Civilization Values, Part VIII: Marriage

This is the final part in the series on the values requisite for civilization. For the first seven parts, here are the links.

·         Part I: Life

·         Part II: Truth

·         Part III: Property Ownership

·         Part IV: God and Freedom of Religion

·         Part V: Civilizing Religion

·         Part VI: Repenting as a Civilization

·         Part VII: FamilyPerpetuates Civilization 

If we start with the values of honoring God, life, truth, and property ownership, family is how we teach and pass along those values. So we need to value family as well. The term “family values” has been tossed around for several decades, but for our purposes we need a more specific definition of what it means to value family. What is family?

As we’ve said, family is the basic unit of civilization. An individual is a unit even smaller, but it isn’t a unit of civilization—because society by definition requires at least two people to associate with one another. And civilization is a particular—good—kind of society. The fundamental relationship leading to civilization and its perpetuation, then, is family. We talked in Part VII about how well family does that.

Today we’ll talk about the relationship that founds a family.

This is not to say that individuals, unmarried people, grandparents helping raise children, foster care situations, and various other-than-the-ideal family structures don’t contribute. If the individuals in these other situations lead intentionally civilized lives, they do contribute to civilization. But the essential relationship—because it means a mother and a father raising their children to be civilized for the next generation—is a married man and woman. And what is essential for this relationship is complete fidelity and permanence.

There’s huge societal upheaval today trying to declare that other relationships are as deserving. But if any other relationship is designed not to produce children, does not require complete fidelity, and is not permanent, it does not offer society what marriage provides.

The section on marriage and fidelity in the Spherical Model website article “Family Is the Basic Unit of Civilization” is long. There’s a large section on why sex outside of marriage is always uncivilized. If there’s something our current society needs to learn, it is that. So here’s a portion of that.

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Sex Outside of Marriage Is Always Wrong

This is such a simple concept, and so many problems would be settled if people would believe it. It’s an essential of civilization. Every time a society attempts to “progress” or “evolve” beyond the old-fashioned notion of virtue, it slides into decay. Every time. This decay happens so frequently and is currently so widespread that the need for virtue must not still be self-evident. So we might as well spell out the reasons.

Human Children Take Time and Consistency to Bring to Adulthood

image from here

Human children grow slowly. It takes close upon two decades to get them from birth to functioning on their own, capable of supporting themselves, reproducing, and raising a civilized next generation. It requires consistency and care from someone with a stake in the child’s success. It takes a pair of parents, providing both male and female role models and ways of nurturing.

The best (really, the only) way to plan for children to be raised by the same two (one male, one female) parents throughout their growing up life is for those two parents to be permanently bonded to each other. To be married. (See Why Marriage Matters.[i]) Marriage isn’t as ephemeral as just a declaration of love between two lovers; it is a commitment to each other and to the entire society that they will stay together for life. This commitment establishes a family, the most basic unit of civilization. There isn’t any way to break up a family that doesn’t harm civilization. Therefore, there isn’t any possible way for sex outside of marriage to be acceptable behavior without harming civilization. Without the attitude of its sacredness, it is impossible to maintain virtue (chastity). And without virtue, families are always harmed.

Look, for instance, at what happens when two young people, believing they are in love, give in to sex. They have just admitted to each other that they value their own desires over the needs of the society they live in. They are both lessened for that selfishness. But what if they recognize that, though what they did was wrong, they could marry and move on? Yes, they could alter their course—what religious societies call repentance, change their thoughts and actions for the future. And if it is true that they love each other, they could go forward making a happy home, with very little harm to society. So, while society wouldn’t condone the mistake, it can easily forgive.

What if the couple decides not to marry? What if they realize they were just young and foolish, and gave in to selfish desires? They could stop, and go their separate ways. Again, it would be possible to repent—change their thoughts and actions for the future—without society being very much degraded for their temporary lapse. Because society never approved. Nor did they require society to grant approval. They realigned themselves with civilization’s requirements following their lapse.

What if a pregnancy resulted from their foolish episode? If they have any hope that they actually can love each other, then they can marry quickly, because forming a family in which to raise their offspring is the highest priority (a much higher priority than the honor of a big wedding celebrated by all their friends). Even if they’re too young to know how to establish and maintain a healthy family, the society around them—their parents, their church, their friends, counselors—can give them guidance and assistance as they finish maturing. It makes the beginning of their family more difficult than a more reasoned, more mature decision, but with effort and help they can succeed in sustaining, rather than degrading, civilization. So, again, while society doesn’t condone the sex outside of marriage, it can forgive without being decayed.

If the couple find themselves in the very sad situation of being pregnant while also realizing they are incompatible, then, again, the highest priority is the need for a family for the child. There can be no civilized focus other than that child whom their behavior brought to life. A child needs, and is entitled to, a loving two-parent family. The two young people should do everything within their power to make sure the child gets this entitlement. This is a much greater concern than whether they themselves love the child and want to be near him/her.

[Note: I am not advocating here that some distant government entity step in and make these difficult decisions and insist that the child be adopted out. I am advising that, for the sake of society, the child’s welfare must be of greater importance than what the foolish accidental parents may want. There should be pressure from society—again, from their family, their church, their friends and mentors—to help these young people see society’s need for them to value the child. Societal pressure and expectation, even shame, coming from a truly civilized society, is much more likely to bring about the best choices following mistakes than rigidly written laws could do. But laws should make it possible for society to be supported in the pressure.]

Let’s assume that, if these two people are at all susceptible to civilizing influence, then they want for their child what every child is entitled to. If they themselves cannot provide the child’s family, then adoption is the most likely way to provide it. The least that can be expected from the young mother is to bring the child to term and then give the baby to a loving two-parent family, being willing to grieve at her own loss of the child because the child gains so much. That’s a lot to expect of an immature young woman, but civilization requires that it be expected.

