As we are now standing at the precipice of the radical redefinition of marriage, it may serve us to begin to ask if there remains any objective standard by which we regulate behavior.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of New Jersey directed that state’s legislature to create either homosexual marriage or homosexual civil unions. The majority decision effectively found that homosexual unions were morally equivalent to heterosexual unions and due the same rights and privileges. The justices based their finding in part on societies’ changing opinions and attitudes (With 39 states having passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, it is unclear where exactly there is evidence of a changing attitude regarding homosexual marriage. But I digress.).

Changing opinions though, no matter how heartfelt, are not a valid standard by which to measure the morality of behavior. It was not changing attitudes that ended slavery for instance; it was the ascendance of the principle of equality that ended slavery and eventually led to civil rights legislation, which further codified this principle into law. To argue the reverse is to suggest that morality is the result of history. Of course if this were true, there is, alas, no moral argument to prevent the future enslavement of racial minorities in this country should attitudes shift again.   

Witness Inspiration as it happens. Watch Mike Thompson's film, "Act Two - The Process" now.

It is not tolerance gay activists are after. They already have that. Generally speaking, Americans do not overly concern themselves with what their neighbors do in the privacy of their own homes. "Live and let live" is the American refrain -- that is, until one decides to expose those private behaviors to the light of day, and demands are made that those behaviors are sanctioned and condoned by the larger society. The mainstreaming of homosexuality is, of course, the true aim of gay activists, and there is no quicker or final way to accomplish this than to erase objective standards of moral behavior; to argue -- as homosexual marriage advocates and liberal judges have -- that the union of a man and a woman and that of two men or two women is objectively equivalent.

Of course, once the walls of distinction are torn down, the door is open to claims by all sorts of relationships to equal status. If two men are good, why aren’t three men better? What about two women and a man? Homosexual marriage advocates are quick to point out that they are not advocating polygamy, but on what standard of behavior can they now base their objection? Once objective moral arguments have been cast aside, it is unclear why marriage redefined to include two men cannot now apply to men who desire a harem of women.  Perhaps we will wait until attitudes change.

But of course societies do not rely on history to determine what is right or wrong, no matter what the justices in New Jersey say. Societies have uniformly seen marriage as a positive good because marriages produce, protect and educate children. The state supports marriage because it has rightly recognized that families are the primary source of moral education in our society, and a free society has a vested interest in strong, healthy, stable, heterosexual families. 

Indeed, it seems schizophrenic to argue on the one hand that there is no substantive difference in the types of homes in which children are raised at the same time we complain about the rates of illegitimacy in communities across the country. If it is true that all family combinations are equal, then let us put to bed for good any further concern over the rising number of single-parent homes. 

For millennia, societies have rejected homosexual marriage not because we are all a bunch of bigots, but because human reason has judged that homosexual behavior is wrong -- a violation of nature in the same way slavery violates man’s natural right to life and liberty. And that does not change depending on which direction the cultural winds decide to blow.