From Our Sunday Visitor, the following article written by John Cavadini gives a good argument against homosexual “marriage”.
A catechetical response to same-sex marriage.
From my experience, when it come to homosexual marriage, most people do not think very deeply. Young adults often ask, “Well, if someone loves someone else of the same sex, why shouldn’t they get married?” or “If being gay is unnatural, then why did God make so many gays?”, etc. This article dives much deeper, and asks questions about our society, and the type of society we want to live in.
One of things this article does a good job pointing out right off that bat is not to argue on your opponents terms. Don’t try to answer their question, which is often a straw-man argument. Rather, ask the question that should be asked. From the article:
Indeed, this is the way it appears to many. In fact, the Church’s position is often misunderstood or caricatured because the question is usually put this way: “Why does the Church oppose the extension of the right to marry to same-sex couples?” But to think of the Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage as a refusal to extend the right to marry to same-sex couples, and then to try to defend that refusal, is to guarantee that the Church’s position will be greeted with hostility and contempt, even, perhaps, in our own hearts.
The Church would put the question differently: “Why does the Church oppose the redefinition of marriage, such that it is no longer the same social institution?” The Church opposes giving up a conception of marriage in which the complementarity of man and woman is the defining feature and replacing it with a conception of marriage where the complementarity of man and woman is, instead, completely accidental to it.
Please, read the whole article. It is very good.
From my thoughts – The institution of marriage, in all cultures and throughout all time, is that of an arrangement between a man and a woman that begets life. That is the primary end of marriage. The union of the spouses is a secondary end, but without the primary end being possible by the definition of the arrangement, it is not marriage.
A particular arrangement, such as one of the spouses being infertile, or an elderly couple getting married, does not change this fundamental definition. It is “still an apple”, but with a worm in it.
Homosexual “marriage”, on the other hand, is of a completely different kind. By definition, a homosexual “marriage” cannot beget life. It is a different definition. It is no longer “still an apple”, or even “still an apple, but with a worm in it”. Rather, it is a rock. Or a brick. It is not the same thing.
And for the culture to try to proclaim it is, is to introduce just one more intellectual absurdity into the climate in which we live.
The truth is, our modern society is full of intellectual absurdities.
