A friend of mine who lives in North Carolina posted the following message on his Facebook page after voting on the marriage amendment Tuesday. I thought it was insightful and summarized a lot of my own thinking on the topic.
Why I Voted For The Marriage Amendment
- I believe that marriage was intended to produce life, and the perpetuation of the human race and thus societies. This only happens between a male and female. I realize this still happens outside marriage, but that does not change the main purpose of marriage.
- In the same vein, marriage laws exist primarily to protect children. They do not exist to give certain rights or entitlements based on the gender of the couple.
- One of the main reasons I voted for it is because I firmly believe that homosexuals and heterosexuals who cohabit will still have equal protection under the law. All people deserve that protection, regardless of their identity. If I believed the amendment limited those protections, I would have voted against it.
- The family, two parents producing children, is the basic unit of society. It is not built on the government or whatever rights it may allow. Without stable families, there would be no society or government. Everyone that exists was brought into the world through this family relationship. Marriage offered further stability to the family. There is a moral restraint in marriage (or at least there used to be) to keep couples from breaking apart and undermining this stability.
- I also believe in tradition. The reason traditions get established is largely because people realized that living one way works and other ways did not. The ancients found that marriage between male and female offered stability for their societies, and not other relationships.
- I believe in revelation. God does communicate his will to us, both in general and special revelation. Nature (or biology, if you will) shows that the only life-producing relationship is between male and female. Special revelation, God’s direct communication, tells us that He created male and female, and that the male was intended to take female as a wife.
I think there is some hypocrisy when we as Christians talk about protecting marriage. The problem lies in the fact that the divorce rate among Christians is as high as it is among non-Christians. Since the onset of “no fault” divorce in the late sixties, divorce rates skyrocketed, and that lies at our door. We need to repent and begin standing up for traditional marriage. This is a step in the right direction.
