Gay unions Traditional view of marriage being challenged by culture By Alan F.H. Wisdom Volume 34, Number 1 Posted January 24, 2001 Law must rest upon “the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.” U.S. Supreme Court, Murphy v. Ramsey, 1885 The phrases above were quite unremarkable when first set down. It was taken for granted that the marriage-based family was the building block of civilization and that society had a special interest in encouraging strong marriages. There were no differences on this point between statesmen and churchmen, or between the various denominations of Christians. All would affirm the wisdom of the Biblical injunction: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled; for God will judge the immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4). Today, suddenly, these phrases have become controversial. They slam squarely against the growing movement to abolish all moral and legal distinctions between marriage and other kinds of “committed” sexual relationships. Those other relationships are given various names: “holy unions,” “same-sex unions,” “civil unions” and “domestic partnerships.” Sometimes a semantic difference is allowed to persist provisionally, with the word “marriage” still reserved for the lifelong union of a man and a woman. But strenuous efforts are being made to eliminate as many practical differences as possible between marriage and other sexual relationships. Vermont decision This revolutionary cultural change has been nurtured quietly for years in law review articles, “alternative” church liturgies and some (not all) circles of the homosexual community. Now, it has burst upon the public scene. In Vermont, a 1999 court decision ordered the legislature to erase all practical distinctions between marriage and homosexual relationships. Now, “civil unions” – treated as marriages in every possible way – are on the books in one state of the Union. Because the Presbyterian Church (USA) is a “mainline” denomination, this movement has inevitably found its way into our church. The failed 1991 human sexuality report proposed that “justice-love” should displace marriage as the standard of Christian sexual morality. At the 2000 General Assembly, the philosophy of sexual leveling found expression in two unsuccessful overtures, which proposed to treat marriage as merely one among many sexual relationships that the church might bless. The General Assembly’s Permanent Judicial Commission decision in the Hudson River case (May 2000) would allow this movement to proceed unchecked. “Same-sex unions” could be celebrated in every way as weddings, as long as the word “marriage” was not used. Amendment O, on the other hand, would uphold the privileged status of marriage in the denomination, rejecting “same-sex unions” as a false imitation. Liberal assumptions The liberal assumptions behind arguments favoring same-sex marriages already have penetrated deeply into the minds of many denominational decision-makers. Conservatives may quote Bible verses condemning sodomy and fornication; however, large segments of our religious elites no longer regard the Bible as authoritative in the Church. And they certainly do not believe that Christians should “impose” Biblical principles upon others. Conservatives may warn that endorsing “gay marriage” will be divisive, and they may quote polls showing roughly 70 percent of lay people opposed to it. But liberals will respond by claiming the high moral ground, saying that they are standing on principles of justice for the sexual outcasts of our society. The moderate majority knows that any defense of traditional marriage will be met with a harsh misconstrual of motives. Anyone who exalts the one man-one woman model of marriage will be tagged as a “bigot,” a “homophobe,” a “Pharisee” obsessed with imposing “narrow religious doctrines” upon the supposedly free-thinking majority. Stakes are high Yet, the debate must be engaged. The stakes are too high to ignore the questions that have been raised: What is marriage? And why does it deserve society’s special favor? The Church and our Western democratic tradition have developed some good answers to these weighty questions: Marriage is not merely a personal choice. It is an institution, among others, established by God for the benefit of humankind. Marriage is not defined by the state. Nor is it defined by the Church. It is defined, instead, by God’s purpose in the creation when he formed man and woman and brought them together as “one flesh.” As an institution, marriage has its rules. Among the rules are that it should unite a man and a woman, that it should be freely and deliberately chosen, that it should be exclusive and monogamous, and that it should be a total and permanent commitment. There is no other human relationship that is the equivalent of marriage and, therefore, no other relationship should be treated as if it were the equivalent of marriage. Marriage is a mystery of how “the two become one flesh.” That mystery necessarily involves the leap across the great divide between the two sexes, male and female, which God created for each other. It is misguided to see socially-approved sex as some kind of “human right” owed to all people. Alan F.H. Wisdom is vice president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington D.C.

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