Marriage Equality

Gary DeMar of American Vision, a Christian Reconstructionist group, is out with two new columns attacking Hillary Clinton and Rob Portman for endorsing marriage equality. Yesterday, DeMar warned that marriage rights for same-sex couples would eventually mean that parents would have no legal recourse to stop pedophiles from molesting their children.

Is Hillary saying that full citizenship requires that people be able to marry anybody they want?

Does this mean that a father can marry his 17-year-old daughter or son? Will laws prohibiting incestuous marriages be considered a violation of a person’s full and equal citizenship rights?

Maybe not now, but who can say what will be permitted in 10 or 20 years?

I’m sure that people who have jumped ship to embrace pro-homosexual marriage have not thought through the consequences of their decisions, especially young people who are almost always in an affirming mood. The day will come when they will have children, and there won’t be a thing they will be able to do to stop predators from taking advantage of their children because “it will be against the law to discriminate.”

In a Saturday column DeMar called homosexuality a “grave evil” and a “bad moral choice,” and went on to compare supporting a gay son to helping a son who is a pedophile, drug dealer, murderer or slave-owner.

Are there no longer any moral standards? If Senator Rob Portman’s son wants to live and love another man, no one’s stopping him. But to overthrow the moral order of the universe by having the State sanction homosexuality is a grave evil.

No one is denied love. I love all kinds of people, but it’s a moral evil to believe that love necessitates sexual relations. Once you go down this road, there’s no way to stop.

Would Senator Rob Portman throw his support behind pedophilia if he had learned that his son was a pedophile? There are young pedophiles out there. Would he support adultery if his son was an adulterer? Would he support slavery if he found out that one of his relatives was a slave owner and argued persuasively that owning slaves was legitimate? Would the Senator Rob Portman support his son if he learned that he was selling drugs to children? Would he support contract killing if he learned that his son was a contract killer for the mob?

Senator Rob Portman’s son has made a bad moral choice. There is no need to compound that bad moral choice by capitulating to it and softening the moral barriers for young men and women who are struggling with their sexuality and helping to pass laws that will affect millions of people.

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As parents, we set standards for our children to live by. When our children rebelled against those standards when they were growing up with us, there were supposed to be consequences. It did not matter how our children felt when they did something wrong. Beating up the neighbor kid because “I felt like it” or “I couldn’t help myself” were not proper moral responses.

Last week, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman announced that, inspired by his son’s coming out, he now supports marriage equality. Religious Right activists are, of course, responding with a characteristic lack of tact and grace.

Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber, for example, denounced Portman for trying to “accommodate his son’s abhorrent lifestyle.”

“... Perhaps [the senator’s] love for his son has deceived him in not being able to differentiate between loving his son and helping his son to do the right thing, versus changing his entire worldview and his view of the natural institution of legitimate marriage in order to accommodate his son's abhorrent lifestyle,” says Barber.

Portman told reporters his previous views on marriage were rooted in his Methodist faith and his change of heart came because of "the Bible's overarching themes of love and compassion." Barber challenges that interpretation.

“This provides us a perfect example of the danger of looking at things through the jaundiced prism of our own feelings rather than on objective truths,” says the Liberty Counsel attorney.

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah wondered how Portman would respond if his son came out as a serial killer:

I’ve heard some wacky excuses by politicians for changing their minds on some of the most important moral issues facing American, but Ohio Sen. Rob Portman’s rationale for flip-flopping on same-sex marriage takes the proverbial wedding cake.

In case you haven’t heard, his son is a homosexual.

“I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married,” Portman wrote in a commentary published Friday in the Columbus Dispatch.

I guess we should all be grateful Rob Portman’s son didn’t choose to become a polygamist or a serial killer.

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People like Todd Akin and Steve King don’t represent a threat to the future of the Republican Party. People like Rob Portman and Karl Rove represent a clear and present danger to its future.

What they are pushing is not liberty, it is licentiousness. What they are pushing is not morality, it is moral relativism. What they are pushing is not the kind of virtue and personal responsibility that makes self-government possible, it is the kind of pop-culture immorality that makes self-government impossible.

