It Started With Marriage · Liberty Politics Discussion

It Started With Marriage

On April 1st, 2001, the Netherlands became the first nation in human history to legalize same-sex marriage. Years later, in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court likewise declared marriage a fundamental right protected by the Constitution.

President Barack Obama, in a speech at the Rose Garden, declared "love is love" as he celebrated the ruling as "a victory for America."

And most Americans seem to agree. A gallop poll suggests that approximately 88% of democrats and nearly 50% of Republicans support gay marriage. So it seems the debate is over. But should it be?

In 2007, an Assumptionist priest by the name of Barry Bercier wrote in his book, Skies of Babylon, that if traditional marriage were re-defined to include same sex couples, "the result would be nothing less than the end of the world of man."

Sound dramatic? Well -- what is marriage?

If marriage were merely a proclamation of love, and if the fundamental purpose of marriage were to reward people who love each other, then gay marriage should be legal.

But society does not give certain legal rights, financial benefits and tax breaks to people simply because they fall in love. At least, until two decades ago, that's not how it worked.

Barry Bercier defines marriage as "the public and legal recognition of the pre-political duality of the sexes and the significance of the duality for human beings and the social and political order."

In other words, marriage -- traditional marriage as it existed across every civilization for nearly all of human history, is the recognition of a unique relationship that pre-exists law and human constructs. That is, the institution of marriage - from Mesopotamia, to Egypt, China, Rome and every Western nation until 2001 -- recognized the duality of the sexes through law because the duality is the nucleus from which life emerges.

The relationship between male and female -- man and woman -- whether you are gay, straight, black, white, bisexual, asexual, rich or poor, is our beginning; our source. For every human being, the duality of the sexes is our 'sine qua non' -- without it, life would not exist.

Not only does marriage recognize and strengthen the relationship from which life is formed, it supports and strengthens new life and relationships that emerge from it.

Mother, father, daughter, son, sister, brother -- these relationships are our foundation, our first human interactions with the world. They help us grow and learn and form our identity. Marriage reinforces these relationships in the interest of children and society.

So how does same-sex marriage undo any of that?

When marriage was changed to include same-sex couples, marriage was transformed -- not by allowing same-sex marriage but by making sex irrelevant in marriage, thereby removing sex from marriage altogether.

When a state redefines marriage by

removing from it the sexual duality that is the core of its definition -- that is, when marriage no longer exists in recognition of the sexes -- it ceases to be a pre-political institution.

Marriage becomes non-sex marriage, a construct -- simply a law, created and granted by the State.

According to Bercier, when the law removes from marriage the sexual duality entwined at the center of its definition, "then, according to the law, all that came with the definition must be removed as well."

Words matter. Words like husband, wife, mother and father -- relationships that reference the sexual duality from which life is created, are neutered by the law into sterile terms void of any fruitfulness.

If the law is to be consistent with its neutered definition, gender-neutral wording like parent, spouse, child, and sibling must be used in place of "gendered language" describing the family structure.

And that is precisely what happened when Democrats under the Biden administration, in 2021, replaced gendered language in government correspondence with these "gender neutral" terms.

The philosopher Frederich Nietzsche once wrote, "Lightning and thunder require time. The light of the stars requires time. Deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard."

In other words, the most significant events are often not recognized or understood until their consequences reverberate through society.

And same-sex marriage was the event -- the door -- the pivotal moment when America stepped into a postmodern world.

"Birthing parent," "people who menstruate" and "gender fluidity" are phrases and neologisms of a progressive ideology that holds in contempt the sexual binary that enables life. It is an ideology born from a relativist worldview that rejects objective truth, even the most basic truth that human beings are born into and from just two genders: male and female.

Marriage, as it was understood by all societies and civilizations for thousands of years until 2001, is not merely a proclamation of love but the institution that celebrates and strengthens the nucleus of our existence.

A civilization that undermines the source of its own existence by indicting marriage as a tyrannical, gender-based system of oppression cannot survive.

An ideology that views human identity as nothing more than a social construct and, the nuclear family -- the seedbed and womb of our development and nature -- as having no unique value worthy of protection is an ideology offended by nature itself.

Lightning and thunder require time. And in that time, since the U.S. Supreme Court made its decision over ten years ago, Americans now live in a world in which men can be women, girls can be boys, and biological sex is irrelevant.

How did we get here?

It started with marriage. And until we close the door that we opened, and restore marriage to its proper form and place in society, we will continue to live in Babylon.

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