We read, see, and hear a growing accumulation of stories in the news of small businesses being persecuted for not providing services to celebrate a same-sex marriage. Photographers, restaurants, inns, and bakeries are the initial targets; some law suits have had great success. It is an eerie echo of the Police song: Every move they make, every step they take, the forces of the new orthodoxy will be watching them.
Marriage and the Onslaught
Things are truly not what they seem in this age of shadows. Basic Christian morality is under an onslaught with such force that many faithful souls are likely to suffer confusion. The public pressure to conform to licentiousness on sexual issues is intense and increasing at an alarming rate.
Individuals have been increasingly singled out as well, such as Phil Roberson from Duck Dynasty, Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran, and most recently Christian baker Jack Phillips, who has been told by the Colorado Court of Appeals that he may not refuse to bake cakes for same-sex couples. To argue for the self-evident truths of Catholic morality will earn you a peck of salt for your wound of sanity. It is apparently no longer enough to slander those who withhold support; there are increasing efforts to ruin the lives of those who do not agree with the redefinition of marriage.
In Portland, Oregon, a judge has ordered a bakery to pay a fine of $135,000 for emotional damages because on moral grounds they did not bake a cake in the celebration of a same-sex marriage. It ought to shock us that among the eighty-eight charges of suffering the lesbian couple allegedly endured is the outrageous accusation of “mental rape”. As Thomas D. Williams noted in his article, “The judge apparently found it unremarkable that ‘loss of appetite’ and ‘impaired digestion’ should lead to ‘weight gain.’” The list is almost entirely overstatement; more than just an insult to decency and common sense, it is an affront to the moral fabric of our society to allow such hyperbolic invention to create legal precedent.
Why We Object
We have always maintained a right to refuse service in this country and that is appropriate. Would a baker be compelled to bake a cake for the KKK celebrating a cross burning? Or a satanic cult in celebration of a black mass? Of course not … at least, not yet. For a point of clarification between these two examples and “marriage equality”, let’s examine what this comparison means.
We object to the KKK and the Satanists because of what they choose to believe and what they intend to do, not for who they are, for they are human persons imbued with intrinsic dignity and worth. In the case of those afflicted with same-sex attraction, the objection is not to who they are, for they are also human persons imbued with intrinsic dignity and worth. Just like the KKK and the Satanists, our objection is to the celebration of what they wish to do. Just like racism and satanic worship are things we should not celebrate, so is sexual activity not ordered toward procreation and family.
In the good society, it is impermissible to insist that a moral man cannot hold a morally ordered position without being persecuted, or accused at the very least of being hateful and bigoted. The grand irony in these charges is lost completely on the promoters of sexual liberty. There is nothing more hateful or bigoted than to try to forcefully compel a free soul to believe what you believe, and when they don’t, to try to ruin their lives. The hypocrisy is glaring. The persecutors want acceptance, but accept nothing but their own agenda. They want tolerance but are intolerant of diverging views. This is not the behavior of civil rights activists.
We recognize these self-evident truths: that men and women are complementary; that they are intended by nature and divine decree to be joined in matrimony and become one flesh; that they are to remain faithful and monogamous while they raise, love and educate their biological children. This is the gold standard for building up civilization. No other type of family or institution can build up a society, not even by an efficient government attempting to engineer society.
Self-Evident Truths
We clearly recognize that children are the natural primary end of the marital act of sex, and no amount of raging against truth can change this self-evident fact. In recognizing that children come from the marital act, and that children are persons deserving of rights at least as much as the rest of us (more, because of their innocence and vulnerability), it is common sense that we consider children primarily before we commit to the marital act.
We conclude as self-evident that the primary end of the marital act is the procreation of children. It follows that children have a natural right to be loved, raised and educated by their biological parents; therefore, the marital act is only morally licit within the bounds of marriage. This fulfills the authentic ends of the human person, while at the same time leading to the well-ordered civilization which is built upon the gold-standard building block of society, the family.
The equality cry is that same-sex attracted couples want to get married. It is an impossibility if one considers the nature of marriage. Marriage is a natural and divine institution, not man-made. A marriage is “the conjugal union of man and woman, contracted between two qualified persons, which obliges them to live together throughout life”.
It is by design that only one man and one woman are qualified to marry. They are eligible by the appropriateness of their relationship to one another and by virtue of their complementarity endowed by the Creator. By mutual consent they agree to be joined as one flesh, faithful and monogamous, “for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, until death do [they] part.”
