In Canada, on June 10, the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling to legally allow same-sex marriages, finding the traditional definition of marriage as a union between man and woman unconstitutional. British Colombia quickly followed suit.
In the United States, just days later, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that a Texas anti-sodomy law constituted an invasion of privacy and was therefore illegal.
These decisions have unleashed a furor of debate over gay rights, with the question of gay marriage now also being debated in the American press. Conservatives fear that these moves will undermine traditional marriage as the stable underpinning of society.
It is astonishing to see how quickly public opinion has become accepting of homosexuality. Most of the gains in gay rights have been introduced within the past decade. Commentators have noted the surprising lack of outrage at moves that not so long ago would have been unthinkable.
David Frum commented in the National Review that, in Canada, “There were no protests from the country’s religious leaders: only mild expressions of concern. There were no angry editorials in any of the country’s major newspapers. The leader of the conservative Canadian Alliance party had no comment, and most of the country’s other conservative leaders otherwise kept silent.
“After less than a decade of judicial and political pressure, resistance to same-sex marriage in Canada had crumpled up” (July 14).
Although American conservatives have been more outspoken, the trend in the U.S. in recent years has only been toward more permissive policies.
Why such a quick and drastic change of mind? London’s Daily Telegraph noted that the British government’s new consultation paper on homosexual partnerships failed to address the meaning of marriage. Could it be that the gay movement is now making such dramatic gains because traditional marriage has lost its meaning?
A plethora of evidence exists to show the destructive effects of marital breakdown. Stephen Baskerville wrote in the Salisbury Review that “Virtually every major personal and social pathology can be traced to fatherlessness more than to any other single factor: violent crime, substance abuse, unwed pregnancy, truancy, suicide, and more. Fatherlessness far surpasses both poverty and race as a predictor of social deviance” (Summer 2003).
Perhaps there is so little resistance to same-sex marriage now because traditional marriage no longer stands as the foundational institution that it must be in every stable society. With divorce rates in the U.S. stubbornly remaining above 40 percent, it’s no great shock that many divorced, cohabiting or single-parent individuals are no longer willing to fiercely defend the institution.
As Frum pointed out, “The hard truth is that the demand for same-sex marriage is a symptom of the crisis in marriage much, much more than it is a cause of that crisis. To oppose same-sex marriage effectively, you have to believe that marriage is more than a contract between two consenting adults, more than a claim on employers and the government for economic benefits. You have to believe that children need mothers and fathers, their own mothers and fathers. You have to believe that unmarried cohabitation is wrong, even when heterosexuals do it.
“Lose those beliefs and the case for marriage has been lost” (op. cit.).