The young man absolutely should be held accountable. (This has historically been a major failing of many attempts at civilization.) Society should decide how. My personal belief is that, if marrying the young mother was not what he could do, then he should, for the next 18 years at least, provide support, possibly a trust for the child’s college or other needs, taken out of everything he earns until that child is an adult. This should be done even though the adopting family is expected to be able to provide; it is necessary for the sake of civilization that the young man be held responsible. And the young biological father should have no expectation of visitation; he gave up that right by giving up the opportunity to be the father in a marriage with the mother. Sexual indiscretion does not entitle a male to being honored as a father; he has to actually be one, in partnership with the mother, to earn that. Individual communities may find other solutions, but civilization requires that the father be held accountable for his actions.

Adoption should never be seen as the mother not loving the child enough. It should be seen as the positive, probable, expected course for such a situation—without prolonged stigma to the mother, and certainly without stigma to the child. As long as both biological parents provide for the child’s needs, society can forgive without civilization being decayed.

Adoption family, image from here

I believe that, in a truly civilized society, there will never be insufficient families willing to adopt. Children are too highly valued, and fertility problems come up frequently in nature. [Note: Undervaluing children and celebrating or causing infertility to avoid inconveniencing adults who choose to be sexually active without forming a family are two signs of a decaying society. The documentary Demographic Winter is a good source.[ii]] But, hypothetically, if the young mother were unable to place her baby in an adopting family, she could, if her parents stepped in to assist, raise the child at home. This is, self-evidently, less valuable to civilization. There’s a child without both parents, and the mother’s choices caused that to happen. So her folly can never be condoned. But it can be forgiven, because civilization, no matter how far advanced, is made up of imperfect human beings. The way society sees the situation is what affects whether society is decayed by it. And if this type of situation were rare (which it would tend to be if there were serious stigma against it), then society could absorb the difficulty for the individual child. While maintaining that adoption should be the usual choice, I believe civilized society can allow the young mother to get her own answer through prayer about whether she should keep her child.

There’s more. I’ve written more about this issue than just about any other. Refer to “Defense of Marriage Collection,” from July 2013. http://sphericalmodel.blogspot.com/2013/07/defense-of-marriage-collection.html  I’ve now written six more years of posts. Many of these appear to relate to LGBT issues, but to me this is always about defending real marriage in an effort to build civilization and repair its decay. Here are a few additional posts I believe are worth checking out:

·         Family Proclaiming, April 9, 2015

·         Millennia of Marriage, May 7, 2015

·         Another Nail, February 20, 2017

·         Surprise at Old News, August 10, 2017

·         Family Isn’t Extinct, October 12, 2017

·         Normalizing Has Already Gone Too Far, August 2, 2018

·         Stop Throwing Out the Baby, May 23, 2019

That’s it for this series on civilization values. In summary, civilization requires that we value God, life, family, truth, and property ownership—which, coincidentally, summarizes the Ten Commandments. It’s been good guidance for a very long time, and it works every time it’s tried. Simple, not easy, but worth trying from the family level on up.

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[i] Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-one Conclusions from the Social Sciences, © 2002 Institute for American Values.

[ii] Demographic Winter, video available at www.demographicwinter.com. See also the follow-up, Demographic Bomb.

Family Isn't Extinct

I’ve been watching a new sci-fi series on BYU-TV called Extinct. One of the creators is Orson Scott Card, who wrote Ender’s Game, it’s sequels, and many other sci-fi fiction books and series. Even with those high expectations, I’m surprised at the quality of this show. I don’t know how they do it out of a college campus media program.

It was introduced October 1^st, with two opening episodes. But BYU-TV did something I’m really appreciating. Besides showing one episode a week for the next month and a half, followed by a season finale, they put the first eight episodes online right away, for streaming at your convenience.

So I binge-watched that first week, up through episode 5. And then I decided to slow down, because I didn’t want to have a huge gap between those eight episodes and the finale. Anyway, I recommend the series, if you like sci-fi at all.

There was a moment in episode 5, “Broken,” that I want to highlight.

The premise of the show is that aliens came and wiped out the human race 400 years ago. But those aliens or others (not sure) recorded the DNA and memories of a number of the humans, and then they try to have the human race repopulate centuries later.

The humans wake up, one at a time, in a lake, with their memories from their previous life intact. They are at the age of their prime (mid-20s to mid-30s), regardless of the age at which they died. One character, Abram, was a psychologist near retirement age in his previous life.

I don’t want to give away too many surprises, but Abram has been trying to decode messages from a mysterious obelisk in their fortress, where there used to be a settlement. Rummaging around the place, he finds a notebook with shorthand notes—in a type of shorthand he invented for himself, back when he was a therapist. So it’s not possible that someone else wrote that notebook; he had been there before, trying to decode those very same things.

In episode 5, we get a flashback of the old Abram visiting his wife, Tasha, in the hospital before she dies. Then we see the new, younger Abram, in the fortress, talking with the drone (a floating metal robot about the size of a basketball) as he’s looking for something. If you watch the full episode, this two-minute clip comes at 18 minutes in.

Embed:

Here’s the dialogue from the essential part:

Drone: Looking for something?

Abram: My notebook proves that I was here before. Maybe there’s proof Tasha was too.

Drone: What makes you think your wife may have been reborn?

Abram: Ezra and Lynn. Feena and Duncan. There’s a pattern of restoring couples.

Drone: I’d hardly call four people a reliable statistical sample.

Abram: Not statistics. Sociology. If you want to start a community and generate offspring, you need strong, monogamous relationships.

Drone: You don’t need monogamy to create offspring.

Abram: No, but you need it to create stable families. And you won’t have much of a civilization without those.

This isn’t the only time Orson Scott Card has his characters mention how important family is. I wrote about one place here.

The alien attack, when these Extinct people’s original bodies died, was approximately our day. It’s interesting that it’s an older character who understands, both intuitively and scientifically, the importance of family for building civilization, because in our day, especially among younger generations, that’s not always common knowledge.

For example, there’s this guy whose presentation came up through Mindvalley (a self-help organization, providing information on things as diverse as meditation, healthy eating, breaking through mental blocks, how the brain works, and other informative and sometimes weird things) on Facebook. The guy, Dan Savage, does a longer presentation called “The 3 things we get wrong about love, sex, and monogamy.” I apologize for the bleeped profanity; the subject itself is profane, but in the two-and-a-half-minute promo video [https://www.facebook.com/mindvalley/  October 4, 2017], Savage says,

Every monogamous relationship is a disaster waiting to happen. If you are with someone for 50 or 60 years, and you cheated on them one time, you are terrible at monogamy. It’s an impossible standard of perfection, and it’s why we all fail at it. Those who attempt it almost all fail at it. Those who attempt it almost all fail at it.

