Why I can't support same-sex marriage

My Family from WiddlyTinks.com

I believe in traditional marriage. I believe children are entitled to be born to a father and mother who honor their marriage vows faithfully. I know that redefining marriage may seem like the compassionate thing to do, but I truly believe that it will ultimately 
hurt the coming generations and our society as a whole. -- Natalie, Facebook

When Facebook exploded yesterday about same-sex marriage, I knew I had to get up to speed on what is going on. First and most importantly I have to say that I believe in obedience and I believe in my leaders.  I believe it when they say:

• That marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children. [What is our eternal destiny? That we can be with our spouse forever and have children.  To accept any other way would destroy a core LDS belief of the afterlife.]
• Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.
• THE FIRST COMMANDMENT that God gave to Adam and Eve pertained to their potential for parenthood as husband and wife.
• We declare that God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force. We further declare that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife. [We NEED to have babies!  No matter what, it ALWAYS takes a part of a male and a part of a female to make a baby.]
• HUSBAND AND WIFE have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children. [Nothing about husband and husband or wife and wife.]
• Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. 
• Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.
• WE CALL UPON responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

I also don't think Eliza Snow was messing around when she said, "In the heavens are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare!  Truth is reason; truth eternal tells me I've a mother there"  Note, she did not say anything about an extra dad up there.

MMM also talked about the religious aspect of why he cannot support same-sex marriage, and I'm with him completely.

Have you also thought about what gay marriage will do to temple work? Parents will not be able to be sealed, children will not be able to be sealed to parents.  God's plan for the salvation of his children will be even more frustrated than it already is.

I know many people disregard the religious aspect of this, but there is still the future of the children we need to consider.  I learned a lot from this Meridian Magazine article, "The Inequalities of 'Equal' Marriage."

Once we change the essential public purpose of marriage, genderless marriage effectually goes on to legally declare the following: (1) that marriage is about meeting the private emotional and romantic needs of adults; (2) that contrary to nature and science alike, children do not need or deserve the protection, service, and socialization of both a male and female parent; and (3) that government, rather than biology and the procreative act, will determine the roles in relationships.

This legislation retires mothers and fathers, at best leaving only de facto agents of the state, who are, in the words of Judge Vaughn Walker, “joined in an economic partnership” to “support one another and any dependents” in their custody, as long as their “feelings about one another” motivate that action.

 This type of definition undermines familial relationships, whether in divorce court or just over the dinner table. “After all,” the Catholic theologian Bishop Paprocki explains, “if marriage is an emotional union meant for adult satisfactions, why should it be sexually exclusive? Or limited to two? Or pledged to permanence? If children don’t need both their mother and father, why should fathers stick around when romance fades?” And why should there be legal recourse to mother and child when that father abandons them? He’s only a romantic attachment. 

And by the way, here's a great one again reaffirming that a traditional family provides the best environment for children to thrive.  Just because we define family as any group of people, does not mean that children in any "family" will do as well as those in a married heterosexual home.  It makes me sad that rather than trying to make society stronger, we're just making it more shaky.  Are we not looking toward the future?  Watch the video, it's fantastic.

My heart broke reading the story of Robert Lopez, a bisexual man who grew up in a home with two moms. He felt so awkward, and didn't learn many social cues that come naturally to mother/father led homes.  He, however, eventually figured out where he fit in and stated,

Once I was a father, I put aside my own homosexual past and vowed never to divorce my wife or take up with another person, male or female, before I died. I chose that commitment in order to protect my children from dealing with harmful drama, even as they grow up to be adults. When you are a parent, ethical questions revolve around your children and you put away your self-interest . . . forever. . . .

Many have dismissed my story with four simple words: “But you are conservative.” Yes, I am. How did I get that way? I moved to the right wing because I lived in precisely the kind of anti-normative, marginalized, and oppressed identity environment that the left celebrates: I am a bisexual Latino intellectual, raised by a lesbian, who experienced poverty in the Bronx as a young adult. I’m perceptive enough to notice that liberal social policies don’t actually help people in those conditions. Especially damning is the liberal attitude that we shouldn’t be judgmental about sex. In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love. The left understands none of that. That’s why I am conservative.

