Reject Homosexual Marriage legislation
The government must ensure stability in the present and provide for its future. Everyone, including the homosexually oriented, depends on these things being done and done well. The two objectives are closely related, and children are at the focus of both.
Providing for the future means bearing, educating and socializing children; children are our social security, economically, physically and emotionally. If there are not enough of them, there will eventually be a disproportion between those able to work and those who cannot, and the burden of supporting the dependent population can become so severe that it strains society's bonds.
If the children are not raised properly, the well-being of those who depend on them later is threatened as much as, if not more than, if there are too few children. Marriage provides for society's future by formally constituting the family. The traditional family—husband, wife, and natural children—is the only way societies have ever found of providing well for stability in the present and for our future.
The family is the first community, the original unit which precedes and forms the basis of all larger and
subsequent units. It is the original school for children, where they are taught all the values and mores that form them in how they interact, first with one another, and later with others to whom they are not related. It is irreplaceable in that it is a community of love, a community based on love; what parents do for children out of love cannot be replicated in a setting where the same tasks are done for pay.
As all who have undertaken the task of raising a family—and those who merely observe with detachment—will agree, it is an awesome and difficult business. For a couple to bear and raise children, and often even to stay together, is hard work and expensive.
In its own interest, the Government must do what it can to ease those burdens and reward
what is so central to its stability and continuation. By easing some of the financial burdens and elevating the stature of the family, the society hopes to induce its citizens to follow in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents and form families.
Marriage can thus be seen as a formal institution structured by society to help it meet its needs for stability in the present and continued existence over time. In marriage, a couple makes a formal, public commitment to one another to live as a single unit; the community endorses and ratifies that commitment. It also extends special recognition and usually various financial privileges to couples making this commitment. Its reason for doing so, as noted above, is its expectation that the couple will form a family unit, to bear and raise properly the children the society needs.
Society's interest in all this is the children, period. Aside from the expectation of child-bearing and child-raising, it has no strong interest in making marriage a privileged institution. The traditional understanding of marriage, and of the family that results from it, lines up perfectly to provide for the key needs identified above.
Marriage once meant a permanent bond, the only approved locus for sex (i.e., marriage both establishes an exclusive sexual relationship and only the marriage relationship legitimizes sexual activity), and children. It went without saying that it was a man-woman relationship. Males and females have a natural complementarity in the process not only of procreating but also of raising children, and children thrive in an atmosphere of stability and commitment. Children also need the role models of both father and mother for their complete development. The atmosphere of stable commitment also helps regulate all of society's rhythms.
One would hardly recognize in today's marriage the institution which the previous section argues best meets society's needs for stability and continuation. The villain of the piece is the generations-old social experiment called the sexual revolution from the 1960’s. It has gradually drained the content from marriage, and with it, the vitality of the family.
The main thrust of the sexual revolution has been to enable adults to separate sex from children and relieve them of binding commitments to one another.
The sexual revolution attacked, and gradually weakened, the covalent bonds of the marriage-sex-children triad. No-fault divorce vitiated permanence; first contraception and then abortion made the connection between sex and children optional.
With sex no longer meaning children, the institutional warrant for marriage was questionable, and hence the increasing growing numbers of people of "living together." 54% live together with no intention of marrying.
The sexual revolution attacked both the legal framework surrounding and protecting marriage and the family and the moral climate. Our Labor governments have overturned laws against abortion, laws were liberalized regulating divorce, and various laws affecting homosexual behavior have been challenged.
In addition, there is a movement to establish a "right" of open homosexuality. Morally, the legal climate, technology and media-led opinion have all greatly influenced society's approvals and disapprovals. Living together and voluntary single parenthood receive hardly a blink today, whereas families with more than two children can expect many arched eyebrows and the obligatory query "don't you know about birth control?"
The sexual revolution gradually brought us to the point where the complex fabric of laws and mores, which together supported and sustained marriage and the family has largely been unraveled. We are beginning to see the effects on social behaviour. These changes have gradually eroded our understanding of what marriage is. No longer is marriage considered universally in the public mind as a permanent union; no longer is it considered to have any necessary connection to children; no longer does it universally bind to fidelity; and that sex should be reserved for it is today's unthinkable thought.