An Opportunity to Colonize Heaven
This is marriage, and we are not allowed to give our own interpretation of it. No amount of persecution will change the above facts; it is against all our civilization’s notions of human rights to try to compel people to believe otherwise by force of law, threat of violence, or any other kind of coercion.
This is a very difficult issue, one that divides many Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is a fact that we are called to take a stand on this; while the Catholic stand is against the redefinition of marriage, because it is morally and ontologically impossible, we are still called to love our brothers and sisters with truth and charity. Our stand against “marriage equality” is an opportunity to colonize heaven. Let us take up our crosses (cf. Matthew 16:24) and follow Him.
18 thoughts on “Same-Sex Marriage: Every Cake You Bake”
I am sorry to have been remiss in responding to this amazing post. As a proud columnist of Catholic Stand, and a man with SSA who lived for 35 years outside of Rome, 15 as an “LGBT” activist, I know most of the arguments on either side because I have lived them. But after a lot of inner fighting and eventual realizing that even the movement I was in towards so-called “marriage equality” was in many cases being done without authentic fairness even from leadership, I gradually stepped away. It had not even occurred to me at that point to become Roman Catholic again, so that was not the reason, to be clear. I just began to see through some of the tactics being used to emotionally tear apart anyone in the path of this hurricane of ideas, while in the same breath saying that we welcomed “all,” I learned that simply was not the truth. After a time I realized, as the author well points out here, that there was no slippery slope but rather the risk of pushing mainstream Christians and others off the cliff instead. Now we see it happening. How that can be considered “fair” by my activist friends is beyond me frankly. I support basic rights of all humans, including such things as equal housing,health care, hospital visitation of loved ones, protected wills and inheritance, and employment (as long as such employment was not against the religious purpose of an organization). Not one of those things has to be denied a person who is actively “LGBT” in this day and age, and we did not need a redefinition of marriage to protect those rights. Conversely, they should not be denied those who need to obey their consciences in the cooking industry or religiously run adoption agencies, or a host of other situations that the courts now are embroiled in due to what some believe is “equality.” There is a way to live together. We need to find it fast. Powerfully written and persuasive article.
Thanks Richard, it is very consoling to hear kind and intelligent words from you, I have seen you on here before. I couldn’t agree with you more, there is a way to live together it is grounded in authentic love, that self-emptying kind perfectly embodied by Christ. The naked truth is that we Catholics are called to love all our neighbors and most Catholics I know do- perhaps our friends in the equality movement would say the same thing, but it seems we don’t share an understanding of what charity is. I don’t hold out much hope for man’s role in this world, but I join you in praying for our Catholic brothers and sisters and as well for our same-sex attracted brothers and sisters. Blessings to you brother.
Phil, every week you post the same long post about the history of marriage and the world. We have all seen it many times. You have generated about 1,000 endless comments from your dissenters in rebuttal. Please do not force us to repeat this exercise yet again.
I will repeat the Truth as long as people assert lies.
While satan’s useful idiots in the culture of death continue to organize efforts to openly persecute the
Catholic church under the thin veneer of civil rights, something else has been going on inside her doors.
There’s a revolution brewing. It’s unified, orthodox, well equipped and committed to reviving authentic, undiluted, no apologies offered Catholicism.
Those of us out here in the parish trenches are finally beginning to understand that neither political
party can be trusted to do the job they were elected to do and therefore we must be the ones who stand and answer Christ’s and the Holy Mothers call to arms.
Leaders like Bishop elect Robert Barron and Dr. Scott Hahn over the last decade or so have effectively mastered the new media and are equipping us with teaching material that is second to none in quality and content and we’re making the most of it.
Those who believe they are going to persuade the Catholic church to suddenly change her 20 centuries of teaching on the subject of faith and morals simply because they’ve managed to get enough of their fellow useful idiots to agree with them are seriously deluded.
The enemies of the church throughout history though varied have the same mistake in common. They fail to realize that the efforts they engage in to thwart the Church’s mission can end up achieving exactly the opposite effect. They crow about the day the Church will be relegated to the dust bin of history but they never realize that the bin is full of the dust of all the decadent, narcissistic, hedonists that failed to heed the Churches universal call to repent and be baptized.
To the extent that their persecution is effectively purifying and strengthening the Church I suppose we owe the useful idiots a debt of gratitude. I do however have one question for them.