I also appreciated this one by Doug Mainwaring and his brutal honesty about gay relationships as well as the satisfaction that can be found in male/female relationships both for spouses and their children.  (I copied way too much of his article, but there's even more good stuff if your read the actual link.)

The notion of same-sex marriage is implausible, yet political correctness has made stating the obvious a risky business. Genderless marriage is not marriage at all. It is something else entirely. . . .

Philia love between men is far better, far stronger, and far more fulfilling than erotic love can ever be. But society now promotes the lowest form of love between men while sabotaging the higher forms. Gay culture continues to promote the sexualization of all (viewing one’s self and other males primarily as sexual beings), while proving itself nearly bankrupt when it comes to fostering any other aspect of male/male relationships. . . . [I'd say it also applies to heterosexual relationships, too.  Our culture seems to train us to think sex is the best thing in the world.  We ought to rethink that a loving relationship is the best thing in the world, and on top of that, if married, comes sex: the icing on the cake.]

[After marrying a woman and adopting after infertility] A great shock came the day after we brought our son home from the adoption agency. While driving home for lunch, I was suddenly overcome with such emotion that I had to pull the car off to the side of the road. Never in my life had I experienced such pure, distilled joy and sense of purpose. I kept repeating, “I’m a dad,” over and over again. Nothing else mattered. I knew exactly where I fit in within this huge universe. When we brought home his brother nearly two years later, I was prepared: I could not wait to take him up in my arms and declare our kinship and my unconditional love and irrevocable responsibility for him.

Neither religion nor tradition turned me into a dedicated father. It was something wonderful from within—a great strength that has only grown with time. A complete surprise of the human spirit. In this way and many others, marriage—my bond with the mother of my children—has made me a much better person, a person I had no idea I had the capacity to become. . . .

[After he and his wife divorced] I dated some great guys, and was in a couple of long-term relationships. Over several years, intellectual honesty led me to some unexpected conclusions: (1) Creating a family with another man is not completely equal to creating a family with a woman, and (2) denying children parents of both genders at home is an objective evil. Kids need and yearn for both. . . .

It took some doing, but after ten years of divorce, we began to pull our family back together. We have been under one roof for over two years now. Our kids are happier and better off in so many ways. My ex-wife, our kids, and I recently celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas together and agreed these were the best holidays ever.
Because of my predilections, we deny our own sexual impulses. Has this led to depressing, claustrophobic repression? No. We enjoy each other’s company immensely. It has actually led to psychological health and a flourishing of our family. Did we do this for the sake of tradition? For the sake of religion? No. We did it because reason led us to resist selfish impulses and to seek the best for our children. . . .

To be fully formed, children need to be free to generously receive from and express affection to parents of both genders. Genderless marriages deny this fullness. . . .

Moms and dads interact differently with their children. To give kids two moms or two dads is to withhold from them someone whom they desperately need and deserve in order to be whole and happy. It is to permanently etch “deprivation” on their hearts. . . .

Sexuality is fluid for many, and much more complex than many want to acknowledge. Gay and straight activists alike pretend this isn’t true in order to fortify their positions. . . .

I find that men I know who have left their wives as they’ve come out of the closet . . . adjust their entire view of the world and their role within it in order to accommodate what has become the dominant aspect of their lives: their homosexuality. In doing so, they trade rich lives for one-dimensional lives. . . .

Two men or two women together is, in truth, nothing like a man and a woman creating a life and a family together. Same-sex relationships are certainly very legitimate, rewarding pursuits, leading to happiness for many, but they are wholly different in experience and nature. . . .

Gay and lesbian activists, and more importantly, the progressives urging them on, seek to redefine marriage in order to achieve an ideological agenda that ultimately seeks to undefine families as nothing more than one of an array of equally desirable “social units,” and thus open the door to the increase of government’s role in our lives. . . .

I do feel compassion for gay people who want to marry, but in good conscience, I just can't support it.

*Here's another I'd like to read, and this.

I enjoyed this one at Beautopotamus, too.