Gay Marriage In The U.S.A.

Gay Marriage In the U.S.A. 

by Archpriest Symeon on Monday, January 4, 2010 at 2:20pm

GAY MARRIAGE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

All foreign nationals please note that I am speaking to American Law and a situation that is unique in the world to the U.S. I am addressing American citizens, though all are welcome to read. To understand why and how this is unique to us as American Citizens you must read my article “The Dual Responsibility of American Citizenship and Church Membership.”

Many religious people who view the prospect of Gay marriage to be harmless to Sacramental Marriage and harmless to religious marriage in general make a simplistic and false assumption. The assumption is that these two things in the United States are separate. Certainly the Orthodox Christian knows that the added Sacramental Celebration of Marriage has much meaning and is in the Orthodox Church as in the Roman Catholic Church a Sacrament of the Church. However, in the United States Sacramental Marriage is only different in the eyes of the religious and religious institutions; it is not recognized as different or special in the eyes of the law.

In the U.S. no state recognizes “sacramental marriage.” States allow religious organizations the right to perform “sacramental ceremony” inside the legal framework of civil marriage. In America in EVERY state there is no distinction between sacramental marriage and civil marriage. In the eyes of the sundry states, all marriage is licensed by the state before the ceremony and validated by the state after the ceremony. Sacramental marriage is no more recognized in the U.S. than would be sacramental divorce. The Pope could grant a couple married by “Sacramental Marriage” a writ of divorce or annulment and in the eyes of the state, the couple would be married until a civil judge granted a civil divorce.

One way that the Marxist/Muslim Axis has used to assault Christianity and the Judeo/Christian foundation of our nation is to assault language. The co-opting, warping and even destruction of some words is an old Marxist trick. Creating new hate-speech words is another trick, like the word "homophobic" but this is a subject for a different article.  So in a real way a huge part of the argument concerning "marriage" is a battle for our own language. In other words "marriage" is one thing and not another.

Before we go further, let us reclaim our language, so that when we speak of marriage we will know what we are saying. When civil marriage laws were written they were written in American English and since the early 1800s the standard for American English was universally agreed to be Noah Webster’s “Dictionary of American English.” So when the legislators, in the1800 and the first half of the 1900s and even some and I dare say "most everyday people" even to the present day, used the word “marriage” it was not and is not a pliable word given to multiple definitions. It meant:

MAR'RIAGE, n. [L.mas, maris.] The act of uniting a man and woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the parties engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity, till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself for the purpose of preventing the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, for promoting domestic felicity, and for securing the maintenance and education of children.

Marriage is honorable in all and the bed undefiled. Heb 13

1. A feast made on the occasion of a marriage.

The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king, who made a marriage for his son. Mat 22.

2. In a scriptural sense, the union between Christ and his church by the covenant of grace. Rev 19. –

This is the exact quote from Noah Webster’s Dictionary of American English – 1823 – which includes these scriptural references.

This Noah Webster reference is no small thing to our culture, no small thing to religious people’s trust of government (The Social Contract as it were) and no small thing to the legal definition of marriage in every state. Why is it important? It is important because when marriage laws were instituted in the sundry States, all in very similar form differing only to what races could be joined, and what kinship affinity would be tolerated, the underlying meaning was uniform, agreed upon, well understood and commonly accepted. This uniformity was held in the information contained in that one simple word, Marriage. So there can be no further doubt as to the meaning of the word, let us note that Noah Webster traced the concept of Marriage farther back into history through the words, spouse and espousal, betrothal and several other words. All these words, including marriage have there most ancient reference in the Scriptural Traditions and practices of the Jews and the Christians - thus the Judeo-Christian foundations of our society (of our Social Contract).

It is a neat trick of Satan to attack language to make what is good to be defined as what is evil.

Satan has been most effective in the destruction of the meaning of good words. Marriage is a good word, carrying the inherent acknowledgment of the role of God in Marriage, just as God’s role is acknowledged on our founding documents. The U.S. Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, The Bill of Rights, all good things, in their concept of Liberty, Freedom, Responsibility of Citizenship, because of their acknowledgement of their God-Given origins.

Today, wounded and suffering, marriage is on the rocks. Punch up any of the online dictionaries and see what confusion and non-clarity there is in the definition of marriage. The same may be said for Freedom, Liberty and the American Citizen’s Rights and Responsibility to be the initiator and validator of governance.

