To a disturbing number of judges, most of the media, and now the Vermont legislature, marriage was created only to shut out homosexuals. That’s it. There’s no other reason for its presence in the law.

How else to interpret the vote today (April 7) in the Senate and House to override Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas’s veto and to legalize same-sex “marriage?”  Or the rulings in Massachusetts, California, Connecticut and Iowa that find nothing unique about men and women bonding for life? Or headlines like this from the April 4 Wall Street Journal: 

“Iowa Supreme Court Overturns Gay-Marriage Ban”

The Iowa law, as with most states, does not mention same-sex relationships. It establishes requirements, beginning with a male-female couple. Characterizing this ruling as overturning a “ban” defines the institution negatively – by what it is not.

In its unanimous opinion in Varnum v. Brien, the Iowa Supreme Court says that real marriage is merely a form of “prejudice” (using that word 21 times) and hints that homosexuals might be better parents than the mother-father variety. The seven justices cite junk science from gay-dominated guilds (the American Psychological Assn., etc.) to float the idea that kids are no better off in a normal home:

“Almost every professional group that has studied the issue indicates children are not harmed when raised by same-sex couples, but to the contrary, benefit from them. …we acknowledge the existence of reasoned opinions that dual-gender parenting is the optimal environment for children. These opinions, while thoughtful and sincere, were largely unsupported by reliable scientific studies.”

Say what? They have it exactly backwards. It’s the “gay parenting” studies that are deeply flawed, as Drs. Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai demonstrate thoroughly in their devastating book No Basis: What the studies Don’t tell us about same-sex parenting. Meanwhile, oceans of data from every conceivable authority show the advantages of the mother-and-father, intact family.

The Iowa court, like the others before it, and the hippy dippy Vermont lawbreakers ask us to believe, absurdly, that men and women have no meaningful differences. Even homosexuals think the sexes are quite different, preferring one over the other.

The creation of counterfeit “marriage” is a finger in the eye of God, who created marriage as the first human institution. Jesus reminded the Pharisees:

 “Have you not read that He which made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh?” (Matthew 19:4,5, Gen. 2:24)

But in America’s kookier courts and trendy New England, the Bible – the founding document of Western legal thought – is ruled irrelevant, and marriage is a speed bump on the road to sexual liberation.

The Iowa judges say that keeping marriage male and female “does not substantially further any important governmental objective.”

Really? Society would survive without a single homosexual relationship, but it would collapse without marriage. The law recognizes that marriage is unique and irreplaceable.  Lots of homosexuals are wonderful, caring people, and some have close relationships, but that does not make them “married” any more than a brother and sister can be “married.”

Rep. Barney Frank often asks the straw man question, “How does my gay relationship hurt your marriage?”

On an individual basis, it doesn’t. But creating a falsehood in the law transforms morality into a form of bigotry. The implications are enormous, according to gay columnist Michelangelo Signorile, who said in 1994 that gays should “fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution.”

Does that sound like merely adding another harmless category?

In 2004, just after Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney began issuing same-sex marriage licenses even though the legislature never authorized them, National Public Radio reported an immediate effect. A lesbian eighth-grade teacher told NPR that same-sex “marriage” made it okay for her to describe in graphic detail homosexual sex acts to her students. Elementary school pupils were soon treated to readings of King & King and Heather Has Two Mommies.  A father who objected wound up in jail.

As marriage has been devalued by easy divorce, cohabitation and now, in certain benighted venues, the ejection of an entire sex from the two-sex formula, this does not “improve” society. What is billed as “progressive” is actually moral corruption.

God Almighty created marriage thousands of years before the men of Sodom thought they had a better idea. If judicial tyrants have their way, America will outdo Sodom and even decadent Greece and Rome, where same-sex “marriage” was unthinkable.

When apprised of the Iowa court’s arrogant ruling, a state Senate minority leader thundered that it was: “disappointing.” He did pledge to support a constitutional amendment protecting marriage.

That’s good and necessary. But when is a legislature or governor going to tell rogue judges that the jig is up? When are citizens going to tell public officials at all levels that they simply don’t have the authority to radically redefine marriage and set up our children and grandchildren for mandatory lessons about same-sex coupling?

While it’s still legal, the resistance had better get organized – and busy.