Ohio-based activist Linda Harvey, president of Mission America, lamented Portman’s decision to support his “rebellious” son’s “disorder” and “delusion”:

It’s not that I can’t empathize with the position his son has put him in. Every parent hopes never to face a rebellious child. But Portman has decided not to call this rebellion. Whether it was pressure from his wife or some kind of ultimatum by his son, Portman now issues editorial statements that ring with “gay marriage” advocacy. What a slam on Ohio families!

He opines about “civil marriage rights” as if they don’t exist now. These unions will be a stabilizing force bringing “renewed strength” to the institution, he thinks – but Portman is either woefully uninformed or deliberately ignores the mounting evidence against these lifestyles and the political militancy they are unleashing . There is no excuse for a sitting senator to jump on board a movement that viciously targets challengers, forces indoctrination of children in taxpayer- funded schools and bullies the corporate culture as well as the Boy Scouts into bowing before its altar of deviance.

And it’s so unnecessary. Every person out there who claims a “gay” identity has the ability to get married in Ohio or anywhere else now. He or she can marry someone of the opposite sex, because that’s what marriage is and because a “gay” identity is a delusion. Two men, no matter how sincere they feel, or two women, will never be a marriage. The person who believes this disorder is “who he is,” as apparently Portman’s son does, has tragically internalized a lie.

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The deception of the culture is easy to accommodate if your principles are weak at the core. Homosexual feelings may seem unchosen, but we do have a choice about what fantasies and desires we nurture and feed. And we always have a choice about public identity and behavior.

His son needs to hear the hope of change and the stories of the thousands of former homosexuals in this country. But his father is apparently not going to tell him. How sad!

Anti-gay activists have started hurling attacks against Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) for reversing his opposition to marriage equality after his son came out as gay.

Phil Burress of the Religious Right group Citizens for Community Values, which is based in Ohio, told the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow that Portman is a “a very troubled man right now” and is “distraught over what’s happening with his son.”

Burress added that Portman had assured him that he won’t help any campaign to repeal Ohio’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage despite his new position: “Rob did tell me that he would not campaign for the same-sex marriage issue if it got on the ballot in Ohio. He would not be their spokesman or participate in their campaign.”

Phil Burress is chairman of the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values Action Political Action Committee. He says Portman, who is a personal friend, talked with him Thursday night.

"I just have a feeling that his son was pushing him into this for political reasons,” Burress tells American Family News. “But Rob did tell me that he would not campaign for the same-sex marriage issue if it got on the ballot in Ohio. He would not be their spokesman or participate in their campaign."

But Burress says Portman's comments on CNN seemed to contradict what the senator told him.

"Now I'm seeing some of his remarks that he gave the news last night about repealing DOMA, and it seems contrary to what he told me [in our conversation] last night,” says the traditional values advocate. “So I think he's a very troubled man right now. I think he's distraught over what's happening with his son."

Burress now wonders if Portman can be trusted on the pro-life issue as well. “If he had a daughter and she became pregnant, would he change his position on abortion, too?” he asks. “Because he told me last night that [he had not] changed his position on abortion or any other issue. You don’t change your mind on principled positions.”

And Burress says his political action committee cannot support Portman in light of his new position. "CCV has what we call non-negotiable issues; if you're wrong on any of these issues, we cannot support you for public office – and two of those issues are abortion and same-sex marriage,” he explains. “So therefore Rob cannot receive our endorsement for his next election."

If the Family Research Council gets its way, evangelical Christians all across America will hear their pastor deliver a sermon written by an FRC official condemning homosexuality and the advance of marriage equality this weekend or next.  On March 26 and 27 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in cases involving California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and this week FRC emailed pastors urging them to hold a “Stand for Marriage Sunday” before then, providing links to a sermon and full-color bulletin insert recapping its main points.

