Marriage: What It Is - New Evangelizers

Marriage between one man and one woman is, for whatever reason, offensive to some people today. And because we don’t want to offend people we don’t talk about it in public. But it is important to educate people to the fact that marriage between one man and one woman is not a rule made up by an oppressive church.

First and foremost, it is a law made up by God. The Bible, in the book of Genesis and later in the Gospels, tells us:

Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

But God didn’t just leave His word as the only source of this truth. He has built this into the very nature of nature. It is a basic principle of biology. Whether you like it or not, it is a basic truth that every child has a mother and a father. And children need their mothers and fathers.

To those who would argue that marriage is not about children, I say “of course it is!” What else could it be about?

Proponents of “marriage equality” have slogans like “Love is love.” If marriage requires only love, then I can marry my children. I can marry my dog. I can marry my friend. Are those relationships with children, pets, and friends marriages? If they are, then really everything is marriage, and everybody is married all the time. I don’t think that’s a tenable position. Besides, why should I need to get my government involved in whom I love?

So clearly we do not mean that all love relationships are marriages. What about sex? Sex is not love, and it appears that sex is a requirement for marriage (I think most of the “marriage equality” people would agree). But sexual relationships do not make marriage. Ask any prostitute. And do I need my government involved in whom I have sex with?

Maybe it’s not love nor sex, but commitment. There are two problems with that though. First off, we have a whole segment of law dealing with commitments – contract law. And nobody has ever claimed that that was a marriage. Maybe it’s love plus commitment? Then I’m back to marrying my children and pets.

I submit that all of this rambling about marriage definitions makes as much sense as “wet streets cause rain.” The true definition is simple and obvious. It doesn’t need thousands of special cases to avoid going into ridiculousness. It doesn’t require denying facts of biology or law or logic.

Marriage is simply the institution that gives children the right to be cared for by their mothers and fathers. Change it and you don’t get equality, you get discrimination. Every offense against marriage, whether it is divorce, polygamy or same sex relationships, is an offense against the rights of children to be cared for by their mothers and fathers.

Copyright 2014, Michael Lindner

Michael Lindner

Mike is a scouter, a science geek, a dad, a husband and a Catholic. He earns a living as a software engineer in beautiful New Jersey. In his spare time (ha ha) he muses at his blog What Does Mike Think? He is not a writer (which will be painfully obvious after reading his posts) but feels called to apologetics and evangelization anyway. You have been warned.