OPINION

Gays Don’t Have a Right to Marriage

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The mere words same-sex marriage connote it’s not a “marriage” by use of the term, but rather an aberration of a societal norm that a small group are determined to force onto the majority. Only 3% of Americans are gay.

Since the beginning of time, before marriage was formally recognized by state laws, it was defined between a man and a woman not just for kicks, but because people of the opposite sex have coupled off to procreate, as a means of continuing society. It takes a man and woman to biologically create a baby, so naturally society began to recognize marriage between a man and a woman to encourage stable families and cultures.

Two men and two women will never be able to create a baby. This is fact not fiction. People argue that not every married couple has children. While every married couple won’t choose to have babies or be able to, marriage between a man and woman is at the core of society’s cultural foundation and must be protected.

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in two cases, California’s Proposition 8, where citizens voted to ban gay marriage, and the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage between a man and a woman. Proponents of gay marriage are asking the court to ignore centuries of a societal norm and legalize gay marriage as the law of the land on the basis of the 14th amendment.

Activists often refer to the 1967 Loving vs. Virginia case to argue that denying gays a right to marriage is discriminatory. In the Loving case, the Supreme Court ruled laws banning interracial marriage were illegal because they violated the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection of the laws” clause, which applied to all citizens. Mildred Loving, a black woman, and her husband, Richard, a white man, had the right to marry because the institution of marriage is inherently between a man and a woman, not between two men or two women, and therefore gay couples don’t have a right to marriage.

During arguments in the California case, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia plainly pointed out, marriage has never been a “fundamental” right for gays, as lawyer Theodore Olson tried to assert. “When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?” said Scalia.

For gays to suggest a right to marry is akin to blacks fighting for civil rights is not only preposterous but also offensive to the highest order. Emmett Till, a 14 year old black boy was beaten, his eye gouged out, murdered, and thrown in the bottom of a lake with a “cotton gin fan barbed wired to his neck” all because he whistled at a white woman. Till was denied civil rights. The Supreme Court declared black slaves property instead of citizens in the 1857 Dred Scott case; therefore denying blacks equal rights to their white slave masters under the Constitution. I don’t see how denying gays marriage rights is akin to slavery holding blacks in bondage as property, as liberals assert.

My mother and father joined “sit ins” at segregated lunch counters in the 1960s to fight for the basic right to eat, work, live and learn in the same places as whites. Blacks and some whites were lynched, murdered, hosed down and arrested so blacks could enjoy their undeniable rights under the Constitution. I don’t see gays undergoing the same struggle in their quest to marry.

America is almost a moral wasteland as it is. People are expected to look the other way, condone and accept as societal norms things like teen pregnancy, out of wedlock births, and the left’s constant mockery and disintegration of traditional family values. Cue the liberal rant: “Stay at home mom Ann Romney never worked a day in her life.”

It’s no coincidence that 38 states where gay marriage was placed on the ballot voters rejected it because it attempts to redefine a societal norm. Nine States and the District of Columbia allow gay marriage. The DC Council voted to approve gay marriage, bypassing a ballot initiative for fear residents would reject it. Of the remaining states, courts forced them to allow gay marriage. While some states have voted in favor of gay marriage, the majority voted against it because they think it’s wrong.

What’s overlooked in the gay marriage debate is that gays represent 3% of the US population yet they are attempting to force their life choices as mainstream on the 97% majority. From gay marriage, to gay adoptions, homosexual curriculum in public schools, and the demand for gay Boy Scouts leaders, when will this gay war on society END?