Wrongly, but very early in our History the various “churches” in the U.S. ceded authority for marriage to the sundry States. They did so out of necessity because of the “non-establishment clause” of the U.S. Constitution and because of the definition of marriage given by Noah Webster, “a contract both civil and religious”. Please note he did not define it as civil OR religious, as if the two were capable of being independent and separate.

Because of the non-establishment clause, which today some call the doctrine of separation of Church and State, state governments were blocked by the U.S. Constitution to grant the right to the Churches to “administer” – that is to initiate and validate the laws of marriage, like is done even today in some European countries, Sweden for instance where the marriage register is kept in the Cathedral Church and administered by Church employees. The Churches in the United States were forced to accept that marriages licensed by the State, were both civil and religious, as the Noah Webster definition clearly taught. This was the only way that marriage could past both the “freedom of religion test” and the non-establishment clause and not cede authority, that is effectively "establish" the Churches. And in almost every state, people who were opposed to religion of any kind were still afforded the right of marriage via common law. Even here the “taint” of religion was not removed from the ceremony; even the civil ceremonies said that marriage was an estate "ordained of God." There was also another option to non-religious marriage, all a couple had to do in most states was move in together and introduce each other to the community as Husband and Wife. The premise being, by the definition of Marriage, that God blesses the union of husband and wife, even when husband and wife refused to admit He existed or was due any honor. This was called “Marriage by Common Law.”

On the other hand, two men could live together for decades and no such “common law marriage” applied. From the legal standpoint the only difference between sacramental, non-sacramental-religious, pagan, and strictly civil marriage is who the State gives authority to sign the CIVIL-RELIGIOUS marriage license as “officiator.” Officiator and validator are not synonymous. The marriage is not technically legal until the signed license is returned to CIVIL authority.

This condition of marriage law was not a problem until the culture grew insane. A radical fringe element (the Gay agenda folk and their lobby, financed by massive wealth of the Marxist/Muslim Axis) tried through massive propaganda lasting four generations to “normalize” same sex debauchery and then label same sex debauchers as “loving couples” holding civil rights that should include the right to marry. Thus rendering the word “marriage” meaningless. Or at least destroying its agreed-upon definition, upon which all marriage law was based.

Because of these realities, a Church person, lay or clergy who advocates for same sex civil marriage and claims that in the U.S. this does nothing to ALL of American marriage law does so simplistically in ignorance, OR knowingly and maliciously, because such an assertion is LIE. The right to marry, in the U.S. is a right granted by the sundry States. The Founding Fathers and legislatures that drew up the civil marriage laws in the 1800s KNEW the definition of marriage and never envisioned that the culture could go SO insane not to inherently understand the reasons for marriage being between one man and one woman.

It is this patchwork (sundry state) situation of marriage law that fostered the National Defense of Marriage Act. The federal Defense of Marriage act, signed by President Bill Clinton is yet another ruse to fool the simple minded. The definition this act gives of Marriage as between one man and one woman isn’t worth the paper upon which it is written because marriage law is not the purview of the federal government. It would only have force IF it was an amendment to the constitution. The only seeming legal “meat” in the law is the statute that says that one state does not have to legally recognize same sex marriage in another state, even when gay “married” couples move to non-accepting states. However, this provision is also a ruse since such a law is patently unconstitutional, goes against one hundred forty years of legal precedents contained in the Interstate Commerce Act, mandating that for purposes of Interstate Commerce that one state is required to recognize the validity of the law of the other several states. First time this law is challenged the so-called Defense of Marriage Act with disappear. And cases are already working their way up the legal ladder to the Supreme Court.

In the DUAL role I’ve previous explained, held by a Christian who is also a U.S. Citizen; such a one has the RESPONSIBILITY to do all in there reasonable power to insure that civil marriage laws reflect norms of decency and morality (actually sanity), since as these laws are initiated and validated by US, WE THE PEOPLE and have BOTH religious and civil implications. It is a shame that any Church Official would advocate for something fundamentally opposed to sanity and foreign to the definition of marriage upon which ALL marriage law in this country is grounded.

American Christians must regain possession of their language from the radical secularists who have through tools of sociological indoctrination continued an attack upon it for at least one hundred years. The point is that Christians should stand for what is TRUE.

