The Injustice of Same-sex Marriage

On April 15th, the Washington state Legislature passed the “Everything But Marriage” bill that gives same-sex couples all the rights of marriage. Governor Christine Gregoire has stated she will sign the bill into law.

The bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, stated, “This bill is about justice." [1]

A right is a just claim to something. How does one determine whether a claim is just or unjust and thus, by extension, whether the laws based upon that claim are just or unjust?

To explain the foundation upon which he and the civil rights movement opposed segregation, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote:

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality (i.e. the dignity and worth of man who is made in the image of God) is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” [2]

"This idea of the dignity and worth of human personality is expressed eloquently and unequivocally in the Declaration of Independence. ‘All men,’ it says, ‘are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ ” [3]

King, as did Abraham Lincoln and the Founders before that, recognized that man’s dignity derives from the Creator’s design. Skin color, in all its varied hues, is part of being human and therefore inconsequential. One’s character, not their skin color, reveals God’s image.

King concluded, “All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the (dignity and worth of man who is made in the image of God)” thereby “relegating persons to the status of things.” [4]

Same-sex marriage advocates claim marriage is a right that justly belongs to two people of the same sex as well as to two people of opposite sexes.

The same voice, which tells us that skin color is inconsequential, tells us the Creator designed sexual organs for the opposite sex. When used otherwise the “eternal and natural law” is violated, debasing God’s image within us.

Advocates claim that sexual orientation is part of a homosexual’s nature; that they are born this way.

A homosexual sexual orientation is a sexual desire toward a member of the same sex.[5] A desire, no matter how strong, is a subjective feeling. Yet, the homosexual’s physical sexual organs are made for the opposite sex. Therefore a homosexual union, by definition, cannot unite the human being’s sexual nature - for the sexual desire they have for the same sex conflicts with the sexual organs they have for the opposite sex.

Marriage between a male and a female unites both parts of a human being’s sexual nature – the physical sexual organs match the sexual desire for the opposite sex. The right of marriage between a man and a woman is rooted in the natural law and therefore is just. Same-sex marriage is unjust.

Homosexuals have always had the exact same rights to marry as all citizens. Everyone can marry a person of the opposite sex thereby entering into a relationship that fulfills, rather than degrades, their dignity and worth as human beings.

Claiming a right based on an inherent contradiction forces upon society “a human law that is not rooted in the eternal law and natural law” thereby rejecting the civil rights movement’s very foundation. It degrades the dignity and worth of the human being and destroys the very notion – “inalienable rights” which are endowed upon us by a Creator – that founded this nation.


References:

[1] Chris Grygiel, “Lawmakers pass extended domestic partner rights: Opponents fear measure will lead to legalized gay marriage”, seattlepi.com, referenced 4/16/2009.

[2] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, reprinted in “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, edited by James M. Washington, First HarperCollins, 1986, pp. 293.

[3] Martin Luther King Jr., “The Ethical Demands of Integration,” Dec 27, 1962, reprinted in “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, edited by James M. Washington, First HarperCollins, 1986, pp. 119.

[4] Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” April 16, 1963, reprinted in “A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.”, edited by James M. Washington, First HarperCollins, 1986, pp. 293.

[5] Merriam-Webster Online Medical defines sexual orientation as “the inclination of an individual with respect to heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual behavior”. Inclination is defined as “a deviation from the true vertical or horizontal; especially: the deviation of the long axis of a tooth or of the slope of a cusp from the vertical” .