| MND COMMENTARY |
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Why Civil Unions Are Unconstitutional, Too April 21, 2005 by David R. Usher Many states protect traditional marriage. Eighteen states now constitutionally prevent same-sex marriage. Another 26 states protect it in statutory language. And 20 states are in the process of passing constitutional amendments to protect heterosexual marriage. However, a surprisingly large number of solid conservatives have joined radical feminists in going along with the notion of civil unions!! You can even count President George Bush, talk show hostess Laura Ingraham, most Young Republicans, and a long list of congressional Republicans among those think it is moral and sensible to quietly turn over the functional aspects of marriage to the National Organization of Women. Civil unions are a convenient concept for feminists. It mugwumps the functional issues while letting those who voted to protect marriage think they just saved the planet from the apes. Radical feminist promoters of these alien changes to our social fabric are very experienced using this negotiating tactic. Their modus operandi: demand the moon and the stars, then let folks know you’ll stop calling them nasty names if they just give you planet earth instead. This approach put nearly all RHINOs to sleep (who, like crocodiles, turn into helpless handbags you tickle their bellies). And it even fooled many rock-solid conservatives, most of whom still think civil unions are just fine and dandy. Wrong, folks. You haven’t thought it through yet. If you would never join N.O.W. or prance around at a V-day celebration, read on ….. A few days after the decision was rendered in the Goodridge case, forcing gay marriage on the state of Massachusetts, I realized why the “good guys” lost. We litigated morals, religion, and tradition in a court full of liberal judges who were (conveniently and primarily) hearing an “equal rights” case. The court slid right under the limbo bar. My previous MND article “Why Gay Marriage is Unconstitutional” set forth the first civil legal argument proving why same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The ADF, CCF, and Family Research Council were stunned by this concept and began applying it in their work. We haven’t lost a court case yet, friends. My thesis, briefly, is this: “Marriage is the first, and the greatest guarantor of human equality in history. It is the only civil rights institution that eliminates all natural and culturally-imposed social, economic, physical, and gender disparities and differences that exist men and women. It is heterosexual marriage which forms the whole cloth of the human race.” In short: Heterosexual marriage naturally ensures equality of the sexes, ensures that the vast majority of children will be raised successfully to mature into adult life, and ensures attainment of pro-social government objectives (for which the constitution provides the right for government to step in and decide what is not acceptable). But how does this relate to civil unions? Civil unions and equality of men and women Connecticut just enacted a state law legalizing civil unions with all the rights and benefits of heterosexual marriage. Now, just as in Massachusetts, any two women can “union” or “marry” each other and form a “hyper-feminist family” that has six incomes (the earnings of two women, two sets of child support orders, and two sets of welfare entitlements). Gay men who “union” with each other get nothing, but might well end up deadbeat dads supporting one or more predatory dual-matriarchal “families”. Normal heterosexual marriages, who also only have two incomes, are an immediately disadvantaged class of families as well. A point of political history: The Feminist movement devoted most of its energy since 1975 seeking “same sex” marriage and “civil unions”, because they knew it would immediately create a gender-class-based society in which feminists hold total control over family, children, and society. I didn’t make this up – it is sporadically discussed in many feminist writings over the past 30 years. Vociferous clamoring about discrimination against gays and lesbians is merely the smokescreen feminists use so you don’t notice what their real objective is. “Sexual preference” has nothing to do with the goals feminists seek. In fact, the feminist goal was not to help gays an lesbians. The feminist goal all along has been sexist – to make it so any two women can marry each other and take over the social and economic construct of marriage. And they actually accomplished it in two states, at least for now. If John Kerry was the king of doublespeak, the National Organization of Women is his queen. N.O.W. pushed divorce, deconstructed marriage, and drove over half the husbands in America out of their families on the notion that marriage is a “trap”. Now feminists want to reconstruct marriage, but to support the goal of feminist supremacy. A point on political stupidity: While we can’t blame gay men for wanting “marriage”, it is social suicide for them to help N.O.W get it because it would turn them into fourth-class citizens, behind everybody else. And that’s precisely why N.O.W is (for once in their history) more than happy to help men “get something”. We can only hope that gay men “get it” before they really get it. The impact of civil unions on religious rights and freedoms A civil union is nothing more than marriage without the ecclesiastical blessing. Gay marriage advocates admit this fact openly. They claim that since civil unions won’t lawfully force ecclesiastical blessings from churches, religions have no say in the matter. This is a raccoon in a trash can if I ever heard one. Everyone who cares about the future of this country should be out there jamming the lid on this stinker like the future of their children depends on it. Already, one man in Massachusetts by the name of David Parker has been arrested opposing pro-homosexual teaching of young children in a book titled “Who's in a Family?” at Joseph Estabrook School in Lexington, Mass. Brian Camenker, director of the traditional-values organization Article 8 Alliance also objects. Since gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, the school believes that parents do not have any lawful right to object to inculcation of homosexual propaganda, even when young children are the targets. It’s a secular abortion of religion in progress. The men in this case are obviously moral men with religious convictions. Massachusetts thinks it is King Herod and anyone who disagrees has to lay down (or go to jail) while their children are morally abused before God. According to a lesbian website “Pink Parents”, this book is “just a catalogue of many kinds of families - pictures of children with gay fathers, lesbian mothers, single parents, grandparents, and even heterosexual parents, with no particular emphasis on any one type of family”. Religion aside, It should come as a bit of a shock that we would never teach kids to smoke in school, but in Connecticut they teach kids how to catch a fatal disease while suggesting it’s a