Why Has Marriage Become Irrelevant?

The current push for same-sex marriage has created some strange bedfellows (no pun intended) with far-left liberals and hard-core Libertarians finding themselves on the same side of the argument. Even former governor of Mississippi and leader of the Mississippi Baptist Convention Ronnie Musgrove has joined the growing chorus calling for legalization of gay marriage across the county.

On one level, the argument (in particular offered by many Libertarians) is correct. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was a mistake. Marriage has never before been a federal issue, nor should it be now. In fact, until the mid-1800s, it wasn’t a government issue at all. All marriages in the United States were considered something licensed by churches with local public magistrates simply confirming the action. DOMA has done nothing but make yet one more local matter a national debate.

But let no one be fooled as to what the ultimate agenda of the left is. The intention is not so much to legalize gay marriage but to eliminate the term itself as relevant. By continually changing what marriage is it ultimately comes to mean nothing.

In an April 15^th article in Slate, Jillian Keenan argues to extend the legality of marriage to polygamy, claiming her motivation is to offer protection to the women and children in such relationships that are now deemed illegal. But at the end of that article, she reveals her true agenda; MS Keenan wants far more than marriage rights for same-sex couples.

“The definition of marriage is plastic,” she wrote. “Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less ‘correct’ than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults.”  She concludes by saying, “So let’s fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States — and then let’s keep fighting. We’re not done yet.”

If achieving same-sex marriage doesn’t end the fight, then what does?  It is the plastic nature of marriage, as Keenan terms it, which leads one to wonder what she sees as the end game in this debate.

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry gave us more than a clue in an article in The Nation on the same day. Harris- Perry wrote:

“As we race to a victorious finish, it is time to begin forcefully articulating that, in fact, maybe we do want to change marriage – because while marriage should be a choice, it should not be an imperative… I hope we will be like the child who asks what difference it really makes. Because I suspect the goal of achieving this right is less about the ceremonies, the flowers, the love or even the economic benefits. I suspect the real goal is to achieve a more inclusive recognition of the authentic and enduring ways that we connect ourselves to one another, without needing the words ‘husband,’ ‘wife’ or even ‘spouse.’ The difference we want this movement to make is bigger than that.”

Responding the Harris-Perry, Kristine Marsh (NewsBusters) wrote:

“While gay marriage advocates have been adamant that gay marriage won’t change anything, Harris-Perry admitted something conservatives have been saying all along: That redefining marriage does alter it; in fact, it makes it meaningless. Of course, the fact that Harris-Perry thinks marriage shouldn’t matter isn’t surprising coming from someone who believes that parents don’t matter either. The MSNBC host and Tulane professor infamously said last week, ‘kids belong to their communities’ and not to their parents or families. Not to mention her disregard for unborn children, or as she calls them, ‘things’ that ‘turn into humans.’

The cavalier comments coming from liberals lately about marriage, family and children reveal the extreme nature of the gay marriage ‘movement’ (as she calls it). Harris-Perry doesn’t just want ‘marriage equality.’ She wants to disregard marriage altogether. This comes at the expense of parents, children and society. Let’s hope her opinions are only popular on the unwatched MSNBC.”

In his wildly popular dystopian novels, Hugh Howey imagines a time in the not-so-distant future where man’s answer to so many of the issue of life is to simply wipe everyone’s memory of the past and reboot the system. In his world of Wool, the path to such an objective makes Hitler’s ultimate solution look like a stroll in the park on Sunday afternoon.

Whatever your views on marriage and the law, make no mistake about it, our culture is in the midst of a major reboot. What the ultimate cost of will be is too far in future to know. And the players in this drama aren’t just those writing for Slate and the Huffington Post. With the divorce rate practically the same among Evangelicals as the general population and continual scandals among the Catholic priesthood over the past half-century, there is plenty of blame to go around for making marriage so plastic that its value has been all but lost to the next generation.