Marriage has become a declaration of the mutual devotion between any pair of adults, a pledge of support, loyalty protection of the partner's privacy, which others are expected to honor and reinforce. The evolutionary emptying of the concept of marriage, and the concomitant acceptance of homosexual relations—both products of the same revolutionary forces—largely explain the drive for homosexual
Marriage or civil unions.
Who, homosexual or heterosexual, could conceive of same-sex "marriage" if marriage meant more than it does today? More than anything else, our increasing technical ability to sever the biological link between sex and children, and the contraceptive mentality that grew from it—the belief that to separate sex from its natural consequences were not only natural but a right—probably paved the way for tolerating homosexual relations.
But tolerance is not the same thing as acceptance. And even though marriage may now be but a shadow of its former self, it still retains some power to make sexual activity legitimate. So, same-sex couples grasp at it even when so many heterosexual couples find it superfluous. They may not believe society needs the institution of marriage, but it would salve their consciences and help them hold their heads high in public.
It is easier to see what extending marriage, or creating civil unions to same-sex couples would do to the institution of marriage. Just as the extending legal benefits to de-facto relationships has changed in people’s minds the purpose and role of marriage. Both remove marriage's sole original defining characteristic, that it is a union of one man and one woman. Although it would not change much of what is left of marriage—because not much is left today—it would lock in the "gains" of the sexual revolution.
That, by itself, is extremely serious: what society really needs is the restoration of marriage; same-sex civil unions, and hetero-sexual de-facto relationships and same sex marriages would continue marriage on its present search for the bottom. That would further solidify the notions that sex need not have a necessary connection to procreation, nor marriage to children.
Similarly, it is hard to imagine that same-sex couples—especially males—would want to see marriage restored to being a permanent and exclusive union. Would civil unions be presented as a permanent and exclusive union?
Male homosexual relations are inherently so transitory that many gay activists opposed same-sex marriage, and civil unions on the grounds that it would be so restrictive of the gay lifestyle that failure would be virtually guaranteed. In short, marriage would be further solidified as a meaningless institution in which society has no inherent interest, unless one makes the leap of saying that society's real interest is in making us all feel good by legitimating every conceivable choice. Will child’s brides return?
Allowing homosexual marriage and civil unions would further dilute the uniqueness of marriage by opening it to all who want it, regardless of their potential to fulfill an essential societal function. If a privilege is open to all, it is no longer a privilege. This great leveling process would further diminish the incentives to bear and raise children. Homosexual marriage or civil union is a chimera of the real thing on which society depends for its continuation and health.
It would further reinforce the sexual revolution's notion—which is too strong already—that any connection between sex and children is purely optional. It sends the message that everything should be a matter of choice, that nothing is a given or need be permanent, and that sexual differences are imaginative fictions imposed through socialization. These effects are enough to fear from extending marriage or civil unions to same-sex couples.
Although most of its proponents are reticent to elaborate on this, same-sex marriage and civil unions would really represent a drop to a new societal or moral low, because it would represent society's formal endorsement of homosexual activity. By giving it the writ of marriage, society gives it the stamp of approval. With homosexual activity, we are now probably somewhere between enduring and pitying; same-sex marriage or civil unions would be the embrace starting from Canberra.
Thus would society endorse an activity, which its true interest is in eliminating. The hazards to the public health which homosexual sex represents, from HIV infections on down, are well known. Same-sex marriage or civil unions would only raise them.
There is a very real sociological argument against same-sex marriage or civil unions that is neither religious nor a front for aversion to persons with homosexual attractions. There are serious public policy reasons for not only keeping marriage heterosexual as it is, but also for attempting to restore its former meaning. The culprit in the background is heterosexual de-facto’s!
Homosexual marriage or civil unions would further weaken an already-damaged institution, to the detriment of us all—homosexuals included. The push for homosexual civil unions, while serious, is best understood as a symptom of a larger and more serious problem with our understanding of sex and marriage. The underlying causes of this serious problem are deeply rooted within our collective consciousness, and involve the acceptance of the destructive premises of the sexual revolution. Rooting these premises will be anything but easy; for many, no legislative or judicial remedy is possible.
Legalizing same-sex marriages would be harmful to society. The primary goal of marriage is the bearing and raising of children, who are vital to the future stability of society. The sexual revolution, however, has weakened the institution of marriage by attacking the bonds between marriage, sex, and children. The results has been de-facto relationships. Homosexual civil unions, would further damage marriage and the family by legitimizing a dangerous kind of non-procreative sexual behaviour and lifestyle.