What part of “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” do you not understand?
Very good article. What is happening now always reminds me of this:
“And he shall make all, both little and great, rich and poor, freemen and
bondmen, to have a character in their right hand, or on their
foreheads. And that no man might buy or sell, but he that hath the character, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here
is wisdom. He that hath understanding, let him count the number of the
beast. For it is the number of a man: and the number of him is six
hundred sixty-six.” Apocalypse 13: 16-18.
My response is not to question your right nor the right of the Catholic Church to assert a rejection of gay marriage. Mt response is to point out the revisionist and quite inaccurate assumptions of your post as relates to your belief that marriage cannot be redefined and why it cannot. Simple history proves otherwise.
(1) Marriage was not always for one man and one woman for conjugal and procreative purposes. Take a few moments to examine the history of marriage. Homo sapiens sapiens have been around for at least 100,000 years conservatively speaking. Human primates achieved behavioral normalcy about 65,000 years ago. Sex was designed for passing on one’s DNA…a biological imperative. It was about power, chattel, inheritance, collection of women, property, control, patriarchy, etc. love was an unknown concept and children were a simple byproduct of clan establishment. Love and children was a medieval concept. Here are a few references to the true history of marriage which predates Judeo-Christian tradition of 4000 years ago.
http://www.livescience.com/37777-history-of-marriage.html
http://theweek.com/articles/475141/how-marriage-changed-over-centuries
http://www.ancient.eu/article/688/
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/marriage-history
So contrary to your undocumented assertion marriage evolved and evolves over the past 65,000 years. You might ask how do we know about breeding and coupling prior to recorded history….well, look at the anthropological study of “uncontacted peoples.”
(2) The RCC churches views and positions evolves, although after social change occurs. Let’s look at women, their positions of inferiority, and the the suffrage movement.
Throughout history, the Catholic Church opposed women’s suffrage on its conviction that a woman’s place is in the home. Claiming that if women were to engage in political life, their dignity would be impaired, the Church argued that in opposing women’s right to vote, it sought to protect and defend women. The Catholic Church has come a long way since then, and in fact today actively recruits Catholic women voters to lobby for the Church’s own political agenda.
The Church’s opposition to women’s suffrage was rooted in ancient doctrine. St. Augustine, writing during the Roman Empire and among the most important Christian philosophers, used the story of the Garden of Eden to oppose women’s rights. Citing Eve’s guilt for the fall of humanity into sin, he justified her double subordination, both to God and man. With this he further argued that only men could represent rationality and spirituality; women, in contrast, represented the body and the material world.
Views about women began to change in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as they struggled for the right to vote, to obtain education and to work outside of the home. Yet the Catholic Church remained steadfast. In 1930, ten years after women won the right to vote in the U.S., Pope Pius XI condemned women’s liberation, arguing it would produce a false redirection from their true identity as mothers and homemakers. It would not be until 1945 that Italy, home of the Vatican, granted women the right to vote.
http://people.opposingviews.com/catholic-church-womens-suffrage-2388.html
To this day, in the Vatican state none of the small number of women residents are allowed to vote. Maybe the RCC will slowly catch up with the times? NO…
(3) Gay marriage rights? Given the fact that marriage and other social concepts evolve, SCOTUS determined that gays have a constitutional right to marry…the majority of self-identified Catholic approve of gay marriage….http://www.pewforum.org/2015/07/29/graphics-slideshow-changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/
Countries That Allow Gay Marriage Argentina (2010)England / Wales (2013)Ireland (2015)Portugal (2010)United States (2015)Belgium (2003)Finland (2015)Luxembourg (2014)Scotland (2014)Uruguay (2013)Brazil (2013)France (2013)The Netherlands (2000)South Africa (2006)Canada (2005)Greenland (2015)New Zealand (2013)Spain (2005)Denmark (2012)Iceland (2010)Norway (2009)Sweden (2009)
We, the People, have a warrant to extend the due process and equal protection clauses of the constitution to ALL people and we have a warrant to protect those groups from indifferent or blatantly hateful discriminatory actions. We need to extend equal protection to women, as when we extended the right to vote in 1920, to prohibit discrimination based upon race, ethnicity, to prohibit discrimination against religions, to prohibit discrimination against disabled (ADA), even though Churches can discriminate against the disabled like my son, to bring service dogs in places of public accommodation. We have a warrant to prosecute and penalize those who offer public accommodation and public service in this country. That is what the courts are doing….if you offer a public service, you offer it to all or none. This is the United States. This is a republic democracy, We the people…bigotry under the guise of religious belief is still bigotry. People have a right to protest, to speak ill of the marginalized but not to conduct themselves in a hateful manner which further marginalizes those that Jesus came for…you know He did not come for the righteous. Matt 5:20 “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Scientific articles about DNA and biological imperatives would indeed shed light on the nature of DNA and other matters biological, but neither adenine, cytosine, guanine, nor thymine, is capable of explaining the inner nature of the the Creator of the Universe, nor will either plasma, neutrinos, nor the Oort cloud explain the Creator’s love for you and for all of us. Nor can the behaviors of any created being, animate or inanimate, singular or plural, contradict in any meaningful way the Word of God and the Magisterium of the Church that have conveyed to us God’s marvellous plan for salvation, for life, for priesthood, for marriage.
