Jessica Makes Some Good Points

Jessica McBride's column on gmtoday.com touches on the upcoming vote on the Marriage Amendment. New Jersey example shows the need for marriage amendment Don'’t let that crafty advertisement with the slow-moving tractor fool you.

Gay marriage activists want you to believe that nothing will change if you vote down the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage this November. If nothing will change, then why are activist groups dumping so much money into media campaigns to mislead you into thinking that nothing will change? After all, because nothing will change anyway, they might as well use their money somewhere it will matter.

Darn good point! Couldn't they be putting that large chunk of change to better use, like say...feeding the hungry or AIDS/HIV research?

The New Jersey Court ruled that denying gays marriage or civil unions violated the state'’s equal protection clause. In other words, they said it was discriminatory. But every ban on marriage is not discriminatory. Or, at least, it'’s not discrimination that'’s wrong. If you really press gay marriage advocates, even they will agree that society has a right to regulate marriage based on commonly agreed upon social norms. And right now, no one'’s demonstrated a compelling need to change it. We don'’t allow very young children to marry, for example. We don'’t allow incestual relationships. We don'’t allow polygamy. If it'’s discrimination to forbid gays to marry, why aren'’t we discriminating against polygamists?

There is right and there is wrong. Calling it discrimination to prevent same sex marriage is just plain wrong. And no, I'm not going to get into a long debate again, Jayce. :)

It'’s not just a religious issue, either. Marriage as "one man, one woman" is also a secular norm. Even the New Jersey court recognized that, when it stopped short of outright mandating only gay marriage, writing: "We can not find that a right to same sex marriage is so deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience of the people of this state that it ranks as a fundamental right. We cannot escape the reality that the shared societal meaning of marriage, passed down through the common law into our statutory law, has always been the union of a man and a woman. To alter that meaning would render a profound change in the public consciousness of a social institution of ancient origin. When such a change is not compelled by a constitutional imperative, it must come about through civil dialogue and reasoned discourse."