Bob Emrich is the Pastor of Emmanuel Bible Baptist Church and serves on the executive committee of Protect Marriage Maine and is the chairman of the Christian Civic League. He writes in the Bangor Daily News:
"...The debate is not whether same-sex couples should be able to live as they wish or love whom they choose. But marriage is about far more than what adults want for themselves. It’s about what children need.
Marriage provides in large part a mechanism to provide for the next generation. It is society’s bond with children. It says to children that we as a community have recognized a structure, the institution of marriage, that is uniquely focused on connecting children to the people responsible for bringing them into the world — their parents. Indeed, marriage is our only institution that is focused on children in this way.
... The shortcomings of the institution of marriage (divorce, co-habitation, adultery, etc.) are no reason to abandon it. Rather, we should be strengthening marriage by devoting resources — in churches, in schools and in nonprofit agencies and departments of government — to creating a thriving marriage culture in our state and nation.
The Bangor Daily News joins with backers of same-sex to attempt to make marriage a political issue. It isn’t. Marriage wasn’t created by government; it was merely recognized by government. There is nothing political about marriage in the least. And in making it a political issue, the paper and gay marriage advocates (really, they are one and the same), seek to set up a straw-man confrontation with anyone who opposes redefining marriage."
12 Comments
"... The shortcomings of the institution of marriage (divorce, co-habitation, adultery, etc.) are no reason to abandon it. "
For the last time: Nobody is abandoning anything. Nobody is proposing a ban on opposite sex marriage. The fact that he needs to base his entire argument in a falsehood tells us all we need to know about the anti-gay lobby's motivations and explains why they can't get a win in court!
JZ said: "The fact that he needs to base his entire argument in a falsehood tells us all we need to know about the anti-gay lobby's motivations and explains why they can't get a win in court!"
The fact that homosexuals cannot procreate and that procreation and the complementary nature of men and women is the basis of marriage is all we need to know about why same-sex marriage can't get a win at the voting booth, even in Calipornia.
Amen, pastor.
No need to institutionalize and promote motherless or fatherless parenting via neutered public unions, posing as marriages.
Excellent job by Pastor Bob!
Boy, I want all pastors to talk like this when speaking about marriage. I think that discussing what they believe to be God’s design for marriage has its place here and there. But this is the kind of talk we need to educate people on the practical, state-oriented rationale for marriage.
The arguments for ssm are foolish to the core and the pastor shows how this is so. Why would adults need a government system to recognize their special friendships? It doesn’t make sense.
@Jacob Z.,
“…explains why they can't get a win in court”
Now who’s basing their arguments on falsehoods?
Let's try this one last time: How does marriage equality INHIBIT child rearing? When two men get married (or two women), are straight couples made infertile or children removed from their parents?! Are children not being conceived/born in all those states and countries that have same-sex marriage?!
These arguments are just so dumb. It's crazy that people actually believe this stuff.
@ OhMyWord
"How does marriage equality INHIBIT child rearing?"
Marriage corruption takes the focus off of the children and puts it on the adults. I know you believe it should be all about you, but it really shouldn’t.
Try re-reading your own post and tell me if you cannot see a little narcissism in there?
Jacob Z argues against a strawman of his own making.
He said: "Nobody is abandoning anything."
Well, when the SSM idea is imposed, it is entrenched as a substitution for the marriage idea.
That would be abandonment of the core meaning of the social institution that 1) integrates the sexes, 2) provides for responsible procreation, and 3) does these things as a coherent whole (ie. as a foundational social institution). That is not nothing.
That is a lot to abandon for the sake of pressing identity politics into marriage and into marriage law.
To demand such an extraordinary imposition on civil society requires an extraordinary justification. None has been on offer thusfar.
Jacob Z also said: "Nobody is proposing a ban on opposite sex marriage."
The demand is that all unions of husband and wife must be treated as if they lacked either husbands or wives. But marriage law is for marriage, and not for other stuff.
If the law (and SSMers want to go further to impose the SSM idea on the marriage culture as well) is to be made blind of the core meaning of marriage, then, the special status of marriage (marital status is a special status) would become unsustainable.
The SSM idea proposes that there is no distinction to be tolerated between marriage and non-marriage -- at least as a show of special favoritism for the gay identity group -- and so in effect this would be a ban on societal regard for the core meaning that SSM simply does not fit.
The substitution of the SSM idea for the marriage idea would be abolition of marriage; it would be a ban on what differentiates marriage from the other stuff -- from non-marriage.
You cannot rely solely on the law to impose a special status arbitrarily. Not if you are going to hold true to the central theme of the SSM complaint against the marriage law. SSMers insist on at least two big deals: 1) that gayness is not a legitimate basis for writing the boundaries of eligiblity -- and yet that is the basic demand they make anyway; and 2) that the law must be justified and cannot be imposed arbitrarily -- neither to arbitrarily treat relationships the same nor to arbitrarily treat relationships differently -- and yet that is the basic demand they add to their first demand, anyway.
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OhMyWord, you present another misrepresentation. Your repeated presentation of a strawman argument does not transform it into something relevant to the arguments in favor of the marriage idea.
Pretty much the strongest reason why all families deserve equal dignity and rights. Because gay families children ALSO need stability in their families.
Speaking of marriage bonding children to their parents, anyone note this article?
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_link_between_rented_wombs_and_gay_marriage
Randy and Chair:
Are you going to force married couples to have children? Or force abortions on those giving birth out of wedlock? (THAT'S the society I want to live in!)
Otherwise, you're missing the important connection between child rearing and marriage. Couples can make their own reproductive choices (or are you arguing otherwise?)
To poster #9: there is no such thing as a marriedgaychristian. True Christians do not practice or condone homosexuality.