Most high-placed proponents of natural marriage, including the Catholic Bishops of America, are convinced that the Supreme Court will shortly impose gay marriage uniformly throughout the nation producing a new genre “government marriage.”
The Court, as well as the court of public opinion, has come to view homosexuality like race, a morally neutral condition. Therefore to stigmatize homosexuality, like stigmatizing race, denies a person’s full humanity and becomes simply an act of pure animosity and bigotry.
Opponents disagree, holding that SEXUALITY IS GROUNDED IN BEHAVIOR AND THEREFORE CANNOT BE SEPERATED FROM MORAL JUDGEMENT, while skin color is truly neutral, it does not give rise to moral reflection.
While there is uniform and accelerated awareness of the dire consequences resulting from such a Court decision, impacting both morality and the Christian mindset itself, serious division exists on how to respond to gay marriage, which defies both reason and religion.
A defeatist consensus is emerging among social and religious conservatives that the most important goal at this time is NOT to fight gay marriage, but to secure as much liberty as possible for dissenters while there is still time.
Everyone knows that church sanctuaries are out of reach of same-sex marriage laws. The whole fight centers over religiously affiliated schools, hospitals, and charities which may well lose their state credentials to operate, as well as individuals in government employment or in commerce who can be fired for defying publicly correct conduct. Social conservatives solely advocating religious liberty as a defense conclude that protection for these various groups must be secured immediately.
Prior to this new policy direction taken by social conservatives, the public debate had focused on the question, “What is marriage?” Now, however, it is coalescing around the question, “What is homosexuality?” Or, to be more specific, is homosexuality the same thing as race?
The success of natural marriage proponents and the issue of freedom for this group depend on how the Courts and the country answer that question. A segment of natural marriage activists insist that the Movement must continue to press arguments on the issue of marriage itself, defending its millennial and rational definition. First and foremost, issues relating to sexuality are not primarily religious issues: they are rational and universal concepts.
These activists hold that Natural Law thinking must be applied to the marriage debate in order to maintain the high moral ground. Their view in short is that natural marriage recognizes anthropological truths about human nature and therefore is critical to building stable societies in which to rear children. Accepting same-sex marriage requires a cultural and philosophical shift, which basically reverses the rational meaning of marriage eroding the social fabric. While the front in the gay-marriage culture-war is shifting to protecting religious liberty the battle for the true definition of marriage must be firmly maintained. Otherwise, religious liberty will falter on the grounds that bigotry has no rights.
--Xavier Rynne
