Triangulating Marriage: President Obama Uses Joe Biden as a Political Lightning Rod

As concerned for the common good we need to consider where candidates stand on marriage and vote accordingly.

With the prospect of a second term looming for President Obama we all need to wake up. This administration has failed to hear the cry of the poor in the womb. They are the most Anti-Life Administration in US History. They have failed to protect the First Freedom of Religious Freedom. If given four more years, they will dismantle marriage and the family and society founded upon it. 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.

P>WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - On Sunday, May 6, 2012 the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden appeared on Meet the Press. Here is an excerpt from his interview: "I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual - men and women marrying - are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties. And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that."

The political pundits began to parse his words. Obama surrogates like Axelrod feigned that they were not spoken on behalf of the Administration. The President orchestrated a strategy to once again make the claim that he was "troubled" by the issue and "still evolving". It was reminiscent of the façade he offered when he ran for office concerning the fundamental Human Right to Life. Remember his words when he refused to affirm that life begins at conception when he was interviewed by Pastor Rick Warren. He said the matter was "above his pay grade."

Almost weekly there is an assault on marriage from this administration. On Monday, high profile Education Secretary Arne Duncan, declared his opposition to marriage as only between one man and one woman. He was asked on MSNBC 's Morning Joe whether he thought that homosexuals should be allowed to marry and said "yes I do". The position of this administration is clear and triangulation does not change a thing. The administration will neither enforce nor defend federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act.  

The efforts of an activist wing of the homosexual community, a homosexual equivalency movement, have reframed the debate and are engaged in a Cultural Revolution intent on changing the legal definition of marriage and restructuring western culture accordingly. They have been joined by eager collaborators in the Judiciary and elected officials who believe they are some kind of new "liberators" when they are injuring the common good.

These leaders insist that homosexual sexual practices are morally equivalent to the sexual expression of marital love between a man and a woman. They further insist that the State make homosexual relationships legally equivalent to marriage.  They are dedicated to building a society where the positive law of the Nation forces us all to call to be a marriage what can never be a marriage - or 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.

In his apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Charity, Pope Benedict summarized the duty of the Catholic faithful when confronted with this 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." That means you and me. We must defend marriage and the family!

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."

The loaded language of the homosexual equivalency movement is used by the main stream media. The verbal engineers of the Cultural Revolution have persuaded them to use their Orwellian newspeak. It was a subtle and strategic effort. First came the distinction between so called "traditional' Marriage and all other "marriages".

I warned many with whom I co-labor to defend true marriage not to use the term "traditional" as an adjective. 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. The fact is that those who seek to redefine the word marriage and then destroy the institution which is the cornerstone of civil society are simply involved - knowingly or unwittingly - in a return to a pagan practice and are unleashing anarchy in the social order.

Next, I warned against ever 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 of many years I know that in the battle to change 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. I also know that such language eventually destroys the vigilance of those who are caught unaware of its ruthless and corrosive effect on the long term struggle.

Finally, I warned of the use of "rights" and "freedom" language.  I know that this vocabulary is the greatest weapon in this new Cultural Revolution. When the effort to legalize the killing of innocent children in the first home of the whole human race, their mother's womb, was couched in the language of "privacy", "choice" and "freedom" the effort advanced and the infamy was accomplished. Every procured abortion is the taking of an innocent human life no matter what the newspeak of the age calls it. It is always and everywhere wrong.

There is an accelerating effort to make homosexual partnerships the equivalent of marriage and use the Police Power of the State to enforce such a restructuring on the rest of civil society. The language of the Anti-Right to Life movement is being deployed. 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 is obvious.

True marriage is the preeminent and the most fundamental of all human social institutions. It is a relationship defined by nature itself 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, when acting properly, 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. In now "redefining" marriage, these renegade Justices and their complicit public officials have imperiled the stability of our society and struck a blow against the common good.

For Judges or legislatures to grant legal equivalency to co-habiting paramours (homosexual or heterosexual) and then confer governmental benefits upon them 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 now, nor has it ever been. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition. To now "confer" the benefits that have been conferred in the past only to stable married couples and families to homosexual paramours is very bad public policy.

Marriage is ontologically between a man and a woman, ordered toward the union of the spouses, open to children and formative of family. The enforcers of a new social 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 the new Cultural Revolution  is a matter of "tolerance" are the most intolerant. They have unveiled their strategy of forcing their brave new world on the rest of us and will allow no dissent. 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 and not what some renegade Court or misguided legislature redefines it to be.

Catholics, other Christians, other people of faith and all people of good will who recognize the vital role that marriage and family serve in the formation of a truly just society must be courageous and persevere. We will be pilloried and persecuted. We must be morally coherent and live a unity of life. Finally, as faithful citizens concerned for the common good we need to consider where candidates stand on marriage and ask whether they will defend it against the new cultural revolutionaries. Then, we must vote accordingly.

With the prospect of a second term looming for President Obama, we all need to wake up. This latest political strategy is one more example of triangulation.  This administration has failed to hear the cry of the poor in the womb. They are the most Anti-Life Administration in US History. They have failed to protect the First Freedom of Religious Freedom. If given four more years, they will dismantle marriage and the family and society founded upon it.

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