To the Editor:

I would like to take a minute to clarify some of the points made in last week’s article, “The truth about gay marriage.” So what is the truth? For starters, let’s clear up some of the misconceptions put forth by the article’s author and the theologian whom she quoted, Vaughn Roste. Mr. Roste is the author of “The Queer Positive Bible,” and his point that the Bible never portrays marriage as a holy relationship between one man and one woman is proven untrue by taking a look at the verse: in the beginning God 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. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. To get a respected theologian’s opinion, let’s look no further than St. Augustine, who said: “Those shameful acts against nature, such as were committed in Sodom, ought everywhere and always to be detested and punished.” Now, I realize that the argument here is not one about homosexual acts, but of homosexual persons and marriage. Let’s look to the law to see why, Bible or no, we should not throw out traditional marriage. The argument that upholding the cornerstone of civilization, AKA marriage, is contrary to the First Amendment does not hold. The First Amendment does not ban religion, it guarantees freedom OF religion. Religion and moral viewpoints permeate many aspects of law and life. Believe it or not, politics’ aim is to shape the lives of citizens and society. Start remembering that Aristotle you had to read back in Core and think about it. When you get a tax break after giving money to a charity or you celebrate a national holiday like Martin Luther King Day, you are ipso facto embracing what the law has provided and sanctions as a “good” way to mold citizens. Politics and the law, and this includes the Constitution, has an interest in shaping flourishing citizens. However, and this is a big however, civil government does not create civil marriage, as quoted in the American TFP. “Civil government does not create civil marriage for the simple reason that it does not create marriage. Marriage is a social reality that predates the state and therefore cannot originate from it. Without marriage, there would be no family, and without the family, no society would be formed. What the government does in so-called civil marriage is to recognize the civil effects of marriage. Marriage can assume a religious character and be regulated by civil law. However, its essence is always the same: a bilateral contract between a man and a woman whereby they give themselves to each other and mutually receive the use of each other’s body to perform those actions which, by their very nature, are destined to the procreation of offspring.” To bring up good citizens, parents must utilize their strengths as males and females respectively to rear children. Men and women complement each other, and a child will flourish best in a low-conflict household in which both the biological mother and father are present. Check out stats from this study at childtrends.com. But do you really need a website to confirm that a man and a woman working together do the best job of raising kids, and are by their nature complementary, and beautifully so. Again, I quote the TFP: “Marriage is a permanent sacred bond uniting a man and a woman who desire to constitute a family and face life’s trials together. Redefining marriage as simply a union between two people regardless of sex defeats the very purpose of marriage – the perpetuation of the species – and therefore destroys the very idea of the institution of marriage. This new idea of ‘marriage’ reduces and degrades all marriage to a more or less stable cohabitation of two people. Thus, when traditional marriage is lumped together with same-sex ‘marriage,’ it prostitutes the term and empties it of content.”Looking to other countries around the world, as the author did last week, that have legalized same-sex marriages, we do not see any patterns of less promiscuous behavior or even of more same-sex marriages resulting from its legalization! The author’s point that there have been “overwhelmingly positive results” proves that she hasn’t done her homework! Even if she were to say that the divorce numbers look better in the nineties (after the legalization of same-sex marriage in Denmark) it is because the pool of married people has shrunk. You can’t get a divorce without first getting married. Let’s look at the facts: The family dissolution rate has worsened. Between 1990 and 2000, Norway’s’ out-of-wedlock birthrate rose from 39 to 50%, while Sweden’s rose from 47 to 55%. There has been a 25% increase during the nineties in cohabitation and unmarried mother and fatherhood. About 60% of first born children in Denmark now have unmarried parents. Stanley Kurtz says, “Now that married parenting has become a minority phenomenon, it has lost he critical mass require to have socially normative force. Marriage in Scandinavia is in deep decline, and the increasingly sharp separation of marriage and parenthood can be linked to same-sex marriage. As sex is separated from procreation, the mindset has evolved: If we’ve come so far without marriage, why marry at all?” Answering the argument that homosexual people are equal in the eyes of the law, I agree! It is true that every person is equal, this equality being juridical and not biological. To quote the TFP one last time: “It cannot eliminate the anatomical and physiological differences between the sexes… the very differences that create the conditions for marriage and constitute its natural foundation. Juridical equality means that all those with the natural capacity to marry have the right to do so, and it does not create the conditions required by nature for marriage.” Now, the question of who does create those conditions gets into a whole other Villanovan article…Respectfully Submitted,Christina Kochanowski