The debate over legalizing same-sex marriage recently has become a major issue. For the good of the nation, the American public must consider all consequences – legal, moral and social – surrounding the issue.
It is inappropriate to say this debate must exclude any consideration of morality. To limit this debate to a civil issue is incorrect. Even without regard to popular opinion, there are compelling legal and societal problems with codifying same-sex marriage.
Legally recognized marriage is not a fundamental right, but a status conferred by society’s laws. Jarrett Ellis, great-nephew of Martin Luther King Jr., recently asserted in a speech that civil rights are not violated when government merely treats people differently under the law.
“Instead,” he said, “civil rights provision with U.S. governance seeks to make sure that different effects of public policy upon different people are not to be found unreasonable or suspect.”
Current marriage laws do not persecute homosexuals, nor should they. Rather, the laws have been established to recognize and promote an ideal concept of a vital institution.
Brigham Young University law professor Richard Wilkins noted the Supreme Court frequently has recognized the importance of marriage and its indisputable link to procreation and child-rearing. Because marriage laws do not abridge rights, he contended, they are justified if they “reasonably further a rational objective.”
That objective is government’s supreme responsibility, expressed by the Supreme Court in 1942 as “the very existence and survival of the race.”
The law merely has established what society had already determined was ideal – namely, marriage between a man and a woman. If laws aim to promote and reflect the social ideal, they will be rendered useless if that ideal is broadened.
If same-sex marriages are legalized, on what legal grounds can society oppose incestuous or bestial relationships? People in such relationships could then claim an inherent unfairness in the law.
Whatever the debate’s outcome, it must not be decided in the courts. For any judge to make a law allowing same-sex marriage would require an unconstitutional amount of judicial activism.
The established law of the land, rooted in centuries of wisdom, must not defer to the whims of the day.