After Friday’s Supreme Court Ruling I got a number of Facebook messages and e-mails asking for my opinion or asking me to explain my opinion.
1. The hashtag #lovewins, was all over social media. Did that mean that #hatelost? Of course not. This wasn’t a love vs. hate conflict. To frame it that way is really the logical fallacy of false dilemma.
I have known many wonderful gay and lesbian people in my life time. All of them have been gifted, talented, funny and really enjoyable folks to be around. I fully believe what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, that these people must be:
accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity.
I believe that we are called to do all of those things for all of God’s people, and that one can do that and still oppose so-called same sex marriage. In fact, to really love our fellow human beings, one MUST oppose SSM.
2. A cooking show a few weeks ago talked about the necessity of letting the different ingredients “marry” in the recipe. What the chef was trying to say was that the different ingredients were very divergent from one another, yet if they were put together they produced a unique and splendid flavor! What a great analogy to the marriage of a man and a woman. You have two individuals with completely dissimilar yet complementary differences (physically, mentally, emotionally), and when they come into a marriage they have the ability to produce unique individuals from their union!
Marriage – of people, foods, or materials literally means the joining or fusion of two different things! But it is the differences that make the joined union so strong. In marriage the woman and the man bring these very important characteristics together and they complete one another in a way that two “sames” just can’t because they are similar.
3. Saying that it doesn’t matter if there are two mommies or two daddies negates the importance of motherhood and fatherhood. Children benefit greatly from the femininity of their mothers and from the masculinity of their fathers. Children with a mother and a father do better.
[T]his is a tragic day for America’s children. The SCOTUS has just undermined the single greatest pro-child institution in the history of mankind: the natural family. Just as it did in the joint Roe v Wade and Doe v Bolton decisions, the SCOTUS has elevated and enshrined the wants of adults over the needs of children.
4. Justice Kennedy’s conscience was tweaking him a bit while he was deciding how to vote.
“I don’t even know how to count the decimals when we talk about millennia,” he said. “This definition has been with us for millennia. And it’s very difficult for the court to say, ‘Oh, well, we know better.’ ” He added that “the social science on this” — the value and perils of same-sex marriage — is “too new.”
Unfortunately, he let other voices drown out his conscience. Marriage of a man and woman raising children is the basic unit of civilization. And we’ve just messed with that.
Oh… and it hasn’t been going that great for Scandinavia which legalized SSM quite a while ago.
Way to go Anthony. Behold your legacy.
Flickr, licensed cc.
5. Legal does not mean Moral. The court has gotten it wrong before many times. The two outstanding debacles that come to mind immediately are the Dred Scott Decision, and of course Roe vs. Wade.
Oh, and just for fun, how about these?
6. One friend asked me if everyone should have the right to pursue happiness in their own way. In my opinion – no. Not if pursuing happiness causes others to lose life or liberty. So far we have seen small businesses and others lose their Life (as in livelihoods) because they did not believe in SSM. Now small business owners are likely to lose the liberty either literally ( jail time) or financially (legal costs) if they determine in good conscience that they cannot participate in SSM weddings, ceremonies, etc.
But beyond that, children are best served in a family with a mother and a father – that is the best way for children to be happy.
7. We are called to love our fellow man. But sometimes love means saying some hard things. SSM will not bring individuals into closer union with God. It is not loving to pretend that it’s okay to partake in them and to live that lifestyle any more than it’s okay to tell a woman that it is good for her to get an abortion. Wrong is wrong. It is not loving to paint it any other way.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
8. And lastly, but my favorite, the a-religious who want to wave the bible in the air, but haven’t necessarily read the contents. So, here are a few surprises contained therein.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3”; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
Genesis 2:24 “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
‘Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’?” Matthew 19:4
No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. John 3: 6-9
“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you: away from me you evildoers.” Matthew 7:22
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting. Rom. 1:24-28
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 2 Timothy 4:3
[…] In 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States essentially redefined the traditional meaning of marriage. Christians and others that hold strong religious and moral views that oppose this view have been persecuted ever since. […]