Defending our children from the rainbow revolution

By David van Gend

A SUBVERSIVE IDEA
Senator Penny Wong assures us that nothing will change with same-sex ‘marriage’: “The sun will still rise, and children will still eat more ice cream than is good for them.”1 That is not what her fellow lesbian activist Masha Gessen told the Sydney Writer’s Festival in 2012: “Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there. Because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change. And that is a lie.”2 Likewise, Michelangelo Signorile told his fellow gay activists “to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely … [because] the most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake is to transform the notion of ‘family’ entirely.”3 Lesbian social historian E.J. Graff exults that “same-sex marriage is a breathtakingly subversive idea” and feminist Ellen Willis agrees that, “Conferring the legitimacy of marriage on homosexual relations will introduce an implicit revolt against the institution into its very heart.”4

Lying about marriage, redefining it completely, introducing an implicit revolt… These are not the words of easy-going citizens who just want to fit in with the established norms of marriage and family. These are the words of culture warriors intent on taking the despised heteronormative institution and reordering it in their own image. Yes, the sun will still rise, but on an unrecognisable human scene.

So those of us who once thought that ‘marriage equality’ was just about marriage now realise we were wrong. For the serious LGBTQ activists, it is about capturing the legal high ground from where the entire ‘rainbow agenda’ can be implemented. This ranges from imposing radical “Safe Schools” gender theory on our kids to passing laws that let cross-dressing males use girls’ bathrooms; from bankrupting bakers who don’t want to write a gay ‘marriage’ slogan on a cake to prosecuting pastors for teaching traditional values on marriage; from removing ‘mother and father’ from birth certificates to changing ‘husband and wife’ into ‘partner 1 & 2’.

We must stand in the path of this juggernaut and say, “No! Same-sex ‘marriage’ is unjust to children and untrue to nature; it is oppressively intolerant of any who disagree – and it shall not pass!”

 

REASSERTING THE TRUTH OF MARRIAGE
Marriage is founded on the truth that only a man and woman can create a child; only a man and woman can give that child her own mother and father, her biological identity and ancestry. That is nature’s job description for marriage, and two men or two women need not apply. Truth matters, and we should not enshrine a lie at the heart of our culture. The great anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, described marriage as “a social institution with a biological foundation.”5 It is not a social invention to be cut to shape according to political fad; it is a social recognition of pre-existing natural reality. All of our marriage laws and customs exist to reinforce this biological foundation, helping to keep a feral-by-nature male with his mate for the sake of social stability and, above all, for the sake of any child they might create.

Not all marriages do create children – but typically they do, and an institution exists for the typical case. Married couples who cannot have children are still fully married because they fulfil the twin criteria of marriage: they bring together the two halves of nature, male and female, in a one-flesh union, and they can give a child, albeit an adopted child, the mother and father relationship a child needs. Same-sex couples obviously do not bring together the two halves of nature in a one-flesh union, and they cannot give a child, any child, the mother and father relationship a child needs. Same-sex relationships are a different kind of thing to the great natural project of marriage and family – and they need to find a different word.

 

THE INJUSTICE OF ‘MARRIAGE EQUALITY’
Same-sex ‘marriage’ is not only an untrue propositionbutalso an unjust proposition. We are guilty of stealing a child’s birthright when we institute motherless families and fatherless homes as an ideal in our law. This is the injustice of same-sex ‘marriage’: that it means future children must be deprived of their mother or their father – not through tragic circumstance, but by a premeditated Act of Parliament. Why would we wish that grief on a child?

Heather Barwick was raised by a loving lesbian couple but she wrote, “My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost.”6 Another sixteen year old girl writes:  “I want to hug my father more than anything and I want him to know I specifically exist, and I am real, and every human has a father and a mother and I deserve to know both.”7

Let that be the epitaph on this heartbreaking experiment in genderless ‘marriage’ and parenting. And if your heart is not easily broken, test your head against the brick wall of research on how same-sex parentingharms children. As professors Sullins, Regnerus and Marks sum up: 

Evidence from large, nationally-representative studies has demonstrated that children raised by same-sex parents, particularly those who identify as married, do not fare as well as those with opposite-sex parents, and many experience substantial harm.8

Given these findings, which of our politicians is so negligent, so indifferent to the best interests of the child, as to sign such an institution into law?Probably the same politicians who so negligently support the “Safe Schools” gender programme. This, too, is ‘stealing from a child’ – when we steal their childhood through the imposition of indecent and disturbing adult ideas. At present, parents can push back against radical LGBT sex-education programmes but once homosexual ‘marriage’ is the law of the land, parents will have no grounds to object. The logic is simple: if the law says homosexual/bisexual/transsexual ‘marriage’ is normal and right, schools will be obliged, by anti-discrimination law, to teach that homosexual/bisexual/transsexual behaviour is normal and right. Vote for genderless ‘marriage’ and you get Safe Schools on steroids.

 

CULTURAL TYRANNY
Finally, we steal from a child when we strip away their entire moral community. If it takes a village to raise a child, then in order to raise tomorrow’s child according to the values of the rainbow revolution, it will be necessary to purge the village of reactionary moral leaders. That means faithful pastors, priests and rabbis. As former Prime Minister John Howard said in 2011,

Changing the definition of marriage, which has lasted for time immemorial, is not an exercise in human rights and equality; it is an exercise in de-authorising the Judaeo-Christian influence in our society, and any who pretend otherwise are deluding themselves.9

A judge of the US Supreme Court, Justice Alito, echoed that warning about the effect of same-sex ‘marriage’ on old values and beliefs. He said,

I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by government.10

Any law normalising homosexual ‘marriage’ will be a truncheon in the fist of the thought police, enforcing approved attitudes on marriage and sexuality via their “human rights” commissions. And we are told that nothing will change.

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David van Gend is a GP in Queensland and President of the Australian Marriage Forum.This is an edited extract from his best-selling book, Stealing From a Child: The Injustice of ‘Marriage Equality’ (Connor Court, 2016).It is available from Koorong, Amazon, in bulk from the publisher or signed by the author at AustralianMarriage.org and all proceeds go back to the marriage campaign.

 

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