March 12, 2011

It's Time for Gays to Get Married

By Bill Flax

Gay marriage appears inevitable. It is the next step in the dance of dissonance across America. A flip through the clouds as modernity divorces itself from traditional culture. Is nothing still sacred?

Homosexuality has been politicized to an extent never seen before in America. What was once barely visible has become front page news and the object of incessant glorification. The entertainment industry inundates us with charming portraits of benign homosexuality.

From the closet, homosexuality emerged into the open; from the open, it ascended to acceptability; from acceptability to equality, and from equality exalted onto a pedestal. Thus does the West stray from its cultural moorings.

The gay lobby and their cheerleader on Pennsylvania Ave. scored a victory on "Don't Ask Don't Tell." Now the White House just capitulated on the Defense of Marriage Act. Amidst all the fuss over gay marriage, everyone misses the obvious.

Gays have every bit as much right to get married as you or I. And in fact, they should.

A homosexual man has an identical right to take a woman in holy matrimony as may any other man. Likewise, the rest of us have just as little right to take some guy and pronounce him a bride. This isn't a question of differing rights. Our rights remain in perfect symmetry. Homosexuals are now and always have been permitted to marry.

Nor is this fight about equal protection under the law. Homosexuality is legal. No statue decrees homosexuals are forbidden from marriage just as no decree states heterosexuals are required to marry. Gays as well as those with conventional sexual appetites are all equally protected within the confines of the law.

However, because marriage doesn't appeal, gays demand the law be changed to accommodate their particular longings. The gay lobby craves that the very definition of marriage should be radically changed. Homosexuals seek to alter a millennia old institution into something it has never been. All done to assuage the internal bitterness of those whose proclivities steer outside the ordinary.

Will the Left take a final bow at legalized gay marriage? The band will keep playing. Another dance will surely follow on its heels. As society pirouettes around traditional morality, we welcome any manner of behavior. What else awaits its turn around the floor?

It doesn't matter how many moral lines are breached, the homosexual activists will keep agitating because it's not persecution they resist, but internal loathing projected outward. Social mores are merely a scapegoat. Tradition and virtue represent punching bags on which to relieve their rage. In truth, the Left wants not for gays to marry so much as to abolish the very concept of marriage.

Marriage is the foundation of coherent society and the conduit distilling our fallen natures into civilized community. Many studies reveal the correlation between marriage and everything from income generation, our children's academic achievement and lower crime rates. Undercutting the family exemplifies folly. The conventional family offers society its best chance to excel.

It may be chic to relegate the traditional family to insignificance while initiating homosexuals into the persecuted innocents club, but values remain the essential bedrock of society. Families serve as ballast rooting us to our past and as a beacon guiding us to a wholesome future.

The difference is not in our rights, but in our character. The homosexual man remains indistinguishable other than his behavior. All of us are born depraved. We are a fallen species prone to various temptations and homosexuality is one of the most difficult. This is not to make light or heap additional burden on those poor souls who suffer the anguish and uncertainty of attraction to members of the same sex.

Happily for most, our carnal natures point in the direction of members of the opposite sex. Lust, like greed, envy, pride, gluttony, sloth or anger, befalls everyone in some combination and some flavor. However, simply because we suffer these burdens doesn't legitimize the failings that occur when temptations manifest as actions. We don't commend lust to anyone of any sexuality.

Marriage is and must always remain one man and one woman. Neither Washington, nor even an imperial judiciary of the 9th Circuit can redefine timeless ordinances.

Rather than seek to undermine such a foundational institution necessary for healthy society, homosexuals ought to get married. Marriage would temper their urges and channel their desires into something beneficial for both them and society at large.

Marriage is not only already a legal endeavor for gays, it's productive. It is high time homosexuals get married and that must be matrimony's last dance.

Bill Flax lives in Ohio. He is a Baptist, a banker and a weekly contributor for Forbes.com Opinions. Bill is the author of The Courage to do Nothing: A Moral Defense of Markets and Freedom. Please contact him at billflax2@yahoo.com.