The 4300-word suggested sermon and accompanying power point presentation start with the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton and march through every Religious Right talking point on homosexuality, marriage equality, and the Satanic, anti-Christian, Nazi-like gay rights movement that is inviting the downfall of civilization. Here are the section heads and some highlights:

Section 1: The Divine Pattern

The sermon says God created men and women to complete each other, and actually includes, “Aren’t you glad God created Adam and Eve, and not just Adam and Steve?” It quotes James Dobson saying “More than ten thousand studies have concluded that kids do best when they are raised by mothers and fathers.” And it asserts that in both the Old and New Testaments, “one man and one woman in a marriage covenant relationship for life is the divine pattern.” (The sermon does not address the abundant inconvenient exceptions to one-man, one-woman marriage in the Bible.)

After reviewing all the ways marriage makes people, couples, and children happier, the section concludes:

God’s way works! Think about it. Every civilization in history is built upon the institution of marriage. It is the foundation. The happiness of couples, the welfare of children, the propagation of the faith, the wellbeing of society, and the orderliness of civilization are all dependent upon the stability of marriage according to the divine pattern. When this God-given pattern is undermined, the whole superstructure of society becomes unstable. Any deviation from the divine pattern invites disaster.

Section 2: The Deceptive Perversion

According to the sermon, homosexuality is a deceptive perversion, a sin that is “open rebellion against the divine pattern.” It cites the familiar “abomination” verses and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Section 3: The Definitive Problem

This section compares gay-rights advocates’ claims that people are born Gay or that “God made us gay” to Nazi propaganda. “They essentially practice Joseph Goebel’s Nazi philosophy of propaganda, which is basically this: Tell a lie long enough and loud enough and eventually most mindless Americans will believe it.” The sermon also compares homosexuality to other “sexual sins” such as promiscuity, adultery and pedophilia. “I do not believe,” it says, “that God would not place in your genetic code something that would damn your immortal soul.” [sic on the double negative]

Section 4: The Destructive Program

This section recounts the dangers of the “radical homosexual agenda,” its goal of “silencing critics in the clergy and Christian media,” and its conquest of the entertainment, educational, and legal arenas, citing a litany of familiar Religious Right horror stories about the alleged persecution of Christians who stand against the merciless gay rights steamroller.  And it pushes one of the primary talking points of Religious Right leaders and their conservative Catholic allies: that equality and religious liberty are fundamentally incompatible:

Where homosexual activists win legal approval, whether by court action or legislation, they often deny our full rights as Christians because a homosexual’s so-called “civil rights” and a Christian’s freedom of conscience and speech opposing homosexuality are mutually exclusive.

“Listen,” the sermon warns, “homosexual activists won’t stop at recognition, their aim is domination. They will not stop until they win over our children and our convicting voice is silenced.”

Section 5: The Determined Plan

These are the action steps FRC wants people hearing the sermon to take:

Action Step 1: Pray

The sermon calls on people to pray for spiritual revival and for “God’s mercy on a nation that is speeding toward Sodom, and hurtling toward Gomorrah.”

Action Step 2: Practice

This section says Christians give up their credibility to challenge the culture when their divorce rate is the same as everyone else’s, and urges people to follow biblical instructions on marriage and home life.

Action Step 3: Participate

This section is a direct rebuke to people who think politics are of the world, something Christians should stay out of. “Since God created the institution of government, would He want His people to stay out of it? No. If Christians don’t ‘render to Caesar’ (Matt. 22:21) and don’t function as ‘salt’ and ‘light’ (Matt. 5:13-16) in the arena of government, then we disobey the commands of Christ and allow Satan to prevail by default.”  The sermon urges people to write blog posts, use Facebook and Twitter, comment on news stories, knock on doors, contact elected officials, and join the March for Marriage being organized by the National Organization for Marriage and its allies in Washington DC on March 26.

Action Step 4: Proclaim

This section urges people to tell those in the “homosexual lifestyle” that they do not have to remain “slaves to sin” but can pray away the gay.

Let’s stand along these poor misguided and lost people trapped in Satan’s snare. Let’s love them out of that sinful and destructive lifestyle! ... But let’s also exercise our rights as Christian citizens! Listen, we can make the difference. Together, Christians all across America can protect and preserve marriage for our children and our children’s children. Let’s stand for God’s plan for marriage because our future depends on it. And all of God’s people said: Amen!

