I thought I knew what marriage was. Not simply the Catholic teaching of marriage, but the practical legal institution of marriage as well. I thought it was a life long commitment to another human being with the potential for creating and raising children, giving them the assurance of always having a mother & father united to raise them to adulthood and make them stable, reliable, productive members of society.
Sadly, society has convinced my wife that marriage is something else. Marriage is a public commitment of love, entitling one to share happiness and bodies, but to be discarded when it becomes work or the sexual attraction lessens without any regard for the young lives created and whose lives were to be protected by the partnership and commitment of the parents the committed their lives to one another and any offspring.
See, today in our country the whole farce of same-sex so-called marriage has placed front and center the idea that marriage is merely a public statement of love. That it simply exists to formalize the sexual relationship between two people that are together in pursuit of pleasure or joy. It undermines the deeper purpose of marriage which is the creation of families that are stable and committed to something greater than simply pleasure. A marriage is about something that isn't always joyful, exciting, pleasurable and fun. It's a about real, true, love. That is self-sacrificing love that cause life to flourish. That creates new life. That leads to a stable, growing culture and society.
I have nothing against anyone that finds themselves attracted to same-sex partners. They are who they are and that is not to be judged. However, the debate over same-sex unions has erroneously created a false concept. The argument has led with the notion that everyone has a right to be happy and that marriage is about happiness. OK, I'm not saying that married people aren't happy or can't be happy. But, when the debate focuses our culture on that as being the defining purpose of marriage that is being unjustly denied to some segment of our population it creates a real and serious problem. It creates a false perception of what marriage is and should be. If marriage is centrally about being happy, then if one is not happy they should discontinue the marriage. It's a logical conclusion of a false ideal about what marriage is.
Of course, my Catholic teaching does tell me that ultimately marriage is about happiness. But it's not in the sense that anybody caught up in a debate about same-sex marriage is likely to understand. The sort of happiness my faith focuses on is that happiness that can only be found when fully accepting God's plan for us and embracing His teachings and His love. But, I don't want to get into that debate here and now.
Now, to be fair, this misconception does pre-date the recent major push for recognition of same-sex unions. The misconception and the push towards same-sex unions all stem from a deeper lack of appreciation for what sex is. Making the foolish attempt to separate the pleasure of sex from the emotions and the potential for life which should demand serious thought and commitment. My wife has left me and our children because she has bought into many of these false ideals. And, you can argue all you want that she is entitled to find happiness and joy.
But, you don't have to look into the eyes of three amazing kids that were brought into this life via what I believed to be an act of true, sacrificial love and commitment and now have to deal with being abandoned by a mother that, all along, was simply seeking selfish pleasure with on concern for anything beyond how much pleasure she derived from the arrangement.
Things are not isolated. Arguing that people should not be denied the happiness of marriage, ignoring how much deeper and complex the institution of marriage really is, well... it has serious consequences for children, families, and our society...
