Is Marriage Bigoted and Discriminatory? | Dr. Patrick Lee | Catholic World Report
The President and members of the Supreme Court say "Yes". They are wrong.
Recently
both President Obama and members of the Supreme Court gave support to
the argument that the very idea that marriage is only between a man
and a woman—central to the Judeo-Christian belief about marriage,
as well as every culture on this planet up until recently—manifests
hatred and bigotry toward people with same-sex attractions. Writing
the majority opinion for the Supreme Court’s decision in US v.
Windsor last month, Justice Anthony Kennedy claimed that the
legislators who passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in
1996—which defined for purposes of the federal government that
marriage is only between a man and a woman—must have intended to
“demean” and “injure” same-sex couples, and to “humiliate”
any children that they were raising. The next day President Obama
echoed these sentiments. DOMA, he said, “was discrimination
enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian
couples as a separate and lesser class of people.”
This strident campaign to redefine marriage will only become more intense in the next few years. Catholics will be increasingly labeled as bigots and hate mongers. And so we will face a choice: will we be bullied by such accusations, and remain silent about what our faith and reason tell us, or will we learn how clearly to articulate and defend marriage in the public square?
The marriage of Christians is both a Sacrament and a natural community; it does not cease to be a natural union because it also involves a Sacrament. For that reason, Catholics cannot ignore our culture’s errors about marriage. To answer the charge of bigotry we must be able to explain what marriage is and why it is a man-woman relationship.
The state does not create marriage. Marriage is a specific type of relationship or community, having its own structure, and would exist whether the state made any pronouncements about it or not. Marriage exists in every culture--and the path toward marriage is similar across cultures: a young man and woman fall in love and long to be one with each other. The two spend time together, talk, play games, share meals, and so on. They eventually desire to be one with each other bodily--that is, sexually. They desire this sexual union not merely for gratification, but to embody their love and personal communion.Continue reading on the CWR site.
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