And we tell people, and people believe, that if someone touches someone else, someone who’s committed to you, made a monogamous commitment to you, touches someone else with their genitals even once, they didn’t love you. They never loved you. That your entire relationship was a lie, and your…the only corrective is divorce. You must leave that person. We define it as an unforgivable betrayal, and then we experience it as an unforgivable betrayal.

And we sit around with our thumbs in our a—s wondering why the divorce rate is as high as it is, when what we should be telling people is that you will grow up, you will fall in love. Perhaps if monogamy is right for you or what you think you want—a lot of people think they want it and actually don’t—you will make a monogamous commitment. And, asterisk, that doesn’t mean because you’re in love, you’re not going to want to f— other people. You’re still going to want to f— other people; so does your spouse. What monogamy means is you will refrain from f—ing other people, hopefully.

And if you make it through 50 years, and they cheated once or twice, and you cheated once or twice, you were good at mono… you get a monogamy gold medal, like the snowboarder who fell down that day. You should have a monogamy gold medal around your neck, not a noose around your neck.

I’ve been with my husband for 23-ish, 24-ish years, I can’t remember, but a long time. And for 18 of the last years, we have been non-monogamous. I have had conversations with people in monogamous… who are appalled by the fact that we’re public about it, that I’ve talked about it, the fact that we’re parents and we’ve talked about it publicly, and this is how these conversations have gone. I’ve had people look at me and say to me, “I could never do what you and Terry have done, because I value commitment and loyalty too highly.” And I look at them like…  I don’t say anything, but I’m thinking, “You don’t think I’m…  What?”  And the next thing out of the m—f—‘s mouth is, “All three of my marriages have been monogamous.” And I’m like, “Oh, what you’re committed to and loyal to is monogamy, not these a—s you keep marrying and divorcing, but monogamy.” We are committed and loyal to monogamy to such an extent that we are not committed and disloyal to the people we’ve married.

Let’s unpack this, because he’s making a living telling quite a number of untruths.

He’s not in an actual marriage; he’s in a same-sex relationship that cannot produce children (yet they got children from someone who did produce children). He says he’s married, but this doesn’t include the essential sexual relationship that leads to reproduction. And it does not include exclusivity as a marriage contract requires. He calls what he has a non-monogamous committed marriage. And the problem, he says, on his authority, is that the rest of the world thinks marriage should require monogamy.

He claims that nearly all marriages include infidelity, because fidelity is an impossible standard. That is, he thinks it’s hard, and therefore you should give up on the very idea. The social science shows that essentially all long-term same-sex relationships include infidelity—more so for gay men and for lesbians. So if he’s going by his limited experience, that’s about right. But their numbers don’t reflect what is normal for heterosexuals.

Among real marriages—between men and women, married for life, with exclusivity, or in other words monogamous—well beyond half, 70% or more continue without divorce. Of those, 78% of men are never unfaithful, and 86% of women are never unfaithful. Compared to the numbers for gays, those statistics are a sharp night-day contrast.

Heterosexual marriages that face infidelity are severely strained. Often they end in divorce. But where the straying spouse is repentant and willing to do whatever it takes to make amends—and this often takes professional counseling for both spouses—there is no requirement that the marriage ends. Savage is saying the goal is no divorce, which you get if you are willing to stay in a marriage with unrepentant infidelity. He’s not clear on the concept if he thinks that makes for a better actual marriage.

I’m raising an eyebrow at his casual reference to sex, like it’s a typo. If the person committed to you “touches someone else with their genitals even once,” like that could so easily happen. It doesn’t happen accidentally; we don’t walk around in public places with those body parts uncovered, where they could just accidentally bump into someone else’s. No, it happens when you make a number of decisions, a number of steps toward having sex with a person. If that’s with a person you are not committed to, then you did indeed commit betrayal. You lied. Maybe you thought you loved your partner, but apparently not enough to control your lust.

This guy holds himself up as an expert when he has no idea what an actual marriage is like. He doesn’t know that huge numbers of people are happy in their marriages—the vast majority of them with total fidelity. It means something when sex is an expression of love in marriage. It means something else entirely when sex is just about self-gratification within or without a relationship. It matters. Because when it’s about self-gratification, it isn’t an expression of love.

People are happier when sex is an expression of love. And that love grows when the two committed parents bring children into their forever family. Maybe, just maybe, God knew how we were most likely to be happy when he required us to limit sex to within marriage.

Because that’s the only way you get civilization. Without civilization we have savagery. There’s been plenty of that in the news this week. Consider: would it be better for us to slake our lusts wherever and whenever we want—so that whatever Harvey Weinstein and others like him do, we just shrug our shoulders and give them a pass? We don’t even think it’s wrong?

Weinstein’s defense? “Everybody makes mistakes.” Not big, felonious ones. Not dozens or hundreds of times. Not endlessly until caught and finally held accountable.

Who is happier when no one considers sex under any conditions wrong? Not those he has used.

Family--with a man and woman married and faithful, raising their children--is still necessary for civilization.

SCOTUS on Marriage Part III: Outcomes of the Cases

Part I is on Definitions, Part II is on Arguments. Today's Part III is on Possible Outcomes

I have a poor record for predicting what the courts will do; I like to think positively, and believe all will work out. But after last year’s tortured ruling on Obamacare, all bets are off. I can’t predict. The oral arguments are almost certainly after the fact of the justices making their individual decision. They have already begun drafting their opinions. So all I can do is summarize the issues.

The two cases both deal with the definition of marriage, but ask different specific questions of law. The Prop 8 case is about whether the people of a state have a right to decide to keep the definition of marriage it has always had, or will have a redefinition forced on them by judges. The decision might avoid an actual decision by deciding the defenders of Prop 8 have no standing, which is a catch 22 situation. The people used the initiative process to override state-imposed changes against their will. Then the state refused to defend the people’s vote against the judges who overruled the people. To say no one but the state has standing leaves us asking, who can be the advocate of the people against the state?

