The Bible Prohibits these Kinds of marriages:
1. With another man. Lev. 20:13; Lev. 18:22.
2. With father or mother. Lev. 18:7-8; Lev. 20:11; Deut. 22:30; Deut. 27:20.
3. With one's sister or half-sister. Lev. 18:9-11; Lev. 20:17; Deut. 27:22; Ezek. 22:11.
4. With one's mother-in-law. Deut. 27:23.
5. With a grandchild. Lev. 18:10.
6. With one's aunt. Lev. 18:12-14; Lev. 20:19.
7. With one's uncle or uncle's wife. Lev. 18:14; Lev. 20:20.
8. With one's daughter-in-law. Lev. 18:15; Lev. 20:12; Ezek. 22:11.
9. With your brother's wife. Lev. 18:16; Lev. 20:21.
10. With a woman and her daughter or her grand daughter. Lev. 18:17; Lev. 20:14.
11. With two women who are sisters. Lev. 18:18.
12. With thy neighbor's wife. Lev. 18:20; Lev. 20:10; Ezek. 22:11.
13. We are not to intermarry with those who practice idolatry. Exod. 34:16; Deut. 7:3.
14. We are not to marry unbelievers. 2 Cor. 6:14-17.
15. We are not to marry those of other races. Gen. 28:6; Exodus 34:15-16; Num. 25:6-11; Deut. 7: 1-3; Josh. 23:12-13; Judges 3:5- 8; 1 Kings 11:1-2; Ezra 9:1-2,12; Ezra 10:2-3, Ezra 10:10-11; Nehe.10:30; Nehe.13:25-27.
A Biblical Case Against Gay 'Marriage'
A December issue of Newsweek featured a cover story entitled “Our Mutual Joy” that purported to offer a “religious case” for gay “marriage.” Author Lisa Miller claimed, “Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.” Really?
It is interesting that apologists for the homosexual lifestyle typically say, on the one hand, that religious conservatives don’t really understand Scripture; if they did, they would see that there is no prohibition against homosexual love or marriage. On the other hand, they tell us the Bible is not to be trusted as a modern-day commentary when it speaks on moral issues—particularly sexuality. As Miller put it, “the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scriptures give us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be married.”
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham was even more direct in his commentary on Miller’s article, saying that “to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition.”
In light of these statements, it is obvious that homosexuals do not want to be held to the biblical standards of faith and practice, yet have no trouble embracing some form of religiosity in order to feel sanctified in the eyes of God. As the apostle Paul put it in 2 Timothy 3:1-5:
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
In her attempt to justify what is scripturally unjustifiable, Miller, either consciously or unconsciously, has made a number of grievous errors:
MARRIAGE IS A HOLY ORDINANCE
First, marriage is not a triviality, but a holy ordinance ordained by God in the Garden of Eden. He declares to Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:24, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh,” which is His model for the union of male and female. Although some patriarchs strayed from this model following the Fall, it was not without consequences. David, for example, lost the son that was born as a result of his affair with Bathsheba.
Jesus is described by Miller as being “indifferent to earthly attachments,” but He reiterates God’s ordinance in Matt. 19:3-5 when questioned by the Pharisees on the matter of divorce:
Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife and they twain [two] shall be one flesh?’ Wherefore, they are no more twain [two], but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
Miller further claims that the “fact” that Jesus was single indicates that the Bible has no model for a “how-to” script on marriage. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Jesus was married—to His church (the community of believers), and His life is an allegory of traditional Hebrew marriage rituals.
In the Hebrew ritual, the father or his emissary would pick out the bride for his son. Next, a price was established for the bride to be paid by the groom. When the bride accepted the proposal, they were legally betrothed, but the marriage was not yet consummated. Gifts were exchanged between the bride and groom and the groom departed to prepare a place for his bride—often in his father’s house. The groom may have left for an extended period, but eventually he returned to claim his bride, take her to the place he prepared, and consummate the marriage.
