As gay activists celebrate the overturning of DOMA, my heart goes out to them, since I know this social experiment is ultimately doomed to failure.
To be sure, I understand that this is just not a political victory for men and women who identify as gay and lesbian. It is an intensely personal, even emotional victory, just as President Obama’s statement last year that he now supported same-sex marriage brought tears to gay leaders like Andrew Sullivan.
To the homosexual community, the Supreme Court’s ruling speaks of legitimacy, equality and fairness. To them, it is a matter of family life, of moms (and moms) and dads (and dads) and kids, of proper societal standing, of a nation making right its grievous wrongs.
I truly get all that and I understand (while completely rejecting) the majority ruling in this case. And I know that we’ve been told that same-sex marriage is inevitable, that the tide has turned, that the polls make it clear that complete, sweeping change is just a matter of time. Give it a few more years, we are constantly reminded, and the older generation will die out – along with its antiquated views – and the younger, enlightened generation will rule the day.
To be quite honest, the day may come when same-sex marriage is the law of the land, but that doesn’t mean that it will not fail, and ultimately, society will rue the Court’s ruling of June 26, 2013.
Now, I fully expect my words to be cited by gay activists as representing yet another example of a close-minded conservative who was too proud (or bigoted or ignorant, or all of the above) to see the handwriting on the wall and quit before being totally disgraced. (Actually, there’s one more insult to be flung at me: I can’t give up my opposition to same-sex marriage because I make too much money on the issue. But of course!) Please feel free to cite me.
The truth be told, on January 1, 2008, I wrote down these words in my personal journal: “The first qualification for someone engaged in confronting homosexual activism is that you’d rather not do it because you’ve put yourself in the shoes of those you’re opposing, you see the world through their eyes, and you feel their pain.”
While gay activists will howl when they read this, God knows how deeply I meant it then and how deeply I mean it now.
So, this is not a personal battle for me. “My side” didn’t lose to “their side” on June 26th, and gay leaders are not my enemies (although I’m sure many perceive me as their enemy).
This is simply a matter of right and wrong, a matter of understanding that God’s ways are best for a society and that God only intended a man to marry a woman. In other words, just as there are universal principles that are always true, even when people mock them and reject them, God’s principles are universally true, even for atheists and agnostics. That’s why Proverbs 14:34 says that, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people” – whether we believe it or not.
And so, unless an apocalyptic scene unfolds in which society completely collapses in the next few years and Jesus returns to put an end to human folly – in which case homosexual activism will be seen as just one of many signs of societal decay – I remain confident that the same-sex marriage experiment will ultimately fail.
First, homosexuality is not a new phenomenon, nor is it only recently that homosexual men and women began to engage in long-term relationships, yet it is only in the last few years that the world has thought to redefine marriage.
Of course, the terms “homosexual” and “sexual orientation” are of relatively recent vintage (especially the latter), but there is ample documentation through the ages of people with exclusive (or, predominant) same-sex attractions, often legitimized by society, and yet virtually no one thought to change the nature of marriage.
It was understood that men and women coming together in marriage had a certain function in society and that it was more than simply romantic and sexual attractions. Today, though, we are tampering with the very foundations of human society by redefining marriage, and in the end, when you tamper with the foundations, the whole building collapses.
Second, gay activism is its own worst enemy, since the very slogans it uses undermine its cause, like the latest, “Love is love” (echoed by President Obama!) – yes whoever you love, love is love – which ultimately must lead to polyamory, polygamy, and even consensual adult incest. (Once again I hear the howls, but already, this is an observation more than a prediction.) Otherwise, it is not full marriage “equality”; otherwise, it discriminates against other sexual minorities and their expressions; otherwise, not everyone has the right to “marry the one they love.”
So, if same-sex marriage succeeds, it will ultimately succeed in making marriage utterly meaningless.
Third, because gay activism is so committed to validating virtually all sexual identities, it makes male-female distinctives into the enemy (see my recent article “The Little Boy Who Is a She-lebrity” for one example of many), thereby declaring war on gender distinctives. This too is a war that either fails the more it succeeds or else proves itself utterly futile, seeking to undo the very nature of who we are as a human race.
Same-sex marriage, then, will either prove to be an unrealistic, even destructive social experiment, or it will so misshape society that the very thing it fought for will no longer have relevance. Either way, it will ultimately fail.
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