It would seem, Phil, that your view of reality and that of the Catholic Church have very different ways of explaining and understanding the universe. In your view of reality, you indicate that the origins of love are medieval (ca. 9th – 15th cents.) However, in our view of reality the love between and man and a woman is documented to the beginning of the Judaeo-Christian era, about 5,000 years ago. The story of Rachel and Jacob, in which Jacob worked for seven years for her father to earn the right to have his bride, seven years which passed for him “as if they were but a day, so great was his love for her,” was set down in the book of Genesis.
Also, it would seem that in your view of reality the drawing of any distinctions among persons and their eligibility to fulfill certain social functions or roles would constitute “bigotry”; while in that of the Church, the drawing of such distinctions was made tens of thousands of years ago by God who created us, and set down for us His word read in Sacred Scripture, later developing and interpreting this through the Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Church.
And since the end of the day is rapidly approaching, and I have to cut this short, I would add that one other way in which your view of reality, Phil, at variance with ours, is your conclusion that “Throughout history, the Catholic Church opposed women’s suffrage . . . (and) the Church’s opposition to women’s suffrage was rooted in ancient doctrine.” Our Catholic understanding is that throughout the first fifteen hundred years of European history, according to the SECULAR law, nobody voted except the nobility and (sometimes) wealthy landowners who were nobly descended. In the American colonies, it was necessary to be at least twenty-five years of age and to own property. Wikipedia indicates that, “The short-lived Corsican Republic (1755–1769) was the first country to grant limited universal suffrage for all inhabitants over the age of 25. This was followed by other experiments (such as) the Paris Commune of 1871,” both of these, by the way, were Catholic lands. The point is that we as Catholics hold the view that until very few centuries ago, almost no one, man or woman, had the right to vote generally.
However, I grant that in your view of reality, the fact that all classes of women were denied the right to vote throughout most of European history, as were the approximately 90-98% of all men who weren’t noble, is the result of the Catholic Church’s work.
Anyway, extremely different views of reality. I think your efforts to deconstruct our view of reality might meet with greater success if you were to take the trouble to frame your points within our our view of reality.
The fact remains that you were not a product of two men or two women.
But there is an even larger issue…
Who are you to destroy America, who gave you the right?
And even greater….are you going to heaven…I assure you…you aren’t headed there anytime soon.
Find Christ before Christ finds you not worthy of heaven.
I wish you well and will pray for you.
The sole purpose of marriage is not o breed people like me,I am one product of people’s love….The right to destroy America? We are a representative republic democracy…the will of the people make law and the majority approve of gay marriages. Not worried about heaven, but I worry about the souls of unmerciful bigots.
Since we all came from stardust, Eddie, I am as worthy as you….you need not pray for me….save yourself
The Churches definition of marriage is never going to evolve or change. Anyone who thinks they’re actually going to get the Church Jesus Christ founded to accommodate a culture of objectification is on a fools errand regardless of how many people you get to agree with you.
The Church is imperishable, you’re not.
I assume you are referring to the RCC and not all Christian Churches….more and more which accept gay marriage.
I read scripture daily but I don’t assume the authority to interpret it myself. Christ founded the Catholic Church himself on the rock of St. Peter, promised her divine protection for as long as she’s on earth, (MT 16:18) and entrusted
her with His very authority when teaching on matters of faith and morals (Lk 10:16). This hasn’t budged in 20 centuries. What makes you think the 21st is going to be any different?