Photo credit: npr.org

If the case is thrown out, it will only affect the state of California, with all the real issues still up in the air. But it also means the people have no recourse against a tyrannical state. Still, I think it’s unlikely the Supreme Court will use this case to announce a new unwritten “right” to same-sex “marriage.”

The DOMA case is about whether defending the long-standing definition of marriage is constitutional. The main question here is, when/how did the millennia-old definition of marriage become unconstitutional? A “right,” by definition, means God granted it, and it is just a matter of the state being prevented from infringing on that right.

If the court decides there is a right to marry (to be granted all legal and society honors) based on having a sexual relationship of one’s choice, why would it be constitutional to refuse to grant those same marriage honors to people who want to marry more than one at a time, or someone who is a close relative, or someone not alive, or someone nonhuman, or someone not of age? That is the slippery slope argument. The only defense to it is, “There is no slippery slope. We’re not talking about that; we’re only talking about the rights of same-sex couples.” And if you refuse to look at the argument, you submit yourself to being surprised by the slippery slope, which logically follows.

The argument against DOMA in the 90s was that it wasn’t necessary, because no one was even considering threatening the definition of marriage. Today’s arguments are equally disingenuous. Taking fidelity, permanence, and family establishment out of the definition of marriage, and pretending it has always been just a love thing, just honoring two people who have chosen to have an emotional connection for the time being, does not benefit society, and it certainly doesn’t leave marriage and family unharmed.

The DOMA decision hinges on rationality. Is there a rational reason to define marriage as it has always been defined if that prevents some people from enjoying the benefits of marriage? The threshold is actually quite low; if a single rational person can be found to have a single logical reason, then it is not irrational to uphold the law. The other side has to prove that there is no rationale for preventing marriage benefits from being extended to people who don’t currently meet the requirements for marriage.

It should be an easy decision, because family, fidelity, and permanence are all outcomes of the marriage contract that have an extraordinarily long history of benefit. In order to rule against DOMA, a very few states get deemed “rational” while the majority of people in the vast majority of states are deemed unreasonable—and bigoted hatemongers to boot.

But in political bodies (and the Supreme Court is unfortunately political, against design), simple facts get obscured behind other motivations. The opposition to the defense of marriage have enlisted a willing media in framing the argument as a civil right to marry—leaving out a great many details: homosexuals are free to (and frequently do) marry a person of the opposite sex like everyone else; there is no guarantee to anyone of marrying the “person of their choice” if the person they choose is already married or is a close relative, or is someone who doesn’t consent to marry them, or is someone below the age of consent or is mentally incapable of giving consent, and various other limitations.

I don’t think the cases available provide the possibility that the Supreme Court can come out with a declaration that marriage must be defined as it always has been not only by the federal government but also in all the states. I think upholding DOMA would only affect definitions within federal law, which leaves things the way they are now, with the possibility that individual states can define marriage differently in contracts within their states.

This is still problematic, because of the “full faith and credit clause.” Generally, contracts made in one state are upheld within the other US states. If you get married in Idaho, you don’t have to get remarried if you visit or move to Virginia. But, in the case of marriage, if a state grants all the rights and title of marriage to a same-sex couple, and that couple moves to a state that doesn’t recognize that change in the definition of marriage, would that second state be forced to recognize the contract? Thirty-one states have foreseen this scenario and have protected themselves, beyond statute, by declaring the long-standing definition of marriage in their state constitutions. Which makes it a question of sovereignty, so that a single state doesn’t hold power without representation over the people of all the other states.

Can same-sex couples move to these states and sue for recognition of their contract? Yes, and that does seem to be a strategy. Because of the deeply held beliefs—the strong rationale for marriage—it would seem reasonable for such couples to either stay where they have a recognized contract or assume that their contract is not binding. But instead of accepting that limitation for themselves, they press for all of society to change. So far, however, no case has made it through the lower courts to the point where a test case could reach the Supreme Court.

My hope for the Supreme Court is that they are swayed by the awareness that Roe v. Wade was not only bad law, it interfered with the state-by-state working out of a divisive issue. The court, I believe, will try to prevent such intrusion for now. I think they are likely to seek some middle-of-the-road still indecisive decision.

On Prop 8 I hope they will find in favor of the people’s law, but whichever way it goes, they are likely to clarify that the decision is only pertaining to the people of California and their initiative process.

On DOMA, I think they should uphold, because to do otherwise would be very disruptive to contract law and would be the most intrusive decision. Even if I’m wrong, I think they will try to find a way to prevent the decision from being a declaration of a new “civil right” for anyone to marry anyone of their choice.

As with Obamacare, we’re trying to predict the minds of Kennedy and Roberts. Kennedy tends to look consistently at civil rights fairness, so it’s hard to know whether he will succumb to the drumbeat argument of the opposition or consider the full meaning of the marriage contract. He is an unknown.

Rumor over the weekend was that Justice Roberts has a lesbian cousin who was sitting in his section during the hearing. I assume that report is intended to cause us to believe that merely having a cousin with an assumed opinion is enough to change the chief justice’s opinion on what the Constitution says. I hope that isn’t so, but I offer no guarantees. Roberts went way out of his way on Obamacare not to strike down the law. It seemed so out of character that people have speculated conspiracy theories, that the administration holds some piece of evidence (even if it’s something untrue and manufactured) over him as a threat, so he must not cross them. Maybe so, but it could be that he just personally seeks to avoid acting in a declarative way.

At any rate, it is unfortunate that the future of civilization is on a knife edge, at the mercy of nine unelected political appointees, two-thirds of whom are more likely to work toward their desired outcome rather than declare what the Constitution says. (May Thomas, Alito, and Scalia live long and healthy lives!)

On an ironic side note, on Sunday, March 24, about 300,000 protestors marched on the capital of France, in defiance of a bill sponsored by their president that would allow same-sex “marriage,” which has already passed the lower parliament. Even the people of France, where sex outside of marriage has been considered a cultural norm for centuries, are standing up against the imposition of the homosexual agenda.

