The trials of marriage

The US Supreme Court hears opening arguments on same-sex marriage law Tuesday. It’s been on trial for years.

But it’s ramped up lately as never before. In January, the French held a massive rally in Paris that stunned parts of the world unaware of the sentiment there for natural marriage and family values. Especially since they saw it coming in the last election.

Extending the right to marry and adopt to same-sex couples was one of President Francois Hollande’s electoral pledges in campaigning last year.

However, once he tried it…

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Paris on Sunday decrying the French president’s plan to legalize same-sex marriage and adoptions.

They converged near the Eiffel Tower, chanting and waving flags, posters and balloons.

“I do not personally agree with gay marriage as I am a Christian and believe what the Bible says about marriage being between one woman and one man for a life time,” said CNN iReporter Oluwasegun Olowu-Davies, who shot video of the march with his phone.

“If your lifestyle doesn’t allow you to conceive, there is a reason,” he said…

Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, the archbishop of Paris, voiced his opposition at a meeting of French bishops in Lourdes last year.

Opening up marriage to same-sex couples “would be a transformation of marriage that would affect everyone,” he said.

At the same time, failing to recognize gender difference within marriage and the family would be a “deceit” that would rock the foundations of society and lead to discrimination between children, he said.

Other religious groups in France, including Muslims, Jews and Buddhists, have also expressed their concern over the draft bill, and more than 100 lawmakers are against the legislation, according to CNN affiliate BFMTV.

Hundreds of mayors around the country have also voiced their opposition, which has won wide backing from gay rights advocates.

But it passed anyway, at least the lower house of Parliament. Now it has to pass the Senate, and activists have turned out again.

Hundreds of thousands of French citizens rallied in Paris on Sunday, March 24, to protest a government plan for recognition of same-sex marriage.

Legislation allowing for homosexual unions passed easily in the lower house of parliament, supporters of the measure are confident of approval in the Senate, and the bill has strong support from President Francois Hollande. But defenders of traditional marriage, hoping to generate strong public resistance, organized the second massive demonstration for their cause.

Police estimated the crowd in Paris at 300,000. Organizers dismissed that estimate as wildly inaccurate, saying that well over 1 million people had participated.

The demonstration was peaceful until some participants tried to turn onto the Champs Elysée to approach the presidential palace, and clashed with police blocking that route. The police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, prompting protests from many bystanders who had not been involved in the confrontation with police, but were affected by the tear gas. Thousands of families, many including young children, had been involved in the rally.

This is remarkable.

The movement against gay marriage has given France a new celebrity in the form of its public face, Virginie Tellenne, a Parisian socialite who goes by the name of Frigide Barjot.

“We want the president to deal with the economy and leave the family alone,” Tellenne said Sunday.

There’s a small handful of fair and accurate reports on this in the press. Most major media were transparently tendentious.

Der Spiegel at least got the caption right that hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest government action to legalize gay marriage. But their headline, ‘Anti-Gay Activists Clash With Police’ needs a little scrutiny. First of all, why are they labeled “anti-gay activists”? Easy answer is because anyone who opposes an agenda of abortion or same-sex marriage or other social policy that uproots a civilizational ethic is labeled as “anti” something, to help shape public opinion against them. And second, why the clash with police? Who started that? Headline doesn’t say. But it was tear gas, fired at the crowd by police when the peaceful demonstration turned onto the Champs Elysee.

This report said

Protesters hoisted signs reading “Don’t touch marriage, take care of unemployment!” and “Everyone is born from a man and a woman”.

That’s the case the March for Marriage organizers plan to make on their first ever US rally on the Mall of Washington Tuesday, similar to the annual March for Life in January each year on the anniverseary of the Roe v. Wade legalization of abortion across the states.

The Court will consider two cases.

The justices are first hearing a constitutional challenge to California’s ban on same-sex marriage. A second day is devoted to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples married in the nine states where such unions are legal.

The two cases fall into the category of the truly momentous. So much so that Supreme Court advocate Tom Goldstein literally pounded the table when speaking to law students last month. “This is special,” he declared, observing that there were no cases like it when he was in law school.” This will be a “foundational decision” that “is going to be decided for centuries.”

On one side of the argument in these cases is the idea of equality. On the other, traditional notions of how society has ordered itself.

That’s a bit disingenuous, but clever. The movement to redefine marriage has been very successful in marketing their ideas as civil rights, human rights, matters of equality. Americans are sensitive to recognizing equality and conferring it, though the matter of abortion and its denial of human rights is another issue for another day.

This isn’t about equality in terms of human rights. Loyola Marymount Philosophy Professor Christopher Kaczor points out in his book The Seven Big Myths About the Catholic Church the flaws in that argument.  Here’s just one snip:

Same-sex marriage advocates will object that even though homosexuals can and do currently get marriied, they cannot marry in accordance with their sexual orientation–for example, a gay man cannot marry a man. Same-sex marriage secures the right of people to marry in accordance with their sexual orientation.

However, if there is a right to marry in accordance with sexual orientation, then a bisexual should be allowed to marry both a man and a woman at the same time. Thus, bigamy would have to be acceptable.

He’s right. In other words, moving the goal posts and changing the rules makes future changes unstoppable, as unthinkable as they are at this time. And they aren’t unthinkable by some groups watching all this to see what might be possible for them in the future.

The politician who masterminded the gay marriage campaign in Holland says that “group marriage” is now being discussed in the country.

Boris Dittrich, a former Dutch politician, gave a video interview about how he successfully introduced gay marriage. He said, “There is now a discussion in the Netherlands that sometimes people want to marry with three people and maybe even more.

“But that’s the beginning of something completely new and that will take a lot of years I guess.”

How recently were societies saying the same thing about where we are now?