During the debate over the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, Religious Right groups like the American Family Association warned that the law would “criminalize negative comments concerning homosexuality” and “take away our religious freedoms.”

Of course, none of that happened, but that hasn’t stopped anti-gay activists from making the exact same false claims again and hoping more people will fall for it.

Yesterday, AFA president Tim Wildmon appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show and alleged that if the Supreme Court overturned Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) then we will see “persecution against Christians” and restrictions on the freedom of speech.

Wildmon: You’re headed down the road of persecution against Christians who believe in the Bible as their standard for moral behavior. In Canada now they have different rules there where you can’t even criminalize the lifestyle itself or you’ll be charged with a hate crime. You know that’s the road we’re headed down if these laws, if DOMA is struck down, if Prop 8 is struck down, then you’re headed for control of speech, even if it’s religious speech.

Ironically, the AFA’s own legal counsel, Pat Vaughn, admitted that “the Defense of Marriage Act is probably unconstitutional.”

Harry Jackson is out with a column today accusing gay rights supporters of seeking “to hijack not only the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement, but also the legal arguments which liberated minorities from centuries of legalized oppression and discrimination.” He specifically takes issue with the fact that marriage equality supporters cite the Fourteenth Amendment and Loving v. Virginia, which found anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional.

Jackson explains that same-sex couples don’t have a right to marry because “‘marriage’ means what it has always meant in America: the union of one man and one woman,” and cites a Nevada ruling which argued that marriage laws aren’t discriminatory because a gay person has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex.

Ironically, those two arguments were exactly those used by supporters of laws banning interracial marriage.

Peggy Pascoe in “What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America” writes that up until the 1960s white society and the white-dominated legal system “believe[d] that the interracial marriage was unnatural” and “assumed that the marriage of one White man to one White woman was the only kind of marriage worthy of the name.”

Not only did they not consider interracial marriage to be a “marriage,” but they also argued that anti-miscegenation laws were not discriminatory because they applied to people of every race and did not target one race in particular.

Despite this history about marriage laws, Jackson concludes his column by insisting that “the notion that homosexuals are being denied equal protection under the law becomes absurd.”

From the very beginning, homosexual “marriage” activists have sought to hijack not only the moral authority of the Civil Rights Movement, but also the legal arguments which liberated minorities from centuries of legalized oppression and discrimination.

After decades of aggressive activism, the common sense understanding of marriage has become almost hopelessly mired in incomprehensible legal terminology. It becomes difficult for everyday observers to navigate the convoluted logic homosexual activists employ as they attempt to remake one of civilization’s oldest institutions. The argument that redefining marriage to include homosexual couples is only “fair” rests on a specious interpretation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The clause reads as follows:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As most of us know, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted just before the end of the Civil War in response to the Black Codes of the South. The Black Codes were various state laws which, among other things, prevented blacks from owning property and imposed harsher penalties for crimes on blacks than on whites. The Fourteenth Amendment clarified that these laws were unconstitutional, and that the government was obligated to protect the rights of all citizens equally.

So what about the “right” to marry? Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) activists argue that the state is abridging their privileges, often citing Chief Justice Earl Warren’s words in Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 decision that overturned state bans on interracial marriage: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

I agree with Justice Warren that marriage is a central ingredient in the pursuit of happiness. I disagree with LGBT activists about what “marriage” is. And it is very hard to have a reasonable or productive discussion when the two sides cannot agree on the definition of a central term. You and I may agree that it should be legal to walk a dog in a particular public park. But you may think that the term “dog” includes only domesticated members of the Canis lupus familiaris species, and I may think that the term “dog” can include large gray wolves. You may argue that “dog” should be defined by the laws and traditions that have governed dog ownership for generations, and I may feel that such an approach in unfair to people who want to walk wolves in the park. The point is that we cannot get anywhere until we agree on what a “dog” is.