Similarly, God the Father selects the bride (believers) for His Son (“All that the Father gives me shall come to me and I will in no wise cast out” John 6:37). Jesus pays for His bride by His sacrificial death on the cross. Believers who accept Christ are sanctified, but not yet in His presence.
Upon a believer’s commitment to trust in Christ, he or she is given the Holy Spirit, who provides each believer a gift of the Spirit. Jesus leaves His bride (the church) to go to His Father’s house, but prior to His departure, says, “In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2-3). In the end times, Jesus will return to the earth to gather His church and consummate his relationship with believers, who will then remain in His presence forever.
Accordingly, marriage is reflective of Christ’s relationship with His church and as such, is not a matter of “indifference” to Him, as Miller suggested, but rather has meaning beyond any other earthly institution—it is holy. In a Spirit-guided Christian marriage, the bride and groom mirror in many ways the relationship Christ has with His church. As noted in Ephesians 5:21-25:
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her.
Therefore, whatever two persons of the same sex wish to call their mutual relationship—partnering, co-habiting, or sharing a household—one thing is certain: It is not a marriage in the biblical sense nor in common sense.
COMPARING SLAVERY TO THE ISSUE OF GAY RIGHTS
Another fallacy of the gay rights movement is comparing America’s experience with slavery with the battle for gay rights. Miller accuses opponents of same-sex “marriage” of using Scripture “as the foundation for their objections,” in similar fashion as 19th-century supporters of slavery. Jon Meacham states this case most succinctly: “The analogy with race is apt, for Christians in particular long cited scriptural authority to justify and perpetuate slavery with the same certitude that some now use to point to certain passages in the Bible to condemn homosexuality and to deny the sacrament of marriage to homosexuals. This argument from scripture is difficult to take seriously.”
The difference is that Scripture does not support slavery and recognizes it as evil, although it was a reality of the times. Persons who looked to the Bible for support on this issue were guilty of the same proof texting as Miller and Meacham. Paul states the biblical view quite clearly in 1 Timothy 1:8-10:
We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.
Those who identify homosexuality as an issue of civil rights and equate it with racial discrimination are both insulting and irrational. Issues of race, ethnicity, national origin, or gender are all real and provable human characteristics. Homosexuality is a behavior that is learned and changeable, unlike the other characteristics, which are innate and immutable. There is not a person on earth that can prove he or she is a homosexual—it is a declaration that can change as evidenced by innumerable persons who have abandoned the lifestyle.
The most common factors in those who have entered the homosexual lifestyle are childhood sexual abuse, a poor relationship with the same-sex parent, or seduction. These classic causes were noted in the story of Lisa Miller (not the author) who left her lesbian relationship with Janet Jenkins convinced that the relationship was sinful. She later repented and reaffirmed her Christian faith. It was also revealed that “her mother sexually and physically abused her as a child and later, forbade her to date, telling her ‘men were evil.’” It is easy to see how she could fall into the homosexual lifestyle.
Miller is not alone in this circumstance. Many gay celebrities have admitted they were victims of childhood sexual abuse including Rosie O’Donnell, Ellen DeGeneres, Anne Heche, Julie Cypher, Melissa Etheridge, swimming star Greg Louganis, and Chastity Bono, who disclosed how she was seduced as a child into the “gay” lifestyle by one of Cher Bono’s lesbian friends. Additionally, many of the young boys seduced by priests were drawn into the homosexual lifestyle by the experience.
Gay-rights activists and their apologists have waged an effective brass knuckles campaign to portray homosexuality as inborn and unchangeable and therefore deserving of acceptance, affirmation, and codification into law. Nevertheless, declaring something to be true doesn’t make it so, nor does it make it right.
