COMMENTARY

Marriage Reality vs.

Marriage Redenition
COMMENTARY: Society needs a civil
institution that specically unites
children with their mother and father.
By William B. May Posted 3/21/17 at 9:43 AM

When the Supreme Court of Washington state ruled unanimously against a local orist who
declined to provide owers for the wedding of a same-sex couple, it was a stunning defeat for
religious liberty and conscience in the United States. The men who sought her services had
been previous customers of Barronelle Stutzmans business, and they had a good relationship.
But Stutzman just felt it was wrong to participate in an event that she knew was contrary to
Gods plan for marriage. There was no animus, but the court found her refusal to be an illegal
act of discrimination.

Courts have rejected similar religious-liberty arguments with a photographer in New Mexico
and in a case involving a Colorado baker that is now pending with the U.S. Supreme Court.

When the Washington decision came down, an article on a leading conservative website noted
the silence by Christian religious leaders across the country. While organizations like Alliance
Defending Freedom are making stalwart eorts with solid legal arguments to defend
constitutional rights up through the Supreme Court, could it be that religious leaders are
recognizing that such arguments in the court of public opinion are futile, given the current
cultural environment? Is it time to start re ecting on why fewer and fewer judges are
understanding and accepting religious-liberty arguments and aording people of faith the
protection of such fundamental human rights that they are due?

Could the root of the problem be the same one that caused the U.S. Supreme Court to redene
marriage? What is the problem we are trying to solve? Is it that same-sex couples are
permitted to make legal contracts called marriage, or is it that the sole civil institution that
specically unites children with their mother and father has been eliminated from the law?
These two seemingly separate problems are two sides of the same coin, and how you see them
depends on which side of the coin you are focused.
Should the goal be to protect exclusively our own religious liberty, or to protect the
fundamental human rights of our children to discover the truth about love, sexuality, marriage
and family? Or can both goals be advanced at the same time?

I believe they can.

The root of the crisis is that the majority has forgotten the real meaning and purpose of
marriage. I will use the term marriage reality to distinguish the original institution from the
current word marriage that has been redened in law (and in culture). Marriage is
commonly understood as an adult-centric committed relationship between a loving man and
woman, or, as redened in law, between two people. That description is not marriage
reality. The word marriage no longer means the institution we know as the foundation of
the regular family.

By law, redened marriage is unrelated to the bearing and education of children. To claim
otherwise is now an act of discrimination against couples who by nature cannot bear children.

While the word marriage can be applied to the union of a man and woman who enter into it
as the foundation of the regular family, that is legally no longer the purpose of the word or
institution. In this new legal and cultural context, children, sadly, must be taught to accept
that marriage is a lifestyle choice for adults, with no connection to having children or a family.

The corollary is the lie that having more families with children deprived of their mother and
father united in marriage is a good thing.

Is that what we want our children to learn?

Understanding that the word marriage has been deconstructed to mean a committed
relationship for loving adults gives insight into why it appears discriminatory for a orist to
choose to serve one couple and not another.

That seems to be how the deciding Supreme Court justices looked at the argument also.

Merely arguing on the basis of religious liberty or conscience protection comes across in our
culture as a self-serving way to protect an ideological opinion. Yes, we must defend our First
Amendment rights and protest any unjust law or ruling that equates acts of conscience with
discrimination. But such a protest does nothing to advance the understanding of the true
meaning and purpose of marriage.

Experience tells us that continuing the same line of argumentation will only lead to endless
con ict and no resolution.

Yet it is compelling and right to want to protest and to not cooperate with something that
con icts with what we know to be true.
Protest over public policy is a well-established and well-protected tradition in our democratic
republic. So the question becomes: How can we protest and resist in a way that avoids what
people misperceive as discrimination and reframes marriage reality in a way people can
understand?

We can take a lesson from the evangelists and missionaries who did not assert rights or
criticize pagan cultures, but brought the Good News and shared it in dierent ways with
dierent peoples so that they could understand. They provoked contemplation about things
that their audiences had never heard, had never thought of or had forgotten. People are
naturally attracted to the beauty of truth when they hear it and when it corresponds with their
own experiences.

Why not reintroduce marriage reality by starting with the simple question, Do we need a civil
institution that specically unites children with their mother and father? This precisely
describes marriage reality between a man and a woman without getting into charged
discussions about issues that lead to misunderstanding and con ict.

The question reveals the fullness of marriage. Not every married couple has children, but every
child has a mother and father and a right to be born in a family with them united in marriage.
Dont we need such an institution?

What if bakers, orists and others protest for a greater good, a common good? We have no
animus against same-sex couples, but we have a right to not cooperate with an unjust law that
has eliminated the sole institution that unites children with their mother and father.

We will not rest until justice is done by restoring it. We will not rest until the reality of
marriage once again becomes the privileged institution that unites children with their mother
and father and is promoted by every law, every public institution and in every school
curriculum.

William B. May is president

of Catholics for the

Common Good.

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