SCOTUS on Marriage, Part II: The Gotcha Question

The SCOTUS heard oral arguments concerning the definition of marriage Tuesday and Wednesday of this week: Tuesday on California’s Prop 8 and Wednesday on the federal DOMA law. This is part II of my commentary on the discussion. On Wednesday, in Part I, I wrote on a couple of basic definitions. Today I’m looking at the Gotcha question, plus the “Voice of the Children” argument. It’s going to take a third post, coming Monday, to deal with the possible outcomes of the court cases.

The Gotcha Question

Here’s the Gotcha question: “How does a same-sex ‘marriage’ harm your heterosexual marriage?” The assumption is that there is no harm, so there is no answer. But there is harm, even if it isn’t blatantly obvious to the casual onlooker.

The current definition of marriage is a particular contract, binding the parties of the contract with the promise of fidelity, permanence, and protection of family. To change the definition removes those promises from even existing contracts.

Procreation: Separating the marriage contract from the act leading to procreation means nullifying and changing the contract so that there is no particular interest in family. This is important because, without interest in family, there’s pretty much no societal benefit from the contract that the state has an interest in. All benefits of marriage go to couples without the couples giving anything of value to society.

Fidelity: The change in contract also removes the promise of fidelity, because unfaithfulness in a same-sex relationship has no effect on the vulnerability of offspring and parents, in competition with a possible usurper of those protections. (Same-sex partners, incidentally, tend to be unfaithful at rates nearing 100%.) I had the promise of fidelity from my mate when I made the contract; if the court changes the definitions within the contract, it takes away from me this contractual promise.

Permanence: The establishment of permanent family in the original contract is also made vulnerable; since there is no dependent spouse or child produced by procreation within the marriage, there is no assumption of harm when a relationship ends. That is why government has had no interest in automatically sorting out division of property when same-sex couples part (which they do, historically, at rates approaching 100%). Similarly, government stays out when co-habiting unmarried heterosexual couples split.

So the change in definition means the new contract has no promise of fidelity, permanence, or family. How does that play out?

Suppose a father of several children, married to a woman for more than a decade, decides he prefers a different woman, and he ends the contract. The wife, who sacrificed considerably—health, career, energy, time, personal wealth—to procreation and raising the children, is left unprotected. She has no promise of alimony to make up for her sacrifice; she has no promise of custody if she doesn’t have as many resources as the father. She is told all can be taken from her, because there was no expectation of fidelity, permanence, or family in the original contract (even though she entered the contract with those promises expected).

Does the change in definition mean this woman’s relationship with her spouse will end in this disaster? No. But is the loss of protection from this threat real? Yes. She has been harmed.

Suppose a woman is married to a man for more than a decade, producing several children, but she has been unfaithful multiple times. She may be uncertain of the fatherhood of each of the children, or she may know the spouse is not the father. She gets the tax and insurance benefits plus honor of society nevertheless, simply because she continues having a sexual relationship with the spouse, but because there is no expectation of fidelity, the man has no right to expect that any children born to the woman were his offspring. Why marry in the first place, if he doesn’t even have that promise? And if he has no expectation of father-child relationship to the woman’s offspring, can there be an expectation that he provide for them? The man has been harmed by the change in contract, and so have the children.

No longer is it a contract requiring fidelity, permanence, and protections to family. It is now a contract implying only an announcement that two people choose to have some sort of sexual relationship, not necessarily exclusive, not necessarily permanent, and no interest in producing or protecting children—but the contract nevertheless requires society and government to give advantages and honors to the couple simply for their declaration of “love.”

Same-sex “marriage” makes it a different contract than it was. Courts will treat it as a different contract in all 1100+ laws relating to the contract. Laws surrounding marriage—property division, child custody, alimony, etc. will change, because the purpose of marriage and the state’s interest in it will have changed. Parents even lose the values attached to being a mother or father; those get substituted with neutral meaningless terms like “parent 1” or “caregiver.” Those who already have the original contract lose its meaning, and couples marrying in the future have no way to make the contract that heretofore has been available.

Voice of the Children Argument

One of the relatively new arguments voiced last Tuesday will probably be referred to as the “Voice of the Children” argument. The estimated thousands of children living with same-sex parents want their parents to have the same respect that married heterosexual parents have. This is interesting. Adults put children in the position of a family without a married mother and father, and then accuse, “How can you be so unfair to our children?” Instead of solving the problem by avoiding putting children in this deficient situation, they tell society it must accept the problem situation as equivalent to ideal as if that would solve the problem. Or, in other words, let’s decide to pretend it isn’t a problem, so that no one has to suffer the problem.

The question ought to be, what are children entitled to? They are entitled to being raised in a family with married mother and father; society should do all within its power to encourage that situation for each child. Wherever that isn’t possible, the situation for the child will be statistically likely to be deficient, and society will have to somehow use its social and economic capital to make up the deficiency as well as it can.

If society were actually interested in what is best for the child, then the child would be placed within a traditional family for adoption. But that is not being considered by anyone as an option, particularly for children born biologically to one of the same-sex parents. We as a society allow a great deal of freedom among individuals to make mistakes and choose their own way of dealing with them. While in past generations most children born to unwed mothers were voluntarily put up for adoption, today many more unwed mothers (above 90%) keep the child, thus depriving the child of a parent (also making adoption much more difficult for couples wishing to adopt, but that’s a discussion for another day). Many similar problems arise from divorce as well. We don’t take children away from divorcing parents to put them in other two-parent homes; the idea is abhorrent, even to the strongest defenders of the natural family.

With that option off the table, then society must simply spend its social capital tolerating the fact that some children will be raised without a mother and a father.

No matter how much the children are saying, “We don’t want our family to be seen as less ideal than families with a mother and father,” society can’t change facts. We sympathize for any child missing a father or mother, but we can’t magically say, “We’ll just say your situation doesn’t miss a father or mother, and then you won’t feel like you’re missing out.” When children demand, “I want! I want! I want!” sometimes the grown-up has to say, “I’m sorry, but that’s not something you can have.”

"Tolerance"--You Keep Using that Word...