SCRIPTURE AND HOMOSEXUALITY
Contrary to the opinion of Newsweek's Miller, Scripture is clear and distinct about the subject of homosexuality no matter how hard gay activists would like to wish it away. Beyond the Old Testament condemnation of homosexual practice as an abomination (which Miller refers to as “throwaway” lines), Paul writes in Romans 1:25-27:
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
In view of the above, it is interesting to note that Miller claims, “Nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women.” Evidently, neither Miller nor her source, the Anchor Bible Dictionary, has ever read Romans.
Miller uses certain peculiar passages in Leviticus, which have no modern application, to suggest that statements condemning homosexuality need not be heeded: “[Leviticus is] a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. . . . Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices. . . . Why would we regard homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice . . . on the best price to pay for a slave?”
It is important to understand that there are three types of laws in the Old Testament: moral laws, ceremonial laws, and codified civil laws. Under the New Covenant, the ceremonial laws were abolished, since Jesus Christ Himself negated the need for the sacrificial system (see Hebrews 9:1-15). The moral laws remain timeless and permanent.
God imposed the codified civil laws on the Israelite nation during its formative years in order that the people not be corrupted by the practices of the pagans.
The punishment these laws invoked were not intended to be permanent, as can be clearly seen in Jesus' encounter with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). Although the Pharisees wanted to stone her to death in accordance with the Mosaic Law, Jesus challenged her accusers to show that they themselves were without sin. Jesus then forgave the woman and sent her on her way with the admonition, “Go and sin no more.” Clearly, her adultery was sinful but not a justification to stone her to death.
As Christians, we are called to follow Jesus' example and be witnesses—not executioners—for the redemption of sinners through entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
The Most Compelling Arguments Against Legalizing Gay Marriage
Marriage is an institution so valued in virtually every society, modern or ancient, that it always has been easy to rally public support against challenges to it.
The fervor of that defense has been obvious, across the country, in recent years, especially since 1993, when the Hawaii Supreme Court signaled that same-sex couples in that state might soon gain a right to marry, under the state constitution.
No state had previously even hinted at that, and the reaction of defenders of marriage was swift and widespread. As a result, the change did not happen in Hawaii, and would not, in any state, until Massachusetts’ highest state court opened marriage to same-sex couples, nine years ago this month.
The Hawaiian hint, of course, ran counter to a traditional understanding about marriage. A state court in New York would remark later: ”It was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex.”
Changing that understanding has been seen, in many quarters of society, as a threat to marriage itself, and, with it, a threat to society’s capacity to renew itself generation after generation. Same-sex marriage, some would and did argue, was nothing less than a suicide pact for humanity.
That understanding had been so well established that, in 1972, it would be entirely unremarkable that the Supreme Court would conclude that a gay couple’s challenge to a traditional marriage law did not even raise “a substantial federal question.” That was the Justices’ brief and apparently unanimous ruling in the case of Baker v. Nelson, and that ruling reverberates still, regularly cited by marriage defenders with the argument that it is the Court’s binding last word on the subject.
In fact, if the Supreme Court were to conclude in one or more of the new same-sex marriage cases now on its docket that Baker v. Nelson did, indeed, settle the matter, that might well be the end of gay marriage equality as a constitutional matter — at least for the next several years, and perhaps longer. The current status of that precedent is thus one of the first questions the Court probably would need to answer before moving on to any other arguments, for or against same-sex marriage.
The Baker argument of marriage defenders is a simple one: that it is a precedent set by the Court, and it cannot be set aside unless the Court itself does so. As the lawyers for the Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives told the Justices in a filing in one of the new cases: “Baker controls this case….Baker stands for the proposition that a state may use the traditional definition of marriage without violating equal protection. It necessarily follows that Congress may use the same traditional definition of marriage for federal purposes without violating equal protection.”
Since the constitutional core of the argument of advocates of same-sex marriage is the guarantee of “equal protection,” a new Supreme Court ruling interpreting Baker as broadly as the House GOP leaders do would undercut the legal foundation of the claim to marriage equality. Indeed, that is why federal courts that have struck down laws against same-sex marriage have done so only after first treating the Baker precedent as narrow in scope, and not binding in the new cases.