Christ established marriage as a sacrament, a direct conduit of Gods grace into the lives of the believers. Sacraments are valid only if they’ve been performed with the proper matter and form. In the case of marriage that means one man and one woman and no Pope can ever change that.
http://www.catholic.com/quickquestions/can-the-church-change-its-doctrines
Should we be surprised then that the protestant fragments that willfully cast off Christ’s promise of protection at the reformation are falling like dominoes? What part of “the gates of hell will not prevail against it” do you not understand?
Let’s tell the truth for a change: Christ did not establish marriage as a sacrament!
The medieval Christian church, taking the lead of Augustine, developed the sacramental understanding of matrimony. However, even at this stage the Catholic Church did not consider the sacraments equal in importance Marriage has never been considered either to be one of the sacraments of Christian initiation (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist) or of those that confer a character (Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders)
With the development of sacramental theology, marriage was included in the select seven to which the term “sacrament” was applied. Explicit classification of marriage in this way came in reaction to the contrary teaching of Catharism that marriage and procreation are evil: the first official declaration that marriage is a sacrament was made at the 1184 Council of Verona as part of a condemnation of the Cathars.
Developing doctrine is not the same thing as inventing it. Catholic doctrine developed over the history of the church as the need arose to clearly articulate and clarify what was already there in the original deposit if faith handed on to the apostles by Christ.
Vatican
II on Development
In answering these questions, the Church facilitates the development or maturing of doctrines. The Blessed Virgin Mary models this process of coming to an ever deeper understanding of God’s revelation: “But Mary kept all these
things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). It’s important to understand that the Church does not, indeed cannot, change the doctrines God has given it, nor can it “invent” new ones and add them to the deposit of faith that has been “once for all delivered to the saints.” New beliefs are not invented, but obscurities and misunderstandings regarding the deposit of faith are cleared up.
http://www.catholic.com/tracts/can-dogma-develop
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
1601 “The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring; this covenant between baptized persons has been raised by
Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament .
1603
“The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married
state has been established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws…. God himself is the author of marriage.” The vocation to
marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman as they came from the hand of the Creator. Marriage is not a purely human institution despite the many variations it may have undergone through the centuries in different cultures, social structures, and spiritual attitudes. These differences should not cause us to forget its common and permanent characteristics.
Marriage is a sacrament of service which you left out and it does confer the graces it signifies. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a sacrament.
1638
From a valid marriage arises a bond between the spouses which by its very nature is perpetual and exclusive; furthermore, in a Christian marriage the spouses are strengthened and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and the dignity of their state by a special sacrament.”
What is it that you fail to understand? Marriage was sacramentalized in the 12th century as a result of the Council of Verona reacting to the Cathars.
The human person (homo sapiens sapiens) achieved human behavioral normalcy about 65,000 years ago and that’s when people began pairing as individuals or groups in nomadic clans. That is about 63,000 years before Christ came around and 63,000 years before the RCC was established…so you’re reasoning is faulty and sources do not disprove the evolution of present day marriage.
Marriage was sacramentalized in the 12th century as a result of the Council of Verona reacting to the Cathars.
Phil, it is a sacrament as the church has the power to make it so. However, you can make a car and use it wrong or expect too much out of it. It’s a real stretch to take Eros and make it holy. Why not fraternal and familial too ?
The tensions and work needed to meld even these together require a lifetime of vigilance. Never has wars raged so mortal as within a family and among friends. The two warning commandments attached to the state of Eros and Jesus’ reluctance to take the lead at Cana; the hesitation cautioned when his apostles asked about its expediency is proof enough that if you’re going to sanctify something like imperfect love you better set the bar high. Imagine, two kids come in and boast a promise with no credentials, experience ( lab vs theory ) or proof of maturity and the church clamps cuffs on them with threats of denial and damnation should it fail. Marriages should be blessed, prayed for but only conferred as a sacrament when the two have shown their ability to ride the humps and come through it all with scars and bruises but ever faithful and ready to make it until death do they part. Then there would be no failed Catholic marriages … and none to demand restrictions.
You completely missed my point but that’s immaterial because for me this conversation has served it’s purpose. I will reiterate what I said in my original post. The Church’s definition of marriage will never change regardless of
public opinion. You can fine us, you can imprison us, you can trample our first amendment rights but know that in doing so you will not only make us stronger and more numerous but you will also hasten your own movements demise. Just like everyone else who’s ever tried it.