Deacon Keith Fournier: A Report From the March for Marriage in Washington, DC

As today's March demonstrated, the movement to defend marriage in such public displays is in its early stages in the United States. As it has in France, Taiwan and elsewhere, it will grow in numbers. Like all human and civil rights movements, it will also grow in influence.

This is not the first time that the Church has been called to live in a homosexualized culture and transform it from within by bearing witness to the truth and goodness of marriage as between one man and one woman, intended for life, open to life and formative of family, which is the first cell of society. The parallels between the first Millennium of Christianity and the Third Millennium of Christianity are beginning to become more obvious. We are living in a new missionary age. As Christians, there are two historic facts upon which we can rely.  Our vital work will be accompanied by increasing persecution. The truth about marriage and family will prevail. 

WASHINGTON,DC (Catholic Online) - I am writing from Washington, DC, the Capitol City of the United States of America. On Thursday I attended the March for Marriage on the lawn in front of the U.S. Capitol Building. I left at 4 AM in the morning in order to do so.

I am very busy these days and I had many legitimate reasons not to attend the March. Then there are other reasons I could have chosen not to attend. For example, since I spend much of my time and effort defending the truth about marriage and family, I could have easily persuaded myself to stay in bed a little while longer and just report on it from afar.

But I knew where I had to be on Thursday.

I sensed that this March was a seed of an historic movement which will grow and help to bring this Nation back to moral sanity. I left even more convinced.I have read the reports that the numbers were small. That was not my experience. However, there is no doubt that some in a growing propaganda media will disparage the March for many reasons.

I have covered the global marriage movement for Catholic Online and other Christian news sources for years. If you only read many news sources, you will often read the propaganda of the Homosexual equivalency activist movement, rewritten as news.

For example, did you read that in March of 2013, hundreds of thousands of French citizens who marched along the Champs-Elysees Avenue toward the Presidential palace of Francois Hollande to defend marriage and the family and society founded upon it.
 
They faced tear gas and clubs from the riot police representing the French Socialist regime. They were courageous and unwilling to back down. They sang La Marseillaise, the French National Anthem, and called for the resignation of the President. 

Many secular news sources did not even report on the Paris March.

Those Marchers were and are a part of a growing global movement to defend marriage. Marchers have also gathered in Taiwan and around the world.

If you read the few media reports on the Paris March, you also read that the participants opposed 'gay marriage', a phrase which is an oxymoron. The propaganda press now routinely uses Orwellian newspeak to fuel caricatures against those who defend marriage as between one man and one woman.

The American press followed the pattern on Thursday, calling the marchers in Washington,DC "anti-marriage equality" and "anti-gay marriage".  

Like propagandists of the past, these folks who do this kind of reporting attempt to re-frame public perception, not report the news. By maintaining that those who defend marriage are against 'marriage equality' they are engaging in verbal engineering.

They try to accuse those who defend marriage of somehow being against marriage - because we will not support the efforts to redefine the word marriage to include homosexual or lesbian partnerships, which are incapable of achieving the ends of marriage.

To limit marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory. Homosexual and lesbian couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition. To state this is not to be 'anti-gay'; it is simply to defend the truth about marriage and serve the common good. 

The people who gathered in Washington, DC on Thursday, June 19, 2014 insist that marriage between one man and one woman, intended for life, and the family founded upon it, has been inscribed by the Divine Architect into the order of the universe.

That is because it has. Truth does not change, people and cultures do; sometimes for good and sometimes for evil.

Marriage 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 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 should all care about the single parent family and the many broken homes which characterize this age of social collapse. However, their existence does not change the norm necessary for building a stable and healthy society.

Intact marriages and families are the glue of a healthy and happy social order.
 
Our claim that  marriage can exist solely between one man and one woman, is intended for life, should be open to life and is formative of family, is not some outdated notion of a past era. In fact, it provides the path the path to the future.

Nor is our position defending marriage as solely between one man and one woman simply a religious position. We insist upon the existence of a Natural Moral Law which can be known by all men and women through the exercise of reason. 

This Natural Moral Law 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. This Natural Law gives us the moral norms we need to build societies and govern ourselves. It should inform our positive law or we will 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 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."

As today's March demonstrated, the movement to defend marriage in such public displays is in its early stages in the United States. As it has in France, Taiwan and elsewhere, it will grow in numbers.

Like all human and civil rights movements, it will also grow in influence.

What was very encouraging to me today was the diversity of the crowd and the number of young people present. At least in the early morning, the majority of participants appeared to be Hispanic. There were also a large number of African Americans.

People came as families, with little children.

There was a wide diversity of religious traditions present at the March. There were Orthodox Jews, Evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Christians and Catholics. There were certainly people of other or no religious tradition. What joined them together was the defense of the good of marriage.

Like the Pro-Life movement, the Movement for Marriage is a great example of what the Catholic Church calls spiritual ecumenism.

I know that I am joined with Christians from across the confessional spectrum, along with faithful Jews, other people of good will in this growing marriage movement.

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.

Heterosexual marriage, procreation, and the nurturing of children form the foundation for the family, and the family forms the foundation of civil society.

This is not the first time that the Church has been called to live in a homosexualized culture and transform it from within by bearing witness to the truth and goodness of marriage as between one man and one woman, intended for life, open to life and formative of family, which is the first cell of society.

I recommend an excellent article from May of 2012, written by Benjamin Riker for Catholic World Report. It is entitled Gay Marriage- Nothing New Under the Sun.

Read it - and get ready.
 
Increase your prayer, build networks of solidarity and support with other Christians, across the confessional spectrum, and get ready for indirect and direct persecution and opposition to increase. Ask the Holy Spirit for a missionary heart and the grace which will be needed to not only persevere - but be used by the Lord in His loving rescue plan for this age.

The parallels between the first Millennium of Christianity and the Third Millennium of Christianity are beginning to become more obvious. We are living in a new missionary age. As Christians, there are two historic facts upon which we can rely.
 
Our vital work will be accompanied by increasing persecution. The truth about marriage and family will prevail. 

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