Posted by
TEFF on Sunday, February 11, 2007 1:25:15 PM
In response to “Same - Sex Marriage — Challenges & Responses”
By Gregory Koukl
Sunday, February 11, 2007
This is a well written article. Although, Mr. KouKl’s article may get the emotional juices flowing he has avoided the emotional elements of the argument. He has presented a straight forward approach to why the family not marriage is the basis that cultures are built on and marriages are law that are created by the culture to protect that foundation. There is a central message that goes beyond Mr. Koukl’s theme regarding homosexual marriage and touches some of the problems that are plaguing our society, namely the decay of the family structure itself. Divorce, cohabitation and infidelity have eroded the importance of the family structure as well.
“The truth is, it is not culture that constructs marriages or the families that marriages begin. Rather, it is the other way around: Marriage and family construct culture. As the building blocks of civilization [marriages], families are logically prior to society as the parts are prior to the whole. Bricks aren’t the result of the building because the building is made up of bricks. You must have the first before you can get the second.
Societies are large groups of families. Since families are constituent of culture, cultures cannot define them. They merely observe their parts, as it were, and acknowledge what they have discovered. Society then enacts laws not to create marriage and families according to arbitrary convention, but to protect that which already exists, being essential to the whole.”
We no longer hold the family structure as important as we once did. Its standing in our society has been effected by the fact that many in our society believe that institution is something that is in flux and can change with the times. However, modern day research is now showing us that children’s needs are not in flux and do not change with the times. They are something that only a family can provide.