Marriage defenders have another basic point to make to the Justices: their argument that laws seeking to preserve the traditional concept of marriage should be judged by the most tolerant constitutional test, “rational basis.” (The first article in this series, found here, discussed that standard-of-review issue, and noted the marriage defenders’ position in favor of a rationality test alone.)
When the marriage defenders move beyond their point about Baker‘s force as controlling precedent, their arguments on constitutional questions go back to the same root: the Constitution, they contend, does not forbid the government, at any level, from taking steps to preserve marriage in its traditional form. Indeed, their lawyers insist that opposition to same-sex marriage has no source in discrimination, but rather is a positive effort to assure that the social values served by marriage go on being served by that institution. Those values depend, they insist, upon marriage being limited to one man and one woman.
The point that they emphasize most heavily, about opposite-sex marriage, is the necessary link they say exists between marriage and child-bearing and child-rearing. They quote the English philosopher and social critic Bertrand Russell: “But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex….It is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.” That institution, of course, is marriage, opposite-sex marriage.
As recently as two years ago, marriage defenders’ lawyers could say in court filings that “every appellate court decision, both state and federal, to address the validity of traditional opposite-sex marriage laws under the federal Constitution has upheld them as rationally related to the state’s interest in responsible procreation and child-rearing.” (Included among the courts making that connection was the Minnesota Supreme Court, in the decision left undisturbed by the Justices in Baker v. Nelson in 1972.)
And, the defenders argue, more than three-fourths of the states still adhere to the traditional definition of marriage, confining same-sex marriages to the status of a novelty in little more than a handful of states.
Although more recent federal appeals court rulings at both the appeal and trial levels have struck down traditional marriage-definition laws, and similar laws have been set aside in a few more states recently, it remains true that there is a considerably longer list of decisions upholding such laws. That is likely to be among the arguments the defenders of marriage will be making to the Justices.
On the merits, though, the marriage-children link is still the heart of their argument against same-sex marriage. It is founded in historical, legal, scientific and cultural principles.
Marriage, the defenders contend, cannot possibly be treated as a “fundamental right” open to gays and lesbians because such a right must have a foundation in American history, legal traditions, and practices.
It has, they say, none of those characteristics; it was unheard of in law until 2003, and can make no claim to being common even today. At the time the nation was founded, and at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868, it was clearly understood that marriage was the union between one man and one woman, the defenders assert. Those historic foundations of the definition should count heavily today in interpreting what the Constitution permits or demands, they argue.
The “responsible procreation” branch of their marriage-children link is keyed to what they call “the undeniable biological reality” that opposite-sex unions, and only those, can produce children. It is better, they argue, that children be born into a stable union that only marriage can create, and it is marriage that is the foundation of America’s — and the world’s — enduring family units. Children, the marriage defenders contend, prosper better with parents of opposite sexes — a father and mother — because they derive unique values from such parents, and because marriage encourages the parents to remain together while the children mature.
Many laws, they argue, are enacted and enforced precisely to encourage the continuation of marriage and the fulfillment of its obligations. Such laws assure that marriages are between two, rather than several, individuals, that the commitment is meant to last for lifetimes, that the partners remain loyal to it, and that the father is presumed to be the father of the child whose mother is his wife. Those laws cannot even be understood, it is argued, unless they are seen as strengthening the responsible birth and rearing of children.
Marriage, its defenders concede, is not conditioned upon having children, because that by itself would be unconstitutional state coercion. But opposite-sex couples may, indeed, become parents by accident, and that is a potential that same-sex partners could never experience, they note.
To the argument that the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia validated the idea that traditional marriage could not be limited to traditional marital partners, the marriage defenders counter that that ruling, too, promoted procreation by opening up the prospect of children of mixed-race being raised within a stable family unit. Moreover, they contend that the decision would have come out the other way, had the couple involved been of the same sex, since only five years later, the Supreme Court decided Baker v. Nelson, and the gay couple in that case had tried to claim the Loving decision as a precedent in their favor.
