U.S. House considers marriage amendment
By Mark Baumgardner, Columnist
In response to the Lawrence v. Texas ruling by the Supreme Court striking down state laws banning sodomy and foreshadowing the possibility of future court decisions paving the way for same-sex “marriage,” members of Congress and President Bush have pushed for the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA). As a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution, the FMA defines marriage as consisting “only of the union of a man and a woman.”
A renewed push for the FMA has emerged after the recent Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling (Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health) that struck down the ban on same-sex “marriage,” claiming it violated the Massachusetts Constitution. Although correct in principle, many of the FMA proponents problematically ignore a larger problem sure to defeat social conservatives on the issue of same-sex “marriage” — that is, if corrective action is not taken.
On this page last week, my colleague Rob Welygan sarcastically argued that government should invest in technology to force sexual morality. However, he, perhaps inadvertently, raised an outstanding point that social conservatives must not ignore.
Long before discussion over the definition of marriage began, the left began attacking traditional ideas of marriage and family. Three years ago, Michael Pakaluk, an associate professor of philosophy at Clark University, wrote that United States Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) was an important turning point for the institutions of family and marriage.
In this article that appeared in “Same-Sex Matters,” a book containing several articles from various authors on homosexual issues, Pakaluk correctly noted that Griswold invented a right to privacy that liberals would later use to push their radical social agenda. He also accurately predicted the imminence of a Supreme Court ruling striking down state laws prohibiting sodomy.
While Griswold opened doors that allowed liberals to win legal battles on abortion and homosexuality, it was also an important microcosm of the prevailing attitudes toward the family over the last 40 years. The contraception mentality became increasingly popular among married couples in America and Europe since the sexual revolution began.
As this prevailed, a diminishing number of married couples recognized that the true purpose of marriage is for a man and a woman to grow closer to each other and to God in a lifelong commitment and, in the process, to raise children to their vocations in life. The birthrate in America and Europe has significantly declined, and simultaneously, as selfish views of marriage developed, divorce increased. When Americans no longer view marriage as a serious, lifelong commitment involving children, it is no surprise that marriage is also no longer viewed by many as a commitment between a man and woman.
Sponsors of the FMA argue that it serves both as a solution to this misunderstanding of marriage and as a restraint to judicial abuse leading to nationwide same-sex “marriage.” Charles Rice, professor emeritus at Notre Dame Law School, eloquently states in one sentence the flaw in accepting the FMA as the complete solution. Writing in The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper, he said, “The campaign to adopt the FMA would be confusing because it would implicitly identify the problem as judicial abuse rather than cultural collapse.”
Indeed, America and Europe have both suffered significant cultural collapse. Aside from violating natural and moral law, the breakdown of the family has resulted in tangible, serious consequences. In a recent interview with Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes of Fox News, Dr. Alan Keyes outlined this point, saying, “The issues of crime, the issues that are concerning us with health, the issues that concern us with family — all these things on which we spend trillions of dollars are traceable to the moral decay of this country that results from the abandonment of our moral principles…”
As I stated in a previous column, the impacts resulting from family decline have devastated Europe as their population ages rapidly and as their workforce becomes much less competitive.
The government can exercise discretion when distributing marriage licenses and should prevent same-sex couples from receiving them. The FMA would accomplish this but fails to reverse the 40 years of cultural collapse that led to this point. To this end, political and religious leaders, especially the clergy, must use their influence to promote traditional marriage and family values and communicate the importance and necessity of natural and moral law. Americans must have a fundamental change in attitude for the FMA to have a true effect.
The left has been consistently winning the culture war over time. Lawrence v. Texas and the recent Massachusetts ruling were two more significant battles won in the assault on marriage and the family. Conservatives cannot and must not hold the illusion that the Federal Marriage Amendment will, by itself, end this assault.
Mark Baumgardner ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in electrical engineering.
