I respectfully present another viewpoint from your opinion letter in Monday’s paper. The subject was Judge Tauro’s decision to overturn part of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.
First of all I would like to establish that I do not hate homosexuals. I would be the first to stand up if I believed anyone was being denied their basic civil rights because they were a homosexual. Nothing in the Bill of Rights or any law excludes homosexuals from rights enjoyed by all U.S. citizens. However, no one in our country has the right to marry whomever. One cannot marry a child, a close blood relative, two or more spouses, or the spouse of another person. When marriage is redefined as other than a heterosexual couple, then what stops further redefinition? Why just two people? Why laws against incest, polygamy, etc., etc.?
You stated in your article: “It is flat silly to say that the institution of marriage is threatened by allowing men to marry men and women, women.” You also stated: “It is civilized to learn to accept differences and to distinguish between different and bad. Civilization comes slowly in some things.”
I strongly disagree with those statements. Not only will same-sex marriage hurt the institution of marriage, but it will destroy the very foundation of our civilization.
Pitirim Sorokin, founder of sociology at Harvard University, reported after analyzing cultures spanning thousands of years on several continents that no society has survived that ceased to regulate sexuality within traditionally defined marriage. Sorokin’s studies found that the weakening of marriage was a first sign of civilizational collapse. These observations were made long before the debate of homosexual marriage.
Author Al Mohler says, “Sorokin’s insight was the realization that civilization requires men to take re-sponsibility for their offspring. Once individuals —especially males — are freed for sexual behavior outside of marriage, civilizational collapse becomes inevitable. The weakening of marriage — even on heterosexual terms — has already brought a harvest of disaster to mothers and children abandoned in the name of sexual liberation.”
If homosexual marriage is legalized, then will those of us who object be on the wrong side of the law? A case in point is Massachusetts, which legalized homosexual marriage in 2004. In 2005 the parent of a six-year-old boy protested to the elementary school after his son was taught about homosexual “families” in his kindergarten class. At a scheduled meeting at the school the father refused to back down from his request that the school honor the Massachusetts parental no-tification statute. He was arrested for trespassing, handcuffed, and then put in jail overnight. He went through several court ap-pearances before the school district backed down and dropped all charges against him. In 2007, the father’s lawsuit against the school was dismissed by a federal judge who refused to uphold his civil rights and enforce the parental notification statute.
In yesterday’s news I read that a school board in Helena, Mont. will decide in August about a proposed sex education program. The program would begin in kindergarten. By first grade the children will learn about same sex relationships. Fifth and sixth graders will be taught about a variety of ways to have intercourse. I would be embarrassed to detail the proposal here in this article. Yet this sex education material would expose 10-year-olds to graphic sexual details.
Fifty-six percent of re-spondents to a Gallup Poll in 2008 opposed legally recognizing marriages be-tween same-sex couples. Because public opinion is against the redefinition of marriage, same-sex marriage advocates circumvent this by redefining marriage through the courts. Thus we have Judge Tauro overturning parts of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that the government cannot constitutionally distinguish between traditional marriage and same-sex marriage. The right of the federal government to de-fine marriage has been clear since the late 19th Century when Congress banned polygamy. It was a condition of statehood that marriage be defined as one man and one woman during this polygamy battle.
Scriptures teach that practicing homosexuality is a sin of choice. Our laws should not legalize, legitimize, and call something moral that the Bible clearly declares as harmful to individuals and societies. “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body. But the one who sins sexually sins against his own body.”
Becky Quinn
Iola, Kan.