Whatever virtues the supporters of same-sex marriage can claim for such unions, the defenders of traditional marriage argue, those cannot compare with those that justify the protection and promotion of traditional marriage, and those who pass the laws of a state — including its citizens in voting on ballot measures — are clearly entitled to choose the definition of the institution that they find to be superior.
Further, the defenders say, it is essential — in a time when traditional cultural and moral values are being tested — that legislatures be allowed to proceed with caution before fundamental alterations are made in the institution of marriage. Such changes should await more scientific certainty about child-bearing and child-rearing outside of traditional marital unions, and also should await the development — if there is to be one — of a different public consensus about whether or not to protect marriage as it has been known for countless years. The defenders buttress this argument about caution with a fervent defense of the power of the individual states, the long-time source of laws about marriage, to make their own judgments about who can enter that institution.
Perhaps the most controversial argument that the defenders make is that the institution itself would be harmed if it were opened to same-sex couples. They have relied upon social science claims that, merely by altering the definition of marriage, such a change cannot help but alter its basic character. The public’s conscious understanding of what marriage is, and is supposed to be, would surely be altered, the argument goes, if a new form of marriage were to have the official blessing of government. The reality that one cannot predict just what would happen to marriage if the popular perception of it were to change in a basic way, the defenders say, is reason enough not to risk that potential development.
Accelerating rates of divorce, the defenders add in another argument, have already begun the process of “deinstitutionalizing” marriage, so that marriage’s standing among the social norms of America already is suffering, and would suffer further if its traditional character is compromised for those who remain in their legal unions.
To the argument that a string of Supreme Court rulings recognizing gay rights and providing constitutional protection for gays and lesbians bolsters the idea that the string should be extended to include marital rights, the marriage defenders argue that the Court has given no hint whatsoever that it is willing to take that much greater step constitutionally. Those decisions, the defenders of marriage contend, were about government intrusions into private lives, not about access to a state-conferred benefit that the legislature has chosen to limit for entirely valid social and cultural reasons.
And to the argument that excluding gays and lesbians from civil marriage is motivated by religious or moral reasons that legislators are not supposed to put into public laws, the marriage defenders respond that the mere fact that the traditional definition has, for some who support it, a religious or moral dimension does not make it constitutionally suspect. And, to make that point, their lawyers have recited quotations from President Obama, in a 2006 address, in which he said that “our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
When marriage defenders turn to the federal law that is now at issue before the Court, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, they add arguments that Congress was entitled to craft a uniform definition to guide all government agencies to a common understanding, that Congress was free to express a moral judgment about the kind of marital unions it wished to support, and that Congress had it in its power to limit those who would qualify for federal benefits linked to marriage, in order to save federal funds.
A final argument, one that marriage defenders hope might ultimately be persuasive for the Supreme Court, is that the issue of same-sex marriage should be left, as much as possible, to be worked out in the democratic process. It is there, they contend, that the people of America can best make a judgment about something so fundamental to their lives.
The fervor of that defense has been obvious, across the country, in recent years, especially since 1993, when the Hawaii Supreme Court signaled that same-sex couples in that state might soon gain a right to marry, under the state constitution.
No state had previously even hinted at that, and the reaction of defenders of marriage was swift and widespread. As a result, the change did not happen in Hawaii, and would not, in any state, until Massachusetts’ highest state court opened marriage to same-sex couples, nine years ago this month.
The Hawaiian hint, of course, ran counter to a traditional understanding about marriage. A state court in New York would remark later: ”It was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex.”
Changing that understanding has been seen, in many quarters of society, as a threat to marriage itself, and, with it, a threat to society’s capacity to renew itself generation after generation. Same-sex marriage, some would and did argue, was nothing less than a suicide pact for humanity.
