Behind this headline

On Thursday, New Jersey became the latest state to defend traditional marriage.

Liberal activism aimed at changing the culture and the law on abortion, euthanasia, religious freedom and same-sex marriage get headlines, but they’re usually shallow stories with thinly disguised activism. Just look at the way they’re reported…

“Minutes after the bill was defeated 20-14, gay rights advocates announced they would file a lawsuit seeking to get the state’s top court to order New Jersey to recognize same-sex matrimony.

“The state Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the state must provide all the benefits of marriage to committed gay couples. In response, the Legislature legalized civil unions for gay couples.

“The Senate vote also was the latest setback for gay rights supporters nationally.

But look at the reason behind the defense of traditional marriage.

“Flipping through TV channels to escape re-runs of old news that was bad and uninformative enough first time around, I discovered Princeton Professor Robert George on EWTN talking with Colleen Carroll Campbell about marriage. I stopped what I was doing to listen, George being one of my favorite scholars in America. They were talking about what marriage is intended to be, because frankly, this culture needs to be reminded what that role is. What immediately caught my attention…other than George being on Faith & Culture…was hearing “the government cannot make good citizens”, which resonated as….well, true. But who ever puts it so clearly?

“George went on to say government can make rules to keep citizens from being bad, or keep them in line, but virtue is only taught within the family. He exposed the fallacies of secular arguments, arguments for new definitions of what constitutes a marriage. And George, as always, followed the arguments through to their logical conclusions and showed how they break down in the process.

“This exercise in reasoning about traditional marrage is repeated many times over in “The Meaning of Marriage: Family, State, Market, And Morals”, a relatively new book George co-edited.”

Strongly recommended, this book. It makes you engage critical thinking skills about the deeper ramifications of cultural trends marketed for maximum public acceptance.

It’s very disinenuous when the liberal activists go into South Dakota, convince the citizens there to vote down the informed consent law for abortion, and then tell the pro-life movement ‘you lost, it’s over, now don’t try it again’. Then the same organizations behind that activism go into California and fight bitterly the results of the voter referendum on same-sex marriage in that state, threatening to take them to court until they get their way. Same on the New Jersey decision Thursday.

So the message is, when you don’t win, change the rules.

Good for the officials of New Jersey who refused to be bullied.