Archbishop Wenski: ‘Marriage equality’ bodes ill

Judges in Monroe, Miami-Dade, Broward and now Palm Beach counties have ruled that the amendment to the Florida Constitution passed in 2008 defending traditional marriage is “unconstitutional.”

These exercises of raw judicial activism have been stayed pending appeal. Yet, in light of these rulings, self-appointed “progressive” elites — including the presumptive Democratic candidate for governor — are telling the majority of Florida citizens, along with millions of Americans who still support marriage as it has been understood for millennia, as a union of one man and one woman, “to get with the program.” Those who characterize themselves as proponents of tolerance will not tolerate their fellow citizens who oppose both the erosion of democratic self-government by aggressively activist judges legislating from the bench, and the further erosion of their freedoms of conscience and religion.

Those who promote same-sex “marriage” in effect wish to consolidate the hollow victories of the “sexual revolution.” To promote what they deem “marriage equality,” the understanding of marriage as a conjugal union of a male and a female, in a permanent and exclusive commitment, conducive to welcoming and raising the children born from such a union, must be “deconstructed” and “redefined.”

In much the same way that abortion and “safe sex” are promoted to protect one from the inevitable consequences of sexual activity, seen now as merely a “recreational activity” without any moral significance, the advocacy of same-sex “marriage” renders the idea of all marriages meaningless.

Indeed, the argument that allowing same-sex partners to marry is about “marriage equality” is fallacious: Enacting same-sex marriage does not expand the institution of marriage to a once “excluded” class; rather it reduces marriage to being just about the emotional gratification of two — and why just two? — people.

Such a redefinition defies the true nature of marriage as a comprehensive “two-in-one-flesh” union capable of uniting children with their mothers and fathers, a union that only a man and a woman are biologically capable of forming.

Common sense — increasingly uncommon today — understands traditional marriage between one man and one woman as a natural fact rooted in procreation and sexual difference. As Abraham Lincoln famously said: “If you call a tail a leg, then how many legs does a cow have? Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.” He understood better than many people today the relationship between truth and reality.

“Marriage equality” today is the “poster child” of those who hold for a radical autonomy that believes that anyone can essentially create his or her reality by one’s individual will without reference to the truth of things. An individual who would believe that he could, by the force of his will, defy gravity is setting himself up for a disastrous fall. Likewise, society invites disaster if it pursues the folly of “calling a tail a leg” by redefining marriage.

To impose same-sex “marriage” would open up a Pandora’s box of unintended consequences that bode ill for the advancement of the common good and human flourishing in all of society.

Families need to be built upon more solid foundations than emotional and or sexual gratification. Children deserve to be raised by the mom and dad who procreated them and who, with disinterested and sacrificial love, commit themselves as man and woman to a mutual and exclusive relationship that will provide them with stable and nurturing homes.