In Texas this week, Gov. Rick Perry signed a law that prevents Texas from recognizing homosexual unions, even if those unions were formed in another state. Vermont has extended recognition to “gay” unions, giving them all the rights and benefits extended to traditional marriages. However, Vermont doesn’t call them marriages but “civil unions.” There’s an important legal difference.
If Vermont, or any other state, were to issue a homosexual couple a marriage license, then under Article 4 of the Constitution, that marriage license would have to be recognized in all 50 states.
Texas’ new “Defense of Marriage Act,” together with the other 36 states with similar legislation, would become instantly unconstitutional.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is hearing arguments in a case involving seven homosexual couples who are challenging that state’s ban on same-sex marriages. If the homosexuals are successful in their challenge, “gay” marriages would have equal status with heterosexual marriages, including the issuance of marriage licenses. Legal analysts say the outcome of the judicial hearing could establish a constitutional right to homosexual behavior.
And the Defense of Marriage Act in all 37 states would become unconstitutional the moment a homosexual couple presented a Massachusetts marriage license as justification for marital benefits.
Jeff Jacoby, an editorial writer with the Boston Globe, said, “Under the ‘Full Faith and Credit Clause’ of the U.S. Constitution, any gay couple will be able to come into Massachusetts, be lawfully married and then go back to their state and say, ‘We are a married couple under the laws of Massachusetts, you must recognize us as such.’ I think that will trigger a tremendous political and social and cultural controversy in this country.”
To prevent this from happening, the Massachusetts House and Senate are holding a joint session to keep alive a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution banning “gay” marriages by defining what constitutes a “marriage.”
Should the Massachusetts lawmakers uphold the ban on “gay” marriages, it will become the 38th state to do so. Enough states to pass an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning homosexual marriages once and for all.
That’s what is at stake, and that is why 37 states found it necessary to come up with a definition of marriage.
The United States was born in 1776. Each of the 50 states has its own legislature. In all the legislative sessions of all the states, plus the U.S. Houses of Congress in more than 200 years, it isn’t until this generation that any one of them found it necessary to define what constitutes a “marriage.”
Until this generation, defining a “marriage” as a union between a man and a woman wasn’t necessary – because it was self-evident.
There are legal definitions for brothers and sisters, and all kinds of family relationships, but every single definition was built on one premise: If marriage wasn’t between a man and woman, there’d be no such thing as brothers, sisters or family relationships. Or a human race.
Until this generation, a legal definition for marriage was as necessary as a legal finding that water makes you wet. Today, even some church leaders are supporting homosexual marriages. So what happened?
The Apostle Paul writes:
But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.”
– II Timothy 3:1-5 (NKJV)
That’s why, after more than 200 years, it is in this generation that lawmakers find themselves “struggling” to define marriage.
Because it is to this generation that perilous times have come.
