Writing in today’s Opinion Journal, a
conservative Methodist pastor makes a solid, if depressing,
argument that the
attempts to stop gay marriage amount to closing the barn door after the
horses have already left. Writes the Rev. Donald Sensing:
Sex, childbearing and marriage now have no necessary connection to one
another, because the biological connection between sex and childbearing is
controllable. The fundamental basis for marriage has thus been
technologically obviated. Pair that development with rampant, easy divorce
without social stigma, and talk in 2004 of “saving marriage” is pretty
specious. There’s little there left to save. Men and women today who have
successful, enduring marriages till death do them part do so in spite of
society, not because of it.
If society has abandoned regulating heterosexual conduct of men and women,
what right does it have to regulate homosexual conduct, including the
regulation of their legal and property relationship with one another to
mirror exactly that of hetero, married couples?
I believe that this state of affairs is contrary to the will of God. But
traditionalists, especially Christian traditionalists (in whose ranks I
include myself) need to get a clue about what has really been going on and
face the fact that same-sex marriage, if it comes about, will not cause the
degeneration of the institution of marriage; it is the result of it.All of this was predicted by that prophetic 1968 papal encyclical American
Catholics love to hate, Humanae
Vitae.