MARRIAGE MATTERS

Julie Lynde Cornerstone Family Council

What’s the big deal?

In the great debate over marriage, confusion reigns over the key question to be answered. The heated rhetoric to which we have all been subjected in one way or another inevitably goes to the personal, private reasons for marrying.  Those reasons for which people enter into marriage may be as diverse as the people themselves. Although understandable, these diverse, personal reasons to marry do not answer the question of why a society as a whole should honor marriage. The key question in the marriage debate is this, “ what is the public purpose of marriage?”

In his “reader’s view” in the March 30, 2004 edition of the Idaho Statesman, ACLU attorney Jack vanValkenburgh indicated that in the world of public opinion in this race to solidify the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman; time was on his side.  Jack is right.  Pop culture, the press, and the media, are engaged in an all out assault on our notion and sensibilities toward traditional marriage.  As time goes on, more political authority figures will engage in anarchy, embolden homosexual activists to thumb their noses at law and tradition.  As their numbers mount, so will confusion…and the desensitization will continue.

Like the blissfully unaware frog whose hospitable pool of water slowly heats to the deadly boiling point, it’ll be too late to salvage our culture if we don’t recognize the changes being imposed on our cultural environment.  In our affections for our homosexual friends, we will become mired in the muddy rationale of personal reasoning and miss the larger point of the societal impact of marriage.

We need to know.  We need to be aware of what it is that makes marriage special and why it should be privileged in public policy. 

The PUBLIC purpose of marriage is nothing short of life and death for a civilization.

It is not bigotry to say marriage should be between a man and a woman.

It is not discrimination to say a child needs a mom and a dad.

“We all know that men and women are necessary for the family and that no child should intentionally be denied her mother or father in order to fulfill adult desires.  That is why we cannot accept the same-sex family.  It serves no public purpose.”  Glenn Stanton  October 2004 Focus on the Family