WHAT IS MARRIAGE FOR?

Preaching to the converted has its uses, but gay and lesbian advocates didn't move the cause of homosexual marriage from the fringe to the liberal mainstream by speaking only to those who already agreed with them. They made their case in terms that the unconvinced could understand too, and framed their radical proposal as an issue of civil rights and family love. Those are appealing arguments -- especially if they are infrequently rebutted. With so few leaders on the other side making an equally articulate case, it's not surprising that same-sex marriage advanced so far so fast.

Those of us who think this week's revolution is a terrible mistake need to do a much better job of explaining that the core question is not "Why shouldn't any couple in love be able to marry?" but something more essential: "What is marriage for?" We need to convey that the fundamental purpose of marriage is to unite men and women so that any children they may create or adopt will have a mom and a dad.

Marriage expresses a public judgment that every child deserves a mom and a dad. Same-sex marriage, by contrast, says that the sexual and emotional desires of adults count for more than the needs of children. Which message do we want the next generation to receive?

The marriage debate doesn't end this week. Indeed, it may only now be starting in earnest. As Massachusetts goes, so goes the nation? That may depend on whether those who understand what marriage is for, and why its central meaning has endured for millennia, can finally find the words to explain themselves to their countrymen.

Even this collection of articles on same-sex marriage from Baptist Press News doesn't do the job Jeff Jacoby suggests we need. The argument against it needs to be more substantive than merely, 'Here are all the ways religious conservatives will be forced to condone and approve of homosexual behavior.' It is too easy for those confirmed liberals and undecided folks to infer that Christians are perfectly fine with homosexuals as long as they don't have to be too close to them, and can express hatred and derision whenever the mood strikes them. Which unfortunately sounds a lot like white bigots complaining in the 50's about having to share buses and water fountains with blacks.

The reason the civil rights movement succeeded, was that while the opposition held immense power, it had no logical argument to oppose it. Jim Crow laws fell with no rational basis for supporting them. However in the case against homosexuality as natural, God-ordained, and free of negative consequences, there is plenty of evidence. Unfortunately conservative state parties are not currently showing a lot of backbone:

To review this short history is to put to the side the dramatic abuse of power by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and put in the foreground the fecklessness of the political class in Massachusetts, which showed, at every turn, either a want of conviction or a want of nerve. That the legislature would prove bumbling, and too crippled by its own divisions to work out a coherent response, is to say that a plural body reflected the deep divisions of opinion in a liberal state. The deeper failure must go to the man who stood as governor, holding the levers of the executive. And if it is countdown for marriage in Massachusetts, it is countdown also for Mitt Romney, whose political demise may be measured along the scale of moves he could have taken and the record of his receding, step by step, until he finally talked himself into doing nothing, or nothing much.

Against a plural body like a legislature, a single executive could act as force to impart focus and energy. But as the legislators splintered along several lines, Romney preserved a decorous silence in public, while he sought counsel, and mulled over schemes, in private. The range of things he could do in combination with the legislature was considerable — if there was a will to do them....

If Romney recedes yet again, he confirms a rather different sense of his party: that the Republicans are ever more comfortable in talking about taxes but lose their confidence to speak when it comes to addressing the questions of deepest moral consequence, the questions that establish the terms of principle on which we live.

Another quote from the National Review website (we need more THOUGHTFUL conservative polemics, and while there are a few secular examples, there are few explicitly Christian ones!):

The public and communal character of marriage is also eroding. Today, many couples write their own vows and design their own ceremonies, based not on ancient religious rites but on quirky tastes and conditional commitment. Rather than promising to cherish a spouse forever, they pledge to stick around "as long as love lasts." Instead of consenting publicly to the awesome responsibility of raising children together, they offer to — in the words of some real-life couples quoted on a popular wedding website — "laugh with you" or "encourage each other's music and writing."

Such vague sentimentality is not the stuff of lifelong commitment. And it has paved the way for same-sex marriages. After all, if marriage is only a temporary union of people who share a sexual relationship, how can its benefits be denied to homosexual couples or to heterosexual couples who live as if they are married? And if the meaning of marriage is defined exclusively by individual couples, how can its benefits even be confined to those in a sexual relationship? If marriage is truly a private affair, then any couple or group of people could lay claim to its benefits, and it could benefit anyone.

Except, of course, for those whose welfare has always depended on the special support society gives to traditional marriage, those whose interests are so rarely heard above the din of adults clamoring for their rights. Statistics consistently show that children raised by married mothers and fathers are less likely to be poor, less likely to engage in risky behaviors like premarital sex and drug abuse, and more likely to succeed in school.

Perhaps the children of America should flock to our courthouse doors and demand that we start respecting their rights.

Now we've found the heart of the matter. Why do the Biblical commandments exist at all? Are they the effluent of a privileged few religious nincompoops focused on consolidating their own power over society c. 700 B.C., or the very word of the transcendent Creator? It is only the loving parent who erects a fence between his backyard and the street beyond, to give his children a place to play without the threat of injury or death. God's commands share this motivation and effect. If we come along and decide the fence inhibits our freedom and punishes those who wish to venture outside the normal bounds, and call that unjust, we can't complain when cars overrun us without mercy.

All that said, I still maintain that ending abortion and increasing dramatically churches' care and feeding of neglected mothers and children, is an overriding priority. Same-sex marriage is only the symptom of our far larger disease of selfishly beginning and selfishly ending our heterosexual marriages. As long as we all worship our own happiness and perceived self-actualization as the highest good, all other pathologies follow. Yes it's important to demand that our leaders and legislators support the traditional definition of marriage, but that can't get more airtime, more anger, and more action than what we devote to defending children against butchery and neglect, right?