Back in 2008, a week after the election that included Proposition 8 in California, I wrote a response to a post on an online group; it was a political offshoot of a rather large homeschool group, so that inflammatory conversations would not show up where people are just looking for homeschool information. 

The post I responded to was saying we should mark the anniversary of Matthew Shepherd’s death, and if someone wants to do that, I don’t have a problem. I do have a problem with insisting homosexuals exemplify our collective guilt alongside “slavery, women voting, separation of races”; “We simply must stop wasting our energy trying to legislate people out of existence.” Really? We have ever legislated anyone out of existence, and homosexuals are included in this apparently vast group?   

He added, “As long as the majority of the citizens of this country are willing to legislate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people there will be people that will take it upon themselves to feel it is their duty to harm these people physically.” Really? Protecting the institution of marriage, which is the basic unit of civilization, causes people to go out and beat up homosexuals? This person not only doesn’t understand evidence, he doesn’t care about it.  

“Dennis,” who always signed his posts with “peace,” did respond to my post, point-by-point accusing me of being a bigoted, uninformed homophobe, simply because I hold the opposite view of his, which he defines as good—but without actually responding to the data with any evidence of his own. That is what we face. So my response isn’t to him; it is to give words to those who know somehow his accusations are wrong but don’t have the data and words to defend themselves. (The political group eventually became unused and irrelevant, but Dennis continued on the regular homeschool group until a few months back, when he started a flame war that was so offensive to so many that he was removed from the group—all the while signing “peace.”)

__________________________________

November 13, 2008

Linda Nuttall

You are assuming, Dennis, that homosexuals are “a people” in the same sense that races are “a people,” a group that is alike because of innate qualities. But there is a huge difference between genetics determining the level of melanin in the skin and the choice to act on various urges. The law is equal toward homosexuals: they can marry someone of the opposite sex, who is not a close relative, who is not already married to another, who is old enough to consent to the contract, who is a human being—the same requirements for marriage that are required of heterosexuals. What they want is a special privilege just for them. They want a new definition of marriage—honor for being in a temporary non-exclusive sexual relationship that cannot produce offspring and offers no benefit to society. Traditional marriage is defined as a permanent contract between a man and a woman requiring exclusivity and faithfulness, designed to protect any offspring by guaranteeing the child will be raised by his/her two parents of separate sexes—clearly a benefit to society. Even when it doesn’t always work out, encouraging it is society’s duty. There must be a preponderance of success to avoid societal decay. 

Marriage pre-dates every state; the state didn’t invent marriage, and therefore cannot simply un-invent or re-invent it into something else. The state can only decide under which conditions to grant a license showing how and when the state will honor the bond. What “same-sex marriage” does is eliminate respect for traditional marriage; it encourages honor for a behavior that deserves no honor, and in essence prevents society from honoring what is in society’s best interest.  

Everywhere “same-sex marriage” has been enforced, it has seriously increased the incidence of out-of-wedlock childbirth and then child abandonment in society as a whole, because it separates the connection between marriage and a commitment to children. Everywhere it has been enforced, people with religious beliefs that disagree have been persecuted and prosecuted for their beliefs. Everywhere it has been enforced, parents have been deprived of the right to decide when and how homosexual relationships will be taught to their children. 

This week the people who claim to be asking for “tolerance” demonstrated their refusal to give it. Yesterday Scott Eckern lost his post as Artistic Director of the California Music Theater, driven out after 25 years, because he voted “Yes” on Proposition 8 (along with more than half of California voters) and gave a $1000 donation to support that cause. According to the Sacramento Bee, “when Tony Award-winner Marc Shaiman, the composer of ‘Hairspray,’ read of Eckern’s donation last week, he urged artists and theater workers across the country to boycott the theater.” He wrote “that he wouldn’t allow his work to be done at California Musical Theater, and theater workers across the country have followed his lead… 

“Susan Egan, star of ‘Thoroughly Modern Millie’ and ‘Cabaret,’ followed with a similar email. Theater professionals flooded CMT’s offices over the weekend with phone calls and emails decrying Eckern’s actions.” What was his action that was so egregious that he should be driven from his profession? Supporting an idea these “tolerance”-seekers disagreed with. 

There was an unauthorized demonstration against a Latter-day Saint temple in Los Angeles two days after the vote last week, requiring LAPD, along with SWAT teams, to protect private property, just because it was owned by a religion that strongly supports traditional marriage—along with the majority of voters, and a wide coalition of churches and demographic groups. The Church has always made it clear that it is important to love and support homosexuals and never attack or hate; but it is also a right and responsibility to stand up for traditional marriage, which is the basic unit of civilization. These beliefs are not tolerated by opponents, who ironically shriek obscenities at their opponents while saying they are only asking for tolerance. 

It might interest you to know that homosexual-on-homosexual violence is so prevalent that a majority of homosexuals experience it, and yet almost nothing is being done to prevent it. Heterosexual-on-homosexual violence as a hate crime (because of prejudice) is so rare that barely a handful of cases can be found annually, and they are prosecuted as they should be. 

If the sacrifice you’re asking from heterosexuals is to re-create the world so we have to raise our children without an understanding of the importance of sexual purity before marriage and complete fidelity within marriage, and have the laws of the country denounce what we would like to teach them—if that is the sacrifice you are asking us to make, I’m not willing.  

At some point it would be nice if the people asking us for tolerance would be willing to experiment: total purity before marriage and complete fidelity after. They’ve been unable and unwilling to do it anywhere they’ve had the opportunity. Doesn’t look to me like they’re willing to make even a small sacrifice of personal self-control. 

You’re asking us to allow a religious belief—that sex outside of a committed marriage, and particularly unnatural sexual behaviors that cannot produce offspring, should be honored as God-approved—you’re asking that this religious belief be forced down our throats, against our will. It is no wonder that people who value marriage and family have stood up in heavy majorities in 30 states to pass state constitutional amendments, and to pass legislation defining marriage in an additional 14 states, to prevent activist judges from forcing this religious belief upon us. 

I recognize that people disagree on the issue. But I am willing to allow the majority to be allowed to say what they believe in a free society, rather than have it forced on them by unelected judges.