The Church knows that even supposed Civil Marriages are marriages bless by God. It accepts married couples into the Church daily that were married via civil marriage and never asks them to “validate” that marriage by sacramental ceremony, except through their entry into the Church via repentance and Baptism. This has been the Tradition from the beginning. Why because the Churches have continued to hold the “meaning of marriage” while the shifting sands of the radical secularists have destroyed the meaning in the greater society.

Under U.S. civil rights laws, no married couple could be barred from ANYTHING systematically due to Race, Creed, or Sexual Orientation, etc. The Church’s coffers will be drained fighting the first few lawsuits, they will lose and Christians will be left with the choice of accepting this “new reality” this insane definition of marriage or becoming “outlaws” and go underground. At that point the visible Orthodox Church, at least the ones, accepting of the new reality will have apostatize.

An acquaintance took to task this last paragraph saying, “If this were so true (and not a rhetorical ‘scare tactic’ scenario), then the Catholics would have been sued into submission for not allowing married men to become priest, and we Orthodox and Catholics would have already been sued to death for not allowing women priests.”

I answer that criticism this way

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You state this as if the enemy isn't cunning, unbelievably well organized, and doesn't know the difference between strategic goal and a tactical plan. You would have to have "faith" that these things won't happen in the future when the collective state of law is so insanely overwhelming no defense is possible, to find any rationale for your conclusion. The enemy is very aware of the present backlash in the country where 40% percent of Americans are identifying themselves as conservative and only 20% as liberal, where 53% are identifying themselves as against abortion and 67% are identifying themselves as against same-sex marriage. Do you realize that by the rightful definition as I outlined in the post, which you labeled "scare tactic," that the very phrase, "same-sex marriage" is indefensible and nonsensical; it has as much meaning as "dry water."

I've read private correspondence at the highest level of Anglican hierarchs from the 1880s discussing this "strategic goal" of creating same sex marriage. It didn't arrive to us from a vacuum. And we have been naïve dupes in the face of it. Each decade has produced its tactical plan. Satan has been tactically agile in his battles, choosing which battles to fight and when to fight them. Your "assumptions" that because it hasn't happened means it won't happen ignores the history and the current trends.

Strategically the enemy has decided to attack parts of Christianity, and has co-opted the other parts, warping their ethics and theology. Tactically in the last two decades they've won almost every battle in this sphere. Even though we saw this much more visibly in The Roman Catholic Church of recent decades, this tension is present in Orthodoxy as well, in all the closet homosexuals, closet Marxists, and closet Mohammedans hiding under clericals, subtly pushing the Gay agenda; pushing not too far mind you, just continually to its ever widening limits. If you think there isn't an undercurrent of gay politics in much of the troubles of the various Orthodox Churches in the last decades you haven't been paying attention. (I'm writing to an Orthodox audience here, but it applies to every Christian denomination as well.) One can't help but note that the jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada with the largest number of monasteries have endured the most tragic, sordid and beleaguering scandals. There has been a backlash to this, where some jurisdictions have actively discouraged monasteries.

Please understand, I'm speaking the reality of the situation not condemning anyone. My very precious and for my soul most valued spiritual father and confessor was a highly esteemed monk, who was tonsured to the Great Schema, the most advanced level of Orthodox monasticism, by a representative of Abbot Parthenios and the elders of Saint Paul's Monastery, Mount Athos. I can't imagine how poverty stricken my life would be without him. We spent many hours in conversation over the years and he was acutely aware of the secular imprint on the monastic movement in the U.S. and the resultant problems. Those true monks filled with the Holy Spirit do not push the homosexual agenda or chide and rebuke others who oppose it.

When the prophet Malachi was speaking by the Holy Spirit condemning the destruction of marriage among the Jewish priests, the Holy Spirit said to them, “Ungodliness will obscure your thinking.” This has certainly happened in large segments of American pop-culture and segments of Christendom and sadly even in segments of the Church. The Holy Spirit further said, “You weary the Lord with your words, yet you say, ‘In what way have we wearied Him?’ In that you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them.” Even in 500 BC, there was an assault on the meaning of words by the forces of sin and evil. Satan’s ploys are not new.

Seriously, may God open our eyes and keep us ALL in His mercy.

Fr Symeon