That understanding had been so well established that, in 1972, it would be entirely unremarkable that the Supreme Court would conclude that a gay couple’s challenge to a traditional marriage law did not even raise “a substantial federal question.” That was the Justices’ brief and apparently unanimous ruling in the case of Baker v. Nelson, and that ruling reverberates still, regularly cited by marriage defenders with the argument that it is the Court’s binding last word on the subject.
In fact, if the Supreme Court were to conclude in one or more of the new same-sex marriage cases now on its docket that Baker v. Nelson did, indeed, settle the matter, that might well be the end of gay marriage equality as a constitutional matter — at least for the next several years, and perhaps longer. The current status of that precedent is thus one of the first questions the Court probably would need to answer before moving on to any other arguments, for or against same-sex marriage.
The Baker argument of marriage defenders is a simple one: that it is a precedent set by the Court, and it cannot be set aside unless the Court itself does so. As the lawyers for the Republican leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives told the Justices in a filing in one of the new cases: “Baker controls this case….Baker stands for the proposition that a state may use the traditional definition of marriage without violating equal protection. It necessarily follows that Congress may use the same traditional definition of marriage for federal purposes without violating equal protection.”
Since the constitutional core of the argument of advocates of same-sex marriage is the guarantee of “equal protection,” a new Supreme Court ruling interpreting Baker as broadly as the House GOP leaders do would undercut the legal foundation of the claim to marriage equality. Indeed, that is why federal courts that have struck down laws against same-sex marriage have done so only after first treating the Baker precedent as narrow in scope, and not binding in the new cases.
Marriage defenders have another basic point to make to the Justices: their argument that laws seeking to preserve the traditional concept of marriage should be judged by the most tolerant constitutional test, “rational basis.” (The first article in this series, found here, discussed that standard-of-review issue, and noted the marriage defenders’ position in favor of a rationality test alone.)
When the marriage defenders move beyond their point about Baker‘s force as controlling precedent, their arguments on constitutional questions go back to the same root: the Constitution, they contend, does not forbid the government, at any level, from taking steps to preserve marriage in its traditional form. Indeed, their lawyers insist that opposition to same-sex marriage has no source in discrimination, but rather is a positive effort to assure that the social values served by marriage go on being served by that institution. Those values depend, they insist, upon marriage being limited to one man and one woman.
The point that they emphasize most heavily, about opposite-sex marriage, is the necessary link they say exists between marriage and child-bearing and child-rearing. They quote the English philosopher and social critic Bertrand Russell: “But for children, there would be no need of any institution concerned with sex….It is through children alone that sexual relations become of importance to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution.” That institution, of course, is marriage, opposite-sex marriage.
As recently as two years ago, marriage defenders’ lawyers could say in court filings that “every appellate court decision, both state and federal, to address the validity of traditional opposite-sex marriage laws under the federal Constitution has upheld them as rationally related to the state’s interest in responsible procreation and child-rearing.” (Included among the courts making that connection was the Minnesota Supreme Court, in the decision left undisturbed by the Justices in Baker v. Nelson in 1972.)
And, the defenders argue, more than three-fourths of the states still adhere to the traditional definition of marriage, confining same-sex marriages to the status of a novelty in little more than a handful of states.
Although more recent federal appeals court rulings at both the appeal and trial levels have struck down traditional marriage-definition laws, and similar laws have been set aside in a few more states recently, it remains true that there is a considerably longer list of decisions upholding such laws. That is likely to be among the arguments the defenders of marriage will be making to the Justices.
On the merits, though, the marriage-children link is still the heart of their argument against same-sex marriage. It is founded in historical, legal, scientific and cultural principles.
Marriage, the defenders contend, cannot possibly be treated as a “fundamental right” open to gays and lesbians because such a right must have a foundation in American history, legal traditions, and practices.
It has, they say, none of those characteristics; it was unheard of in law until 2003, and can make no claim to being common even today. At the time the nation was founded, and at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868, it was clearly understood that marriage was the union between one man and one woman, the defenders assert. Those historic foundations of the definition should count heavily today in interpreting what the Constitution permits or demands, they argue.