beautiful thing. The teaching of these values is a violation of the separation of church and state. When a state can require parents to stand aside while children are taught that sex is unimportant and has no purpose; that androgynous family structures (and unhealthy sexual practices that go with them) are equivalent to normal (and biblical) ones; and that disgusting sexual practices are somehow normal; the state is violating the fundamental natural right of parents to raise their children according to their religious and moral beliefs. More importantly, parents cannot raise their children to understand what sexual practices are right and wrong. Civil unions would have exactly the same effect on parenting. Secular society would have the full legal right to trample the lives of parents, flattening their right to teach their children about the most fundamental of all religious tenets – heterosexual marriage. In 1880, Pope Leo XIII issued an illuminating Encyclical On Christian Marriage; pointing out why civil unions violate religious rights and freedoms. “All nations seem, more or less, to have forgotten the true notion and origin of marriage; and thus everywhere laws were enacted with reference to marriage, prompted to all appearance by State reasons, but not such as nature required …. Let no one, then, be deceived by the distinction which some civil jurists have so strongly insisted upon-the distinction, namely, by virtue of which they sever the matrimonial contract from the sacrament, with intent to hand over the contract to the power and will of the rulers of the State, while reserving questions concerning the sacrament of the Church. A distinction, or rather severance, of this kind cannot be approved; for certain it is that in Christian marriage the contract is inseparable from the sacrament, and that, for this reason, the contract cannot be true and legitimate without being a sacrament as well …. A very torrent of evil has flowed from this source, not only into private families, but also into States. For, the salutary fear of God being removed, and there being no longer that refreshment in toil which is nowhere more abounding than in the Christian religion…. Now that the minds of so many are inflamed with a reckless spirit of liberty, and men are wickedly endeavoring to get rid of every restraint of authority, however legitimate it may be, the public safety demands that both powers should unite their strength to avert the evils which are hanging, not only over the Church, but also over civil society ….” We now have two states that have effectively removed “God” and parents from their constitutions, despite the fact the constitutions of these two states state they were founded “under God” and define parental rights. How did feminists position themselves to take over marriage? We have reached this impasse because conservatives spent the last twenty-five years ignoring divorce reform. If conservatives had taken this issue seriously, marriage would not have devolved to a state so meaningless that liberals could take it over in the first place. And there are millions of reasons for reforming divorce. Men have been denied constitutional parental and social rights for nearly half a century now, to the great detriment of most women and children. Divorce has left more women and children in poverty than any other event or war in American history. Consider this: “We must now grant to fathers the same right to be in the family as we have granted to women in the workplace”. This is the answer to the greatest social and economic debacle in American history, all wrapped into one sentence. When a boy cannot grow up anticipating being a father and husband (the only way men can be full members of society), his future is quite predictable. We do not allow laws discriminatory of the races, and we cannot allow the creation of any law which would establish permanent socioeconomic discrimination against men based on sex. Whether or not civil unions are actually granted the “same benefits as marriage” or not is immaterial. When any two women can (or could eventually) “union” with each other and take sole control of family and society, it is unconstitutional on its face. Enactment of civil unions in any form would establish a fatal social legal tenet, and be entirely malleable in the future. It would be a step towards feminist supremacy changeable with a Christmas-tree amendment in the last minutes of your next legislative session, or a liberal court ruling expanding it. We just don’t go there, America!! Action is needed now! I urge all readers, of all religious and political persuasions, to join together in unity in strongly opposing the tremendously antisocial and unequalitarian concepts of “gay marriage” and “civil unions”, which are extremely dangerous to the future of America and the human race. To win, everyone should call their representatives in full opposition of civil unions and support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. There is still disagreement over the Federal Marriage Amendment. I believe that if we do not bar same sex marriage and civil unions at the federal level, feminists will “knock up” a few states, and then run it up the courts until they get what they want from the Supreme Court – just like they did with Roe v. Wade. This is what we have to do to stop feminists from achieving their goal of taking over the American family, whether we are “states rights” folks or not. We need our steady conservative commentators to wake up, tackle this issue seriously, and straighten out the American public. Playing politics is fine when you don’t have an ideological disaster in progress. We have one right now. Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, Shawn Hannity, Mona Charen, George Will, Phyllis Schlafly, John Leo, and all the others who did so brilliantly educating the American public in the last election cycle should take steps making this a more decisive and permanent victory. Failure to do so only feeds the social problems and social entitlement expenditures that bring on uncontrollable deficits, which will eventually put liberals back into power, if the divorce and government-as-preferred-husband-for-about-half-of-women problem is not fixed. And we must organize to reform divorce. There are not yet any aggressive, well-funded marriage-movement organizations that are on the right track. This needs to change, and very quickly. Premarital counseling sure feels good, but it isn’t going to slow the losses in Las Vegas. We need tough-love divorce reform and strengthening of the marriage contract. We need proactive policies that help spouses work through the normal problems and processes of marriage and aging. And we must always reward the spouse most responsible to the marriage in the event divorce finally becomes necessary. David R. Usher is a Legislative Analyst for the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition. |
There is little question that same-sex marriage is unconstitutional (even in a couple of states who haven’t read their constitutions lately).|
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