would not recognize the surviving partner as a spouse for purposes of calculating estate taxes. That is because of our law, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which protects marriage as what it is, between one man and one woman.

Although it is the Federal law, DOMA has been unilaterally rejected by the Justice Department of the United States under the Obama administration. They will not enforce it. It has also been assaulted in the Courts by homosexual equivalency activists. They want to compel a legal equivalency between homosexual and lesbian partnerships and marriages.

In Hollingsworth, the supporters of marriage as between one man and one woman asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision. That Court upheld the unilateral action of a lower federal Court which struck down a constitutional amendment lawfully passed by the citizens of California. It defined marriage as between one man and one woman.

Supporters of what I call the "homosexual equivalency movement" believe they are right. They now speak of "marriage equivalency". By the term they mean somehow making what can never be a marriage, a homosexual partnership, to be a marriage, by a pronouncement of a Court or a legislature. They accuse us of being against marriage because we will not redefine it to include homosexual partnerships.

The leaders of the homosexual equivalency movement insist that homosexual sexual practices are morally equivalent to the sexual expression of marital love between a man and a woman. They now insist that the State and Federal Government treat homosexual relationships as legally equivalent to marriage. 

They convinced the main stream media to frame efforts to defend marriage as opposing gay couples. They have been joined by collaborators in the Judiciary and some elected officials who now view themselves as "liberators" when they are injuring the common good and threatening the foundation of civil society.

They are dedicated to building a different society where the positive law of the Nation forces us to call to be a marriage what can never be a marriage. If we do not, we will face the police power of the State.

The truth about marriage is not simply a religious construct. The Natural Law reveals - and the cross cultural history of civilization affirms - that marriage is between a man and a woman, open to children and intended for life.

Marriage is the foundation for the family which is the privileged place for the formation of virtue and character in children, our future citizens. The family is the first society, first economy, first school, first civilizing and mediating institution and first government.

I have warned my fellow supporters of marriage - in my work and in my writing - not to use the term traditional as an adjective for marriage. There were a number of reasons I opined about the dangers of this propaganda ploy. All have proven to be correct.

First, the phrase traditional marriage 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. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Those who seek to redefine the word marriage and destroy the institution which is the cornerstone of civil society are involved in a return to a pagan practice. They are unleashing anarchy in the social order.

Next, I warned against even using the word marriage when referring to homosexual (or gay) partnerships. This warning did not come from some personal hostility toward persons with same sex attraction but out of a desire for verbal integrity. Homosexual relationships simply cannot constitute a marriage.

As a lawyer and activist I know that in the effort to change the culture, the softening of the language is the most effective early action before a wholesale assault is waged in the courtrooms, the legislatures and the media. Such loaded language eventually destroys the vigilance of those who are caught unaware of its ruthless and corrosive effect.

When sexual behavior between two men or two women is viewed as the foundation of a right to marry-  and those who oppose this equivalency movement are characterized as being against the freedom to marry and equal rights - the revolutionary plan advances and the common good is threatened.

True marriage is the preeminent and the most fundamental of all human social institutions. It is a relationship defined by nature 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 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.

For Judges or legislatures to grant legal equivalency to co-habiting paramours (homosexual or heterosexual) does not further freedom, it undermines it. It also does not serve the common good, it injures it.

To limit marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition. To confer the benefits that have been conferred in the past only to stable married couples and families to homosexual paramours is bad public policy.

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, open to children and formative of family.

The new cultural alchemists are as fraudulent in their claims as their ancestors who claimed to be able to change cheap metals into gold. History will one day record that their claims were destructive and false.

The enforcers of this new order, whether ruling from the bench or misusing their office in the Legislative and Executive branch, unchecked by any balance of power, have followed what the legal positivists have long proclaimed, "The law is what the courts say it is."

Those who claim that accepting all of this is a matter of tolerance are the most intolerant. Notice how intolerant they are of those who, though respecting the dignity of every person including homosexuals, also insist that marriage is what it is.

Christians must not participate in the destruction of the institution of marriage. The Sacred Scriptures and unbroken teaching of the Church confirm that marriage is between one man and one woman. Of that there is no doubt. Those who attempt to argue otherwise in the various Christian communities are being disingenuous. They are also false teachers.  

Catholic Christians must lead the defense of Marriage. Our Church is the most vocal and clear in the defense of marriage - and the family and society founded upon it. That means we will face the brunt of the persecution which will come.

In his apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Charity, Pope Benedict summarized the duty of the Catholic faithful when confronted with an assault on authentic marriage:  "Marriage and the family are institutions that must be promoted and defended from every possible misrepresentation of their true nature, since whatever is injurious to them is injurious to society itself."

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church wrote these words 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."

They are correct. Pray for the Justices of the US Supreme Court. Pray for Marriage.

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