The “responsible procreation” branch of their marriage-children link is keyed to what they call “the undeniable biological reality” that opposite-sex unions, and only those, can produce children. It is better, they argue, that children be born into a stable union that only marriage can create, and it is marriage that is the foundation of America’s — and the world’s — enduring family units. Children, the marriage defenders contend, prosper better with parents of opposite sexes — a father and mother — because they derive unique values from such parents, and because marriage encourages the parents to remain together while the children mature.
Many laws, they argue, are enacted and enforced precisely to encourage the continuation of marriage and the fulfillment of its obligations. Such laws assure that marriages are between two, rather than several, individuals, that the commitment is meant to last for lifetimes, that the partners remain loyal to it, and that the father is presumed to be the father of the child whose mother is his wife. Those laws cannot even be understood, it is argued, unless they are seen as strengthening the responsible birth and rearing of children.
Marriage, its defenders concede, is not conditioned upon having children, because that by itself would be unconstitutional state coercion. But opposite-sex couples may, indeed, become parents by accident, and that is a potential that same-sex partners could never experience, they note.
To the argument that the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia validated the idea that traditional marriage could not be limited to traditional marital partners, the marriage defenders counter that that ruling, too, promoted procreation by opening up the prospect of children of mixed-race being raised within a stable family unit. Moreover, they contend that the decision would have come out the other way, had the couple involved been of the same sex, since only five years later, the Supreme Court decided Baker v. Nelson, and the gay couple in that case had tried to claim the Loving decision as a precedent in their favor.
Whatever virtues the supporters of same-sex marriage can claim for such unions, the defenders of traditional marriage argue, those cannot compare with those that justify the protection and promotion of traditional marriage, and those who pass the laws of a state — including its citizens in voting on ballot measures — are clearly entitled to choose the definition of the institution that they find to be superior.
Further, the defenders say, it is essential — in a time when traditional cultural and moral values are being tested — that legislatures be allowed to proceed with caution before fundamental alterations are made in the institution of marriage. Such changes should await more scientific certainty about child-bearing and child-rearing outside of traditional marital unions, and also should await the development — if there is to be one — of a different public consensus about whether or not to protect marriage as it has been known for countless years. The defenders buttress this argument about caution with a fervent defense of the power of the individual states, the long-time source of laws about marriage, to make their own judgments about who can enter that institution.
Perhaps the most controversial argument that the defenders make is that the institution itself would be harmed if it were opened to same-sex couples. They have relied upon social science claims that, merely by altering the definition of marriage, such a change cannot help but alter its basic character. The public’s conscious understanding of what marriage is, and is supposed to be, would surely be altered, the argument goes, if a new form of marriage were to have the official blessing of government. The reality that one cannot predict just what would happen to marriage if the popular perception of it were to change in a basic way, the defenders say, is reason enough not to risk that potential development.
Accelerating rates of divorce, the defenders add in another argument, have already begun the process of “deinstitutionalizing” marriage, so that marriage’s standing among the social norms of America already is suffering, and would suffer further if its traditional character is compromised for those who remain in their legal unions.
To the argument that a string of Supreme Court rulings recognizing gay rights and providing constitutional protection for gays and lesbians bolsters the idea that the string should be extended to include marital rights, the marriage defenders argue that the Court has given no hint whatsoever that it is willing to take that much greater step constitutionally. Those decisions, the defenders of marriage contend, were about government intrusions into private lives, not about access to a state-conferred benefit that the legislature has chosen to limit for entirely valid social and cultural reasons.
