Statement on the Supreme Court Decision from the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal:
In the midst of present day moral confusion and the cultural attack on the Christian way of life in the United States and around the world, there is a real temptation to discouragement and even despair. As the news continues to report the “victory lap” that is being taken by those who offer a different way of understanding marriage and sexuality, the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal find great hope in the powerful presence of God at work in the countless couples, families, and individuals who are heroically faithful to the Gospel and the truth of marriage and sexuality according to God’s design. We also find great hope in those individuals who experience same sex attraction and have made the free, heroic and self-sacrificing choice to live the virtue of chastity in a culture where the alternative is in fact much easier and socially celebrated.
Why same-sex marriage won’t spark a marriage crisis by Arleen Spenceley:
Marriage is supposed to be perpetual and exclusive. We are supposed to pick spouses who bring out the best in us, spouses who are committed to our becoming saints. Marriage is designed to result in the destruction of self absorption.
The crisis is that people are married who don’t know that — that people are married in the Church who don’t know what marriage is supposed to be, and that nobody who knows it ever told them.
The result is that what marriage is supposed to be is so seldom modeled that most people have never even encountered it — that there largely has been no discernible difference between how marriage is done by people who are part of the Church and how it’s done by people who aren’t.
Which is a problem.
Maybe It’s Just Love by Jenny Uebbing:
Marriage is essentially ordered to the good of … wait for it … the children who may result from it.
Not just the spouses.
[…]
And wouldn’t you know it? When we unhitched babies from bonding years ago with widespread acceptance and use of contraceptives, that was the first blow against marriage as a social institution. Married couples could now enjoy sterile, momentary physical pleasure and label it “sex.”
And guess what?
So could non-married people. And people who were married to other people but maybe wanting to experiment a bit with each other just the same.
Pretty soon people who experienced sexual attraction to members of the same sex looked around and realized, huh, marriage doesn’t seem to mean anything about babies anymore, but rather, about adult sexual satisfaction and companionship. And we want that too!
And who can blame them?
[…]
It is particularly telling that the most supportive demographic in the movement for gay “marriage” has been the generation or two of children who’ve come of age in the era of no-fault divorce.
“The sanctity of marriage?” they rightly scoff, “I don’t know anything about that. But I know happiness when I see it, and those guys look happy, so power to them. I sure as hell didn’t see that in my house growing up.”
Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent by Katy Faust:
There is no difference between the value and worth of heterosexual and homosexual persons. We all deserve equal protection and opportunity in academe, housing, employment, and medical care, because we are all humans created in the image of God.
However, when it comes to procreation and child-rearing, same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are wholly unequal and should be treated differently for the sake of the children.
When two adults who cannot procreate want to raise children together, where do those babies come from? Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right. When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this. Whether by adoption, divorce, or third-party reproduction, the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.
[…]
I am not saying that being same-sex attracted makes one incapable of parenting. My mother was an exceptional parent, and much of what I do well as a mother is a reflection of how she loved and nurtured me. This is about the missing parent.
[…]
If it is undisputed social science that children suffer greatly when they are abandoned by their biological parents, when their parents divorce, when one parent dies, or when they are donor-conceived, then how can it be possible that they are miraculously turning out “even better!” when raised in same-sex-headed households? Every child raised by “two moms” or “two dads” came to that household via one of those four traumatic methods. Does being raised under the rainbow miraculously wipe away all the negative effects and pain surrounding the loss and daily deprivation of one or both parents?
[…]
Do not fall prey to the false narrative that adult feelings should trump children’s rights. The onus must be on adults to conform to the needs of children, not the other way around.
Marriage Unconstrained: In Which I Argue with Myself by Eve Tushnet:
Marriage doesn’t cure loneliness. But there’s more to say than that. It’s good that marriage does not rescue the spouses from their loneliness, because this loneliness can break them out of the shell of self-satisfaction. I’ve seen this with non-religious people as much as with the faithful: Marital loneliness is so painful and bleak, but it can also be the seedbed of patience, mercy, and service to others.
Court Decision Will Renew Campaign for Marriage by Jennifer Roback Morse:
The natural constituency for sexual common sense has been decimated by the political brawls of the past decade. Good and decent people have done their best to hang on, but feel embattled. We need to rebuild that constituency. We have allowed many features of the Sexual Revolution to go by without sufficient challenge. It is almost as if we have said, “We like the Sexual Revolution fine, just not the gay parts.” This is no longer acceptable. It never was acceptable.
[…]
All this means that many people have broken hearts or guilty consciences. When we try to talk about traditional sexual ethics, we are unwittingly poking their wounds. And when we try to talk about separation of powers or judicial tyranny or religious liberty or children’s rights, we completely lose them.
The public policy arena is perhaps not the best ground on which to try to fight the battle for marriage. And in any case, our prospects for success in this arena are now quite limited, at least for the foreseeable future.
A Conversation with My Gay Friend by Jennifer Fulwiler:
“That’s how I see our culture’s understanding of marriage: They’re looking backwards through the binoculars. They’re kind of getting it right, but because they have the thing flipped around, it’s going to entirely distort their view of things.”
[…]
“Yes, marriage is about sex. But it’s about sex because sex is how new life is created — and, ultimately, it is an institution ordered toward protection and respect for new people.”
[…]
“Anyway,” I continued, “in this view you are constantly having to make sacrifices out of respect for what this act is all about: If you’re totally open to having kids, then there are the sacrifices that come with birth and raising children; if you’re abstaining during fertile times, you’re sacrificing. Infertile couples sacrifice by not using artificial methods like in vitro to force new life into existence. Gay men and women sacrifice by living chaste lives, as do people separated from their spouses, and people who are not yet married, or whose spouse has died. Notice that we’re all sacrificing, and that all of the sacrifices are about the same thing: love and respect for new human life, and specifically the act that creates new human life.”
Desire of the Everlasting Hills
work in progress 