What the 'gay marriage' debate is really about

By J. Matt Barber

It's called Pandora's Box.

And the Supreme Court just opened it.

Did you actually think the debate over "gay marriage" was about marriage? Have you really come to believe that this cultural kerfuffle has anything to do with "civil rights" or "equality"? Have you bought into the popular premise that this is a legitimate discussion on federalism – that it's a reasonable disagreement over whether the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause requires that newfangled "gay marriage," something rooted in same-sex sodomy, a deviant and disease-prone behavior our Constitution's framers officially declared "the infamous crime against nature," be made law of the land?

A lot of people have, so don't feel bad. A lot of reasonable, well-meaning and even, at times, intelligent people have taken the bait.

But that's all window dressing. It's superficial. It's collateral. It's chaff, a diversion, a squirrel. Don't chase it.

At its core, this increasingly heated fight over "gay marriage" is about two diametrically opposed and profoundly incompatible views of reality (or lack thereof). It's the modern manifestation of a millennia-old clash between worldviews. This ugly cultural conflict is, in reality, neither legal nor political in nature, but, rather, is fundamentally a philosophical debate. Ultimately, it derives from, and is illustrative of, deep-seated spiritual warfare. Quite simply, the clash over "gay marriage" is emblematic of the larger, and much older, clash between good and evil.

And it's reaching critical mass.

On the one hand, on the natural marriage side, we have a worldview that recognizes absolute truth – that acknowledges the fixed moral and natural law, authored and enforced from time immemorial by the sovereign and loving Creator of the universe. This same Creator, incidentally, just happened to design and define the very institution over which we quarrel. Those with this worldview concede that every man, woman and child is accountable to this sovereign Creator and will, one day, stand before Him to face final judgment for what they did or did not do during their infinitesimally short-lived stint here on earth.

This, though not a comprehensive representation, is the biblical worldview.

On the other hand, on the unnatural marriage side (or the "marriage equality" side as these self-styled "progressives" euphemistically prefer), we have a worldview that denies absolute truth. It imagines there are no fixed lines of demarcation between right and wrong – that morality, that reality, is entirely relative and, therefore, the very notion of good and evil, right and wrong, sin and repentance are but false and limiting constructs concocted in the narrow minds of a dull bevy of sheepherders some thousands of years ago.

Since those with this worldview either deny God's very existence altogether or, alternatively, believe that some version of god, like marriage, can be defined, or redefined, in the mind of the beholder, they claim accountability to no one (except goddess political correctness) and, thus, declare reality to be that which they, the secular-"progressive" intelligentsia, proclaim it to be (e.g., that manmade, credulity-straining, reality-warping and oxymoronic counterfeit called "same-sex marriage").

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, who happens to be both a big fan of unnatural marriage and one of the aforementioned intelligentsia, summarized this worldview neatly when he wrote the following in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He did so while attempting to rationalize government-sanctioned child sacrifice, the evil twin to "gay marriage": "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life," he pontificated.

Right. Lay off the 'shrooms, dude.

In other words, man is the measure of all things. Man is god, and there is no god but man. According to Kennedy, and as was first suggested by a garden snake a very long time ago, truth is defined by man's "individual concept of existence."

This, of course, is empirically and manifestly stupid.

And so both of these worldviews cannot be right. It's impossible. The law of non-contradiction precludes it.

So who is right?

It's simple. Those who acknowledge objective reality, natural morality and absolute truth are right. Those who recognize that there are fixed biological, moral and natural laws – that despite the rebellious machinations of fallen man, can be neither altered nor ignored – won the debate before the debate even began.

There is no debate.

Yet the debate goes on.

As for the continuing kangaroo courtrooms overseeing and facilitating the destruction of marriage via judicial fiat, I fully expect that additional reality-denying judges will call up down, black white and evil good. They'll declare a "constitutional right" to sodomy-based marriage.

It's all the rage right now.

Still, there is no legitimate legal argument to be made in favor of this absurdity. The common law, natural law and reality itself preclude any man, any court, any government, even state governments, from presuming to redefine the institution of marriage to exclude the necessary element of binary male-female complementarity.

Mankind can no more redefine marriage to include same-sex parings than can he suspend the laws of gravity.

Yet these arrogant, godless, black-robed autocrats presume to do just that.

The courts are tossing around spiritual nitroglycerin here. It's the stuff that brings down entire civilizations. Here's the bad news: The aforementioned Justice Kennedy is the swing vote in favor of imposing fuax marriage on everyone.

Here's the good news: God will not be mocked.

© J. Matt Barber