The Supreme Court has spoken, but homosexual “marriage” is hardly settled law. Like the Dred Scott decision (1857) codifying slavery, Obergefell v. Hodges will unleash an explosion of unrest that may, I pray, ultimately lead not only to its overthrow but also a much-needed reorientation of American culture itself.
The Court’s decision overturns more than 30 state referenda opposing homosexual marriage. Those states, those voters, and their elected representatives are unlikely to acquiesce on an issue so fundamental to human life and society.
The issue of homosexual “marriage” is not merely social but philosophical and theological — it raises the question of human nature. The advance of secularism has caused religious teaching to be viewed as an imposition of values. Advocates of gay “marriage” view the Court’s decision as another milestone in the rejection of this so-called imposed view of human nature and morality.
They can celebrate for the time being, but Obergefell v. Hodges will eventually be shown to have damaged the most fundamental institution of a civilized society — marriage between a man and a woman. Marriage nourishes and protects each new member of society, transmitting to the successive generations values, language, and citizenship.
Homosexual relationships offer no such benefit to the State. These relationships may please the partners and bring them comfort. However, the same could be said for non-sexual friendships, which also bring comfort to those joined by the relationship, but shared pleasure and satisfaction are not the purpose of marriage.
Statistics indicate that homosexuals make up 1.5% of the population. Only a small minority of these seek permanent relationships. Most have an average of 50 or more sexual partners. Now the extraordinarily important institution of marriage has been redefined in order to accommodate a fraction of the population.
The human body is not a mistake, as Pope Francis made clear in his encyclical, Laudato si’. We are either male or female. We are not one of five genders as recognized by the United Nations and the LBGT lobby. The union of a man and woman is elevated and codified into the exalted state of marriage because this union is the source of life and family, of society itself.
The Holy Father writes: “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation. Learning to accept our body, to care for it and to respect its fullest meaning, is an essential element of any genuine human ecology. . . . In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God, the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude which would seek ‘to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows how to confront it’.” (#155)
The gift of human existence, its embodiment in two sexes — Adam and Eve — has been swept aside to satisfy a politicized homosexual agenda, which will not stop at “marriage” but will demand explicit affirmation. With that affirmation will come an explicit demand for the rejection of the Judeo-Christian worldview and values, as articulated by Pope Francis.
As it did in 1973 with Roe, the Supreme Court has again opened a civilizational Pandora’s Box. Since Roe there have been over 50 million deaths by abortion. Obergefell v. Hodges will reap something far harder to measure — confusion, anxiety, and unhappiness. For children, adolescents, teenagers, and young adults in their period of moral and intellectual development, this decision raises disorienting questions that will prove insoluble for those without a community providing answers and commonsense support.
It’s a time to pray for our nation. America will be engaged in another divisive social battle that was completely avoidable, had the Court restrained itself as the Constitution provided in the 10th Amendment.