Controversy Still

The article below is the most controversial of the protecting marriage articles I wrote back in 2004 or so. This one was included as a post on, I believe, NewsMax, by columnist Steve Farrell, dated 10-21-2004. However, it is archived here.  I did not write it with any intention to offend, only to bring clarity to the arguments for protecting marriage. I think most of these things are even more unspeakable today, even though the points remain true. The original footnotes are included for support and additional commentary. I’m not certain, however, that links in the footnotes are still live.

Let me note something about a main point, that homosexual relationships are virtually always unfaithful: nearly all of us know some gay couples that we believe are faithful. It is difficult to believe they are not. As noted in the references, no scientific measures have been able to identify through sociological study any faithfulness beyond five years; most split up within 18 months. And those who remain together simply redefine "fidelity" to mean something emotionally imaginary but physically irrelevant. After multiple failed efforts to scientifically document fidelity among homosexuals (particularly male homosexuals, but females as well), scientific studies simply ceased.

The Gay Marriage Fantasy

By Linda Nuttall

October 21, 2004 

The following fairy tale is to make a point.

♦♦♦♦♦

Once upon a time there was a handsome young man with high hopes for his future. As he neared the end of his college education, he met and fell in love—with the person he had always dreamed of spending the rest of his life with. They had both kept themselves pure so that when they met, they could commit to each other and then consummate their relationship, knowing that special gift was only for that one special person. 

They were both male, so marriage in the traditional sense was not an option. However, they had several choices for making their commitment. They could make it privately, between the two of them, perhaps with a few close friends and family. They could join a religious community that encouraged them to make their commitment. Or they could go to a place where the laws included their type of relationship in its legal definition of marriage. 

After considering alternatives, and wanting to be truly committed in every way, they moved to The Netherlands. There they lived separately while they established residency, but spent good relationship-building time together after work and on weekends. At the appropriate time they invited friends and family and had a small wedding. 

Eventually they moved back to their home in Middle America. Even though they weren’t afforded the same governmental financial advantages of other married couples, they knew they were committed solely to each other, and that was what was important. 

In time they wanted to start raising a family. They found themselves unable to conceive as a couple, so they turned to adoption. Adoption is always a difficult process, and their case was no exception. But they found that about a third of adoption agencies welcomed their kind of couple as parents. Eventually they were allowed to adopt a baby boy. One of them opted to stay home to raise this child for several years, a choice they never regretted. 

The boy grew and gave them great joy. He was as normal as any other children, even though he was adopted and didn’t physically resemble his two dads. As a youth he kept their family values:  save yourself for that one true relationship, whoever it might be, and then stay together forever. 

They lived a long and happy life. The End.

♦♦♦♦♦ 

Yes, it’s a fairy tale. It’s fantasy. It has never happened. Not in the thousands of years of human history that homosexuality has existed. 

But change the couple in the story to a young man and a young woman, and suddenly it seems almost typical. Looking for and finding the one permanent relationship is not the story of every heterosexual couple; it’s getting more rare, with the media trying to convince us it’s impossible. But it is in fact the true experience for a high percentage of traditional marriages, and has been so for thousands of years in hundreds of cultures.  

It was true for me. It was true for most of my high school friends—all with our marriages intact at the time of our 20^th reunion. In my experience, raised in a religious community during the 60s and 70s, the “fairy tale” was the rule. When mistakes were made, when divorces happened, those were considered tragedies felt deeply by the individual sufferers and those who cared about them. They were rare. 

The “fairy tale” my friends and I experienced had an additional joy. We bore children. Usually several. Even those few of us who had to resort to adoption took great joy in raising the next generation of children, and passing along the values that gave us what often seems like a very blessed life. For heterosexuals the “fairy tale” can be real because it is the natural, traditional way to form families. 

Homosexual couples can’t live the ideal. It’s not that they lack the ability to remain committed because society has not granted them the honor of marriage; society has not granted them the honor because they lack the ability to stay committed. They lack fidelity—apparently in 100% of relationships.^[i]      

Other people have been left without the legal recourse of marriage. That happened to a number of slaves prior to Emancipation in this very country. They responded by appointing their own community leaders and granting them authority to perform ceremonies to tie couples together^[ii]—because that is the natural way for families to form, and no man-made law could stop them from forming their families with a commitment. 

If homosexuals were capable of living a life as heterosexuals except with that single gender preference difference, it would not be impossible to find an example. 

Another reason society has not recognized homosexuality as just another family form is  that homosexuals lack the ability to form a family. They cannot procreate—without exception. Society didn’t cause this discrimination; nature did. A mother and father, staying together to raise a child to adulthood, is not only the natural family form, but the best way of blessing the lives of children, women, and men.^[iii]  Society has a stake in encouraging this form as much as possible. 

Homosexuality is not a natural equivalent alternative. It is, in every way, a perversion—unnatural and unhealthy.^[iv]  The gay marriage issue is not a question of rights vs. discrimination. It is a question of supporting what is not only natural but most beneficial for society (the natural family) vs. encouraging what is logically a behavioral aberration that should be treated rather than honored.^[v]  

If society makes the mistake of pretending homosexual relationships are equivalent to marriage, then society says that it does not value procreation, parenting, commitment, or fidelity—behaviors civilization has depended on for its perpetuation.^[vi]  And if those things are not part of marriage, then that diminishes marriage to nothing more than honoring, with governmental perquisites, anyone who has a current sexual partner.  

Does honoring homosexual relationships with the title and benefits of marriage harm heterosexual marriage? Yes. It nullifies the very purpose of marriage. It takes away the option of real marriage for everyone.

