I think a lot of businesses will “go galt” and cut benefits back to “employee only”, no spouses, no family. That would put a dent into the so-called advantages of same-sex unions.
Ancient Greece.
No one is “redefining marriage”. That would be like “redrafting the law of gravity”. Both are impossible, because both were created by God and are thus outside the purview of man.
No, we are instead attempting to hide from marriage. Or more specifically, we’re trying to hide from its various and sundry implications - for the individual and the society; for the man, the woman, and the children; for the lawmaker, the judge, the neighbor, and the stranger.
Marriage restrains, organizes, and orders. And for some, that just really cramps their style!
Amen.
alas, no jewish version...
Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. As generation after generation of "citizens" are breed, raised and taught that there is nothing to ever be ashamed of, proud or or responsible for, societal norms degrade into moral bunkruptcy.
We are a nation where there are few proud Americans that hold onto a moral code (religious or otherwise). There was a time when people worried about the reputation of their Sir Name (as a minimum standard).
The trend follows thousands of years of human history. So I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. Our founders warned that, if not guarded and defended constantly, our Republic and individual liberty would not last. They built our nation on the dependency of the citizen's moral standards (largely fait based). They put the hope of our nation on the citizens keeping the politicians in check and the governance to a minimum. They wanted a government that was A-moral (no compassion - just business and limited at that).
We have failed as a nation. I'm not sure how to turn it around now that the great majority is lost.
Not all societies need be mourned at their demise.
Under various labels, primarily that of "liberals" and now, "progressives," their efforts were directed at dismantling the foundation upon which individual liberty was built--recognition of a "Creator," "laws of nature and of nature's god," "Divine Providence," and "the Supreme Judge of the world"--all clearly acknowledged in that Declaration of Independence!
As of 2012, as is evidenced by some of the facts discussed by Parker, their work has not been without a consequence in our national life. First, the Founders' ideas had to be turned upside down, and everything else follows.
In the Pope's speech in Germany a few years ago, he observed:
"A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures." We also might add that such "reason" may be incapable of preserving a culture where ordered liberty is treasured.
The following essay restates some of the founding philosophy. Everything that flows from ignorance of that philosophy helps to explain why other supporting institutions fall into disarray.
"Man ... must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator.. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.... This law of nature...is of course superior to any other.... No human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this: and such of them as are valid derive all their force...from this original." - Sir William Blackstone (Eminent English Jurist)
The Founders DID NOT establish the Constitution for the purpose of granting rights. Rather, they established this government of laws (not a government of men) in order to secure each person's Creator endowed rights to life, liberty, and property.
Only in America, did a nation's founders recognize that rights, though endowed by the Creator as unalienable prerogatives, would not be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of law which was itself in harmony with a higher law. They called it "natural law," or "Nature's law." Such law is the ultimate source and established limit for all of man's laws and is intended to protect each of these natural rights for all of mankind. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 established the premise that in America a people might assume the station "to which the laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them.."
Herein lay the security for men's individual rights - an immutable code of law, sanctioned by the Creator of man's rights, and designed to promote, preserve, and protect him and his fellows in the enjoyment of their rights. They believed that such natural law, revealed to man through his reason, was capable of being understood by both the ploughman and the professor. Sir William Blackstone, whose writings trained American's lawyers for its first century, capsulized such reasoning:
"For as God, when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the...direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws."
What are those natural laws? Blackstone continued:
"Such among others are these principles: that we should live honestly, should hurt nobody, and should render to every one his due.."
The Founders saw these as moral duties between individuals. Thomas Jefferson wrote:
"Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him .... The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society . their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation."
Americas leaders of 1787 had studied Cicero, Polybius, Coke, Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone, among others, as well as the history of the rise and fall of governments, and they recognized these underlying principles of law as those of the Decalogue, the Golden Rule, and the deepest thought of the ages.
An example of the harmony of natural law and natural rights is Blackstone's "that we should live honestly" - otherwise known as "thou shalt not steal" - whose corresponding natural right is that of individual freedom to acquire and own, through honest initiative, private property. In the Founders' view, this law and this right were inalterable and of a higher order than any written law of man. Thus, the Constitution confirmed the law and secured the right and bound both individuals and their representatives in government to a moral code which did not permit either to take the earnings of another without his consent. Under this code, individuals could not band together and do, through government's coercive power, that which was not lawful between individuals.
America's Constitution is the culmination of the best reasoning of men of all time and is based on the most profound and beneficial values mankind has been able to fathom. It is, as William E. Gladstone observed, "The Most Wonderful Work Ever Struck Off At A Given Time By he Brain And Purpose Of Man."
We should dedicate ourselves to rediscovering and preserving an understanding of our Constitution's basis in natural law for the protection of natural rights - principles which have provided American citizens with more protection for individual rights, while guaranteeing more freedom, than any people on earth.
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom." -John Locke
Footnote: Our Ageless Constitution, W. David Stedman & La Vaughn G. Lewis, Editors (Asheboro, NC, W. David Stedman Associates, 1987) Part III: ISBN 0-937047-01-5
What's the point?
It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.