By Star Parker
The Book of Proverbs, part of biblical canon, once a vital part of American culture, tells us: “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” It’s this haughty spirit, this pride that precedes destruction, that lies behind the Supreme Court’s decision last week to bury the Defense of Marriage Act.
DOMA defined marriage, for purposes of federal law, as traditional marriage — the union of man and woman.
This decision did not come out of nowhere. It did not happen in a vacuum. It is but the latest in a long process of the unraveling of American culture driven by pride — the sense that we answer to no higher authority. That the two-legged animal man is master of the universe and decides, invents right and wrong, true and false.
There have been many stops on the way to this Supreme Court decision relegating marriage, as we have known and understood it for millennia, to a casual fiction that could come out of Hollywood.
One stop we might note was the Supreme Court’s decision in 1980, Stone v. Graham, that said that posting the Ten Commandments in a public school is unconstitutional.
Read more at http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/parker-same-sex-marriage-is-war-on-religion-1.5588869
8 Comments. Leave new
Ah yes, “traditional” marriage and the words of Solomon.
I wonder if he was passing along this wisdom to one of his 700 wives. Or perhaps he was taking a break from the 300 concubines.
D, if you actually knew more about Solomon you would have looked in I Kings.
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. 2 They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. 3 He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 4 As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. 5 He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
Solomon, like all of us was a sinful man and there were consequences for his sexual sins.
CJ – This piece begins with a quote attributed to Solomon and decries the supposed downfall of our society citing the imagined departure from marriage “as we have known and understood it for millennia.”
Even the most casual reader of I Kings 11 is aware that the “issue” with Solomon’s wives is not their impressive numbers but instead their rather eclectic origins and religious beliefs and apparent persuasive powers. And we all know that a rather broader view of marriage than our own but yet fitting Ms. Parker’s “understood for millennia” criterion was practiced by Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, David, Ezra, … and on and on. What conclusion should we draw from the special arithmetic of one plus one equals one: if Jacob and Leah are one flesh and Jacob and Rachel are one flesh, then exactly what number of flesh are Rachel and Leah?
I may not know all there is to know about Solomon, but apparently I know more about Solomon than Ms. Parker knows about irony.
I think D’s response was as disjointed as it was sarcastic. At least all his wives and concubines were the gender opposite his!
The article misses one important point. The Supreme Court is not authorized by civil law or by secular law to enforce religious law. If your argument is biblical, fine. Just don’t rely on Ceasar to uphold God’s law as you read it.
The idea that the decision was a war on religion is silly. Your relationship with God would have to be pretty shallow for Anthony Kennedy to be able to shatter it. This is a war not on religion but on hypocrisy (and we can be pretty clear what Jesus thought about that). So many anti-marriage equality folks bang on about freedom and liberty and then miss this golden opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.
No one has to agree with another person’s life choice. You do not have to approve, agree, acquiesce or anything else. You just have to realize that yours is not the only opinion and you are not the only citizen of the country. I am no less free because Mike Huckabee gets to go on TV and declare that he is a Christian and speaks for God. I am embarrassed and frustrated, but no less free.
This is a debate that has long since past the threshold of logic and sanity. Same-sex marriage exists. Deal with it.
Rob, in your statement “same-sex marriage exists, deal with it”, can you think of some words or phrases describing things or conditions that exist in the world today that you could substitute for “same-sex marriage” that might show you the profound weakness of that argument?
Marriage is the one institution that liberals and the Supreme Court have found that they want to be same-sex. The military and miltary schools, public colleges and universities are not allowed to be same-sex (male) because it was found to be discriminatory toward women. How can “same-sex marriage” be any less discriminatory than those other institutions? These same-sex marriages are made by men who do not like women and women who do not like men and only wish to be with someone just like themself. Traditional marriage brings together two different sexed people, male and female, to be joined as one. In this union procreation takes place where children are born, being the flesh and blood of both the father and mother. That is always an impossibility with same-sex sex.
Don
I am not making an argument I am simply stating a fact. Same-sex marriage is a reality whether anyone likes it or not or approves of it or not is another matter. But there is little reason to keep plowing the same row over and over again on this political matter. As a matter for the church, there is lots of conversation yet to be had. As a matter of civil law and human rights, there is simply no rational argument against it.