M
mystagogia
Guest
Homosexuals argue for the right to marry on the grounds that marriage is a right denied to them arbitrarily.
But marriage was never a right. It is a “rite”, but it is not a “right”. You, regardless of your sexuality, have no right to be married to anyone at all. Marriage is a privilege. You have to seek a marriage partner, and win acceptance and consent from him/her. Marriage is therefore a ritual, an ordeal or process of sorts. It was never a thing you could demand or expect to happen by rights. Our Savior was very clear on this matter when He said succinctly that marriage was not meant for everybody.
Marriage, being a crucial fundamental building block of the family unit that brings a lot of socially positive benefits along with it, is a privilege promoted by state governments for obvious reasons. A valid complaint from homosexuals is that they are denied state benefits allotted to married couples on the basis of their sexual preferences. This is therefore a fight over privileges and benefits, not rights.
One ironic thing is that at this time in history provides one of the greatest moments of acceptance for the homosexual lifestyle since perhaps the days of ancient Greece, if even then. Domestic partner and civil rights laws and policies have created a situation wherein homosexuals today face any discrimination they encounter today with a range of legal means to combat it effectively. That discrimination is also harder to come by, as millions of homosexuals live freely today in open proclamation of their lifestyle. They are more often publicly acclaimed for their stance today in the West, and their detractors publicly shamed when they can be brought into the light of day. Woe to the policy or to the individual who can be shown to stand athwart the homosexuals’ progress!
A secondary ironic thing is that marriage represents the traditional family form, and this is exactly the thing that homosexuals define themselves by rebelling against. How much ink and effort has been spilled by homosexual leaders and theorists since the 1960’s or so regarding the need to explore alternative lifestyles on the ground that the patriarchal, repressive traditional family model is so wanting? The political anti-tradition aspect of homosexual activism has a long and storied history, straight back to the origins of the phrase so often heard today in other contexts: “The personal is political.”
Look to the work of Stanley Kurtz’ studies of the effects of homosexual marriage in the Scandanavian countries to see quantification of the effects of homosexual marriage on the larger society. The practice of homosexual marriage does seem to have a pronounced effect in eroding marriage as a cultural institution. Upon adoption of homosexual marriage laws, expect to see the marriage rate plummet across the board (even the homosexual marriage rate, after an initial on-rush). A host of problems present themselves. What Kurtz does not and cannot show is that the phenomena are causal rather than correlative. That is to say, is homosexual marriage the cause of marriage’s sudden fall from social graces, or is it a symptom?
But either way the prognosis is not good for the patient society when it has decided to embrace homosexual marriage. Expect weakened families, lower marriage rates, higher births out of wedlock, and a number of social factors formerly considered to be pathologies.
What to think of it all? We know where the Church stands. It’s a hard place to stand in many ways, culturally. But she did not get there by accident, or caprice, or blind adherence to old ways. But rather by a particular means.
But marriage was never a right. It is a “rite”, but it is not a “right”. You, regardless of your sexuality, have no right to be married to anyone at all. Marriage is a privilege. You have to seek a marriage partner, and win acceptance and consent from him/her. Marriage is therefore a ritual, an ordeal or process of sorts. It was never a thing you could demand or expect to happen by rights. Our Savior was very clear on this matter when He said succinctly that marriage was not meant for everybody.
Marriage, being a crucial fundamental building block of the family unit that brings a lot of socially positive benefits along with it, is a privilege promoted by state governments for obvious reasons. A valid complaint from homosexuals is that they are denied state benefits allotted to married couples on the basis of their sexual preferences. This is therefore a fight over privileges and benefits, not rights.
One ironic thing is that at this time in history provides one of the greatest moments of acceptance for the homosexual lifestyle since perhaps the days of ancient Greece, if even then. Domestic partner and civil rights laws and policies have created a situation wherein homosexuals today face any discrimination they encounter today with a range of legal means to combat it effectively. That discrimination is also harder to come by, as millions of homosexuals live freely today in open proclamation of their lifestyle. They are more often publicly acclaimed for their stance today in the West, and their detractors publicly shamed when they can be brought into the light of day. Woe to the policy or to the individual who can be shown to stand athwart the homosexuals’ progress!
A secondary ironic thing is that marriage represents the traditional family form, and this is exactly the thing that homosexuals define themselves by rebelling against. How much ink and effort has been spilled by homosexual leaders and theorists since the 1960’s or so regarding the need to explore alternative lifestyles on the ground that the patriarchal, repressive traditional family model is so wanting? The political anti-tradition aspect of homosexual activism has a long and storied history, straight back to the origins of the phrase so often heard today in other contexts: “The personal is political.”
Look to the work of Stanley Kurtz’ studies of the effects of homosexual marriage in the Scandanavian countries to see quantification of the effects of homosexual marriage on the larger society. The practice of homosexual marriage does seem to have a pronounced effect in eroding marriage as a cultural institution. Upon adoption of homosexual marriage laws, expect to see the marriage rate plummet across the board (even the homosexual marriage rate, after an initial on-rush). A host of problems present themselves. What Kurtz does not and cannot show is that the phenomena are causal rather than correlative. That is to say, is homosexual marriage the cause of marriage’s sudden fall from social graces, or is it a symptom?
But either way the prognosis is not good for the patient society when it has decided to embrace homosexual marriage. Expect weakened families, lower marriage rates, higher births out of wedlock, and a number of social factors formerly considered to be pathologies.
What to think of it all? We know where the Church stands. It’s a hard place to stand in many ways, culturally. But she did not get there by accident, or caprice, or blind adherence to old ways. But rather by a particular means.
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