Tag Archives: Same-Sex Marriage

Podcasts

Is marriage just an arrangement for people who love each other?

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Mary sent me this article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is liberal like the CBC and BBC, but Australian.

However, read this excerpt:

As proponents for gay marriage turn up the political temperature on this issue, the catchcry has become ‘equal love’ – if two persons of the same sex love each other, who are we to tell them they cannot marry? Greens MP Adam Bandt has this week reintroduced the argument in the Federal Parliament, stating, “It is the power of love that has brought us to this moment in the debate over marriage equality.” This is a persuasive argument for it evokes in us our own needs to receive and to give love, but is ‘equal love’ a valid proposition for legalising same sex marriage?

Let’s think about it. If ‘equal love’ is the only prerequisite for marriage, then why not legalise marriage between uncles and nieces, or between mums and sons, if they are so inclined? I doubt if many people would accept such sexual unions, and yet if love (and take note that love in much of this debate is left undefined) is the only requisite for marriage how can we exclude a union between any two consenting persons, regardless of their status? Let’s not stop there, what if three people love each other, should they not be permitted to marry? And if marriage is so malleable why not introduce, as one newspaper article recently suggested, fixed terms for marriage rather than being for life?

The point is simple, ‘equal love’ is an inadequate ethic for deconstructing marriage. There are some human relationships which are appropriately deemed unsuitable for marriage. Particulars such as ‘kinds’ and teleology must play a role in defining marriage: what is a man and what is a woman, and what is the purpose or goal of marriage?

This guy is a pastor, yet he makes a good rational argument that is accessible to anyone. Is marriage really about adult feelings and the needs of adults to be happy? Or is it about something else?

Jennifer Roback Morse explains the purpose of marriage

If you want to learn more about how to define and defend traditional marriage, then take a look at these videos by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, which I found at Lex Communis.

Details:

Dr J addresses the Sacramento Department of Evangelization and Catholic Schools on the question of altering the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions.  She also examines the break-down of traditional marriage and the consequences of no-fault divorce.

Clip 1 of 4:

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Clip 3 of 4:

Clip 4 of 4:

Or you can download the MP3 here. If anyone is wondering who I consider to be an ideal woman, Michele Bachmann and Jennifer Roback Morse are two of my favorite women. I really like women who I can sit and listen to and learn from, especially when they are passionate about what they believe and have lots of evidence to use in debates.

Podcasts

New version of Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s Love and Economics talk

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Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse

If you’ve heard it before, it might be worth listening again – this version is clear and new, and there is Q&A. This is my favorite lecture on marriage because she makes marriage seem like the Lord of the Rings or some similar epic. There’s good and evil, and it’s very dangerous and adventurous and important.

The MP3 file is here.

Her goal in this lecture is to explain what families do to help to raise children who can participate in society and the free market. Her audience is fiscal conservatives and libertarians who think that marriage and family are not as important from fiscal issues. She is making a connection between marriage and civil society, and civil society to limited government, and limited government to liberty. Family should be very important to fiscal conservatives and libertarians.

My favorite part is about 26 minutes in, when she is discussing government-run day care, government-provided meals for children and being very aggressive about how she doesn’t want government taking over the roles of mothers and fathers. The push to make government take over the parental roles flows from the idea that women need to be more like men, and that means they need to be separated from their children so they can work like men do. Also, government programs attempt to communicate to women that men are unecessary as protectors and providers and moral leaders, since the government can protect, provide and educate.

What she does not mention is that socialists also love the idea of taking money from the hard-working, frugal parents and redistributing it to single mothers so that all the children will be equally screwed with loveless day care and lousy public-school educations, which are really more indoctrinations than preparation for a profession. They like the idea that everyone will be equal and the only way to do that is to yank children away from their parents.

Consider the words of this radical feminist:

“We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there’s no equality. […]In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.”

(Mary Jo Bane:  Former Assistant Secretary of Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services of the Clinton administration)

This is what they think about the traditional family. The left thinks that the man’s job is to work, and the woman’s job is to work, and the government’s job is to steal their money so that everyone’s children are raised “communally”. This is what the left believes about marriage and family. That’s why they enact policies to break up marriages and push women out of the home to make them work like men. Leftists also don’t want parents teaching their children conservative views and values.

This lecture is highly-recommended. Christians really need to think about marriage and family the way she does. There are two things a woman needs to do to convince a good man to marry. 1) Treat marriage and family as a war against tyranny and socialism. 2) Understand and assist men with their needs and plans.

News

Iowa voters dismiss three judges who redefined traditional marriage

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USA Today reports on the fate of three Iowa judges who redefined traditional marriage by legislating from the bench. (H/T Dr. J at Ruth Blog)

Excerpt:

Three Iowa Supreme Court justices lost their seats Tuesday in a historic upset fueled by their 2009 decision that allowed same-sex couples to marry. Vote totals from 96% of Iowa’s 1,774 precincts showed Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit with less than the simple majority needed to stay on the bench. Their removal marked the first time an Iowa Supreme Court justice has not been retained since 1962, when the merit selection and retention system for judges was adopted.

Dr. J writes:

Other courts, state and federal, have failed to discover a right to same sex marriage. It is disingenous for these justices’ to try to brazen it out by claiming that they based “their decisions on the law and the Constitution and nothing else.” They are assuming the very thing that needs to be proven, and which Iowa voters believe cannot be proven, namely that there is an open and shut case for same sex marriage to be found in the Iowa Constitution.

If the right to redefine marriage was Constitutional, the people could surely be convinced to have their legislators enact it in the normal way. Judicial activism would not be needed. Good riddance.