---

[i] Consider, for example, the research of McWhirter and Mattison. They interviewed 156 male couples and concluded that in these relationships "fidelity is not defined in terms of sexual behavior, but rather by their emotional commitment to one another" (The Male Couple; David P. McWhirter, M.D., and Andrew M. Mattison, M.S.W., Ph.D.; Prentice-Hall, 1984; p 252, 3). The researchers—a gay couple themselves—reported that two-thirds of the couples began their relationship with the expectation of sexual exclusivity, but that the partners became more permissive with time. They found that all the couples who had been together at least 5 years had incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity in their relationships. In fact, the authors concluded that "the single most important factor that keeps couples together past the ten-year mark is the lack of possessiveness they feel. Many couples learn very early in their relationship that ownership of each other sexually can become the greatest internal threat to their staying together."  See also After the Ball; Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen; Doubleday, 1989. The book acknowledges that "the cheating ratio of 'married' gay males, given enough time, approaches 100%...Many gay lovers, bowing to the inevitable, agree to an 'open relationship,' for which there are as many sets of ground rules as there are couples" (p330). As to whether legal “marriage” leads to fidelity, see e.g., Xiridou, Maria, et al, “The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV infection among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam,” 1029-1038 AIDS, 17 (7) May 2, 2003. “Those with a steady partner and those without reported having an average of 8 and 22 casual partners per year, respectively.”

[ii] The custom is referred to as “jumping the broom.”

[iii] Assertions concerning the benefits of marriage can be found, along with additional details and references to specific studies, in “Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-One Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” 2002, Institute for American Values, available at www.americanvalues.org . See also Linda J. Waite’s tabulations from the 1987-1988 waves of the National Survey of Families and Households available in Linda J. Waite and Maggie Gallagher, 2000. The Case for Marriage:  Why Married People are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially (New York:  Doubleday): 155-156. 

[iv] Considering health problems related to homosexuality, see Hogg, R. S., S. A. Strathdee, K. J. Craib, M. V. O’Shaughnessy, J. S. Montaner, and M. T. Schechter, “Modelling the Impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men,” International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 26, 657-661, 1997. “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65^th birthday.” 

   For mental health problems see, e.g., Theo B. M. Sandfort, De Graaqf, Bilj, and Schable, “Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders:  Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study,” 85 (Archives of General Psychiatry 85 (January 2001) (“The findings support the assumption that people with same-sex behavior are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders”); Richard Herrell, et al., “Sexual Orientation and Suicidality,” Archives of General Psychiatry 867 (October 1999) (“Same-gender sexual orientation is significantly associated with each of the suicidality measures” and “is unlikely to be due solely to substance abuse or other psychiatric co-morbidity”); David M. Fergusson, et al., “Is Sexual Orientation Related to Mental Health Problems and Suicidality in Young People?” Archives of General Psychiatry 876 (October 1999) (“Findings support recent evidence suggesting that gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people are at increased risk of mental health problems, with these associates being particularly evident for measures of suicidal behavior and multiple disorder.”)  While some may argue that these findings are “caused by society oppression” (J Michael Bailey, “Homosexuality and Mental Illness,” Archives of General Psychiatry 883 and 884 October 1999), this is not the only possible explanation. The survey of findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study found a significant greater risk for psychiatric disorders among homosexuals, even though “the Dutch social climate toward homosexuality has long been and remains considerably more tolerant” than most of the world. Sandfort, et al, above, at 89. Other possible explanations include hypotheses that “homosexuality represents a deviation from normal development and is associated with other such deviations that may lead to mental illness,” and that “increased psychopathology among homosexual people is a consequence of lifestyle differences associated with sexual orientation.”  J. Michael Bailey, above, at 884. Also, Sandfort et al., above, at 85-91.  (Youth are four times more likely to suffer major depression, also three times as likely to suffer generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, four times as likely to commit suicide, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer multiple disorders, and over six times as likely to have attempted suicide. Additionally, this research originates in the Netherlands where homosexuality is much more mainstream and accepted.)  Substance abuse is an additional health concern of those in the homosexual lifestyle:  Timothy J. Dailey, “The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality” and associated notes, Family Research Council “The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychologists reports that lesbian women consume alcohol more frequently, and in larger amounts, than heterosexual women. Lesbians were at significantly greater risk than heterosexual women for both binge drinking (19.4 percent compared to 11.7 percent), and for heavy drinking (7 percent compared to 2.7 percent)….Among men, by far the most important risk group consisted of homosexual and bisexual men, who were more than nine times as likely as heterosexual men to have a history of problem drinking.”  

   Domestic violence is an additional health risk for homosexuals: Susan C. Turnell, A Descriptive Analysis of Same-Sex Relationship Violence for a Diverse Sample, 13 Journal of Family Violence, 281 (2000) (finding that 44% of gay men report having experienced physical violence in their relationships, including 14% reporting sexual violence, with 83% reporting emotional abuse. Among lesbians:  55% acknowledge having experienced physical violence, 14% report sexual abuse and 84% report emotional abuse); See also, U.S. Department of Justice Study, Citizen Magazine, (January 2000) (reporting that the U.S. Justice Study found an epidemic of violence between homosexuals:  an annual average of 13,740 male victims of violence by homosexual partners and 16,900 victims by lesbian partners. By contrast, the most recent numbers—1999—for “hate crimes” based on sexual orientation totaled a relatively low 1,558 victims). See also New York Times article “Alleged Murder Is Further Proof of Domestic Violence as Major Health Risk of Homosexuals, Traditional Values Group Says,” available at http://www.afaanwpa.org, quoting Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Northwestern Pennsylvania:  “The truth is that acts of outside aggression against individuals involved in homosexual behavior, while always highly publicized, are rare. The far greater threat of violence to individuals involved in homosexual relationships—a staggering 50,000 percent higher risk, according to research by homosexual activists themselves—is the epidemic of domestic violence such individuals commit against each other.”  See also David Island and Patrick Letellier, Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them, p. 14, “The probability of violence occurring in a gay couple is mathematically double the probability of that in a heterosexual couple…we believe as many as 650,000 gay men may be victims of domestic violence each year in the United States.” 

[v] For a discussion about treatment, consider “Born That Way?  Facts and Fiction about Homosexuality, Factors Beyond Biology,” with associated notes, by A. Dean Byrd, Ph.D., MBA, MPH, Meridian Magazine (online at www.lds.mag.com), Sept. 3, 2004.

[vi] It is interesting to note that countries which have legalized or are considering legalizing same-sex marriage have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. For instance, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada have birthrates that hover around 1.6 children per woman¾well below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1. For national fertility rates, see: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/sw.html

For information concerning the growing disconnect between marriage and procreation, see http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/SOOU2003.pdf .