Homosexuals are not being denied “marriage” rights any more than wolf enthusiasts are being denied dog-ownership rights. Last November, a federal appeals court in Nevada pointed out homosexuals are not, in fact, being denied the right to marry, as the term “marriage” has been long understood. A lesbian couple had sued the state, seeking to overturn Nevada’s ban on gay marriage under the Fourteenth Amendment. Wrote Judge Robert Jones:

Like heterosexual persons, they [homosexuals] may not marry members of the same sex. A homosexual man may marry anyone a heterosexual man may marry, and a homosexual woman may marry anyone a heterosexual woman may marry.

Judge Jones went on to point out that homosexuals have little cause to identify with historically oppressed minorities in the United States, observing that, “Homosexuals have not historically been denied the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, or the right to own property.” Judge Jones starts with the assumption, as we all should, that “marriage” means what it has always meant in America: the union of one man and one woman. If we begin with that reality, the notion that homosexuals are being denied equal protection under the law becomes absurd.

The fervently anti-gay writer Frank Turek takes to Townhall today to present an interesting analogy. Turke argues that when gays and lesbians advocate for marriage equality, they are being just as unreasonable as someone who “can’t qualify to become a police officer” protesting “when the government pays other people to be police officers.” He goes on to say that gays and lesbians can “simply marry someone of the opposite sex” and that the legalization of same-sex marriage will harm children and cause Americans to “lose the freedom of speech.”

Of course, the argument that gays and lesbians already have marriage equality because they could just marry a person of a different gender was the same claim made by supporters of anti-miscegenation laws who asserted that interracial marriage was unnatural and that people already have the same right to marry someone of their race.

Here’s why promoting natural marriage exclusively does not deny anyone equal rights.

First, everyone has the same equal right to marry a qualified person of the opposite sex. That law treats every man and woman equally, but not every behavior they may desire equally. Same sex marriage and natural marriage are different behaviors with different outcomes, so the law rightfully treats them differently. One behavior perpetuates and stabilizes society, and the other doesn’t. Promoting one behavior does not deny rights to people who don’t engage in that behavior.

An analogy may help clarify this point. Like marriage, the government promotes police work by paying people to become police officers because police do much good for society. But if you can’t qualify to become a police officer, or if you choose another vocation, your rights are not being violated when the government pays other people to be police officers. All people, regardless of their vocation, experience the benefits of police, just like all people, regardless of their marriage status, experience the benefits of natural marriage.

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Some will ignore those biological realities and object, “But men and women are the same so there’s no difference between homosexual and heterosexual relationships!” If that were true, no one would be arguing for same-sex marriage. The very fact people demand same-sex marriage is precisely because they know men and women are drastically different. If men and women were the same, no one would be spending time and energy trying to get same-sex marriage approved. They would simply marry someone of the opposite sex—which according to them is the same as someone of the same sex—and be done with it.

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Now, I am not suggesting that a law would fully achieve either, but only to point out that natural and same-sex marriage should not be legally or culturally equated. The truth is homosexual and heterosexual relationships are not the same, can never be the same, and will never yield the same benefits to individuals or society. We hurt everyone, especially children, by pretending otherwise.

Finally, as jurisdictions with same-sex marriage show us, people lose their freedoms of speech, association, religion and even parenting due to the imposition of same-sex marriage. In Massachusetts, for example, parents now have no right to even know when their kids as young as kindergarten are being taught about homosexuality, much less opt out of it; business owners must now provide benefits to same-sex couples, and they can be fined for declining to provide services at homosexual weddings; Catholic charities were forced to close and leave Massachusetts and Washington D.C. because both governments mandated that all adoption agencies had to provide children to homosexuals. So much for freedom of religion! And in Canada, same-sex marriage has led to such a chilling restriction on speech, that my speech here today could get me fined or jailed if given there.

To sum up, the government already permits homosexual relationships, but promoting them by equating them with married heterosexual relationships ignores the facts of nature, the needs of children and the health of society. While people with different sexual attractions are equal, not all behaviors are equally beneficial. True equality treats equal behaviors equally. It doesn’t demand that different behaviors be treated the same.

