TIME TO DEFEND MARRIAGE - AGAIN!

Credit where credit is due, I say. So today, even before challenging the church, I give credit to those who again push same-sex marriage. Even though I oppose your agenda with every fiber of my being, I take my hat off to you for a number of reasons.

I do so first for the way you stick to it. Your unwillingness to give up in the face of repeated defeats is impressive. Ann Coulter says that there is never a permanent victory over a liberal. She's right. You keep trying and trying, and you've even won some victories, especially through the courts imposing your "new morality" on a few states.

That's why, following your legislative victory in New York allowing same-sex marriage, I expected you to begin the petition drive here in Maine again within the week. No matter that the voters in 2009 rejected same-sex marriage by a hefty 53 to 47 percent margin, or the fact that every time people get to vote you lose, I knew you would try again. Sure enough, last Thursday, June 7Th, you began your petition drive to get the issue on the ballot again in 2012.

Now on Wednesday,August 17th, the Maine Secretary of State approved language for your citizen's initiative. You are off and running. The political battle is on again.

We in the church can learn from you. We finish a battle then get back to our normal lives, usually exhausted. I doubt that Bishop Malone or Pastor Bob Emrich feel up to spearheading another protracted political fight. Nor are the people of Maine. Marc Mutty of the Portland diocese of the Roman Catholic Church said,

"The people of this state rejected same-sex marriage in November of 2009 and should not be put through what will likely be another diivisive, drawn out campaign."

You know that. Yet, as the church, WE MUST AGAIN MOBILIZE to defend Biblical marriage. We need your ability to stick-to-it.

My hat is also off to your public relations campaign. Almost daily your cheerleaders in the Bangor Daily News make absurd claims with no references to sources. Claims that 10 to 15% of the population are homosexual when any legitimate survey can find only about 2%. Claims there is a gay gene in the DNA code predetermining homosexuality, when no gene can ever be identified. Claims that children are just as well off with two aprents of the same sex in spite of many studies to the contrary.

And, of course, equating your behavioral choice to the racial struggle for equality was a stroke of genius. Who can be against equality, right? Even your name, Equality Maine, makes it hard to resist. And that allows you to tell us we are on the wrong side of the moral issue, and call us homophobes and hate-mongers if we oppose your so-called equality. Yet, the real issue isn't equality, but morality, and same-sex marriage is simply, morally wrong. Michael Youssef claims, "Every issue is a moral issue." This one certainly is.

You've claimed your cause is similar to the court case of Loving versus Virginia. Virginia law made it a crime for Mildred and Richard Loving to marry because they were an interracial couple. However, they were fighting for the right to become a traditional marriage between one man and one woman, not trying to redefine the very definition of marriage. When the Supreme Court upheld their right in June of 1967, they ruled in favor of traditional marriage, not against it. I'm surproised that the black community isn't up in arms over the way you try to make your case equilivilent to thiers.

The Supreme Court understood then that the essential public purpose of marriage was to bind one male and one female together and to the children their sexual activity might produce, knowing that children do better in a home with a mother and a father. That is still true and the reason traditional, Biblical marriage is worth defending.

Same-sex marriage disconnects marriage from its most basic purpose. Quoting Jeff Jacoby,

"Marriage - male female marriage - is indispensable to human welfare. That is why it has existed in virtually every known human society. And why it cannot, and will not, be permanently redefined."

Thousands of years of collected wisdom shouldn't be thrown overboard, and no society until now has ever established same-sex marriage.

I also take my hat off to you for your effective use of questionable polling data. As they say, figures don't lie, but liars figure. Polling data can be fertile ground for liars. We repeatedly hear nowadays that a majority of people approve same-sex marriage. Really? If you say something over and over and over again, it doesn't make it so. When the Alliance Defense Fund and Public Opinion Strategies conducted a scientific national poll from May 16Th through 19Th of this year, they got entirely different results. They found that 62%, a solid majority in any body's reckoning, believed that, "marriage should be defined as a union between one man and one woman." These findings line up well with the actual results when voters go to the polls.

People, we need to think right. Proverbs 1:7 says,

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge , but fools despise wisdom and instruction."

Without beginning with the fear of the Lord, it's amazing where our human reasoning will take us - yes, even to calling thoise standing for Biblical morality bigoted hate-mongers while demanding a complete remaking of the definition of marriage. Now we see Isaiah 5:20 lived out before our eyes. It says, "Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil." We cannot stand by and allow them to stand moralitiy on its head.

Now to address the church (and all who believe traditional marriage is worth defending), I quote the hymn of William P. Merrill,

"Rise up, O church of God! Have done with lesser things. Give heart and mind and soul and strength to serve the King of Kings."

We can win this battle again. Thirty two states have put marriage protection on the ballot, and all thirty two have won. In the ten states of the south where people have voted, traditional marriage won by an average of 71.44%. Even in Ohio, in 2004 they passed a state constituional amendment by 62% protecting marriage. We've alredy won once in Maine.

Back in 1973, when the Supreme Court ruled in Roe versus Wade that unborn babies could be deprived of their right to life and be killed in the womb, the church mostly remained silent. In their generation, they abdicated the fight over the biggest moral issue of their day. Same-sex marriage is the biggest moral issue of our day. Don't let our children and grandchildren have to ask us why we sat out the fight, if we lose anther great battle. This battle can be won. It will be, if we rise up and get to work.