How would "marriage" between homosexuals threaten my heterosexual marriage and family?

MARRIAGE MATTERS

How would “marriage” between homosexuals threaten my heterosexual marriage and family?

“This public debate for same-sex marriage isn’t just about a few different kinds of marriage here or there.  It is about asking every one of us to radically change our own understanding of marriage forever.

If marriage were truly a private affair, which it is not, then same-sex marriage would have little impact on anyone’s family.  But marriage is just as much about the community as it is about the individuals, perhaps even more so.  That’s why marriages are public ceremonies, whether in churches or before civil authorities, and are regulated by laws.  Marriage is a societal agreement.

No marriage is an island.  Every marriage touches the community as a universally human community norm—a rule embraced by society for how we conduct ourselves sexually and domestically, and what we provide for children to meet their developmental needs.  And every society must have a norm for what it expects and what it will not allow. Marriage is that social norm for the family.  As humans, we are all connected and our decisions and actions—both public and private—do affect other people, even if it is indirect and not always evident.  There are no truly private marriages.

            Every healthy marriage proclaims to the community that men and women

• Need and complete each other in their differences
• Should be faithful to one another sexually and emotionally
• Have a duty to look out for each other’s welfare

Share a commitment to bear and cooperatively raise the next generation

Marriage is also a statement to the community that men must commit themselves to one woman, to care for her as selflessly as he can, and support and care for the children that he sires with his wife.  The decline of marriage over the past few decades has reduced the number of men who are helping women raise their children, creating widespread fatherlessness, one of our nation’s most urgent social problems.  Same-sex marriage likely will contribute to this decline, even among heterosexual men.  Won’t lesbian families sent the message to men that fathers are optional and lead men to increasingly see themselves that way?  Gay male families tell us that a man committing himself to one woman is simply one lifestyle choice among many.  So, men committing themselves to women will become increasingly optional.   This is not good for men, and it won’t be good for women or their children.”

Excerpted from 

Marriage on Trial by Glen Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier Intervarsity Press 2004 p. 54-55.