Weak Marriage Amendments Not Worth the Paper on Which They’re Printed
This year, the Minnesota state legislature approved a marriage amendment that will be placed on statewide ballots in order to be decided by the North Star State’s voters in 2012. Here’s the proposed amendment:
“Only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota.”
Last month, FPN’s Policy Blog addressed the weakness of this amendment. However, since that time, many prominent Christians have expressed their support for the amendment. As such, it is necessary to once again deal with the amendment’s problems, this time in greater detail.
Many well-meaning Minnesotans believe the proposed marriage amendment will be an adequate bulwark against the growing push to legitimize so-called “gay marriage” in the United States. Sadly, they’re wrong.
The marriage amendment they’re backing isn’t much stronger than the paper on which it’s printed.
The proposed amendment merely defines marriage as the union between one man and one woman. This will not do the job of protecting the institution of the family. A state marriage amendment that does nothing to protect against all types of homosexual legal unions misses the point of protecting the institution of the family. As events in other states have proven, homosexual activists will take advantage of weak marriage amendments to create marriage impostors, or homosexual legal unions that look like marriage in almost every way but name (e.g., civil unions, domestic partnerships, etc.).
These marriage impostors erode the traditional, God-given institution of marriage to an unrecognizable unit of cohabitational ‘partnership’ between two humans, regardless of their gender. Any homosexual union is an affront to the God-ordained institutions of marriage and family. Romans 13 demonstrates governments are to promote righteousness and prohibit evil. Marriage as defined by God is a good and righteous ordinance; for a government to dilute it with perversion cannot please Him. It is wrong for society to endorse perverse and destructive lifestyles, not to mention allowing children to be subjected to them.
Weak marriage amendments leave loopholes for the creation of various homosexual unions, which will lead to wider societal acceptance of homosexuality, resulting in an increase in homosexual behavior. Once average Americans have been deceived into thinking there is no difference between marriage and other homosexual unions, then homosexual activists will push for the actual title of “marriage,” rendering the weak marriage amendment more worthless than it is now. The erosion must be stopped with a strong marriage amendment.
Let’s be clear: the word ‘marriage’ doesn’t need defending.
What needs a vigorous defense is the God-created institution of a one-man, one-woman union. Merely protecting the eight letters that make up the word ‘marriage’ is short-sighted and unwise. To truly preserve God’s ideal in our culture and society, all homosexual legal unions that seek to mirror one-man, one-woman marriage must be prohibited.
That’s why a robustly specific marriage amendment is needed in states like Minnesota.
Leviticus 18:22
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.(NKJV)