The homosexual lobby claims the majority of Americans favor same-sex marriage and that marriage should be only about love. Even if that were true, favoring homosexual marriage by definition means being “for” anything outside what the Bible calls a sacred union—between one man and one woman.
According to a recent article on Prospect.com by Boston College School of Law professor Kent Greenfield, opponents of same-sex marriage have been right all along. Government approval of same-sex marriage will eventually erode bans on polygamous and incestuous marriages as well. As a matter of constitutional rationale, there is indeed a slippery slope between recognizing same-sex marriages and allowing marriages among more than two people and between consenting adults who are related.
The American Family Association (AFA) is pointing to Greenfield’s article in an effort to call the Republican Party and Christians around the country to act on the issue of same-sex marriage and the culturally poisonous problems that will undoubtedly result before they are the mainstream way of thinking in America.
“We have reached a frightening impasse,” says AFA President Tim Wildmon. “I fear the day just years from now when marriage has absolutely no definition at all. After we water it down more and more until it is meaningless, marriage won’t be anything but a free-will agreement between any two people—or more than two people.
“Since marriage is ultimately about the optimal nurturing environment for vulnerable young children, destabilizing the institution of marriage is a terrible thing to do to America’s children. God gave us the responsibility to protect this sacred union, and we should resist any effort to destroy it. What God has defined, man must not redefine.”
A Law Fund research scholar and author of The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits, Greenfield writes, “Marriage, we’ve said, is about defining one’s own family and consecrating a union based on love. We’ve voiced these arguments in constitutional terms, using claims arising from the doctrines of ‘fundamental rights’ and equal protection. Fundamental-rights analysis says that marriage is for many a crucial element of human flourishing, or as the Court said almost fifty years ago ‘essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness.’ Because it’s so important, government can restrict marriage only by showing a truly compelling justification. The equal protection argument is simply that the marriage right should not be taken away from groups unless the government has good reasons to exclude those groups.”
One way politicians and citizens can act is to support the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment sponsored by Congressman Tim Huelskamp. H.J. RES. 51 is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make marriage legal only between a man and a woman. The amendment states, “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any state, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.”
Protecting traditional marriage is nothing new. More than 150 years ago, the delegates in the 1856 Republican Party Convention made a point to protect the people of the United States from the woes that can result from same-sex marriage.
Documents from the convention state, “This Convention of Delegates, assembled in pursuance of a call addressed to the people of the United States, without regard to past political differences or divisions … do [resolve] that the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the Imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy, and Slavery.”
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