MARRIAGE IN SCANDINAVIA

Yes, the acceptance of same-sex marriage, alongside other changes in values, kills marriage in a society.

Data from European demographers and statistical bureaus show that a majority of children in Sweden and Norway are now born out of wedlock, as are 60 percent of first-born children in Denmark. In socially liberal districts of Norway, where the idea of same-sex registered partnerships is widely accepted, marriage itself has almost entirely disappeared.

Certainly Scandinavia's system of registered partnerships is not the only cause of marital decline. Factors like contraception, abortion, women in the work force, individualism, secularism, and the welfare state are also at work. These factors are weakening marriage throughout the West. Yet scholars note that many family changes that eventually sweep the West show up first in Scandinavia, probably because of Scandinavia's unusually large welfare state and its notably strong secularism.

So no, having lesbian couples call their relationship a marriage and having the state recognize it legally, doesn't affect me directly. The root of the problem is the tearing apart of marriage, sex, and parenthood into three separated compartments. We want to be able to dabble in only one or any combination of the three as long as it suits us, and we want to be able to drop out of them with no hassles or consequences. Of course homosexuals aren't the cause of all this -- it is all of society slowly accepting more and more sexual garbage into our daily lives, and gradually distancing ourselves from God's design for the family.

Thank God for his forgiveness and mercy towards us, me included, for our casual throwing away of his precepts.