“Marriage isn’t about love”
By Tom Quiner
“The state should never have gotten involved with marriage.”
I heard a Ron Paul supporter make that claim a few days ago on a call-in Catholic talk radio show. The guest on the show, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, made an interesting response: “marriage isn’t about love.”
That’s enough to make any Catholic sit up and take notice since we each made a vow to love and honor our spouse til death do us part. Mr. Donohue was making the case for the state’s interest in secular marriage, as distinguished from religious marriages.
The state isn’t concerned about feelings, says Donohue, they’re concerned with families. If John Lennon’s wish had come true, “imagine there’s no religion,” there would still be marriage because communities realized thousands of years ago that societies work best with strong families, and families can only be created with a man and a woman.
There is no need for so-called marriage between two men, just as there is no need for so-called marriage between two women.
Secular marriage is about families, not feelings, not attractions, and not even love.
Feelings change.
Attractions change.
But children need the permanence, stability, and love of their mom and dad. Bill Donohue points out that is exactly why communities, governments, and principalities down through the ages created and enforced the marriage covenant: it was good for the state.
That’s why so-called gay marriage is bad for the state. It puts attractions before children. It turns marriage upside down to the long term detriment of our communities.
Marriage isn’t about love, it’s about the children in the eyes of the state. Sex and procreation go hand in hand.
The fact that traditional marriage, between one woman and one man, is best for children, and is good for the state, does not mean that gay marriage is bad. Is it better for children to live in an orphanage or with a loving family, even if they are a gay couple? Is it better for gay couples to live together in uncommitted or committed relationships? When no one is harmed by the voluntary peaceful actions of adults, what is “good for the state” is not a good reason to use the force of government to prohibit those actions.
The government doesn’t prohibit such co-habitation. People with same-gender attractions have always been free to live with someone of the same gender. What they do behind closed doors is their business. There was no functional need to redefine marriage, because such unions preclude procreation. Marriage serves a function: to protect children who can only be created in such unions. This notion that without gay adoption (which is a different subject from gay marriage), we’re condemning children to orphanages is a straw man argument. Heterosexual couples are waiting in line to adopt. My sister couldn’t wait, so she and her husband adopted children from overseas because there was such a long line to adopt in America.
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A. Social science research shows clear advantages when children are raised by two married parents.
B. Same-gender attraction is fundamentally disordered.
A+B: Disordered marriage.
[…] prompted by a blog, “Marriage isn’t about love”, on Tom Quiner’s site: http://quinersdiner.com/2012/10/09/marriage-isnt-about-love/#comment-5260 Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. This entry was posted in […]