Don Feder of the World Congress of Families today harshly criticized the increasing number of Republicans who favor legalizing same-sex marriage, which he said would turn the GOP into “the Party of Gross Stupidity.”

Feder warns that gay rights advocates like President Obama is leading Americans “from the bath houses and fern bars to the broad sunlit plains of spouse-#1 and spouse-#2 marriage licenses” as part of “the sexual-equality death march, which ends with the demise of Judeo-Christian morality.”

While some Republicans are laboring diligently to expand the Democratic base with amnesty, others are working with equal fervor to shrink the GOP base by betraying the religious right on marriage. Not for nothing are they called the Party of Gross Stupidity.

The ads also have President Obama cautioning us, "Our journey (to the promised land of gender-neutral bathrooms) is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like everyone else under the law." Fearless Leader has a remarkable talent for self-parody. (He will lead them from the bath houses and fern bars to the broad sunlit plains of spouse-#1 and spouse-#2 marriage licenses.)

"Gay marriage" itself is merely a milepost on the sexual-equality death march, which ends with the demise of Judeo-Christian morality.

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The foregoing all flow logically from societal embrace of gay rights and marriage mutation. Once a sledgehammer is taken to the foundation, why should any norms stand?

Just as there’s always been same-sex attraction, there have always been blood relatives who’ve violated the injunctions of Leviticus, men who wanted harems, adults with an unhealthy attraction to children, fetishists, sadomasochists and Michael Jackson. Erotic attraction can get as messy as the human psyche.

Civilization depends on taming self-destructive sexual urges, which do great damage to the social fabric. The continuation of the species, and the proper upbringing of the next generation, is based on men marrying women, who will remain true to each other and raise their children with loving discipline.

To sanctify any other arrangement by calling it a marriage is stupid.

The Family Research Council has launched what it is describing as “an ambitious, no-holds-barred campaign to keep marriage as between one man and one woman and preserve the American family.”  FRC is worried about two cases before the Supreme Court that will have “a lasting impact on the very soul of our nation” -- one on California’s Prop 8 and one on the federal Defense of Marriage Act. 

In a direct-mail piece dated on Valentine’s Day, FRC President Tony Perkins says it is important to get members of Congress “to pressure the Supreme Court to come down on the right side of marriage.” Recipients of the letter are encouraged to sign petitions to their representative and senators to urge them to “PRESSURE THE SUPREME COURT TO RULE IN FAVOR OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE!”

The text of the petition:

[Representative/Senator], as one of your constituents, I ask that you please use your influence to urge the Supreme Court to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act and state statutes banning same-sex “marriage.” The covenant marriage relationship between one man and one woman is a universally accepted social tradition that transcends all cultures and predates any religion. It is essential for procreation and the stability of society. I respectfully request that you do all in your power to urge the Court to uphold traditional marriage. Thank you for your service to our country.

The letter also recycles some of the same false claims that FRC and its allies made about federal hate crimes legislation, suggesting the advance of marriage equality will lead to the federal government dictating what pastors can preach about homosexuality or prosecuting those who preach against same-sex marriage.  Perkins also claims – falsely  – that the “vast majority of Americans do not want to see marriage redefined” and “the vast majority of voters are against the legitimization of same-sex ‘marriage.’” Actually, a majority of Americans supports marriage equality, according to recent polls by Gallup, Wall Street Journal/NBC, Washington Post/ABC, and CBS News.

But what difference do facts make to Tony Perkins? He says that if the Supreme Court were to support marriage equality, it would be “siding with an extreme minority and defying the will of the majority.” That’s why, he says, “the justices need to know up front that this majority will be anything but ‘silent.’”

FRC’s new “Marriage Preservation Initiative” is, of course, not the first effort to recognize, in Perkins’ words, that, “[d]espite the fact that Supreme Court justices have a reputation for being independent, they, too, are political and can be influenced by public pressure.” Back in 2010, after a district court ruling that Prop 8 was unconstitutional, the late Chuck Colson launched his own campaign to convince the justices that a pro-marriage-equality ruling would lead to “cultural Armageddon.”