Nobody was surprised by Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to overturn California’s Proposition 8 which prohibited homosexual marriage.
The judge ruled that Proposition 8 violated two provisions of the U.S. Constitution namely due process and equal protection because in his view it lacks a rational relation to any legitimate government interest. In essence, he ruled that there is a federal constitutional right to government recognition of homosexual “marriage” – that is, he claimed that the government has the ability and constitutional duty to redefine marriage to include two persons of the same sex.
Judge Walker apparently failed to understand and comprehend two millennia of history and culture that teach us that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman. As a union naturally capable of and open to conceiving and nurturing children, marriage is essential to the well-being and common good of society, more so than any other human institution that the state recognizes and supports. The judge was dreadfully mistaken when he found no rational basis for the timeless definition of marriage.
Redefining marriage is wrong. The consequences would include a neglect of the essential place of sexual difference and complementarity between husband and wife, the neglect of the rights of children to a mother and a father, the false claim that men and women, fathers and mothers, do not matter for families or for society, and requiring a radical revision of laws and education. In law, marriage is shorthand for a package of benefits and responsibilities that the law grants or imposes upon persons who enter into that relationship. The government does not act irrationally or unconstitutionally when it decides not to regulate same-sex couples. Treating different things differently is not unjust discrimination. It’s respecting the unique reality of the relationship between a husband and a wife, who alone are capable of forming a union open to new life.
Marriage is not devised or invented by people. It is given in nature, human nature. Only a man and a woman – by nature and not by human invention – are capable of forming a spousal union and generating children. That some marriages do not generate, or are incapable of generating children, or that technological means are sometimes employed to create children outside the sexual act, does not alter the fundamental fact of sexual complementarity between men and women that is part of, and given in, human nature.
Judge Walker has either mistakenly understood the history and nature of marriage or tragically made a decision based on political correctness. In an age when marriage continues to be attacked on all fronts, this sacred institution needs to be preserved and protected at all costs. Millions of Californians agree and voted overwhelming for Proposition 8 in order to protect and preserve marriage. The will and voice of the people were ignored by Judge Walker who chose to listen to the radical homosexual lobby and the politically correct elites of California who want only to stifle the will of the people and intolerantly drown out their voice. The battle for marriage continues and fortunately for the institution of marriage and the future of our nation the ill advised and mistaken decision of Judge Walker will not be the last word.
