Now Every Marriage is a Gay Marriage

Thursday night, I went to a presentation by a representative from senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom. He presented on the implications of several recent court rulings in the United States in the last few years. While most people know about the disturbing ruling of Obergefell, there are several other rulings which have fleshed out how that ruling impacts all areas of family life: parents, children, reproduction, and family history. It is important for Christians to reflect on these things so that we can better understand the time and culture in which we are living.

The representative opened his presentation by addressing the common objection that people make when they hear about these things. People often say: “These issues do not have a direct impact on me so I don’t need to worry about these things yet. When they impact me directly then I will act.” But there are two ways to respond to this. First, when it affects you directly, you don’t need to be warned. You know there is a problem. And second, when that happens, it is too late to change things. You will be eaten up in the system.

The representative then worked through several court cases and rulings.

In 2013, the US Supreme Court, in the Windsor case, found that the “Defense of Marriage Act” was invalid. Justice Kennedy wrote that this act did political harm to those in the minority group of gays. This decision enforced the opinion that it does injury to gay people to make a law defining marriage as only between one man and one woman. This set the stage for Obergefell in 2015.

The speaker then proposed that most people do not understand what Obergefell actually did in its ruling. People usually think that there was a small group of people being excluded from this one category called marriage and that SCOTUS simply welcomed those people into the group. In reality, the Obergefell ruling fundamentally redefined the institution of marriage for everyone. In this ruling, SCOTUS stole the name from the old institution and then applied the old name to this new concept. Contrary to the court’s opinion, it is not adding to the ancient institution of marriage at all. It has created a whole new, modern institution based on the whims and opinions of the court.

The presenter explained that “we have reached rock bottom.” There is nowhere else to fall from here. What we are seeing now is the legal system working out the implications of this ruling. Obergefell was the explosion and these other rulings are the shrapnel flying out.

The presenter continued by pointing out, that because of Obergefell, there is now no longer any physical embodiment of marriage. The courts are not basing their decisions about marriage and the family on the physical reality of the world but upon the feelings and thoughts of people. The presenter said “What you think you are, is now the important thing.” Physical reality has nothing to do with marriage. We have been denied the ability to live in the reality of marriage. Now every marriage is a gay marriage. And this opens the door for the court to make rulings based solely on its own opinions.

The justices of the court are no longer bound by reality. In the Obergefell ruling, we see that every individual has been desexed. We are not biological creatures but now creatures of the state. The courts now have the authority to define what is and what is not human. There is nothing but the court.

In June 2017, the US Supreme Court ruling Pavan V. Smith overturned a policy in Arkansas where the Department of Health issued for a lesbian couple “birth certificates bearing only the birth mother’s name and not the female spouse.” SCOTUS ruled that Arkansas could not force parents to include the biological father’s name on the birth certificate. In the case of same-sex couples having children, the biological father would be a donor but this ruling cut the ties of biology between the donor and the child. Obergefell was used as the foundation for this ruling.

The presenter explained that this means Obergefell did not only redefine marriage but it also redefined parenthood as a state in which the adult can choose his or her relationship to the child and the child has no foundation in which to be informed about his biological history. The parents can decide to put their names on the birth certificate and the child might never know of his biological history. The Obergefell ruling also forces the legal system to read and interpret the laws of the land by using gender neutral language. “Father” in a law can now mean “mother”. “Man” can now mean “woman”. Parents are reduced to non-gender individuals.

In 2016 a case in New York state, Brooke V. Elizabeth, the court redefined parent as “where a partner shows by clear and convincing evidence that the parties agreed to conceive a child and to raise the child together, the nonbiological, nonadoptive partner has standing to seek visitation and custody.” This means that an adult who shows “clear evidence of parties agreeing to conceive a child” can have rights over a child. Notice that this ruling does not limit the number of parents that a child can have. As long as the adults are “agreeing parties” then they can be parents. This now redefines parent as a category where there could be three or four adults who claim to have “parental rights” over a single child.

The presenter described this as a new parenthood for all. The category of parent has been redefined so that it has to apply to all of these different groups and so the definition of parent has been lowered to the lowest common denominator.

The presenter further unpacked the implications of these rulings. This means that the status and authority of parent rests solely on the ruling and decision of the court and not on the biological nature of the family. The family unit, parents and child, do not precede the state but rather the state says what is and what is not a parent, a child, and a family.

In February 2018, in Ohio, a father and mother lost custody of a teenage girl who was suffering from gender dysphoria and seeking to transition to be a boy. Judge Hendon, who ruled in the case, said this: “the child truly may be gender-nonconforming and has a legitimate right to pursue life with a different gender identity than the one assigned at birth.” That statement is simply incredible. The child has a legitimate right. This sets the precedent for children to overturn the authority of parents based on court decisions. This again reinforces the concept that the family is a construct of the court rather than a natural biological reality that comes from the way God has made the world.

The presenter finished his presentation with a discussion on reproductive companies that deal in egg and sperm donations. Some of these companies are no longer being required to keep records of donors. This means that the biological history of these embryos is being denied in whole. This could lead to the tricky issue of incest between adult siblings who grow up and sleep together without knowing their biological history. While that scenario might seem fanciful, the underlying point is crucial: in the legal world, the family is no longer tied to biology in any way, shape, or form. Biology has become meaningless in these new rulings.

The presenter concluded his time by reading Justice Kennedy’s infamous words in the Casey v. Planned Parenthood ruling: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe.” In the name of the monster called individual liberty we see that we are losing our grip on reality and the state is taking control of it. The justices of the court now have control over the meaning of family and the court has opened the doors for people to manipulate reality based on their whims and wishes. Christians must understand these decisions and be ready to stand and defend the truth of reality.