\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Marriage Is a Social Construction.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Gregory Koukl<\/p>\n
What is marriage?\u00c2\u00a0 There are only two possible kinds of answers to this question:\u00c2\u00a0 Either marriage and family have a fixed, natural purpose (a natural \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teleology\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) or they do not.\u00c2\u00a0 If not, marriage is some kind of social construction, an invention of culture like knickers or bow ties, fashions that change with the times. Marriages defined by convention can be anything culture defines them to be.\u00c2\u00a0 No particular detail is essential.\u00c2\u00a0 This, at least, is the argument of the same-sex marriage advocacy.<\/p>\n
It is not possible, however, that marriage is a social construction.\u00c2\u00a0 Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why.<\/p>\n
Columnist Dennis Prager has observed, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Every higher civilization has defined marriage as an institution joining members of the opposite sex.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 I agree with Prager\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s position on marriage, though I take exception with one of his words.<\/p>\n
I don’t think marriage has been defined by cultures.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, I think it has been described by them.\u00c2\u00a0 The difference in terms is significant.\u00c2\u00a0 If marriage is defined by culture, then it is merely a construction that culture is free to change when it desires.\u00c2\u00a0 The definition may have been stable for millennia, yet it is still a convention and therefore subject to alteration.\u00c2\u00a0 This is, in fact, the argument of the those in favor of same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n
The truth is, it is not culture that constructs marriages or the families that marriages begin.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, it is the other way around:\u00c2\u00a0 Marriage and family construct culture.\u00c2\u00a0 As the building blocks of civilization, families are logically prior to society as the parts are prior to the whole.\u00c2\u00a0 Bricks aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the result of the building because the building is made up of bricks.\u00c2\u00a0 You must have the first before you can get the second.<\/p>\n
Societies are large groups of families.\u00c2\u00a0 Since families are constituent of culture, cultures cannot define them.\u00c2\u00a0 They merely observe their parts, as it were, and acknowledge what they have discovered.\u00c2\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
Why has civilization always characterized families as a union of men and women?\u00c2\u00a0 Because men and women are the natural source of the children that allow civilized culture to persist. This is the only understanding that makes sense of the definition, structure, legitimacy, identity, and government entitlements of marriage.\u00c2\u00a0 This alone answers our question, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What is marriage?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Marriage begins a family.\u00c2\u00a0 Families are the building blocks of cultures.\u00c2\u00a0 Families\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand therefore marriages\u00e2\u20ac\u201dare logically prior to culture.<\/p>\n
Families may fail to produce children, either by choice or by accident, but they are about children, nonetheless. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why marriages have always been between men and women; they are the only ones, in the natural state, who have kids.<\/p>\n
Government has no interest in affirming any other kind of relationship. It privileges and sustains marriage in order to protect the future of civilization.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why same-sex marriage is radically revisionist.\u00c2\u00a0 It severs family from its roots, eviscerates marriage of any normative content, and robs children of a mother and a father.\u00c2\u00a0 This must not happen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Looking for more information to support Prop 8 without being called a right-wing fundamentalist religious bigot? Visit What Is Prop 8? Here is another piece by Greg Koukl found on Stand To Reason: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Marriage Is a Social Construction.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Gregory Koukl What is marriage?\u00c2\u00a0 There are only two possible kinds of answers to this question:\u00c2\u00a0 Either […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/katylee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}