Traditional Marriage is at a crossroads, especially when activist judges recently overturned the will of the people in California. Please read the links posted on the right side bar of my blog (and posted below), and urge anyone you know in California that supports traditional marriage to vote yes on proposition 8 this November. Please, if you can financially support prop 8, don't hesitate.
Please know that I do not personally condemn anyone who chooses to live a homosexual lifestyle, and I believe that many are born with same-gender attraction. I have read some touching blogs of LDS members who feel same-gender attraction and choose not to act on their feelings even though it means a lonely life in mortality. I see them choose to abstain just as God asks single people, divorced or never been married, to obey laws of chastity. I do not love homosexuals any differently, and in fact go out of my way to show that I care even though we have fundamentally different beliefs. We can accept and love a person without accepting their choices.
So, why not just live and let live?I feel that homosexual activist groups are making the issue that if we do not accept and condone their lifestyle choice, we are not accepting them as a person rather than allowing us to accept them without accepting their lifestyle decisions. If we do not accept their lifestyle, we are considered bigots/racist/discriminatory. Homosexuals cry "Inequality!," which seems compelling.
Prop 8 is up for vote in November for all Californians. It maintains that marriage is between a man and a woman. This is
not a declaration of war against individuals, but a defense of a vital institution.
Prop 8 is NOT an attack on same-sex couples and does not take away the rights that same-sex couples already have under California’s domestic partner law. California law already grants domestic partners all the rights that a state can grant to a married couple. Same-sex couples have a right to their private lives, but not to change the definition of marriage for everyone else.
Here are just
some of the legal ramifications, including being on a precipice of losing our first amendment rights:
1. Marriage between a man and a woman is the fabric of our society. To deny children growing up in a home with a father and mother whenever possible (I understand there are many single parents and non-ideal situations to which you do your best), is to further plummet already declining moral values in our country, which will have many dire, unintended consequences to the stability of our society.
Children need input from both a mother's and father's differing strengths for the best possible development. To be raised by same-sex parents is to teach them that one role or the other is irrelevant.
Even from the religious standpoint of arguing that God has commanded the acting on same-gender attraction as a sin, "Gay marriage" is not bad because God forbids it. God forbids it because it is harmful for us, as a society and as individuals. Even if people don't believe it or know it, God has a plan for us, and family is centered around that plan. Marriage is ordained of God to fulfill the purposes of our creation, including being a sacred mechanism whereby spirits can be housed. Our bodies are physically designed to compliment each other, as are our male and female natures.
Strong families are also the fundamental institution for transmitting to future generations moral strengths, traditions, and values that sustain civilization.Poignantly posted at www.calmarriagedefense.blogspot.com is the following: "
Marriage is a social contract because the issues involved go beyond the particular individuals. Unions of a man and a woman produce the future generations on whom the fate of the whole society depends. Society has something to say about that.
Even at the individual level, men and women have different circumstances, if only from the fact that women have babies and men do not. These and other asymmetries in the positions of women and men justify long-term legal arrangements to enable society to keep this asymmetrical relationship viable — for society's sake.
Neither of these considerations applies to unions where the people are of the same sex.
Centuries of experience in trying to cope with the asymmetries of marriage have built up a large body of laws and practices geared to that particular legal relationship. To then transfer all of that to another relationship that was not contemplated when these laws were passed is to make rhetoric more important than reality."
All of this is extremely endangered by the legalizing of same-sex marriage.
Co-habitation under any title is not a sufficient reason for defining new forms of marriage.2. Churches may be sued over and lose tax exempt status if they decline to allow same-sex marriage ceremonies in their religious buildings.
2. Ministers who preach against same-sex marriages may be sued for hate speech and risk govt. fines. California municipal employees are already not allowed to say "traditional marriage" or "family values," due to them being considered hate speech.
3. Religious adoption agencies will not be allowed to place children solely in homes with both a mother and a father, even if this is counter to church doctrine. Catholic Charities in Boston already closed its doors due to the legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts.
4. Children in public schools will have to be taught that same-sex marriage is the same as traditional marriage, causing serious clashes between the secular school and the right of parents to teach their children their own values and beliefs.
Urgently important articles/links:
The Divine Institution of MarriageProclamation on the Familyhttp://www.protectmarriage.com/
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