And to the argument that excluding gays and lesbians from civil marriage is motivated by religious or moral reasons that legislators are not supposed to put into public laws, the marriage defenders respond that the mere fact that the traditional definition has, for some who support it, a religious or moral dimension does not make it constitutionally suspect. And, to make that point, their lawyers have recited quotations from President Obama, in a 2006 address, in which he said that “our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”
When marriage defenders turn to the federal law that is now at issue before the Court, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, they add arguments that Congress was entitled to craft a uniform definition to guide all government agencies to a common understanding, that Congress was free to express a moral judgment about the kind of marital unions it wished to support, and that Congress had it in its power to limit those who would qualify for federal benefits linked to marriage, in order to save federal funds.
A final argument, one that marriage defenders hope might ultimately be persuasive for the Supreme Court, is that the issue of same-sex marriage should be left, as much as possible, to be worked out in the democratic process. It is there, they contend, that the people of America can best make a judgment about something so fundamental to their lives.
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The Argument Against Gay Marriage
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Bible Verses Against Same Sex Marriage
The Bible says:
Genesis 19:1-38
This is a lengthy passage relating to the destruction of Sodom.
Leviticus 18:22, 24
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind, it is abomination. Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things
Same Sex Marriage - Bible Prohibition Verses from the Bible strongly indicate that the gay same sex marriage life style should be suppressed. Thus the foundation of our American law comes from the Bible. Leviticus 20:13
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.
Deuteronomy 23:17-18
There shall be no whore of the daughters of Israel, nor a sodomite of the sons of Israel.
Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the LORD thy God for any vow: for even both these are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
1 Kings 14:22, 24
And Judah did evil in the sight of the LORD, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all that their fathers had done.
And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.
1 Kings 15:11-12
And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the LORD, as did David his father.
And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made.
1 Kings 22:42-46
Jehoshaphat was thirty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. . . .
And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the LORD: . . .
And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land.
2 Kings 23:3, 7
And the king stood by a pillar, and made a covenant before the LORD, to walk after the LORD, and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes with all their heart and all their soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. And all the people stood to the covenant.
And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove.
Romans 1:26-27
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their woman did change the natural use into that which is against nature.
And like wise the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another: men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Hebrews 13:4
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Like wise our forefathers in early Alabama passed laws to suppress openly homosexual behavior.
Our forefathers did not consider homosexuals to be normal people, as they took the word of God
the Bible seriously.
These laws and traditions have been maintained to even today. Shall we remove the landmarks
established by our forefathers? Is the human reasoning put forth by the liberal newspapers wiser
than the wisdom of our forefathers?
No Same Sex Marriage Biblical References in the Old TestamentThe Bible clearly teaches no same sex marriage.
Genesis 19:1-38
Judges 19:14
Leviticus 18:22
Leviticus 20:13
Deuteronomy 23:17;
1 Kings 14:24;
1 Kings 15:12;
1 Kings 22:46;
2 Kings 23:7
Homosexual References in the New Testament
Romans 1:26-29
1 Corinthians 6:9;
1 Timothy 1:9-10,
Jude 1:7
Summary of Biblical Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage
1. God lists "homosexual offenders" among "the wicked" (1 Corinthians 6:9).
2. God lists "homosexual offenders" among those who He determines will "not inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 6:9).
3. Historically, homosexuality has incurred God's destructive wrath upon an entire city (Gen. 19:4-5, 11-13).
4. God's word defines the men of Sodom as "sinning greatly" because of their men having sex with men (Genesis 13:13; 19:5).
5. God calls Sodom's sin "sexual perversion" (Jude 1:7). Societies that remain in perversion (Sodom, Rome...) are on the road to destruction.
6. God's word identifies husband-wife relations as "natural relations" and homosexual relations as "unnatural ones" (Romans 1:26-27) and "perversion" (vs. 27).
7. God's word also rebukes those who "approve of those who practice" homosexuality (Romans 1:32).
8. Jesus settled the marriage issue once for all, declaring that God had made them "male and female ... a man ... [and] his wife" (Matthew 19:4-5).
Matthew 10:16-20 Persecutions Are Coming
16 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.
17 But beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues.
18 You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles.
19 But when they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak. For it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak;
20 For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
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