I believe what marriage has been for all of recorded history, a societal institution that includes two genders (polygamy just has more of one gender), and based on my faith only one of each. But one doesn’t have to be religious to accept this as intrinsic to the nature of marriage; i.e. without two genders you can’t have something called marriage.

The only reason marriage has ever existed, and the only reason the state has ever had an interest in a relationship between two people, is because their bodily union creates another human being. Marriage has never been understood as a right, but as a supreme responsibility to civilization. It has also never been understood as an exclusively romantic relationship; only in recent history has romance, at least in the West, come to be seen as a prerequisite for marriage.

This is not to say that I begrudge those who wish to re-define marriage, only that they be honest about their endeavor. I never put the words same-sex and marriage together, because it is a practical oxymoron, if just in historical terms. Advocates should just admit that what they want to do is re-define what marriage has always and everywhere in every culture ever been. They want to turn the word marriage into meaning a primarily romantic relationship that doesn’t intrinsically involve children and is more about rights than responsibilities.

Unfortunately for the progressives among us, they have bit off more than they can chew in this quest to re-define a fundamental institution known to every society in the history of the world. There is a saying that facts are stubborn things; reality has a way of getting in the way of those who want to fundamentally transform it, as our current president, a progressive through and through, said in another context that he wanted to do to our country.

Progressives (AKA modern liberals), believe that the acceptance of this re-definition of marriage is inevitable, or so we’re told ad nauseam. For young people it is supposedly no big deal; who wants to take away rights from people, as the issue is framed; live and let live. National polls say the support for marriage as currently defined is dropping, and why wouldn’t they, when people who believe in it are declared bigots by our cultural elite. I’m always surprised that the secularist progressive agenda isn’t more popular in America, given most Americans are indoctrinated with it daily in classrooms, in front of TV screens, where they get their news; it is basically ubiquitous,

The re-definition of marriage is supposedly a fait accompli, an historical inevitability; those who are against it should just accept it, and please shut up! Progressives along with their historical and intellectual predecessors, the Marxists, believe there is an inherent inevitability to history that just so happens to accord with their vision of what an enlightened society should look like. In that society the family is a malleable institution that has no inherent traits; they come in all shapes and sizes, we are lovingly told, and there is now such a thing as a Modern Family and a New Normal.

The problem with Marxism and it’s offshoots like progressivism, is this little thing that always seems to get in the way of their grand schemes: human nature. In this view human nature is in effect a blank slate, a construct of social reality. They have no basis on which to claim otherwise, because theirs is a universe devoid of metaphysics, not to mention a personal God (religious progressives live in the worldview of their secular brethren). In John Lennon’s Imagined world, there is no there, there. Of course the average person knows this is a bunch of hooey: Yes, Virginia, there really is a there, there. In all of recorded history human beings have been remarkably consistent in their behavior, both good and bad. This give us some basis on which to conclude that human nature is a real thing, that the human soul is a glorious yet very troubled thing, and that how this nature is treated will have fairly consistent consequences.

The champions of re-defining marriage want us to believe, and they claim this with a straight face, that children raised by two men or two women will face no different outcomes then those raised by their married biological parents. It doesn’t take a radical, right-wing conservative to observer that men and women generally are very different; the whole Venus and Mars thing, and that the combination of the feminine and the masculine are likely necessary to raise psychologically and emotionally healthy children. In fact, this is so axiomatic and so blindingly obvious that of course your average progressive would not see it.

Every sociological study over the last two or three decades has shown beyond a reasonable doubt that children who grow up in intact, two parent, good old traditional families do better on every conceivable outcome. Divorce Is bad for children, second marriages are bad for children, adults just living together is bad for children. But when it comes to re-defining marriage, we’re now supposed to believe the gender of the parents makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. Human nature, however, the one that actually exists, just won’t allow it.

Supposedly there are studies that prove gender doesn’t matter, but no large scale studies have ever been done. When someone tried this recently, he found it very difficult to find same-sex couples with children that had stable relationships over time. When he came to a different conclusion than the monolithic academic left he was pilloried. Mark Regnerus, a sociologist at the University of Texas, who did the study stated:

The study found “that the scholarly and popular consensus that there are no notable differences between the children who grew up with a mother or father in a same-sex relationship and those whose (heterosexual) mother and father were and are still married is a fiction”

It could be argued that the study was more about family stability than parental gender, but that Regnerus would even question the received wisdom was practically treated as heresy. This is not surprising given Stalinist academic group think in American higher education, but it does show that the pursuit of truth is the last thing many in modern academia want. For many, it’s all about the agenda.

But as time goes on and more children are raised by same-sex couples the truth will indeed win out. This is not to say that all children raised by same-sex couples will turn out horribly, any more than all children of divorce will, only that the best environment for raising children is and always will be in a two-parent married biological family.

I came across a couple of stories recently of adults who were raised in same-sex relationship environments:  one gentleman grew up with two moms, while the woman was raised by a promiscuous homosexual father. I’m sure there are plenty of other stories like these, and in due course the results of children raised in same-sex romantic environments will be widely known. As I said, not all these stories will be bad; human beings are incredibly resilient, but this predication I will make: one day again the prevailing and accepted wisdom in America will be that by far the best environment for raising children is by their married biological parents. That this would ever be questioned is one of the inscrutable mysteries of the modern liberal mind.